tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-102613492024-03-07T21:14:57.479-05:00NAVITORWelcome to The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy!
"Exspectata ut Conitor! Nos Tutus Vos! Narro Amicus , quod Penetro!"Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.comBlogger674125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-62460420809904797272014-12-06T12:25:00.001-05:002014-12-06T12:34:13.030-05:00On a Roll: Suddenly, things look up for the GOP<b>...We can hope...T</b><br />
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Republicans have lost the last two presidential elections, but not much else over the past six years. They’ve captured the House and Senate. They now hold 31 governorships and 69 of the 99 state legislative chambers. What this means is pretty simple: There’s an emerging Republican majority.<br />The GOP still has significant emerging to do before reaching majority status. It may never get there. The rise this year may be Republicans’ peak for now. They may have achieved nothing more than what University of Virginia professor <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.larrysabato.com/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Larry Sabato">Larry Sabato</a> calls “the emerging outline of possible GOP victory in 2016.”<br />
<br />At the very least, a Republican must win the White House in 2016 while maintaining control of Congress. Republicans need to attract more votes from minorities, particularly Hispanics. They must continue to improve their appeal to women. Most of all, Republicans must avoid self-inflicted wounds such as prompting another government shutdown or nominating a poor presidential candidate.<br />
<br />That’s a lot to pull off. But Republicans have advantages they lacked in the presidential years of 2008 and 2012. One is the eight-year itch. That’s the tendency of voters to change parties in the White House after a two-term presidency. The only exception in the last seven instances of such a presidency was the election of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="George H. W. Bush">George H. W. Bush</a> in 1988 after Reagan’s two terms.<br />
<br />And President Obama is likely to make things worse for the Democratic candidate in 2016. He is not only unpopular but also appears committed to an unpopular agenda. Every poll shows Americans want compromise in Washington. Obama’s preference is for confrontation.<br />
<br />Then there’s the ideological direction of the Democratic party. It’s tilting left.<br />
<br />All the energy and passion is on the left. The party is being McGovernized. Moderates have about as much influence as liberals do in the Republican party. The Democratic agenda—bigger government, higher taxes, increased spending, and cultural nihilism—isn’t a winning combination for 2016.<br />
<br />Midterm elections are not predictive of presidential outcomes. We know that from recent history: After winning in a landslide in the 2010 midterm, Republicans lost the presidential race two years later. Still, the 2014 election offers some clues about political trends. For instance, it suggests the Obama coalition is not the same as the Democratic coalition.<br />
<br />Obama was a great presidential candidate. He maximized the Democratic vote. But when he wasn’t on the ballot in 2010 and 2014, Democrats lost badly. Their turnout machine didn’t work as effectively without him on the ticket. So the Democratic coalition will probably be less broad in 2016.<br />
<br />Democrats think they have a number of current issues on their side. But issues that poll well don’t always cause voters to back candidates of the party associated with those issues. Raising the minimum wage is a good example. It’s clearly a Democratic issue. In November, voters in Arkansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Alaska backed increases in the minimum wage. At the same time, they elected Republicans to the Senate—and by large margins except in Alaska.<br />
<br />Among the major Democratic issues today are global warming, same-sex marriage, abortion, and voter ID. Global warming is so far down the list of issues that voters care about, it has dropped out of sight. The fight over gay marriage is over. Democrats benefited in two election cycles from blaming Republicans for a “war on women” involving abortion and contraception. That issue died in 2014. Opposing voter ID laws may galvanize African Americans and the party base, but that’s it. Besides, there’s no evidence such laws prevent voting.<br />
<br />Immigration is different. It divides the country. It’s a problem for Republicans, who need 40 percent or more of Hispanic voters to win the presidency. It is one of the few issues that actually may help Democrats. Even so, Republicans fared better with Hispanic voters in 2014 than in 2012. In Texas, Republican Greg Abbott got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in winning the governor’s race.<br />
<br />The Hispanic vote is growing, but it’s voters over 65 who are increasing the fastest as a share of the electorate. According to one estimate, seniors will be 30 percent of voters in 2030, Hispanics only 15 percent. And older voters tend to be more conservative, thus inclined to vote for Republicans.<br />
<br />The youngest voters, 18 to 29, are beginning to slip away from Democrats, too. Exit polls showed House Democrats had “half the advantage” with voters under 30 this year than they did in 2006. “The party’s grip on the young may be loosening,” wrote Mark Bauerlein in the <em>New York Times</em>.<br />
<br />Virginia governor <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_McAuliffe" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Terry McAuliffe">Terry McAuliffe</a> said Democrats ought to have touted aggressively the economy in the 2014 campaign. He should know better. Employment has improved, especially if you’re happy with a part-time job. But the recovery from the 2008-2009 recession is the slowest in many decades as average middle-class income stagnates and the exodus of Americans from the job market continues.<br />
<br />Assuming Obama sticks to his unimaginative Keynesian policies, it’s doubtful the economy will be any better in 2016. And a mediocre or worse economy won’t boost Democratic candidates, quite the contrary.<br />
<br />Finally, it’s worth looking at the Democratic presidential candidates. They’re old. Hillary Clinton will be 69 in 2016, Vermont <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Bernie Sanders">senator Bernie Sanders</a> a ripe old 75, and Jim Webb, the former Virginia senator, 70. Outgoing <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_O%27Malley" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Martin O'Malley">governor Martin O’Malley</a> of Maryland will be a mere 53, but the main feature of his governorship—tax hike after tax hike—was repudiated in this year’s election. True, younger candidates may jump in.<br />
<br />The Republican presidential race, in contrast, is brimming with potential candidates in their 40s or early 50s. A partial list includes Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, and Ted Cruz. Who’s likely to be a more exciting candidate in 2016, Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio?<br />
<br />Favorable trends guarantee nothing in politics. But if they didn’t exist, Republicans wouldn’t have emerged in 2014. Should they continue in 2016, Republicans will emerge again. And in the not too distant future, they’ll be the majority party.<br />
<a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/roll_820654.html?nopager=1" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">:</span><br />
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<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pengoopmcjnbflcjbmoeodbmoflcgjlk" style="font-size: 13px;">'via Blog this'</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-9312624509763376842014-10-31T16:53:00.001-04:002014-10-31T16:59:17.340-04:00Voters Are Ready For Sweeping Change <strong>Not only are all the political prognosticators forecasting that <a class="zem_slink" href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/politicsglossary/party-affiliated/Republican-Party/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="the GOP">the GOP</a> will take control of the Senate, they're also predicting the Republicans will strengthen their majority in the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.hulu.com/house" rel="hulu" target="_blank" title="House - Full Episodes and Clips streaming online for free">House</a>, hold the majority of state governorships and win a record number of state legislative chambers across the country.</strong><br />
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WASHINGTON -- It's almost a foregone conclusion that President Obama and the Democrats are going to suffer a humiliating defeat in next week's midterm elections.<br />
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But what would that mean for the last two years of his deeply unpopular presidency, the outcome of the 2015-16 presidential election cycle and the Republicans' chances of winning back the White House?<br />
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Certainly, a huge, game-changing win for Republicans on Nov. 4 will dramatically reorder the political dynamics of the next two years. And this election is shaping up as a very big victory for the GOP across the nation.<br />
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Not only are all the political prognosticators forecasting that the GOP will take control of the Senate, they're also predicting the Republicans will strengthen their majority in the House, hold the majority of state governorships and win a record number of state legislative chambers across the country.<br />
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When you look at the number of major elective offices across the nation, you discover that the GOP -- whatever the polls say about it in Congress -- now controls a hefty chunk of the nation's political power structure.<br />
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<a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.rep.de/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="The Republicans (Germany)">The Republicans</a> already have a tight hold on the House, are within six seats of taking the Senate, control 29 of the nation's 50 state governorships and rule 59 of the country's 98 partisan legislative chambers. Democrats hold only 39.<br />
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A <em>Washington Post</em> survey of the 6,049 state legislative races in 46 states says a "record number of statehouses could go Republican" in next week's elections.<br />
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After looking at these lopsided GOP numbers, all the stories from the liberal news media about how unpopular the Republican brand has become now seem positively laughable. If the GOP is that unpopular, why are the voters putting it in charge of the lion's share of the country?<br />
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It should be clear by now that it's the Democrats who are unpopular, or at least the Democrats who have been in lockstep with Obama's agenda to move the country in a sharply leftward direction -- one where more government, more spending and still more regulations are the answers to every problem.<br />
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So how will all of this play out over the next two years?<br />
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It's certainly going to have a profound impact on the 2015-16 presidential campaign, which will officially begin the day after Tuesday's results.<br />
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Hardly a day goes by, it seems, that some news story doesn't appear in one of the nation's major newspapers, usually on the front page, extolling Hillary Clinton as the savior of the Democratic Party, and who is on a fast track to follow Obama into the White House.<br />
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That she appears to be the overwhelming choice of her party is unarguable. But she also faces a hornet's nest of political obstacles that no one wants to mention.<br />
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First and foremost is that the nation's electorate has grown tired of the Democrats' botched, mismanaged handling of the economy and has turned bitterly against them.<br />
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A majority of voters now say the government's ability to address the nation's biggest problems has declined in the last several years. And by an overwhelming 3-to-1 ratio, far more voters blame Obama and the Democrats than the GOP, according to a recent <em>Washington Post-ABC News</em> poll.<br />
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Clinton is certainly not immune from this deep hostility toward Obama's big-government, anti-business approach to domestic issues, as well as his bungled handling of national security/foreign policy matters, which she oversaw and carried out as the president's secretary of state. She coldly turned a deaf ear to the desperate pleas for added security from the doomed embassy officials who lost their lives in a fiery terrorist attack in <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=32.1166666667,20.0666666667&spn=0.1,0.1&q=32.1166666667,20.0666666667%20(Benghazi)&t=h" rel="geolocation" target="_blank" title="Benghazi">Benghazi, Libya</a>.<br />
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One does not have to be politically clairvoyant to know that the GOP's campaign cry in 2016 will be "it's time for a change," and that means putting the Republicans back in charge of the government.<br />
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Meantime, what can we expect from the White House if the Republicans end up in charge of Congress in the last two years of Obama's presidency?<br />
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It's hard to see him signing any of the economic reforms the GOP wants enacted to accelerate growth, significantly boost new business formation, job creation and higher middle-class incomes, which have remained flat.<br />
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But GOP congressional leaders will want to show the American people the kind of changes that are needed to turn the country around, especially in the run-up to the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_2016" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="United States presidential election, 2016">2016 presidential election</a>.<br />
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To do that, they will have to pass pro-growth legislation to reform the tax code by cleansing it of costly corporate tax exemptions and other loopholes, and lowering the tax rates on business, families, individuals and investors.<br />
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They will have to tackle a common-sense replacement for Obamacare that lowers health care costs, including the rising cost of medical insurance premiums.<br />
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They should dare Obama to veto their pro-growth agenda and, if he does, it will become the virulent issue of the 2016 race for the White House. Then, let's see what Hillary does with that.<br />
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It is more than likely that Obama will not give an inch on any of the issues he has steadfastly opposed over his rocky years in office. Not on badly needed budget cuts to slow the growth in spending, tame the deficit and shrink an $18 trillion debt. Certainly not on junking Obamacare, or expanding trade and angering his party's union bosses.<br />
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Thus, we're most likely in store for two more years of gridlock in preparation for the presidential election battle to come.<br />
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The Republicans better choose their standard-bearer carefully, someone who, unlike Obama or Hillary, as been in charge of running a government and getting an agenda enacted.<br />
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The voters are clearly ready for sweeping change, and that's the midterm message they are going to deliver loud and clear on Tuesday.<br />
<a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/donaldlambro/2014/10/31/voters-are-ready-for-sweeping-change-n1912270/page/full" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-87503831333185044742014-10-18T17:40:00.001-04:002014-10-21T17:18:50.325-04:00The Voters Are Mad as Hell and They Aren't Going to Take it Anymore<b>...Well it's about time! Our nation is on the verge of defeat across the spectrum dud to this communist clown!</b><br />
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WASHINGTON - Eighteen days before the midterm elections, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.barackobama.com/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Barack Obama">President Obama</a> and the Democrats face an outraged electorate that is turning into a perfect political storm.<br />
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The stock market is in a nose dive, slashing worker 401(k) retirement accounts that further threaten a weak, job-challenged economy. Anemic economic data, including a decline in retail sales -- which accounts for one-third of all consumer spending -- has forced economists to lower their forecasts for economic growth.<br />
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If all this weren't bad enough, the Obama administration announced Wednesday<br />
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that the government added nearly $700 billion in new deficit spending to a monster national debt that now stands at $17.8 trillion.<br />
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This followed growing fears over two new Ebola cases and increasing questions about whether the administration was adequately responding to the disease's outbreak in the U.S., or was asleep at the switch. Federal health care officials were summoned to Capitol Hill to explain how two quarantine nurses could be infected by the disease and why more wasn't being done to protect hospital personnel.<br />
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All of this was taking place at a time when the U.S. was caught up in a growing war against a far more dangerous terrorist threat that was on the brink of entering Baghdad in Iraq, and seizing much of Syria, too.<br />
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Meanwhile, Russia was showing little or no substantive signs of backing away from its continuing efforts to seize still more territory in Eastern Ukraine whose economy was said to be "choking under Russian pressure."<br />
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Europe's economy is in a recession, raising additional fears here of a global economic crisis that will only further weaken an underperforming U.S. economy.<br />
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All of this is reaching critical mass as new political data shows the Democrats have fallen to their lowest point in the polls in the last 30 years.<br />
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According to a nationwide <i>Washington Post-ABC </i>News poll taken between Oct. 9-12, only 39 percent now have a favorable impression of the Democrats, compared to 51 percent who view them unfavorably.<br />
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Obama is at the lowest point of his presidency as well. A 51 percent majority disapprove of the way he's "handling his job as president." Only 40 percent approve.<br />
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The <a class="zem_slink" href="http://gallup.com/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Gallup (company)">Gallup Poll</a> reported similar findings this week: Only 40 percent approved of the job he's been doing, versus 55 percent who disapproved.<br />
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And it appears that these voters intend to demonstrate their displeasure by voting for the Republicans. Asked who they planned to vote for on Election Day, just 43 percent said the Democrat, while a 50 percent majority said the GOP candidate.<br />
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It is almost impossible to overstate the gloom that now permeates America's electorate and has turned both Wall Street and Main Street into a deeply pessimistic mood.<br />
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A "fear gauge" compiled this week by the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIX" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="VIX">Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index</a>, which charts investor apprehension, recorded one of its highest fear levels since the summer of 2012.<br />
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Despite Obama's assurances that the possibility of a serious Ebola outbreak "are extraordinarily low," the cases of two stricken two nurses in a Dallas hospital have had a rippling across the country and in the economy.<br />
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Lawmakers were calling for the resignation of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=33.798817,-84.325598&spn=0.01,0.01&q=33.798817,-84.325598%20(Centers%20for%20Disease%20Control%20and%20Prevention)&t=h" rel="geolocation" target="_blank" title="Centers for Disease Control and Prevention">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a> Director Tom Freiden and for a travel ban for all nonmilitary passengers and medical personnel flying from the West African countries where the Ebola outbreak occurred.<br />
