Thursday, July 26, 2012

POLITICAL DIGEST 07/27/2012 CONSERVATIVE


Worth Reading: Financial Crime Rules the World. By Ron Hera of Hera Research
Excerpt: Financial markets have exploded with financial crime since 2009 as an unintended consequence of the moral hazard engendered by the “too big to fail” doctrine of Western governments and monetary authorities. Since “too big to fail” became the norm, there has been an increase in the number and frequency of financial crimes and the crimes themselves have become more blatant and egregious. MF Global’s $1.6 billion plunder of segregated customer accounts suggests that regulators are impotent and that there is no rule of law. (Banking and Finance are, alas, far from my areas of expertise, but a lot of this fits with what I’ve observed. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: Sources have confirmed to The Daily Caller that Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday berated an intern from House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s office for taking notes during a lecture he gave on Capitol Hill. According to one intern who was present, Holder had just started speaking when he noticed a male intern who was standing on the side of the packed room beginning to take notes.

Excerpt: As noted in a Daily Caller profile of my book on Davis, Frank Marshall Davis was a literal card-carrying member of Communist Party USA — number 47544. He was unflinchingly pro-Soviet. Beginning in the 1940s, when he joined the Communist Party, he wrote propaganda for Party-line newspapers in Chicago and Honolulu. And most remarkable, Davis, by the 1970s, met and mentored a future president of the United States — Barack Obama, a Democrat. Here, I’d like to focus on that word Democrat, because it contains some fascinating irony.
Excerpt: Obama offers no coherent answer for how some people accomplish so much more than others when we are government and government is us. But he does have an answer for what to do about uneven outcomes. Denigrate accomplishment. And punish it.

Excerpt: If you want to see what direction health care is going, just read the July 12 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). …Even medical professionals who do read journal articles rarely do so to gain insight into the latest shifts in the cultural or political winds. …These days, radical trial balloons are often launched from such “venerable” publications — which is especially disturbing because the imprimatur of the medical intelligentsia provides respectability to ideas that otherwise would be dismissed out of hand. (No ovens this time. --Barb.)

Excerpt: Every single day more Americans fall into poverty. This should deeply alarm you no matter what political party you belong to and no matter what your personal economic philosophy is. Right now, approximately 100 million Americans are either “poor” or “near poor”. For a lot of people “poverty” can be a nebulous concept, so let’s define it…. 

Axelrod Changes His Story: ‘Every White House Leaks’(video)
Excerpt: David Axelrod's heated exchange on Morning Joe over White House leaks of national security information.

Excerpt: The Obama Administration “is not giving the American people a complete picture of security on our border with Mexico” and data on crimes and violence along the southern border is “deceiving and underreported,” Michael McCaul, the Texas congressman who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security.

U.S. government to use 'drones the size of GOLF BALLS to spy on AMERICAN citizens'
 Excerpt: The Obama administration has been widely criticized for its increased reliance on drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but according to published reports, a plan is now in the works to harness tiny drones to spy on U.S. citizens. A 30-page memorandum issued by President Barack Obama’s Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley on April 23 has stated that the drones, some as small as golf balls, may be used domestically to ‘collect information about U.S. persons.’ (Be all ready to go when the GOP takes power and wants to track the NBPP, OWS and other radicals. ~Bob.)

1980 vs. 2012: Alas, Romney–Obama won’t be a replay of Reagan–Carter. By Jim Geraghty
Excerpt: While Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is sure to enjoy the comparisons of this year’s presidential election with the one 32 years ago, Republicans shouldn’t fool themselves about the difficulty of the task before them. While