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Airline stocks have been hit hard because of fears that passengers could be exposed to the deadly virus. About 200 airline cabin cleaners at New York's LaGuardia Airport did not report for work last week because they said they hadn't been given adequate protection.<br />
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Still, the Ebola threat was serious enough for Obama to suddenly cancel a fundraising campaign trip and meet with his chief health advisers, or else appear that he wasn't on top of the situation.<br />
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Whether or not there are new Ebola cases, the crisis has triggered a deeper level of uncertainty in a fragile and uneven economy that is still struggling to climb out of its lethargy in the sixth year of Obama's troubled presidency.<br />
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A decline in retail sales, a weak housing market, a still-shrinking labor force, and little or no growth in wages was bad enough. But things could get worse if the Ebola threat causes consumers to stay home more, cancel trips, avoid restaurants, movie theaters, and cut back on shopping. Then the economic angst could turn its full fury in the voting booth against the party of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, expressing their anger in the only way they can.<br />
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The Democrats are heading into the final weeks of this election with the political cards stacked against them, and they know it.<br />
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The <i>Post-ABC</i>poll found that two-thirds of the voters now say the country is going in the wrong direction. And six out of 10 Americans say Obama doesn't have a clear plan to govern.<br />
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He has similarly dismal polls on dealing with the Islamic State. Several weeks ago, the job he was doing gave him a six point net gain. Now that has dropped by 16 points.<br />
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Other polls have found that a majority of the electorate thinks the GOP can do a much better job on the economy, restraining spending and balancing the budget.<br />
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Gallup's daily economic surveys this week found that 41 percent of Americans say they're "struggling." Another 5 percent say they're "suffering," and 13 percent say they are under "stress."<br />
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A big factor in next month's congressional elections will be voter turnout, and this is where Republicans, who are far more motivated to vote than the Democrats, have a stronger hand to play.<br />
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"Seventy-seven percent of Republicans say they are certain to vote, compared with 63 percent of Democrats," the Post reported Thursday.<br />
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This could be another "wave" election, a lot like the one in 2010 when the GOP took over the House and stopped Obama's agenda dead in its tracks. Stay tuned.<br />
<a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/donaldlambro/2014/10/17/the-voters-are-mad-as-hell-and-they-arent-going-to-take-it-anymore-n1906218/page/full" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-42158818143863850302014-07-09T23:29:00.001-04:002014-10-21T17:21:14.451-04:00The Genius of J.S. Bach's "Crab Canon" Visualized on a Möbius Strip | Open Culture<br />
<b>Wonderful! Bach was, after all, the greatest jazz musician ever to have lived...T</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/xUHQ2ybTejU?feature=player_embedded" width="640"></iframe><br />
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The most impressive of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Johann%2BSebastian%2BBach" rel="lastfm" target="_blank" title="Johann Sebastian Bach">Johann Sebastian Bach</a>’s pieces, musicophiles may have told you, will knock you over with their ingeniousness, or at least their sheer complexity. Indeed, the music of Bach has, over the past two and a half centuries, provided meat and drink to both professional and amateur students of the relationship between ingeniousness and complexity. It’s no mistake, for instance, that the composer has offered such a rich source of intellectual inspiration to<i> <a href="http://amzn.to/VOLcVW" sl-processed="1">Gödel, Escher, Bach</a> </i>author <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Douglas Hofstadter">Douglas R. Hofstadter</a>, well beyond having given him a word to fill out the book’s title. Listen to <a href="http://youtu.be/xUHQ2ybTejU" sl-processed="1">the first canon from Bach’s </a><i><a href="http://youtu.be/xUHQ2ybTejU" sl-processed="1">Musical Offering</a></i>, and you’ll hear what sounds like a simple beginning develop into what sounds like quite a complex middle. You may hear it and instinctively understand what’s going on; you may hear it and have no idea what’s going on beyond your suspicion that <i>something</i> is happening.<i><br /></i><br />
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If you process things more visually than you do aurally, pay attention to the video above, a visualization of the piece by mathematical image-maker <a href="http://www.josleys.com/" sl-processed="1">Jos Leys</a>. You can follow the score, note for note, and then watch as the piece reverses itself, running back across the staff in the other direction. So far, so easy, but another layer appears: Bach wrote the piece to then be played simultaneously backwards as well as forwards. But prepare yourself for the mind-blowing coup de grâce when Leys shows us at a stroke just what the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_object" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Impossible object">impossible shape</a> of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobius_strip" sl-processed="1">Möbius strip</a> has to do with the form of this “<a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_canon" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Crab canon">crab canon</a>,” meaning a canon made of two complementary, reversed musical lines. Hofstadter had a great deal of fun with that term in <i>Gödel, Escher, Bach</i>, but then, he has one of those brains — you’ll notice many Bach enthusiasts do — that explodes with connections, transpositions, and permutations, even in its unaltered state. Alternatively, if you consider yourself a consciousness-bending psychonaut, feel free get into your preferred frame of mind, watch Bach’s crab canon visualized, and call me in the morning.<br />
<a href="http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/the_genius_of_js_bachs_crab_canon_visualized_on_a_mobius_strip.html" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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<b>Related content:</b><br />
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<a href="http://www.openculture.com/2010/11/a_big_bach_download.html" sl-processed="1">A Big Bach Download: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/the_open_goldberg_variations.html" sl-processed="1">The Open Goldberg Variations: J.S. Bach’s Masterpiece Free to Download</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.openculture.com/2012/10/glenn_gould_explains_the_genius_of_johann_sebastian_bach_1962.html" sl-processed="1">Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebastian Bach (1962)</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-20106385768141963542014-07-04T02:19:00.003-04:002014-07-04T02:20:30.944-04:00Free to Choose<b>The greatest economic mind of the 20th century, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Milton Friedman">Milton Friedman</a>. Here is his entire TV series on PBS, "<a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/dp/0156334607%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzem-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0156334607" rel="amazon" target="_blank" title="Free to Choose: A Personal Statement">Free to Choose</a>", taken from his book of the same name, that became the intellectual foundations of the Reagan ( and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://kemppartners.com/about-jack-kemp/jack-kemp-bio" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Jack Kemp">Jack Kemp</a>) Tax cut bill that saved our nation in the early 80's. Without Mr. Friedman, it is questionable that there would even have BEEN a <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Ronald_Reagan" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Presidency of Ronald Reagan">Reagan presidency</a>. God bless him! Watch them all via the link below...T</b><br />
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<b> http://miltonfriedman.blogspot.com/ </b><br />
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<b>Here's one sample. Please watch them all!...T </b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/15idnfuyqXs" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-14895859350702559992014-06-29T03:02:00.001-04:002014-06-29T03:18:56.415-04:00The Worst Day in History<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container zemanta-img" style="float: right; margin-right: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<b>How could anyone disagree? the onset of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="World War I">WWI</a> destroyed European classical culture for all time. What we were left with was depression, racism, eugenics, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Fascism">Fascism</a>, Socialism, "Progressivism" and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Communism">Communism</a>. Not to mention WWII, The brutal repression and mass murders of the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Cold War">cold war</a>, and 100 years of neglecting, or forgetting to deal with Islam...T</b><br />
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A hundred years ago today, June 28, 1914, was arguably the worst day in human history. Not that anything so awful happened during those 24 hours, but the assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="House of Habsburg">Hapsburg</a> throne by a 19-year-old <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbs_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina">Bosnian Serb</a> nationalist, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Gavrilo Princip">Gavrilo Princip</a>, initiated a series of events that led to not just the horrors of World War I but arguably also those of World War II as well as the rise to power of the fascist and communist movements.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="continued"><br /></a> <br />
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In brief, that vicious era that historians have dubbed the short twentieth century, 1914-89, with its unprecedented numbers of deaths, of extremist movements, and of general human misery began with the shots that festive summer day. (June 28, 2014)<br />
<a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2014/06/the-worst-day-in-history" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-8718437730901784512014-06-18T01:07:00.001-04:002014-06-19T00:29:45.824-04:00The Collapsing Obama Doctrine <b>In 1983, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.259886,-118.819805833&spn=0.01,0.01&q=34.259886,-118.819805833%20(Ronald%20Reagan)&t=h" rel="geolocation" target="_blank" title="Ronald Reagan">President Ronald Reagan</a> said, "If history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom." President Obama is on track to securing his legacy as the man who betrayed our past and squandered our freedom.</b><br />
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As the terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threaten Baghdad, thousands of slaughtered Iraqis in their wake, it is worth recalling a few of President Obama's past statements about ISIS and al Qaeda. "If a J.V. team puts on Lakers' uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant" (January 2014). "[C]ore al Qaeda is on its heels, has been decimated" (August 2013). "So, let there be no doubt: The tide of war is receding" (September 2011).</div>
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Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is "ending" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as though wishing made it so. His rhetoric has now come crashing into reality. Watching the black-clad ISIS jihadists take territory once secured by American blood is final proof, if any were needed, that America's enemies are not "decimated." They are emboldened and on the march. </div>
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The fall of the Iraqi cities of Fallujah, Tikrit, Mosul and Tel Afar, and the establishment of terrorist safe havens across a large swath of the Arab world, present a strategic threat to the security of the United States. Mr. Obama's actions—before and after ISIS's recent advances in Iraq—have the effect of increasing that threat. </div>
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On a trip to the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Middle East">Middle East</a> this spring, we heard a constant refrain in capitals from the Persian Gulf to Israel, "Can you please explain what your president is doing?" "Why is he walking away?" "Why is he so blithely sacrificing the hard fought gains you secured in Iraq?" "Why is he abandoning your friends?" "Why is he doing deals with your enemies?"</div>
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In one Arab capital, a senior official pulled out a map of Syria and Iraq. Drawing an arc with his finger from Raqqa province in <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=33.5,36.3&spn=10.0,10.0&q=33.5,36.3%20(Syria)&t=h" rel="geolocation" target="_blank" title="Syria">northern Syria</a> to Anbar province in western Iraq, he said, "They will control this territory. Al Qaeda is building safe havens and training camps here. Don't the Americans care?"</div>
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Our president doesn't seem to. Iraq is at risk of falling to a radical Islamic terror group and Mr. Obama is talking climate change. Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he goes golfing. He seems blithely unaware, or indifferent to the fact, that a resurgent al Qaeda presents a clear and present danger to the United States of America.</div>
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When Mr. Obama and his team came into office in 2009, al Qaeda in Iraq had been largely defeated, thanks primarily to the heroic efforts of U.S. armed forces during the surge. Mr. Obama had only to negotiate an agreement to leave behind some residual American forces, training and intelligence capabilities to help secure the peace. Instead, he abandoned Iraq and we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.</div>
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The tragedy unfolding in Iraq today is only part of the story. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are resurgent across the globe. According to a recent Rand study, between 2010 and 2013, there was a 58% increase in the number of Salafi-jihadist terror groups around the world. During that same period, the number of terrorists doubled.</div>
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In the face of this threat, Mr. Obama is busy ushering America's adversaries into positions of power in the Middle East. First it was the Russians in Syria. Now, in a move that defies credulity, he toys with the idea of ushering Iran into Iraq. Only a fool would believe American policy in Iraq should be ceded to Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terror.</div>
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This president is willfully blind to the impact of his policies. Despite the threat to America unfolding across the Middle East, aided by his abandonment of Iraq, he has announced he intends to follow the same policy in Afghanistan. </div>
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Despite clear evidence of the dire need for American leadership around the world, the desperation of our allies and the glee of our enemies, President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch. Indeed, the speed of the terrorists' takeover of territory in Iraq has been matched only by the speed of American decline on his watch. </div>
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The president explained his view in his Sept. 23, 2009, speech before the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.un.org/ga" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="United Nations General Assembly">United Nations General Assembly</a>. "Any world order," he said, "that elevates one nation above others cannot long survive." Tragically, he is quickly proving the opposite—through one dangerous policy after another—that without American pre-eminence, there can be no world order.</div>
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It is time the president and his allies faced some hard truths: America remains at war, and withdrawing troops from the field of battle while our enemies stay in the fight does not "end" wars. Weakness and retreat are provocative. U.S. withdrawal from the world is disastrous and puts our own security at risk.</div>
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Al Qaeda and its affiliates are resurgent and they present a security threat not seen since the Cold War. </div>
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Defeating them will require a strategy—not a fantasy. It will require sustained difficult military, intelligence and diplomatic efforts—not empty misleading rhetoric. It will require rebuilding America's military capacity—reversing the Obama policies that have weakened our armed forces and reduced our ability to influence events around the world. </div>
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American freedom will not be secured by empty threats, meaningless red lines, leading from behind, appeasing our enemies, abandoning our allies, or apologizing for our great nation—all hallmarks to date of the Obama doctrine. Our security, and the security of our friends around the world, can only be guaranteed with a fundamental reversal of the policies of the past six years. </div>
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In 1983, President Ronald Reagan said, "If history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom." President Obama is on track to securing his legacy as the man who betrayed our past and squandered our freedom.</div>
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<a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/dick-cheney-and-liz-cheney-the-collapsing-obama-doctrine-1403046522?mod=rss_opinion_main" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-16804847362417397602014-06-18T00:25:00.001-04:002014-06-18T00:42:02.061-04:00Obama’s Criminal Negligence in Iraq <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container zemanta-img" style="float: right; margin-right: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22037447@N03/2126065602" imageanchor="1" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: clear:right;"><img alt="Barack Obama" border="0" class="zemanta-img-inserted zemanta-img-configured" height="320" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2387/2126065602_439973449d_n.jpg" style="border: none; font-size: 0.8em;" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption zemanta-img-attribution" style="text-align: center;">Barack Obama (Photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22037447@N03/2126065602" target="_blank">jamesomalley</a>)</td></tr>
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<span class="userContent"><b>Truth.... He has disgraced his office, our nation, and rendered meaningless the sacrifice of thousands of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="United States">American</a> lives. Men and women who died so that we may live. Shame on you Obama! Shame for all time!!!</b></span><br />
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<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">President Barack Obama came to office promising to
“bring a responsible end to the war in Iraq.” That should have been easy enough
to do, considering the war was already over. Alas, he seems to have had in mind
something quite different than “ending a war.” Perhaps because of his general
bias against exertions of American power, Obama seems to have convinced himself
that our continuing military presence in post-war Iraq was the same as
continuing the war.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">That should have been easy enough to do,
considering the war was already over. Alas, he seems to have had in mind
something quite different than “ending a war.” Perhaps because of his general
bias against exertions of American power, Obama seems to have convinced himself
that our continuing military presence in post-war Iraq was the same as
continuing the war.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">This novel conception of when wars end
suggests Obama may yet pull our forces out of Europe and the Far East in order
to “end” World War II. It also helps to explain how he came to equate
“responsibly ending the war in Iraq” with throwing away everything we had
gained from it. Obama made it plain from the start that he saw no reason to
keep investing in a mistake. He let our military presence in Iraq lapse, and
left the Iraqi government to fend for itself when it was still far too fragile.
There is a reason we stayed in Germany and Japan and South Korea for decades
after the fighting stopped: We didn’t want our sacrifices to be for nothing,
and we didn’t want to have to fight again.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">Now the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,
or ISIS — the very al-Qaeda forces we defeated in Iraq in 2007 — have come back
and taken over </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-controls-shocking-percentage-of-iraq-and-syria-2014-6"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">huge swaths of the country</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">, including most of
the Sunni heartland to the west and north of Baghdad. Meanwhile, over in
next-door Syria, Obama stood by while the rebels fighting Bashar Assad came
under the dominance of extreme Islamist forces, and then sold them all out with
the chemical-weapons deal in September 2013. Consequently, we have thrown the
Iraqi government into a de facto alliance with the murderous Baathist regime in
Syria — a feat that not even common enemies and a common ideology could achieve
during Saddam’s rule — and now both governments find themselves increasingly
dependent on Iran.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">With Iran’s power and prestige thus enhanced,
and rapidly filling the vacuum left behind by the U.S., the mullahs now see the
possibility at long last of extending the Islamic Revolution across the Fertile
Crescent. With our impending agreement to let Iran keep </span><a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/11/outstanding_questions"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">its nuclear-weapons programs</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">, we can now settle
comfortably into the role of a de facto subordinate ally of Iran, </span><a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/iran-deploys-forces-to-fight-al-qaeda-inspired-militants-in-iraq-iranian-security-sources-1402592470"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">whose forces</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;"> we may soon be
helping with </span><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/11/iraq-wants-america-back-to-fight-al-qaeda-with-air-strikes.html"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">air strikes</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;"> in Iraq. If you’re
wondering where that leaves our actual allies among the Gulf kingdoms and
Israel, they are wondering the same thing.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">Foreign-policy mistakes are inevitable, and
should generally be expected, if not always forgiven. But in its approach to
Iraq and the Middle East as a whole, the Obama administration has been
criminally negligent. It could be years and maybe decades before we see a
situation as good as the one Obama found when he got to office — and things are
almost certainly going to get far worse before they get better.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">By the time he got to the White House in early
2009, Obama should have realized that the war in Iraq was already over, and
that we had won. Exactly two years earlier, the Iraqi security forces were
reaching critical mass, simultaneous with the start of America’s own surge, and
the Sunni tribes of Anbar province were all coming over to the U.S. side. By
the summer of 2007, when I was embedded in Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi forces had
utterly defeated al-Qaeda’s Iraqi offshoot, ISIS, in a series of </span><a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/025vxetc.asp"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">massive joint operations</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">. The following year,
the Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki personally orchestrated the offensive
that </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/mar/27/iraq"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">crushed</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;"> the Iranian-backed
militias collected in and around Basra in southern Iraq.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">U.S. casualties in Iraq were close to levels
commensurate with peacetime training activities back home, and a tenuous but
real peace reigned over the whole country. Obama inherited from the Bush
administration the framework agreement for a long-term alliance with Iraq, as
well as a status-of-forces agreement that set December 2011 as a tentative
withdrawal date for all U.S. forces. Iraqi politics were dominated by a Shiite-led
coalition that overtly favored an ongoing alliance with the United States. In
the press, Shiite militias accused each other of being under Iranian control.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">At that point, the U.S. was exerting an
enormously beneficial and calming influence on Iraqi politics. Sunnis who felt
abused by the majority Shiite government could appeal to the Americans for
help, while Shiites could remonstrate to the Americans about Sunni
intransigence. Both could get results — peacefully — through America’s good
offices. In a country where no faction trusted any of the others, all factions
could trust the Americans to be impartial, for the simple reason that we were
impartial. More important, to invoke the title of Bing West’s </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Strongest-Tribe-Politics-Endgame/dp/0812978668"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">great book</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">, we were the
strongest tribe.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">This central position allowed the various
factions of Iraqi politics to embrace an alliance with the United States,
instead of being forced to seek the protection of coreligionists in Saudi
Arabia or Iran whose real agenda was the continuation of a </span><a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/06/12/iraq_mosul_isis_sunni_shiite_divide_iran_saudi_arabia_syria"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">Wahhabi-Iranian proxy war</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;"> <i>inside</i> Iraq.
This is something that Iraqis constantly commented on in their own press, but
which Americans by and large never understood: In toppling the tyranny of
Saddam Hussein, the U.S. had opened the door to a proxy war between the Wahhabi
extremists of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Arab states and the Shiite
extremists of Khomeini’s revolution in Iran. That war proved far bloodier than
America’s counterinsurgency campaign. In fact, the purpose of the
counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq was to defeat both sides in the proxy war,
so that our newfound allies in the government of Iraq could cement their power
and forge a lasting government.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">Hence, America’s continuing military presence
allowed U.S. military officers and diplomats to exert enormous influence both
within Iraq and in the broader Middle East. It allowed us to keep the peace
among Iraqi factions while <i>simultaneously</i> diminishing Iranian and
Wahhabi Arab influence. We had gained, at a frightful cost in lives and
treasure, a priceless strategic asset, namely the possibility of Iraq as a
strong military ally, hosting U.S. forces as long as we needed to keep them
there, engaged against the extremists in Syria and Iran, as well as al-Qaeda,
the Muslim Brotherhood, and their sympathizers among the Arab states. And the
prospect of a successful democracy (however rudimentary and corrupt)
functioning at the heart of the Middle East gave enormous hope to the
pro-democracy movements of the region. In order to consolidate those gains it
was absolutely vital for the U.S. to make a long-term commitment and back it up
with a long-term military presence.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">So what did Obama do? He did what he normally
does, which is to counteract what little capacity for action the U.S.
national-security establishment retains when left on autopilot. He has visited
Iraq only once during his presidency, early in 2009; but even then he only
visited troops, and declined to meet with any senior Iraqi officials. He has
met with Prime Minister Maliki only twice, once in </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-maliki-meet-at-white-house-to-discuss-future-us-iraq-relations/2011/12/12/gIQA9BLqpO_story.html"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">December 2011</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;"> and once in </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-meets-with-iraqs-maliki-vows-ongoing-partnership-no-public-aid-commitment-made/2013/11/01/14d6a402-4319-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">November 2013</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">, by which time the
current debacle was well in train. By </span><a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/obama-s-iraq_794950.html"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">all accounts</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">, Obama barely lifted
a finger to preserve a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq, even when — as Dexter
Filkins recently reported in a </span><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/04/28/140428fa_fact_filkins"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">phenomenal feature</span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;"> for <i>The New
Yorker</i> — all major Iraqi factions were asking, in private if not in
public, for the U.S. to stay.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">The tentative end-of-2011 withdrawal date
became fixed, and all U.S. forces were gone by the beginning of 2012. What so
many Iraqis feared would happen next did not take long to come. The Shiite
factions that had rallied to the U.S. side ran for Iranian cover. Sunni tribal
leaders who had thrown in their lot with the U.S. were left to fend for
themselves in the face of impending and ever more certain assassination. The Iraqi
government became more corrupt and authoritarian as Maliki cemented power
within his own narrow coalition. The Kurds rested in their mountain redoubt
behind their powerful peshmerga militia, as the Sunni heartland once again
became fertile ground for ISIS and other Sunni extremists. The country began to
descend once again into the Wahhabi-Iranian proxy war that Bush had ended on
America’s terms in the final years of his presidency.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">Meanwhile, on Syria, Americans quickly agreed,
on a broad bipartisan basis, to make the worst of a bad situation. As soon as
the rebellion began, there were those, including here at NR, who took the
attitude that there were no moderate Sunni rebels in the Syrian resistance, and
that we should just let our enemies in Syria (namely everyone) pulverize each
other in the hopes they would all lose. In fact, the resistance included plenty
of people willing to align themselves with the U.S., namely the very same
tribes that had aligned themselves with the U.S. in Iraq.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">The civil war in Syria would inevitably
threaten the stability of Iraq, and potentially turn into a cataclysmic
regional conflict. Hence, opponents of intervention in Syria should have
realized that the only alternative to intervening in Syria was to send U.S.
forces back into Iraq, in order to seal off the Iraq–Syria border and buttress
the Iraqi security forces.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">But instead of coopting the Syrian resistance,
or — the next best thing — sealing the border between Syria and Iraq, we did
nothing. By the start of 2013 we had abandoned both the Sunni resistance in
Syria and the Sunni heartland in Iraq to Islamist networks, particularly ISIS.
The Syrian civil war’s slide across the border into Iraq rapidly became a
reality. Violence increased throughout the year until Maliki came begging for
American help in November 2013. But Obama hadn’t done anything to stop the
region from sliding back into chaos and there was no point in starting now.
Maliki left empty-handed, with little choice but to throw himself at the mercy
of the Iranians — and hope for survival in a revival of the Wahhabi-Iranian
proxy war.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">When Obama got to power, a tenuous peace held
in the Middle East, and the U.S. stood at the height of its influence and
prestige in the region. Of course, the Middle East is a devilishly tricky
place; upheaval is always around the corner; and the U.S. can’t single-handedly
control any region. But it should be obvious to anyone who takes an honest look
at the events of the last five years that the Obama administration’s whole approach
to foreign policy was bound to make the Middle East a much more dangerous
place.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">Obama’s skepticism of American power
apparently blinded him to how vital that power was to the maintenance of peace
and stability. Perhaps this discomfort with American power meant the gains of
the Iraq war were a burden to him. If so, he couldn’t do anything to reverse
the 4,500 lives we lost and $1 trillion we spent to liberate Iraq. But maybe he
could make people stop saying the sacrifice had been worth it.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; vertical-align: top;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; letter-spacing: .1pt;">If that was his purpose, then there is at
least one area in which his foreign policy is succeeding. As for the rest,
behold the Middle East in flames.</span></div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/380344/obamas-criminal-negligence-iraq-mario-loyola" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-41667883290970762014-03-21T23:38:00.001-04:002014-03-21T23:58:51.722-04:00Superpower Once Lived Here <b>A truly spineless worm. To make Jimmy Cater look resolute by comparison...</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
On February 22, popular protests led to the fall of the pro-Russian government of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.president.gov.ua/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Viktor Yanukovych">Viktor Yanukovych</a> in Kiev. On February 27, in response to this setback, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://eng.kremlin.ru/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Vladimir Putin">President Vladimir Putin</a> sent forces into Crimea to seize it from <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=50.45,30.5&spn=10.0,10.0&q=50.45,30.5%20(Ukraine)&t=h" rel="geolocation" target="_blank" title="Ukraine">Ukraine</a>. On March 19, President Barack Obama delivered his response. He reassured Putin, “We are not going to be getting into a military excursion in Ukraine.” Obama added, “What we are going to do is mobilize all of our diplomatic resources to make sure that we’ve got a strong international coalition that sends a clear message.”<br />
<br />
<div class="p3">
The message is clear. The problem is its content. Obama certainly isn’t sending the message that Colin Powell, after the Cold War, wanted America to send: “Superpower lives here.” Obama’s message, by contrast, is: “Superpower once lived here. No forwarding address.”</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p3">
Putin understands Obama’s message. He knows he’s won Crimea. The question is whether he’ll win Ukraine.</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p3">
He thinks he will. He’s dealing with the Obama administration, after all. He looks at the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.5333333333,69.1333333333&spn=10.0,10.0&q=34.5333333333,69.1333333333%20(Afghanistan)&t=h" rel="geolocation" target="_blank" title="Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>, he witnesses the failure to enforce the red line in Syria and the subsequent successes of his friend Assad, he chortles at the relaxation of the sanctions on Iran and the desperate desire to cut a nuclear deal, and he sees Obama’s defense cuts. And he reads the <i>New York Times</i>, where David Sanger reports, “Mr. Obama acknowledges, at least in private, that he is managing an era of American retrenchment.”</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p3">
So Putin sees retrenchment. Putin sees retreat. And Putin sees that Obama is unlikely to reverse course.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
In late 1979, with the seizure of American hostages by Iran and the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Soviet war in Afghanistan">Soviet invasion of Afghanistan</a>, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Jimmy Carter">President Jimmy Carter</a> was mugged by reality. Carter then tried, however haplessly, to change direction. But Barack Obama is no Jimmy Carter. Will Obama increase defense spending, as Carter did? Is he likely to launch a military excursion, as Carter did, over the objection—and then resignation—of his dovish secretary of state?<br />
<br />
Carter, whatever his problems, was more hawkish than most in his party. In this he followed in the footsteps of every other Democratic president in the past century. Until Barack Obama.<br />
<br />
It’s been a bit bewildering, even disorienting, to watch Obama get mugged by reality and refuse to press charges. But of course he doesn’t want to press charges. He doesn’t believe in an international system in which the American role is to lead. Former Saudi intelligence chief <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turki_bin_Faisal_Al_Saud" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Turki bin Faisal Al Saud">Turki al-Faisal</a> was asked by the Financial Times recently about Putin and Obama. He explained: “While the wolf is eating the sheep, there is no shepherd to come to the rescue of the pack. This is where we find ourselves today.”<br />
<br />
Indeed it is. In the New York Times, Sanger comments, “History suggests that such eras [of retrenchment]—akin to what the United States went through after the two world wars and Vietnam—often look like weakness to the rest of the world.” Retrenchment looks like weakness because it is weakness. And the consequences of such eras of weakness aren’t happy.<br />
<br />
What is to be done? Congress needs to push the administration in the right direction as much as possible. Foreign policy experts need to propose sound measures—to ensure, for example, that the loss of Crimea isn’t followed by the loss of Ukraine—in the hope that President Obama might be pressured to embrace them.<br />
<br />
More broadly, though, the opposition—which one hopes will come to include some liberals and some Democrats—has to articulate a foreign and defense policy of resolve and strength. Allies and enemies around the world will read the American situation differently if they think the American collapse of will is bipartisan than they will if they see that it is not. Pro-Western forces around the world may be able to maneuver and to hang on if they receive a clear message that the cavalry is coming to the rescue on January 20, 2017.<br />
<br />
So it’s important to mount a vigorous opposition to Obama’s foreign and defense policies. It’s important to propose serious alternatives. It’s important not just for the sake of intellectual honesty and political clarity. It’s important because what the opposition says now can make a difference in the world over the next three years. <br />
<br />
<br />
It will still be a rough time. America can’t be strong with a president committed to weakness. But the prospects for a restoration of American strength will be brighter, the challenges of 2017 will be less daunting, if the opposition today stands clearly and unequivocally for American strength and leadership, and—dare one say it?—for American greatness.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/superpower-once-lived-here_785683.html" target="blank">Full article in new window</a>
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-55461471003415493992014-01-14T14:17:00.001-05:002014-01-14T15:23:52.359-05:00The Immorality of Leaving Iraq and Afghanistan<div class="hentry post author-dennis-prager category-contributors category-political-opinion" id="post-19621">
<div class="entry-content">
<b>Obama is a traitor and should be impeached, tried, and executed for war crimes against the American people...T</b><br />
<br />
On every level and from every perspective — from pure national interest to the purely moral — the decision by the Obama administration and the Democratic Party to withdraw American troops from <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=33.3333333333,44.4333333333&spn=10.0,10.0&q=33.3333333333,44.4333333333%20(Iraq)&t=h" rel="geolocation" target="_blank" title="Iraq">Iraq</a> and Afghanistan is indefensibleLet’s begin with Iraq.<br />
<br />
Here is how the front-page article in yesterday’s edition of USA Today began:<br />
<br />
"When the last U.S. combat troops departed Iraq in December 2011, they left behind a defeated <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Al-Qaeda">al-Qaida</a> and an Iraq where traditional rivals Sunni and Shiite Muslims were sharing power in the world’s only Arab democracy.<br />
<br />
"Two years later, al-Qaida has seized major cities where hundreds of U.S. troops died while fighting alongside their Iraqi brethren. The population once freed by the U.S.-Iraqi alliance has now watched those same jihadist insurgents return to command the streets and impose their will."<br />
<br />
As a result of the United States withdrawing its troops at the end of 2011:<br />
<br />
In 2013, 7,818 Iraqi civilians were killed, higher than the 2008 toll of 6,787 (United Nations figures). In 2010, there were approximately 10 car bombs per month; in 2013, there was an average of 71.<br />
<br />
At great expenditure in money, lives and limbs, the United States had defeated al-Qaida in Iraq. American troops had turned such terrorist dominated cities as Fallujah and Ramadi into relatively peaceful cities governed by pro-government, anti-al-Qaida Sunnis. And al-Qaida had been handed its greatest defeat.<br />
In 2008, the American people elected as president a man dedicated to bringing the troops home.<br />
<br />
Discussing Iraq last week, White House spokesman Jay Carney said, "The president made a commitment to end the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/Iraq_War" rel="wikinvest" target="_blank" title="Iraq War">war in Iraq</a>. He fulfilled that commitment." The language Carney used is instructive. The president made a commitment "to end the war."<br />
<br />
That is how Democrats see abandoning countries to mass death: the "war ends."<br />
<br />
That is the amoral and provincial perspective of the Democrats. All the death, torture and fighting that takes place because Americans have withdrawn don’t really matter. For the Democrats and others on the left — the self-proclaimed compassionate folks — the amount of suffering caused by America withdrawing its troops is just not important.<br />
<br />
This began with the withdrawal from <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=21.0333333333,105.85&spn=10.0,10.0&q=21.0333333333,105.85%20(Vietnam)&t=h" rel="geolocation" target="_blank" title="Vietnam">Vietnam</a>. By 1972, when the Democratic Party nominated <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McGovern" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="George McGovern">George McGovern</a>, it had, for the first time, ceased being a liberal party. It had been taken over by the left, and remains so until this day.<br />
<br />
Forced by the Democrat-controlled Congress, the United States abandoned Vietnam in 1975. On April 30 of that year, the last American helicopter left Saigon, leaving our Vietnamese allies to be "re-educated," tortured and murdered — and all the Vietnamese to be enslaved by a Stalinist Communist regime.<br />
<br />
After America left Vietnam, about two million South Vietnamese were sent to re-education camps, of whom about 165,000 died, between 100,000 and 200,000 were executed, 50,000 died performing hard labor in "New Economic Zones," and another 200,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese died fleeing Vietnam (the "Boat People").<br />
<br />
The same month the last <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Left" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="American Left">American left</a> Vietnam, the Communist Khmer Rouge ("Red Cambodians") under Pol Pot took over Cambodia and proceeded to murder about two million, or about one out of every three or four Cambodians.<br />
<br />
Eight months after the Americans left Vietnam, Communists took over Laos who then proceeded — with the help of the Vietnamese Communists — to engage in genocide against the Hmong population.<br />
Meanwhile about three million additional people fled Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.<br />
<br />
But for the left, the "war ended."<br />
<br />
Having lived through all that, I recall only silence from previously vociferous anti-war protestors about the mass murders that followed the American withdrawal from Vietnam. The campuses were quiet, the intellectuals were quiet, the Democratic Party was quiet.<br />
<br />
We are reliving that now as the left and its political party abandon Iraq and soon Afghanistan. The amount of death and human suffering that will follow in each country mean nothing to the left and the Democratic Party (and, to be fair, to the Libertarian Party as well) — so long as there is no American involvement.<br />
<br />
And the most amazing aspect of all this is that the left and the Democrats are certain that they are the moral and compassionate ones.<br />
<br />
But there is one difference this time: In all the previous abandonments of allies, only the benighted allies suffered the consequences. This time, with a victorious al-Qaida in Iraq and Taliban in Afghanistan, we will, too.</div>
</div>
<a href="http://www.bernardgoldberg.com/the-immorality-of-leaving-iraq-and-afghanistan/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Bernardgoldbergcom+%28BernardGoldberg.com%29" target="blank">Full article in new windows</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-85807064515858939332013-04-27T16:47:00.001-04:002013-04-28T19:03:34.847-04:00Against the ‘New Normal’ - Obama's Acceptance of Permanent Decline<b>How refreshing. I had wondered if ANYONE in America worried, or even noticed, our stunning and precipitous decline these last 5 years</b><br />
<br />
Are you alarmed by the counterterrorism failures increasingly evident as we learn more about the Boston terror attack? Don’t be. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has helpfully explained, “This tragedy is the new normal.”<br />
<br />
<br />
Are you surprised that a whole city was ordered to “shelter in place” as one “knockoff jihadi,” in Vice President Biden’s term, roamed the streets? Don’t be. It’s the new normal. Are you shocked by the Obama administration’s dissembling in response to terror attacks in Benghazi? Don’t be naïve. It’s the new normal. Are you worried that the president proclaims “red lines” to deter dictators from, e.g., using chemical weapons, then does nothing to enforce them? Don’t be unsophisticated. As Rep. <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Adam Smith">Adam Smith</a>, ranking Democrat on the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Committee_on_Armed_Services" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="United States House Committee on Armed Services">House Armed Services Committee</a>, explained, “The president said it was a red line. What the president never said was what that meant exactly.” It’s the new normal. Are you startled that the commander in chief accepts defense cuts that the president’s own defense secretary said would be “devastating” and “a disaster” and “would inflict severe damage to our national defense”? Don’t be foolish. It’s the new normal.<br />
<br />
And do you think, back home, that we might do better than slow economic growth, high long-term unemployment, mountains of debt, and a massive health care reform that’s a “train wreck,” in the felicitous term of the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who helped shepherd it through Congress? Didn’t you get the memo? It’s all the new normal.<br />
<br />
By the way, the new normal is bipartisan. It’s of course true that the administration in power during this period of national decline has a particular interest in selling the concept of a new normal. It’s true that the idea fits uncommonly well with the fatalism that, beneath the airy talk of hope and change, lies at the heart of modern liberalism. But Republican elites aren’t immune to the charms of the new normal, which excuses subpar performance in so many areas.<br />
<br />
So it’s apparently the new normal for GOP leaders in Congress to be more interested in exempting themselves from Obamacare than in laying the groundwork for repealing it, and thereby exempting all Americans. It’s apparently the new normal for GOP elites to spend all their time, money, and effort trying to quickly muscle through a poorly crafted immigration bill—which once passed will have irreversible effects—than trying to do anything significant for American workers or against crony capitalism. It’s apparently the new normal for GOP leaders, at once terrified and contemptuous of their own base, equally intimidated by donors and voters but uninterested in treating either group as grownups, to think they too can simply shelter in place, under the awning of the new normal. (One might add that, when it comes to the leaders of both parties colluding to preserve power and perquisites, the new normal bears a striking resemblance to the old normal.)<br />
<br />
Normal Americans, we would wager, don’t accept the new normal. For one thing, they remember being told that all manner of problems, from the existence of the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=55.75,37.6166666667&spn=10.0,10.0&q=55.75,37.6166666667%20(Soviet%20Union)&t=h" rel="geolocation" target="_blank" title="Soviet Union">Soviet Union</a> to economic stagflation to high crime rates to welfare dependency, had to be accepted as normal. Both party establishments were wrong in their earlier embrace of various pathologies deemed to be permanent. Why are they owed greater deference today?<br />
<br />
There are times when the conservative party ought to be and has to be the party of normalcy, standing against utopian or destructive or foolish change. But there are times—and this is one of them—when a modern conservative party has to be the party that refuses to accept what is said to be normal. This is a time for a serious political party to point out that the new normal is merely a new excuse by the powers-that-be for their deficiencies and failures.<br />
<br />
The historic task of American conservatism is not merely to defeat the liberal party in the next election, which, given the way things are going for this administration, shouldn’t be very difficult. It’s to refuse to accept, to boldly challenge, and to fundamentally reverse, an enervating “new normal” that would acquiesce in American decline and say farewell to American greatness.<br />
<a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/against-new-normal_719152.html" target="blank">Full article in new windows</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-23675731460005109562013-04-09T17:09:00.001-04:002013-04-09T18:35:43.965-04:00Three Who Saved the West <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container zemanta-img" style="float: right; margin-right: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reagan_Thatcher.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: clear:right;"><img alt="Margaret Thatcher with Ronald Reagan" border="0" class="zemanta-img-inserted" height="416" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Reagan_Thatcher.jpg/300px-Reagan_Thatcher.jpg" style="border: none; font-size: 0.8em;" width="300" /></a></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption zemanta-img-attribution" style="text-align: center; width: 300px;">Margaret Thatcher with Ronald Reagan (Photo credit: <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reagan_Thatcher.jpg" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>)</td></tr>
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<b>My thought has always been that Reagan, Churchill, and Thatcher were the greatest leaders of the 20th century. They revived moribund economies, social systems, and military retrenchment. Along with John Paul II these 3 defeated <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Socialism">socialism</a>, fascism, Nazism, communism, and progressivism. Now that socialism has returned, who will rise to the challenge? God bless you <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Margaret Thatcher">Margaret Thatcher</a>...T</b><br />
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And now the last of them is gone. Margaret Thatcher, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/ronald_reagan" rel="rottentomatoes" target="_blank" title="Ronald Reagan">Ronald Reagan</a>, and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Pope%2BJohn%2BPaul%2BII" rel="lastfm" target="_blank" title="Pope John Paul II">Pope John Paul II</a>—three who won the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Cold War">Cold War</a> and, it isn't too much to say, saved the West (at least for a while!)—are no longer with us. Their examples remain. <br />
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They knew what they believed but also knew they had to justify their beliefs, and that one could adjust prudently to circumstances without yielding on principle. They stood firm when in power, and they took risks to get there, challenging the conventional wisdom and the respective establishments of their nations or institutions. They were conservative but not nostalgic, and would counsel us today against excessive nostalgia for their deeds and their days. They would rather, I suspect, urge that we act in their spirit—what one might call a spirit of unapologetic but reformist conservatism.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittaker_Chambers" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Whittaker Chambers">Whittaker Chambers</a> wrote at the end of his last letter to Bill Buckley, “Each age finds its own language for an eternal meaning.” So each age has to find its own leaders for an eternal task—the defense and renewal of civilization. The death of Margaret Thatcher is a healthy reminder to students of politics of the difficulty, the gravity, and also the nobility of this task. </div>
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="read-more"></a><a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/three-who-saved-west_714663.html" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li" style="background: none; display: block; float: left; font-size: 11px; list-style: none; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px; padding: 0; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 84px;"><a href="http://mryoungconservative.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/margaret-thatcher-great-britains-iron-lady-passes-at-87/" style="border-radius: 2px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; display: block; padding: 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img src="http://i.zemanta.com/158655874_80_80.jpg" style="border: 0; display: block; margin: 0; max-width: 100%; padding: 0; width: 80px;" /></a><a href="http://mryoungconservative.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/margaret-thatcher-great-britains-iron-lady-passes-at-87/" style="display: block; height: 80px; line-height: 12pt; overflow: hidden; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Margaret Thatcher, Great Britain's Iron Lady, Passes at 87</a></li>
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li" style="background: none; display: block; float: left; font-size: 11px; list-style: none; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px; padding: 0; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 84px;"><a href="http://itsspencerbrown.com/2013/04/08/a-lesson-from-margaret-thatcher/" style="border-radius: 2px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; display: block; padding: 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img src="http://i.zemanta.com/158379383_80_80.jpg" style="border: 0; display: block; margin: 0; max-width: 100%; padding: 0; width: 80px;" /></a><a href="http://itsspencerbrown.com/2013/04/08/a-lesson-from-margaret-thatcher/" style="display: block; height: 80px; line-height: 12pt; overflow: hidden; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">A Lesson to be Learned from Margaret Thatcher</a></li>
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li" style="background: none; display: block; float: left; font-size: 11px; list-style: none; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px; padding: 0; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 84px;"><a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/04/margaret-thatcher-transformative-conservative.php" style="border-radius: 2px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; display: block; padding: 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img src="http://i.zemanta.com/158291247_80_80.jpg" style="border: 0; display: block; margin: 0; max-width: 100%; padding: 0; width: 80px;" /></a><a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/04/margaret-thatcher-transformative-conservative.php" style="display: block; height: 80px; line-height: 12pt; overflow: hidden; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Margaret Thatcher, transformative conservative</a></li>
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-32528207710650426062013-03-26T13:13:00.001-04:002013-04-09T18:37:29.427-04:00Hope for Detroit?<b>Having grown up in this once proud city, watched its decay, it's corrupt mayors and city council clowns, having returned home in my late 40's, it's good to see a ray of sunshine break through the clouds hovering over this dark city...T</b><br />
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The Detroit News ran a fascinating editorial on Tuesday about the arrival of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_emergency" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Financial emergency">Emergency Manager</a> Kevyn Orr, an accomplished bankruptcy manager assigned by the state of Michigan to spend the next eighteen months cleaning up that tortured, misgoverned city. The people who killed Detroit showed up to protest Orr’s arrival, but there were only about 150 of them, and little attention was paid to their antics:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Most city residents ignored the ministers who used their pulpits to raise the fervor against the state takeover, and also paid scant attention to ill-informed outside agitators such as the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Jesse Jackson">Rev. Jesse Jackson</a> and TV host Rachel Maddow, who are ranting incessantly about the loss of democracy.</blockquote>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Instead, Detroiters appear to be willing to give Orr a chance to show what he can achieve before they react. Or they simply are resigned to the inevitable. Or they prefer any option to the failed status quo.</blockquote>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
They got their first look at what the city’s turnaround may yield Monday — as Orr was settling in to his new City Hall office — when Mayor Dave Bing detailed a plan by the business community to help equip the Emergency Medical Services and police departments with new vehicles.</blockquote>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Led by mega-mogul Roger Penske, Detroit’s Big Three automakers and other business leaders and foundations, the initiative will raise $8 million in private funds to lease 23 new EMS vehicles and 100 police cruisers. Another $6 million is promised for recreation programs, with $5 million of that money coming from Lear Corp. and $1 million from DTE Energy Co.</blockquote>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It’s an enormous private sector commitment that should help address the No. 1 concern of Detroiters — public safety.</blockquote>
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Imagine that! Private sector businessmen stepping up to help their city, now that they’re confident they won’t just be dropping money into the pockets of degenerate kleptocrats. The little band of protesters rallied by the likes of Maddow and Jesse Jackson (whose family knows a few things about corruption) are howling about the loss of “democracy,” but maybe this is the only way to dismantle rotting big-city political machines: let them prove their abject failure beyond question by crashing the city, use professional management to clean up the wreckage, and hope voters observing the process will have second thoughts about following political charlatans into ruin. Warning: this process will be several orders of magnitude more unpleasant, if run at the national level.<br />
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By the way, that’s Orr in the image above. It shouldn’t matter what he looks like, but let us not kid ourselves, it does.<br />
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A previous article in the Detroit News described an $11,600 tax lien on his Maryland home as a stain on “what colleagues say has been an otherwise distinguished career as a bankruptcy attorney and corporate turnaround specialist.” The tax liens mostly stemmed from his failure to pay unemployment taxes for his babysitter. The remainder of his resume is impressive:<br />
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<div>
Orr, 54, has some familiarity with the Motor City, having handled <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.chryslergroupllc.com/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Chrysler">Chrysler LLC</a>’s bankruptcy in 2009. He was the lead attorney who convinced a court to allow Chrysler to abruptly shut down 789 dealerships, a controversial decision at the time.</div>
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“He was sensitive and appreciative of the issues that he was litigating in those matters,” said Arthur J. Gonzalez, the retired bankruptcy judge who handled the Chrysler case.<br />
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[...] Orr has a 30-year career in bankruptcy law, business restructuring, commercial litigation and bank regulation. In discussing Detroit’s financial problems, Orr has said he is most comfortable in bankruptcy court, where municipalities are favored over bondholders, but he’d like to avoid that route.<br />
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After graduating from the U-M’s Law School in 1983, Orr first worked in private practice at a Miami firm.<br />
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He later moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for the federal government, first as a litigator for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and later as an attorney for the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_Trust_Corporation" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Resolution Trust Corporation">Resolution Trust Corp</a>., a government-created entity from the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s.</blockquote>
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He also earned high marks working as deputy director of the Justice Department’s U.S. Trustees Program in the late 90s.<br />
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Orr has his work cut out for him, and limited tools for accomplishing the job. Detroit is running a $327 million budget deficit, plus $14 billion in long-term debt. The Washington Post described Orr’s formal powers as follows: “State law allows emergency managers to negotiate labor contracts and deals with vendors. He can sell off city assets to raise money and cut the salaries of elected officials to save bucks. In some cities with emergency managers, elected leaders have been moved out of decisions involving municipal finances.”<br />
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It will be enormously helpful if Orr can augment these limited formal powers with arrangements such as the business community’s support for police and emergency medical services. He sounds both cheerful and confident, saying of his job in a recent interview, “If it doesn’t kill me, it’s going to make me stronger.” Isn’t that pretty much the message Detroit and its automakers have been striving to convey through their advertising and public-relations efforts? It sounds like the city and its emergency manager are on the same page, at least for now.<br />
<a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2013/03/26/business-leaders-step-up-in-detroit/" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-23154764792329487242013-03-25T12:26:00.001-04:002013-03-25T12:43:30.753-04:00The GOP: Delusional, Schizophrenic or Just Plain Stupid?<b>This from Bernie Goldberg today: Couldn't have said it better myself. Doesn't anyone in the GOP remember Ronald Reagan and his conservatism?...T</b><br />
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Another day of political news reports. Another day of flip-flops, ridiculously late recognition of the obvious and disjointed and dispiriting dribble from the Grand Old Party. Geez…can they possibly be this mindless and out of touch? Yes, me thinks.<br />
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Where in the world to start? There’s enough material for a whole season’s worth of political sitcom episodes…perhaps titled Bozos and Bureaucrats.<br />
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I read RNC chairman Reince Priebus “wants to explore the possibility of choosing who actually asks the questions during the debates.” Imagine that. The equivocations in his statement turn one’s stomach.<br />
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But, perhaps we should be thankful Priebus stumbled upon a glaring flash of the obvious: the deck has been stacked again Republicans and Conservatives (note the distinction) in presidential debates for, oh, let’s give it thirty years or so.<br />
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Perhaps if Priebus remains in his current position another thirty years his growing observational acuity will reveal another revelation, something small, not really significant…like not going to political gunfights with down-filled pillows.<br />
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We have good ‘ol <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.speaker.gov/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="John Boehner">John Boehner</a>, God love him. He didn’t trust Obama, but now he does. He once believed the massive deficit is a fatal affliction; now it threatens the country’s financial health no more than a hangnail. He vowed to repeal Obamacare, now he doesn’t. What am I missing here?<br />
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And, according to Erick Erickson, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://cantor.house.gov/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Eric Cantor">Eric Cantor</a>, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and that stalwart defender of conservatism <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Mitch McConnell">Mitch McConnell</a> (just kidding) continue to talk the talk of Obamacare repeal, but, in reality are caving like the French Army in 1940.<br />
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John McCain and his sidekick <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.lgraham.senate.gov/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Lindsey Graham">Lindsey Graham</a> are always good for a flashback…to the good old days of a permanent Republican minority in the Senate. Go along, get along and relish the positive press coverage for reaching across the aisle to the always reasonable and compromising Democrats.<br />
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But…it seems <a class="zem_slink" href="http://paul.senate.gov/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Rand Paul">Rand Paul</a> and Marco Rubio are getting a little frisky, not laying low in the bunker. The whacko birds are causing a little heartburn in the so called ‘world’s greatest deliberative body.’ John and Lindsey ain’t real happy about it.<br />
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Anybody wonder why four million Republicans sat out the 2012 election?<br />
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If you answered that question correctly, here’s another.<br />
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Does anyone not understand why that pesky talk of a third party just won’t go away?<br />
<a href="http://www.bernardgoldberg.com/the-gop-delusional-schizophrenic-or-just-plain-stupid/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Bernardgoldbergcom+%28BernardGoldberg.com%29" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-87207952002623867822013-03-19T13:38:00.002-04:002013-03-25T12:29:46.616-04:00What Caused the Big Bang?<b>Fascinating. As a follow-up to our last post on "the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Higgs boson">God Particle</a>" discovery as the building block of the universe, this subject compels, and shows that the human mind is currently uncapable of comprehending this subject. A truly humbling experience...T</b><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uabNtlLfYyU?feature=player_detailpage" width="640"></iframe>
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For almost one hundred years, we have known that the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Metric expansion of space">universe is expanding</a>. We have traced this expansion back in time, through to the very beginning when the universe occupied an infinitesimal point in space. This was the state of the universe at time t=0, over 13 <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bya" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Bya">billion years ago</a>.<br />
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It is from this starting point that everything we are familiar with came into existence: protons, neutrons, stars, galaxies - even <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Spacetime">space and time</a> itself are here. At time t=0, this point began an unprecedented inflation, in this instant time and space were born. This event has become known as the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Big Bang">Big Bang</a>.<br />
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The big bang is our current, most accepted theory for how the universe began. It was inspired by the discovery that the universe is expanding.<br />
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It was an unusual and highly counterintuitive event. It was not an explosion, it did not occur inside anything, rather, everything that we are familiar with: left, right, up, down, cause and effect, the stage for all physical laws, was getting larger.<br />
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We possess a natural curiosity of the world around us. We want to know how and why things are the way they are.<br />
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This curiousity has served us well because it carries significant survival benefits. If we see an event and ask ourselves why it happened or what caused it, we are more likely to spot a threat before it becomes dangerous in the future.<br />
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Our curiosity gives us the ability to look beyond the present moment. From it, we have evolved an urge to look for causes, it is an inseparable part of our biology. Because of this, we really can't help ourselves when we attempt to find a cause for creation, it is second nature for us to ask, 'What Caused the Big Bang?'<br />
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Any answer to this problem must begin with a key realization: both time and space are contained within the universe and came into existence only AFTER the Big Bang occurred. The cause of the universe must not include them, they are not available to us. It must come from outside our experience.<br />
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In this realm, the solution, whatever it is, will seem very strange to us, and it will almost certainly make no sense to our brains because here, it is possible to have an event with no cause. There is no time, there is no before in which the Big Bang could have occurred, there simply is no cause and effect.<br />
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We must somehow come up with a solution that exists outside time and space.<br />
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GOD MADE IT HAPPEN<br />
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For many "God caused the big bang" is a perfectly reasonable response. This seems to help many cope with the unsatisfying prospect of an event without a cause.<br />
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The problem of course is that one is then immediately forced to ask, "From where did the creator come?"<br />
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If the answer is "he always existed" then we have a situation, from a causality standpoint, that is no more satisfying than a universe that springs forth from nothing. A creator that has always existed is an entity that somehow exists without a cause.<br />
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So this answer doesn't solve the causality issue whatsoever.<br />
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THIS UNIVERSE IS ONE OF MANY<br />
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Further, the idea of cyclical universes doesn't solve it either.<br />
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For reasons having to do with entropy and the second law of thermodynamics the process of an ever cycling universe - one that continually expands and contracts - cannot be perfectly efficient. This means that each successive expansion will take a little longer than the previous one.<br />
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If each previous universe is, say, half as long as the one that succeeds it, and the one before that half as long, this infinite sum does eventually converge to a universe with zero length with no obvious past and we are back again to at least one big bang starting for no obvious reason.<br />
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OUR BIOLOGY BETRAYS US<br />
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The real problem with this question of what caused the big bang is ultimately a biological one; our brains have evolved to assume that everything has a cause, we can't imagine any event ever not having one.<br />
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But 100 years ago, we couldn't imagine that our galaxy was only one in an ocean of one hundred billion. 200 years ago, we couldn't imagine that the stars were more than 13,000 light years away. 500 years ago, we couldn't imagine that the Earth revolved around the Sun. If our past enquiries into the universe are any guide, the truth of the cosmos is always more than we have imagined.<br />
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The answer to the cause of the universe will almost certainly be something strange and, by definition, wholly beyond our experience. Our occluded brains must always be open the answer, especially when asking questions that push the limits of our capacity to understand.<br />
<a href="http://www.deepastronomy.com/what-caused-the-big-bang.html" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-85031540263700209712013-03-17T18:12:00.001-04:002013-03-25T12:31:30.697-04:00"God Particle" found: Elemental building block of the universe<b>This is astounding.....If the universe is so elegantly organised, then the question begs: Who, or what, organised it?...T</b> <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1_HrQVhgbeo?feature=player_detailpage" width="640"></iframe>
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The search is all but over for the so-called <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Higgs boson">God particle</a> that is a crucial building block of the universe. <br />
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Physicists said on Thursday they believe they have discovered the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subatomic_particle" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Subatomic particle">sub-atomic particle</a> predicted nearly half a century ago, which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape. <br />
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The elusive particle, called a Higgs boson, was predicted in 1964 to help fill in our understanding of the creation of the universe, which many theorise occurred in a massive explosion known as the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Big Bang">Big Bang</a>. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-8F5zsuZ6GdzeTRa3UfATVGeTMqs9gbsjliGevMZE63KFFCQF1o3QmX4apMpj_lGuHoIZPMjslrfQFnCU9HuOFlXato4flg_xM1fRtjGmmAGLdlGmXiRbrlqB6Egpp1HENRAt9g/s1600/dh_higgs-20130315062643337860-620x349.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-8F5zsuZ6GdzeTRa3UfATVGeTMqs9gbsjliGevMZE63KFFCQF1o3QmX4apMpj_lGuHoIZPMjslrfQFnCU9HuOFlXato4flg_xM1fRtjGmmAGLdlGmXiRbrlqB6Egpp1HENRAt9g/s320/dh_higgs-20130315062643337860-620x349.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>A representation of traces of a proton-proton collision measured in the search for the Higgs boson. Photo: AP</i></span> <br />
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The particle was named for <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Higgs" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Peter Higgs">Peter Higgs</a>, one of the physicists who proposed its existence, but it later became popularly known as the God particle. <br />
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Advertisement Last July, scientists at CERN, the Geneva-based European Organisation for Nuclear Research, announced finding a particle they described as Higgs-like, but they stopped short of saying conclusively that it was the same particle or some version of it. <br />
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Scientists have now finished going through the entire set of data year and announced the results in a statement and at a physics conference in the Italian Alps. <br />
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"To me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said Joe Incandela, a physicist who heads one of the two main teams at CERN that each involve about 3000 scientists.<br />
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Its existence helps confirm the theory that objects gain their size and shape when particles interact in an energy field with a key particle, the Higgs boson. The more they attract, the theory goes, the bigger their mass will be.<br />
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But, it remains an "open question", CERN said in a statement, whether this is the Higgs boson that was expected in the original formulation, or possibly the lightest of several predicted in some theories that go beyond that model. <br />
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But for now, it said, there can be little doubt that a Higgs boson does exist, in some form. <br />
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Whether or not it is a Higgs boson is demonstrated by how it interacts with other particles and its quantum properties, CERN said in the statement. The data "strongly indicates that it is a Higgs boson", it said. <br />
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The discovery would be a strong contender for the Nobel Prize, though it remains unclear whether that might go to Higgs and the others who first proposed the theory or to the thousands of scientists who found it, or to all of them. Read more: <br />
<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/god-particle-found-physicists-say-they-have-discovered-a-higgs-boson-20130315-2g481.html" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-89474047371972805322012-01-15T20:43:00.005-05:002012-01-16T02:41:48.548-05:00Obama, Hitler, And Exploding The Biggest Lie In History<strong>Absolutely true. Roosevelt (and most of elite US opinion of the time) openly admired Mussolini. FDR also studied and emulated Hitler before the war. His NRA was modeled after NAZI policies. After all, the only difference between Nazism and soviet communism was the emphasis on race rather than class. But BOTH hated the Jews. And BOTH hated the "bourgeoisie". Nazism, Fascism and Communism were all "heresies of socialism" as historian Richard Pipes noted. </strong><br />
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<strong>Remember that fact the next time some pre-programmed liberal shouts that you are a NAZI because you happened to have voted republican. HEIL OBAMA!...T</strong><br />
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<em><span style="color: #660000;">“The line between fascism and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.fabians.org.uk/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Fabian Society">Fabian socialism</a> is very thin. Fabian socialism is the dream. Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator.”</span></em> John T. Flynn<br />
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Numerous commentators have raised alarming comparisons between America’s recent economic foibles and Argentina’s fall “from breadbasket to basket case.” The U.S. pursues a similar path with her economy increasingly ensnared under the growing nexus of government control. Resources are redistributed for vote-buying welfare schemes, patronage style earmarks, and graft by unelected bureaucrats, quid pro quo with unions, issue groups and legions of lobbyists.<br />
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In Argentina, everyone acknowledges that fascism, state capitalism, corporatism – whatever – reflects very leftwing ideology. Eva Peron remains a liberal icon. President Obama’s Fabian policies (Keynesian economics) promise similar ends. His proposed infrastructure bank is just the latest gyration of corporatism. Why then are fascists consistently portrayed as conservatives?<br />
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In the Thirties, intellectuals smitten by progressivism considered limited, constitutional governance anachronistic. The Great Depression had apparently proven capitalism defunct. The remaining choice had narrowed between communism and fascism. Hitler was about an inch to the right of Stalin. Western intellectuals infatuated with Marxism thus associated fascism with the Right.<br />
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Later, Marxists from the Frankfurt School popularized this prevailing sentiment. Theodor Adorno in The Authoritarian Personality devised the “F” scale to demean conservatives as latent fascists. The label “fascist” has subsequently meant anyone liberals seek to ostracize or discredit.<br />
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Fascism is an amorphous ideology mobilizing an entire nation (Mussolini, Franco and Peron) or race (Hitler) for a common purpose. Leaders of industry, science, education, the arts and politics combine to shepherd society in an all encompassing quest. Hitler’s premise was a pure Aryan Germany capable of dominating Europe.<br />
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While he feinted right, Hitler and Stalin were natural bedfellows. Hitler mimicked Lenin’s path to totalitarian tyranny, parlaying crises into power. Nazis despised Marxists not over ideology, but because they had betrayed Germany in World War I and Nazis found it unconscionable that German communists yielded fealty to Slavs in Moscow.<br />
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The National Socialist German Workers Party staged elaborate marches with uniformed workers calling one another “comrade” while toting tools the way soldiers shoulder rifles. The bright red Nazi flag symbolized socialism in a “classless, casteless” Germany (white represents Aryanism). Fascist central planning was not egalitarian, but it divvied up economic rewards very similarly to communism: party membership and partnering with the state.<br />
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Where communists generally focused on class, Nazis fixated on race. Communists view life through the prism of a perpetual workers’ revolution. National Socialists used race as a metaphor to justify their nation’s engagement in an existential struggle.<br />
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As many have observed, substituting “Jews” for “capitalists” exposes strikingly similar thinking. But communists frequently hated Jews too and Hitler also abhorred capitalists, or “plutocrats” in Nazi speak. From afar, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany each reeked of plutocratic oligarchy. Both were false utilitarian Utopias that in practice merely empowered dictators.<br />
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The National Socialist German Workers Party is only Right if you are hopelessly Left. Or, ascribe to Marxist eschatology perceiving that history marches relentlessly towards the final implementation of socialist Utopia. Marx predicted state capitalism as the last desperate redoubt against the inevitable rise of the proletariat. The Soviets thus saw Nazis as segues to communism.<br />
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Interestingly, almost everywhere Marxism triumphed: Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc., all skipped the capitalist phase Marx thought pivotal. Instead, they slid straight from pre-industrial feudal conditions into communism; which essentially entailed reversion back to feudalism supplanting the traditional aristocracy with party cronyism – before dissolving into corrupted variants of state capitalism economically similar to fascism.<br />
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As usual, Marx got it backwards.<br />
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It’s also ironic that even as orthodox Marxism collapsed due to economic paralysis, cultural Marxism predicated on race, sex and identity politics thrives in “Capitalist” America. The multiculturalists substituted race where the Soviets and Maoists saw only class. America’s civic crusade has become political correctness, aka cultural Marxism, preoccupied with race. Socialism wheels around again.<br />
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While political correctness as manifest in the West is very anti-Nazi and those opposing multiculturalism primarily populate the Right, it’s false to confuse fascism with conservatism. Coupling negatives is not necessarily positive. Because the Nazis would likely detest something that conservatives also dislike indicates little harmony. Ohio State hates Michigan. Notre Dame does too, but Irish fans rarely root for the Buckeyes.<br />
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America’s most fascistic elements are ultra leftwing organizations like La Raza or the Congressional Black Caucus. These racial nationalists seek gain not through merit, but through the attainment of government privileges. What’s the difference between segregation and affirmative action? They are identical phenomena harnessing state auspices to impose racialist dogma.<br />
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The Nation of Islam and other Afrocentric movements, like the Nazis, even celebrate their own perverse racist mythology. Are Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright conservatives? Is Obama?<br />
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Racism does not exclusively plague the Right. Many American bigots manned the Left: ex-Klansman Hugo Black had an extremely left wing Supreme Court record, George Wallace was a New Deal style liberal – he just wanted welfare and social programs controlled by states. Communists always persecute minorities whenever in power.<br />
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The Nazis’ anti-SemitismMarana, welcomed Jews back into Spain for the first time since 1492 and famously thwarted Hitler by harboring Jewish refugees.<br />
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Very little of Hitler’s domestic activity was even remotely right wing. Europe views Left and Right differently, but here, free markets, limited constitutional government, family, church and tradition are the bedrocks of conservatism. The Nazis had a planned economy; eradicated federalism in favor of centralized government; considered church and family as competitors; and disavowed tradition wishing to restore Germany’s pre-Christian roots.<br />
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Despite Democrats’ pretensions every election, patriotism is clearly a conservative trait so Nazi foreign policy could be vaguely right wing, but how did Hitler’s aggression differ from Stalin’s? The peace movement evidenced liberals being duped as “useful idiots” more than pacifistic purity. Note the Left’s insistence on neutrality during the Hitler/Stalin pact and their urgent switch to militarism once Germany attacked.<br />
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After assuming power, Nazis strongly advocated “law and order.” Previously, they were antagonistic thugs, which mirrored the communists’ ascension. The Nazis outlawed unions perceiving them as competitors for labor’s loyalties, i.e. for precisely the same reason workers’ paradises like Communist China and Soviet Russia disallowed unions. To Nazis, the state sustained workers’ needs.<br />
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Even issues revealing similarity to American conservatism could also describe Stalin, Mao and many communists. This is not to suggest liberals and fascists are indistinguishable, but a fair assessment clearly shows if any similarities appear with American politics they reside more on the Left than Right.<br />
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On many issues the Nazis align quite agreeably with liberals. The Nazis enforced strict gun control, which made their agenda possible and highlights the necessity of an armed populace.<br />
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The Nazis separated church and state to marginalize religion’s influence. Hitler despised biblical morality and bourgeois (middle class) values. Crosses were ripped from the public square in favor of swastikas. Prayer in school was abolished and worship confined to churches. Church youth groups were forcibly absorbed into the Hitler Youth.<br />
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Hitler extolled public education, even banning private schools and instituting “a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program” controlled by Berlin. Similar to liberals’ cradle to career ideal, the Nazis established state administered early childhood development programs; “The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school as early as the beginning of understanding.”<br />
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Foreshadowing Michelle Obama, “The State is to care for elevating national health.” Nanny State intrusions reflect that persons are not sovereign, but belong to the state. Hitler even sought to outlaw meat after the war; blaming Germany’s health problems on the capitalist (i.e. Jewish) food industry. The Nazis idealized public service and smothered private charity with public programs.<br />
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Hitler’s election platform included “an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.” Nazi propaganda proclaimed, “No one shall go hungry! No one shall be cold!” Germany had universal healthcare and demanded that “the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood.” Obama would relish such a “jobs” program.<br />
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Nazi Germany was the fullest culmination of Margaret Sanger’s eugenic vision. She was the founder of Planned Parenthood, which changed its name from the American Birth Control Society after the holocaust surfaced. Although Nazi eugenics clearly differed from liberals’ abortion arguments today, that wasn’t necessarily true for their progressive forbears.<br />
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Germany was first to enact environmentalist economic policies promoting sustainable development and regulating pollution. The Nazis bought into Rousseau’s romanticized primitive man fantasies. Living “authentically” in environs unspoiled by capitalist industry was almost as cherished as pure Aryan lineage.<br />
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National Socialist economics were socialist, obviously, imposing top-down economic planning and social engineering. It was predicated on volkisch populism combining a Malthusian struggle for existence with a fetish for the “organic.” Like most socialists, wealth was thought static and “the common good supersede[d] the private good” in a Darwinist search for “applied biology” to boost greater Germany.<br />
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The Nazis distrusted markets and abused property rights, even advocating “confiscation of war profits” and “nationalization of associated industries.” Their platform demanded, “Communalization of the great warehouses” (department stores) and presaging modern set aside quotas on account of race or politics, “utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State.”<br />
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Nazi Germany progressively dominated her economy. Although many businesses were nominally private, the state determined what was produced in what quantities and at what prices. First, they unleashed massive inflation to finance their prolific spending on public works, welfare and military rearmament. They then enforced price and wage controls to mask currency debasement’s harmful impact. This spawned shortages as it must, so Berlin imposed rationing. When that failed, Albert Speer assumed complete power over production schedules, distribution channels and allowable profits.<br />
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Working for personal ends instead of the collective was as criminal in Nazi Germany as Soviet Russia. Norman Thomas, quadrennial Socialist Party presidential candidate, saw the correlation clearly, “both the communist and fascist revolutions definitely abolished laissez-faire capitalism in favor of one or another kind and degree of state capitalism. . . In no way was Hitler the tool of big business. He was its lenient master. So was Mussolini except that he was weaker.”<br />
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Mussolini recognized, “Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter’s prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes’ excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (l926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics.” Keynes saw the similarities too, admitting his theories, “can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state than . . . a large degree of laissez-faire.” Hitler built the autobahn, FDR the TVA. Propaganda notwithstanding, neither rejuvenated their economies.<br />
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FDR admired Mussolini because “the trains ran on time” and Stalin’s five year plans, but was jealous of Hitler whose economic tinkering appeared more successful than the New Deal. America wasn’t ready for FDR’s blatantly fascist Blue Eagle business model and the Supreme Court overturned several other socialist designs. The greatest dissimilarity between FDR and fascists was he enjoyed less success transforming society because the Constitution obstructed him.<br />
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Even using Republicans as proxies, there was little remotely conservative about fascism. Hitler and Mussolini were probably to the right of our left-leaning media and education establishments, but labeling Tea Partiers as fascists doesn’t indict the Right. It indicts those declaring so as radically Left.<br />
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/2011/09/01/obama-hitler-and-exploding-the-biggest-lie-in-history/" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
<div class="zemanta-related"><h6 class="zemanta-related-title" style="font-size: 1em; margin: 1em 0px 0px;">Related articles</h6><ul class="zemanta-article-ul"><li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://ferrellgummit.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/nazis-blow-big-kiss-to-occupy-wall-streeters/" target="_blank">Nazis Blow Big Kiss to Occupy Wall Streeters</a> (ferrellgummit.wordpress.com)</li>
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</ul></div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_c.png?x-id=6805cb57-6198-4f30-8580-660fdb996755" style="border: currentColor; float: right;" /></a></div>Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-30508323380467233802012-01-06T16:33:00.001-05:002012-01-06T16:35:31.377-05:00McCain: Iraq 'Unraveling' Under Obama Pullout<strong>As I have previously stated: Obama is a traitor for what he has done, with his shameful sacrifice of the lives of all those brave men and women who gave their lives to defeat <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamofascism" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Islamofascism">Islamo-fascism</a> in the region and give <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=33.3333333333,44.4333333333&spn=10.0,10.0&q=33.3333333333,44.4333333333 (Iraq)&t=h" rel="geolocation" target="_blank" title="Iraq">Iraq</a> it's freedom. He should be impeached and removed from office. His successor will be forced to AGAIN re-fight both wars...T<br />
</strong><br />
Arizona Senator and 2008 presidential candidate John McCain says President Obama has placed the United States in “great peril” with his policy on troop withdrawals in Iraq and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.5166666667,69.1333333333&spn=10.0,10.0&q=34.5166666667,69.1333333333 (Afghanistan)&t=h" rel="geolocation" target="_blank" title="Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>.<br />
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McCain charges in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV that the pullout of all U.S. troops from Iraq was politically motivated to please his liberal base.<br />
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“Our Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said we always envisioned a residual force of some 20,000 people. They played the duplicitous game of never telling the Iraqis the number of troops we wanted to keep there until it got down to the negligible number of 3,000,” McCain says.<br />
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“He claimed Iraq is a stable and democratic situation and obviously it’s unraveling, because he refused to try to keep a residential force in Iraq.<br />
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“In Afghanistan, over the objections of his generals — who he appointed — he has put Americans in greater risk, and the chances of succeeding in Afghanistan are greatly diminished, because we needed the second fighting season.<br />
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“This is all leading from behind, and in my view it places this country in the greatest peril since the presidency of James Earl Carter.”<br />
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Read more on Newsmax.com: McCain: Iraq 'Unraveling' Under Obama Pullout<br />
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!<br />
<a href="http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/mccain-iraq-obama-unraveling/2012/01/06/id/423310" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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<div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_c.png?x-id=1c6f5f3f-4353-401c-bf82-e5744a7b4a09" style="border: currentColor; float: right;" /></a></div>Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-68720055111649615612011-12-23T17:59:00.003-05:002011-12-23T22:29:11.026-05:00U.S. exit from Iraq leaves a power void - And ensures Obama's Place in History as Worst U.S. President<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:David_H._Petraeus_press_briefing_2007.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commande..." height="199" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/David_H._Petraeus_press_briefing_2007.jpg/300px-David_H._Petraeus_press_briefing_2007.jpg" style="border: currentColor; font-size: 0.8em;" width="300" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; width: 300px;">Image via <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:David_H._Petraeus_press_briefing_2007.jpg" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></span></span><strong>Never before in US History has an American president surrendered to a foreign power. Never before have we lost a war. Never before has a president surrendered after victory was final, total, complete, and a resounding success for all sides involved.</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Barack Hussein Obama has ensured his status as the worst president in the history of the United States of America. All that remains is to watch, helplessly, as Iraq descends into chaos, anarchy, and either an Al Queda haven or an Iranian puppet state - or both...T</strong><br />
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The Iraqi government lost more than a fighting ally when the last U.S. troops left the country Sunday.<br />
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Since the 2003 invasion, U.S. service members had woven themselves into the fabric of Iraq’s power structure - its politicians, soldiers, village elders and tribal sheiks.<br />
<br />
Army and Marine Corps officers acted as small-town mayors. They had authority to spend nearly $4 billion over seven years on local construction and humanitarian projects via the Commanders Emergency Response Program.<br />
<br />
U.S. military personnel - whether sergeants, platoon leaders or brigade commanders - helped settle major political disputes in Baghdad and brokered talks at local levels among various tribal chiefs.<br />
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Their power base: as many as 170,000 U.S. troops, M1 tanks, advanced jet fighters and the American military uniform.<br />
<br />
Now all that persuasive power is gone. Left to fill the void are the State Department and a limited diplomatic presence at the U.S. Embassy and two stations outside Baghdad.<br />
<br />
It took only one day after the U.S. exit for Iraq’s <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia_Islam" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Shia Islam">Shiite Muslim</a> majority to move against the highest-ranking Sunni, accusing the country’s vice president of terrorism and provoking a government crisis in the process.<br />
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“Our pullout is not just the number of brigades, it’s not about the numbers,” said retired ArmyMaj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, who has been to Iraq as an independent adviser and has interviewed returning soldiers.<br />
<br />
“The Army had a postgraduate course in how to kill insurgents and work with the people,” he said. “They became toward the end the glue that tied together these factions in Iraq whose natural condition is to spiral apart.<br />
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“The Iraqis relied on us not just to kill insurgents and train the Iraqi army or do nation-building; they relied on us as an excuse to stay together.”<br />
<br />
The Pentagon’s counterinsurgency strategy embodied more than killing. Protecting and winning over the population stood as a major goal, particularly after 2006, when <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="David Petraeus">Gen. David H. Petraeus</a> rewrote the doctrine and took command in Baghdad.<br />
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It put emphasis on the commanders’ pocket money through the emergency response program. Officers could make spot decisions to build or fix a building, start electric power or make a condolence payment - without a lot of red tape.<br />
<br />
In one town, cash on the spot enabled the Army to build a sports/community center, renovate a fruit-and-vegetable stand and complete a water-sewage treatment plant.<br />
<br />
Then there was the pivotal 2004 battle to defeat Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr’s marauding militia in southern Iraq, a beating that told the fiery cleric that he would not rule Iraq by force. The militia had taken over several towns - including Karbala, Najaf, Kufa and Diwaniyah - and imposed harsh Islamic law with terrorism and executions.<br />
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The Army’s 1st Armored Division executed <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Iron_Saber" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Operation Iron Saber">Operation Iron Saber</a> in stages, first destroying the enemy, then shifting to people-to-people programs that made soldiers part of the town’s leadership.<br />
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“I’ve got to think this was a watershed operation in terms of how to do things as part of a counterinsurgency,” Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, an assistant division commander at the time, told The Washington Times.<br />
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The battle over, the Army began hiring local Iraqis for construction projects and reassembling the security forces who had fled.<br />
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“We crossed over from bullets to money,” Gen. Hertling said.<br />
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Gen. Scales told The Times that Iraqis no longer will have U.S. soldiers at the ready to make sure the local security forces fulfill their missions.<br />
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“Those in uniform maintain their cohesion based on their associations with us,” he said. “There still is value in being around a cohesive Western power that is essentially an army of a democracy.<br />
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“You know the old adage ‘leading by example.’ The Iraqis’ natural tendency is to break apart, especially at the midlevel management of the army in the past, was often assuaged by the moral presence of a respected U.S. Army.”<br />
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By 2011, lieutenant colonels who had been to Iraq in 2003 and 2004 are generals and have made as many as five tours to the country. “They had built long-standing friendships with Iraqis,” Gen. Scales said.<br />
<br />
One such player is Army Col. John Paul Digiambattista, who did three tours, the last as a brigade commander.<br />
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He spoke with Talkingwithheroes.com about the noncombat chores his brigade carried out in 2010 as it worked within a provincial reconstruction team to improve local governments.<br />
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“There are still efforts we can make to improve the government, improve what the government does for the people,” he said. “Democracy does not come easy.”<br />
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It is this intangible that the Iraqis will miss - the presence of Americans in the background who can step in to prod the government or help settle disputes.<br />
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“For those forces in Iraq whose aim was to keep the state together and rely on the U.S. Army for being a builder of the state, there was real trepidation about the American military leaving so precipitously,” Gen. Scales said. “A residual force is not just a bunch of privates sitting around Camp Victory eating hamburgers. A small residual force, had it remained in Iraq, would really have punched above its weight because of who it was by that time.”<br />
<a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/22/us-exit-from-iraq-leaves-a-power-void/?page=all#pagebreak" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
<div class="zemanta-related"><h6 class="zemanta-related-title" style="font-size: 1em; margin: 1em 0px 0px;">Related articles</h6><ul class="zemanta-article-ul"><li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2011/12/time-to-add-this-euphemism-to-your-vocabulary-security-gap.html" target="_blank">Time to add this euphemism to your vocabulary: "Security Gap"</a> (bokertov.typepad.com)</li>
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://waronterrornews.typepad.com/home/2011/12/ironhorse-finishes-their-chapter-in-iraq.html" target="_blank">Ironhorse finishes their chapter in Iraq</a> (waronterrornews.typepad.com)</li>
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/rssReference.php?headline=U.S.+intelligence+warned+of+strife+after+Iraq+pullout&NewsID=313683" target="_blank">U.S. intelligence warned of strife after Iraq pullout</a> (thehimalayantimes.com)</li>
</ul></div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_c.png?x-id=1c7ce294-43c7-45b0-83b9-473af3716f34" style="border: currentColor; float: right;" /></a></div>Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-73660608272896579742011-11-29T16:27:00.002-05:002011-12-06T23:39:48.625-05:00Retirements Confound Democratic House Quest<strong>How does that song go, again? Let's see: "Happy Days are Here Agaiinnn!"</strong><br />
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Massachusetts Rep. <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/barney-frank" rel="huffingtonpost" title="Barney Frank">Barney Frank</a>’s announcement Monday that he won’t run for re-election marks the 17th Democratic departure from the House this year, compared with only six Republicans. Those numbers don’t bode well for Democrats in their effort to take back control of the House in next year’s elections, Politico and The Hill report.<br />
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Democrats and Republicans alike see tough times ahead for House Democrats. “Members of the House don’t focus on their own politics. They focus on whether they are going to be in the majority and can push an agenda,” former Democratic Alabama Rep. <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.answers.com/topic/artur-davis#Gale_Contemporary_Black_Biography_d" rel="answerscom" title="Artur Davis">Artur Davis</a> told Politico.<br />
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“There are very few Democrats who see the prospect of the House shifting. I predict there will be five to 10 other senior Democrats that will announce their retirements in the coming months.”<br />
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The Democratic retirements fit a historical pattern. When either party loses a majority, its representatives get discouraged — and some hang it up. After the GOP ceded its House control in 2006, 27 Republicans opted for retirement, compared with six Democrats.<br />
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“Members of Congress don’t retire when things are good. They just don’t,” Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak told The Hill. “I think they’re looking at it right now and saying, ‘It’s unlikely we’re going to win the House back. If anything, it’s likely we won’t have the Senate, and the White House is a 50-50 shot, at best.’”<br />
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Democrats also may be worried that it will be many years before their party returns to power in the House, especially with the economy looking like it won’t recover anytime soon, Chris Perkins, a GOP pollster in Texas, told The Hill.<br />
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“What it does is allow the Republicans to build a narrative,” he said. “It makes the recruiting efforts for the DCCC [<a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.dccc.org/" rel="homepage" title="Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee">Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee</a>]that much harder, when potential candidates see a lot of senior members bailing.”<br />
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Democrats also are fearful of the recent redistricting moves that will make some of their races a lot more difficult. Frank cited changes in his district’s boundaries as a reason for retirement.<br />
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California Rep. <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Cardoza" rel="wikipedia" title="Dennis Cardoza">Dennis Cardoza</a>, whose district was greatly reshaped, put the problem bluntly, telling Politico: “You have to represent people [who] you’ve never represented before. To represent nearly half of new voters . . . well, that’s not my idea of a good time.”<br />
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Some of the retirees aren’t too happy with their party leaders. Four of the nine Democrats who are departing and not seeking another office in 2012 voted against <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Pelosi" rel="wikipedia" title="Nancy Pelosi">Nancy Pelosi</a> as <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_leader_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives" rel="wikipedia" title="Minority leader of the United States House of Representatives">House minority leader</a>.<br />
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Cardoza is upset with the White House, saying he is “dismayed by the administration’s failure to understand and effectively address the current housing foreclosure crisis.<br />
<a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/frank-democratic-house-retirements/2011/11/29/id/419425" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
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</ul></div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_c.png?x-id=d7afb20d-2b32-467a-96f9-cc4f472f2a8d" style="border: currentColor; float: right;" /></a></div>Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-9497188065515728592011-11-19T19:23:00.011-05:002011-12-09T22:05:46.711-05:00What Is a Progressive, or, is Obama a Totalitarian Fascist?<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Woodrow_Wilson%2C_Harris_%26_Ewing_bw_photo_portrait%2C_1919.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States..." height="454" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Thomas_Woodrow_Wilson%2C_Harris_%26_Ewing_bw_photo_portrait%2C_1919.jpg/300px-Thomas_Woodrow_Wilson%2C_Harris_%26_Ewing_bw_photo_portrait%2C_1919.jpg" style="border: currentColor; font-size: 0.8em;" width="300" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; width: 300px;">Image via <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Woodrow_Wilson%2C_Harris_%26_Ewing_bw_photo_portrait%2C_1919.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span></span><br />
<div align="left"><span style="color: #660000;"><em>The first appearance of modern totalitarianism in the Western world wasn’t in Italy or Germany but in the United States of America. How else would you describe a country where the world’s first modern propaganda ministry was established; political prisoners by the thousands were harassed, beaten, spied upon, and thrown in jail simply for expressing private opinions; the national leader accused foreigners and immigrants of injecting treasonous "poison" into the American bloodstream; [and] newspapers and magazines were shut down for criticizing the government[?]<br />
<br />
[N]early a hundred thousand government propaganda agents were sent out among the people to whip up support for the regime and its war; college professors imposed loyalty oaths on their colleagues; nearly a quarter-million goons were given legal authority to intimidate and beat "slackers" and dissenters; and leading artists and writers dedicated their crafts to proselytizing for the government.</em></span><br />
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<br />
</div><div align="left"><strong>Obama calls himself a "progressive". I take him at his word...T</strong><br />
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When is the last time you heard a liberal describe himself as a "liberal"? It’s probably been a long time. These days, those on the left are more likely to call themselves "progressives."<br />
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Writing in The New York Times, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs said there have been two progressive eras — one in the early 20th century and the second under <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt" rel="wikipedia" title="Franklin D. Roosevelt">Franklin Roosevelt</a>. He called on modern liberals to usher in a third era.<br />
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But what exactly is "progressivism"? To many people, the term "Progressive Era" evokes fond caricatures of Teddy Roosevelt and such reforms as safe food, the elimination of child labor and the eight-hour work day. Yet real progressivism was far more sinister. Here is how Jonah Goldbergdescribes the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i" rel="historycom" target="_blank" title="World War I">World War I</a> <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson" rel="wikipedia" title="Woodrow Wilson">presidency of Woodrow Wilson</a>:<br />
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<em>The first appearance of modern totalitarianism in the Western world wasn’t in Italy or Germany but in the United States of America. How else would you describe a country where the world’s first modern propaganda ministry was established; political prisoners by the thousands were harassed, beaten, spied upon, and thrown in jail simply for expressing private opinions; the national leader accused foreigners and immigrants of injecting treasonous "poison" into the American bloodstream; [and] newspapers and magazines were shut down for criticizing the government[?]</em><br />
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It gets worse. According to Goldberg:<br />
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<em>[N]early a hundred thousand government propaganda agents were sent out among the people to whip up support for the regime and its war; college professors imposed loyalty oaths on their colleagues; nearly a quarter-million goons were given legal authority to intimidate and beat "slackers" and dissenters; and leading artists and writers dedicated their crafts to proselytizing for the government.</em><br />
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At the time of the Wilson presidency, progressives did not view the exercise of state power and the violation of individual rights as a war-time exception to be set aside in times of peace. To the contrary, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Croly" rel="wikipedia" title="Herbert Croly">Herbert Croly</a> (founding editor of the New Republic), John Dewey (father of progressive education), Walter Lippmann (perhaps the century’s most influential political writer), Richard Ely (founder of the American Economic Association) and many others saw war as an opportunity to rid the country of classical liberalism and the doctrine of laissez faire.<br />
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Wilson, our first Ph.D. in the White House, made clear his complete rejection of the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and classical liberalism in his books and other writings. As Ronald Pestritto notes, liberty in Wilson's view was "not found in freedom from state actions but instead in one’s obedience to the laws of the state."<br />
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The primary domestic objective of progressives was to create in peacetime what Wilson had accomplished during war. They were able to do so a little more than a decade later. Franklin Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the Navy under Wilson, and when he led Democrats back to the White House in 1932 he brought with him an army of intellectuals and bureaucrats who shared the Progressive-Era vision. Indeed, most of the "alphabet soup" of agencies set up during the Great Depression were continuations of various boards and committees set up during World War I.<br />
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At that time it was commonplace for intellectuals on the left to be enamored of Lenin’s communist regime in Russia. And almost everyone who was enamored of Lenin was also an admirer of Mussolini’s fascist government in Italy. For example, General Hugh "Iron Pants" Johnson, who ran Roosevelt’s <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Recovery_Administration" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="National Recovery Administration">National Recovery Administration</a> (NRA) kept a picture of Mussolini hanging on his wall. The admiration was often mutual. Some writers for publications in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy wrote of their fascination with Roosevelt’s New Deal. As Goldberg explains:<br />
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<em>The reason so many progressives were intrigued by both Mussolini’s and Lenin’s "experiments" is simple: they saw their reflection in the European looking glass. Philosophically, organizationally, and politically the progressives were as close to authentic, homegrown fascists as any movement America has ever produced. [They were] militaristic, fanatically nationalist, imperialist, racist, deeply involved in the promotion of Darwinian eugenics, [and] enamored of the Bismarckian welfare state.</em><br />
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The progressives saw the state as properly involved in almost every aspect of social life. Herbert Croly envisioned a government that would even regulate who could marry and procreate. In this respect, he reflected the almost universal belief of progressives in eugenics. These days, there is a tendency to think that interest in racial purity began and ended in Hitler’s Germany. In fact, virtually all intellectuals on the left in the early 20th century believed in state involvement in promoting a better gene pool. These included H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb (founders of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.fabians.org.uk/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Fabian Society">Fabian Socialism</a>), Harold Laski (the most respected British political scientist of the 20th century) and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="John Maynard Keynes">John Maynard Keynes</a> (the most famous economist of the 20th century). Pro-eugenics articles routinely appearedin the left-wing New Statesman, the Manchester Guardian and in the United States in the New Republic.<br />
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One of the ugliest stains on American public policy during the 20th century was the internment of 100,000 Japanese Americans during <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii" rel="historycom" title="World War II">World War II</a> by the Roosevelt Administration. Another stain is the resegregation of the White House under Wilson. Bruce Bartlett argues that these acts were consistent with the personal racial views of the presidents and that the Democratic party has along history of racial bias it would like to forget.<br />
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The worst excesses on the right in the 20th century are usually associated with <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy" rel="wikipedia" title="Joseph McCarthy">Senator Joe McCarthy</a>; the hearings of the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee" rel="wikipedia" title="House Un-American Activities Committee">House Un-American Activities Committee</a> (HUAC), including pressuring Hollywood actors to reveal their political activities and name the identities of their colleagues; and domestic surveillance of political enemies.<br />
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Yet all of these activities have roots in the Progressive Era as well. Joe McCarthy started his political life as a Democrat (and later switched to be a Republican) in Wisconsin — the most pro-progressive state in the union. As Goldberg observes, "Red baiting, witch hunts, censorship and the like were a tradition in good standing among Wisconsin progressives and populists." The HUAC was founded by another progressive Democrat, Samuel Dickstein, to investigate German sympathizers. During the "Brown scare" of the 1940s, radio journalist Walter Winchell read the names of isolationists on the radio, calling them "Americans we can do without."<br />
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Civilian surveillance under American presidents in the modern era (for example under Republican Richard Nixon and under Democrats John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson) are extensions of what went on earlier in the century. However, modern surveillance does not begin to compare in magnitude to what went on during the Wilson and Roosevelt presidencies.<br />
<br />
Bottom line: the next time you hear someone call himself a "progressive," ask him if he knows the historical meaning of that term.<br />
<a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/johncgoodman/2011/11/19/what_is_a_progressive/page/full/" target="blank">Full article in new window</a></div><br />
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<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/2011/09/01/obama-hitler-and-exploding-the-biggest-lie-in-history/" target="_blank">Obama, Hitler, And Exploding The Biggest Lie In History</a> (forbes.com)</li>
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://r.zemanta.com/?u=http%3A//www.usnews.com/news/blogs/Ken-Walshs-Washington/2011/12/06/teddy-roosevelt-a-bad-omen-for-obama%3Fs_cid%3Drss%3AKen-Walshs-Washington%3Ateddy-roosevelt-a-bad-omen-for-obama&a=65309824&rid=eb3f64fe-4057-4ef1-a400-dd9ec4176bc0&e=5a2317a23fa9061081260f6849dc0e06" target="_blank">Teddy Roosevelt a Bad Omen for Obama?</a> (usnews.com)</li>
</ul></div><div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_c.png?x-id=eb3f64fe-4057-4ef1-a400-dd9ec4176bc0" style="border: currentColor; float: right;" /></a></div>Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-23990102265565171952011-11-18T16:14:00.004-05:002011-12-09T18:43:36.946-05:00Congressional Supercommittee Is Super Divided - But has Time-Tested Solution at Hand!<em><span style="color: #660000;"></span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #660000;"><center>"The Kennedy across-the-board tax rates in the 1960s. The Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s, followed by the broader and bipartisan tax reforms of 1986 that got rid of a number of tax breaks, exemptions and other loopholes in order to lower the rates, cutting the top marginal rate to 28 percent as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Toomey</span> would do now. And let's not forget the Republicans' pro-growth capital gains tax cut President Clinton signed in his second term that unleashed a wave of high tech capital investment that led to full employment and a budget surplus"</center></span></em><br />
<br />
<strong>So we are apparently to see from this "Super <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Committee</span>" a package of phony budget cuts and massive <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">real time</span> defence cuts, all because the democrats will agree to cut NOTHING after <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Osama</span> has <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">increased</span> spending by 4 trillion $ in 3 years, more that all the previous administrations in US history, combined, from Washington through Bush.</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>The above quote <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">demonstrates</span> 2 things:</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong> - 1: There is a time tested alternative that would work, as it always has, and would raise revenues, as the democrats demand, which also means ...</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong> - 2 The democrats DON'T WANT REVENUE, they want to tear down those who have, in the name of fairness. Whatever happened to the concept of "a rising tide lifts all boats"?</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Conclusion: It ain't gonna happen! Our best alternative for now is to let the sequestration occur, and next time, don't cave when time to raise the debt limit comes. When Romney or Newt is president, and we control the Senate, all this can be reversed...T</strong><br />
<center><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">Sen. <a class="zem_slink" href="http://toomey.senate.gov/" rel="homepage" title="Pat Toomey">Pat <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Toomey</span></a>, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">GOP's</span> fiercest anti-tax warrior, stunned the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">supercommittee</span> when he proposed raising taxes to break the impasse over cutting the government's monster debt.<br />
<br />
The freshman Pennsylvania Republican has impeccable conservative credentials. Before he ran for the Senate last year, he ran the Club for Growth, an anti-tax, pro business political action committee that supported GOP House and Senate candidates who fought tax hikes, even knocking off some pro-tax Republican incumbents in party primaries.<br />
<br />
<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Toomey's</span> move was denounced by the Democrats who refused play his game, saying his plan didn't do enough to raise revenues. It also opened up a deeply divisive split in his own party.<br />
<br />
Rep. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Jeb</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Hensarling</span> of Texas, the Republican co-chair of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">supercommittee</span>, has sided with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Toomey</span>, as have other Republicans, including party leaders. But dozens of members see his plan as a betrayal of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">GOP's</span> position against raising taxes at any time, especially in the middle of a weak, high unemployment economy.<br />
<br />
Rep. Patrick T. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">McHenry</span> of North Carolina, who calls <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Hensarling</span> one of his mentors, gathered more than 70 signatures from House Republicans this week on a fire-breathing letter to the panel's leadership that called any tax increases "irresponsible and dangerous to the health of the United States."<br />
<br />
But the headlines and the stories about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Toomey's</span> tax plan leave out a critical component. While it would cap a number of itemized deductions that taxpayers take, thus raising their taxes, it would also offset those increases by lowering the income tax rates across the board.<br />
<br />
Under <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Toomey's</span> plan, all of the income tax rates would be reduced by as much as 20 percent -- lowering the top rate from 35 percent to 28 percent. The 10 percent bottom tax rate, created under <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/george_w_bush" rel="rottentomatoes" target="_blank" title="George W. Bush">President George W. Bush's</a> 2001 tax cut law, would drop to 8 percent.<br />
<br />
The details of these deduction caps are not clear right now and, as a chief analyst of a major business lobbying group told me this week, "the devil is in the details."<br />
<br />
Overall, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Toomey's</span> plan would reportedly raise $400 billion in additional tax revenue, though an estimated $110 billion of that would be derived from higher economic growth and increased employment.<br />
<br />
<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Supercommittee</span> Democrats argue that his plan would hand huge tax cuts to the wealthy. But GOP aides say that most people in higher income brackets usually take many more deductions to lower their taxable income, so they would on average see their taxes go up.<br />
<br />
President Obama and the Democrats are fixated on raising taxes on people who make more than $200,000, as well as small businesses who file as individual taxpayers, major corporations, and investors by raising their capital gains tax rate.<br />
<br />
But these taxpayers pay the lion's share of all income taxes. Raise taxes on capital gains and you will get less venture capital investment and a weaker economy. Fewer Americans will sell assets they hold to plow their gains into higher performing, growth investments if the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">capgains</span> tax rates take a bigger bite out of their profits.<br />
<br />
Without knowing the full details of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Toomey's</span> plan, he is following a tried and true fiscal path to economic growth. We've had many recessions and downturns in the last five decades, and lowering the tax rates have always helped our economy recover and made it stronger than before.<br />
<br />
The Kennedy across-the-board tax rates in the 1960s. The Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s, followed by the broader and bipartisan tax reforms of 1986 that got rid of a number of tax breaks, exemptions and other loopholes in order to lower the rates, cutting the top marginal rate to 28 percent as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Toomey</span> would do now.<br />
<br />
And let's not forget the Republicans' pro-growth capital gains tax cut President Clinton signed in his second term that unleashed a wave of high tech capital investment that led to full employment and a budget surplus.<br />
<br />
Even the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_tax_cuts" rel="wikipedia" title="Bush tax cuts">Bush tax cuts</a> in in 2001 and 2003 helped us get through several financial catastrophes, cut the deficit in half and produced a 4.7 percent unemployment rate in 2007 just before the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">subprime</span>, home foreclosure scandal drove us into severe recession.<br />
<br />
Still, it is hard to see this bitterly divided <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">supercommittee</span> producing a well thought out growth incentive plan under such a tight deadline, before Thanksgiving.<br />
<br />
The driving force behind its creation in the federal debt limit battle was a series of annual budget deficits under Barack <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Obama's</span> presidency that climbed to $1.5 trillion in his first year and hit $1.3 trillion this year. The total federal debt now stands at a whopping $15 trillion.<br />
<br />
But the members of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">supercommittee</span> say they are no nearer to a deal now than when they began. They have agreed on a large number of spending cuts, but clearly the stumbling block remains the issue of taxes. Maybe the best course would be to set that issue aside for the time being, turning it over to the tax-writing panels of Congress, and concentrate on a plan to cut spending.<br />
<br />
The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">supercommittee's</span> mission is to cut at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. That comes out to a little over $100 billion a year out of a nearly $4 trillion annual budget that wastes more than that sum each and every year.<br />
<br />
If they can't agree on even that amount in savings, then I say, let the automatic budget cuts -- triggered under the debt limit deal -- begin.<br />
<a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/donaldlambro/2011/11/18/congressional_supercommittee_is_super_divided/page/full/" target="blank">Full article in new window</a></div></center><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="zemanta-related"><h6 class="zemanta-related-title" style="font-size: 1em; margin: 1em 0px 0px;">Related articles</h6><ul class="zemanta-article-ul"><li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/b7dc9534-d6cd-4b1b-914a-02f3dc95cb70">Hugh Hewitt: The Toomey-Hensarling Tax Hikes: Part 3: The GOP Heads For The Cliff</a> (hughhewitt.com)</li>
</ul></div><br />
<div class="zemanta-pixie" style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_c.png?x-id=11952162-468f-4c89-a57f-01cf481a4311" style="border: currentColor; float: right;" /></a></div>Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-22001638898378136532011-11-17T18:46:00.005-05:002011-11-17T18:58:02.274-05:00Updates to the Site<strong>A brief message to update everyone on changes to this site, and thanks so much for your readership these many years!</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong> - 1: I have changed the e-mail subscription newsletter so that it now contains only a paragraph or two of text, with links pointing to the full post, here on the site. As it had worked out, people were just reading the emails, and never visiting the site, and I have made an effort to make the site more interactive. So, to that end...</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong> -2: There are newer, more user friendly social <a class="zem_slink" title="Media sharing" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_sharing" rel="wikipedia">media sharing</a> buttons to allow more sharing amongst site visitors (see each post's footer!), and...</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong> - 3: I have added Poll questions, which will rotate. You can vote multiple times, and for more than one answer. The questions will rotate every few days. Currently, the questions ask: "Worst US President?". You will find the poll in the right hand column, just below the list of followers. Please come join me, and vote early, and often (as do the democrats each and every election cycle!)</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy the site!...Ted</strong><br /><br /><div style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Enhanced by Zemanta" href="http://www.zemanta.com/"><img style="border: currentColor; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=dcc6c09c-d15c-4040-a291-590acd4ce8ad" /></a></div>Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10261349.post-58148369701848604222011-11-16T00:19:00.004-05:002011-12-09T22:08:21.208-05:00ObamaCare Goes to Court: A historic showdown on the constitutional limits of federal power<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Supreme_Court_Front_Dusk.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Category:Federal courthouses of the United States" height="240" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Supreme_Court_Front_Dusk.jpg/300px-Supreme_Court_Front_Dusk.jpg" style="border: currentColor; font-size: 0.8em;" width="300" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; width: 300px;">Image via <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Supreme_Court_Front_Dusk.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span></span><strong>Commerce power under the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.history.com/topics/constitution" rel="historycom" title="The U.S. Constitution">Constitution</a> meant the power to regulate, meaning in the English language of the day, "to make regular" the rules under which the various states would conduct trade and commerce. It was NEVER intended to be a huge federal entitlement to control all US and individual commercial liberties. The constitution, after all, was adopted to redress the failings of the articles of confederation, under which the various states had placed tariffs on each other, and adopted differing currencies.</strong> <br />
<strong>This was so clearly the intent of the founders that it cannot be disputed. Only ignored.</strong><br />
<strong>Well, not this time. Obama care is such a monstrous expansion of federal power, that were it to be upheld, there would no longer be ANY limitation on what the federal government could command the individual to do, as this article makes clear.</strong><br />
<strong>For these reasons, the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=38.8907083333,-77.0043444444&spn=1.0,1.0&q=38.8907083333,-77.0043444444" rel="geolocation" t="'h" title="Supreme Court of the United States">US Supreme Court</a> will overturn Obama care this spring, and that outcome is not seriously in doubt...T</strong> <br />
The "constitutionality" of the Obama health care law, Harvard Law School's<br />
<a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Tribe" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Laurence Tribe">Laurence Tribe</a> wrote in the New York Times earlier this year, "is open and<br />
shut," adding that the challenge against it is "a political objection in legal<br />
garb." <br />
In announcing yesterday that it will consider the law's constitutionality,<br />
the Supreme Court said it would give an historic five-and-a-half hours to oral<br />
arguments. Perhaps by his Cambridge standard, Mr. Tribe thinks the nine Justices<br />
are a little slow. We prefer to think this shows the Court recognizes the<br />
seriousness of the constitutional issues involved. It makes those who cavalierly<br />
dismissed the very idea of a challenge two years ago look, well,<br />
constitutionally challenged. <br />
<br />
Other critics of the constitutional case have suggested that its outcome<br />
before the High Court will be a wholly "political" decision, a repeat of<br />
Bush v. Gore. We trust the justices won't fall for this slur against<br />
their reputation.<br />
<br />
The issue at the heart of the ObamaCare challenge brought by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business is whether the federal government has the constitutional authority, under the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause" rel="wikipedia" title="Commerce Clause">Commerce Clause</a>, to order everyone in the United States to purchase health insurance—the so-called "individual mandate." If that is so, critics argue, then there is no limit to what commercial activity the government can command. And make no mistake: Future governments would order specific "commercial" activity under this authority.<br />
<br />
The latest spin to be directed at the constitutional challenges is that conservative judges on the lower courts are divided. In fact, it isn't just conservatives who are divided over the law's constitutionality. One of the appellate judges on the 11th Circuit in Atlanta who overturned the law in the case the High Court accepted is a Democrat. Open and shut? Not quite.<br />
<br />
Among the conservative opinions on behalf of ObamaCare in the lower courts, the two that we'd call the most idiosyncratic and misguided were issued separately by Judges <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_H._Silberman" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank" title="Laurence H. Silberman">Laurence Silberman</a> and Jeffrey Sutton.<br />
<br />
Judge Silberman, in an opinion joined by Judge Harry Edwards, acknowledges that Justice's lawyers defending the ObamaCare individual mandate couldn't cite "any doctrinal limiting principles" to this new, expansive reading of the Commerce Clause. But somehow Judge Silberman found a justification anyway in a 1942 Court precedent involving limits on wheat-growing for personal consumption, because these personal decisions ultimately might affect interstate commerce.<br />
<br />
As a member of the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_District_of_Columbia_Circuit" rel="wikipedia" title="United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit">D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals</a>, Judge Silberman may have felt he was bound by that precedent as he interprets it. But the Supreme Court can revisit such precedents, or their misapplication, especially in light of its own more recent attempts to put some limits on federal government power under the Commerce Clause.<br />
<br />
Judge Silberman also explicitly notes that an affirmation of such a broad Commerce Clause interpretation could become a "federal police power" to the disadvantage of the states—though he seems surprisingly unconcerned about it.<br />
<br />
In a pro-ObamaCare decision in July, Judge Sutton abstracted the law's mandate in a way that allowed him to find it constitutional, rather than address the mandate's provisions as they are written into the law. But Judge Sutton did address the stakes in the case with unmistakable clarity: The High Court, he wrote, "either should stop saying that a meaningful limit on Congress's commerce powers exists or prove that it is so."<br />
<br />
The Obama Administration's answer to the law's multiple discrepancies, contradictions and nuances has been to go all-in on the argument that overturning the mandate will overturn the entire law. It's true that without the mandate the law is unlikely to work, but the law is such a Rube Goldberg contraption that it won't work with the mandate.<br />
<br />
We'd like to see the entire law overturned, but the mandate deserves its own constitutional judgment. It shouldn't be found constitutional merely because Justice's lawyers say its excision would ruin the entire law. Congress can't drop unconstitutional provisions into laws hoping that the Court will bless them simply because not doing so would invalidate the larger law.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the most intriguing nugget in the Supreme Court's announcement is that it will take arguments on the law's Medicaid provisions. Intriguing because the Court was under no obligation to touch the law's Medicaid piece, which none of the lower courts invalidated. ObamaCare vastly expands Medicaid to the middle class and hammers hard any state that refuses to comply. It appears some of the Justices want to hear someone justify this federal aggrandizement as well.<br />
<br />
The Court itself deserves credit for deciding to take this case this year, even though it probably means issuing a decision in an election year.<br />
<br />
The law is already speeding the ruin of U.S. health care, increasing costs and reducing competition. It is easily the most unpopular major reform in decades and the most unpopular entitlement expansion ever. More broadly, it is impossible to duck the matter of whether this law's powers would stop at health care, as its backers insist, or whether it will be merely the first wave of other such mandated enforcements, if the federal government is given the power to compel individuals to participate in commerce, rather than merely regulate it.<br />
<br />
These are issues involving the nation's core understanding of the citizenry's relationship to its government. Voters should have the chance to include the Court's verdict on the law when they go to the polls in 2012.<br />
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204323904577038252658343724.html?mod=googlenews_wsj" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br />
<br />
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<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://reason.com/blog/2011/11/15/is-partisanship-responsible-for-the-succ">Is Partisanship Responsible for the Success of Constitutional Challenges to ObamaCare?</a> (reason.com)<br />
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Al-Qaeda in Iraq had been routed, driven to humiliating defeat by an Anbar Awakening of Sunnis fighting side-by-side with the infidel Americans. Even more remarkably, the Shiite militias had been taken down, with U.S. backing, by the forces of Shiite Prime Minister <a class="zem_slink" title="Nouri al-Maliki" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Maliki" rel="wikipedia">Nouri al-Maliki</a>. They crushed the Sadr militias from Basra to <a class="zem_slink" title="Sadr City" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=33.3888888889,44.4583333333&spn=0.1,0.1&q=33.3888888889,44.4583333333" rel="geolocation" t="'h">Sadr City</a>.<br /><br />Al-Qaeda decimated. A Shiite prime minister taking a decisively nationalist line. Iraqi Sunnis ready to integrate into a new national government. U.S. casualties at their lowest ebb in the entire war. Elections approaching. Obama was left with but a single task: Negotiate a new status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) to reinforce these gains and create a strategic partnership with the Arab world’s only democracy.<br /><br />He blew it. Negotiations, such as they were, finally collapsed last month. There is no agreement, no partnership. As of Dec. 31, the U.S. military presence in Iraq will be liquidated.<br /><br />And it’s not as if that deadline snuck up on Obama. He had three years to prepare for it. Everyone involved, Iraqi and American, knew that the 2008 SOFA calling for full U.S. withdrawal was meant to be renegotiated. And all major parties but one (the Sadr faction) had an interest in some residual stabilizing U.S. force, like the postwar deployments in Japan, Germany and Korea.<br /><br />Three years, two abject failures. The first was the administration’s inability, at the height of American post-surge power, to broker a centrist nationalist coalition governed by the major blocs — one predominantly Shiite (Maliki’s), one predominantly Sunni (<a class="zem_slink" title="Ayad Allawi" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayad_Allawi" rel="wikipedia">Ayad Allawi</a>’s), one Kurdish — that among them won a large majority (69 percent) of seats in the 2010 election.<br /><br />Vice President Biden was given the job. He failed utterly. The government ended up effectively being run by a narrow sectarian coalition where the balance of power is held by the relatively small (12 percent) Iranian-client Sadr faction.<br /><br />The second failure was the SOFA itself. U.S. commanders recommended nearly 20,000 troops, considerably fewer than our 28,500 in Korea, 40,000 in Japan and 54,000 in Germany. The president rejected those proposals, choosing instead a level of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.<br /><br />A deployment so risibly small would have to expend all its energies simply protecting itself — the fate of our tragic, missionless 1982 Lebanon deployment — with no real capability to train the Iraqis, build their U.S.-equipped air force, mediate ethnic disputes (as we have successfully done, for example, between local Arabs and Kurds), operate surveillance and special-ops bases, and establish the kind of close military-to-military relations that undergird our strongest alliances.<br /><br />The Obama proposal was an unmistakable signal of unseriousness. It became clear that he simply wanted out, leaving any Iraqi foolish enough to maintain a pro-American orientation exposed to Iranian influence, now unopposed and potentially lethal. Message received. Just this past week, Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurds — for two decades the staunchest of U.S. allies — visited Tehran to bend a knee to both President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and <a class="zem_slink" title="Ali Khamenei" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei" rel="wikipedia">Ayatollah Ali Khamenei</a>.<br /><br />It didn’t have to be this way. Our friends did not have to be left out in the cold to seek Iranian protection. Three years and a won war had given Obama the opportunity to establish a lasting strategic alliance with the Arab world’s second most important power.<br /><br />He failed, though he hardly tried very hard. The excuse is Iraqi refusal to grant legal immunity to U.S. forces. But the Bush administration encountered the same problem and overcame it. Obama had little desire to. Indeed, he portrays the evacuation as a success, the fulfillment of a campaign promise.<br /><br />But surely the obligation to defend the security and the interests of the nation supersede personal vindication. Obama opposed the war, but when he became commander in chief the terrible price had already been paid in blood and treasure. His obligation was to make something of that sacrifice, to secure the strategic gains that sacrifice had already achieved.<br /><br />He did not, failing at precisely what this administration so flatters itself for doing so well: diplomacy. After years of allegedly clumsy brutish force, Obama was to usher in an era of not hard power, not soft power, but smart power.<br /><br />Which turns out in Iraq to be . . . no power. Years from now, we will be asking not “Who lost Iraq?” — that already is clear — but “Why?”<br /><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-lost-iraq/2011/11/03/gIQAUcUqjM_story.html" target="blank">Full article in new window</a><br /><div class="zemanta-related"><h6 style="margin: 1em 0px 0px; font-size: 1em;" class="zemanta-related-title">Related articles</h6><ul class="zemanta-article-ul"><li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/11/06/international/i225707S37.DTL">Iranian influence seeping into Iraq</a> (sfgate.com)</li><li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/02/shiite-fighting-in-iraq-e_n_94751.html">Shiite Fighting In Iraq Exposes Weakness Of Iraqi Security Forces</a> (huffingtonpost.com)</li><li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/iraq-is-now-lost-and-its-obamas-fault/">Iraq is now lost, and it's Obama's fault</a> (gunnyg.wordpress.com)<div style="height: 15px; margin-top: 10px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Enhanced by Zemanta" href="http://www.zemanta.com/"><img style="border: currentColor; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=79c7aa86-59ed-4441-947c-686b384010d6" /></a></div></li></ul></div>Navitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03661946416046970329noreply@blogger.com0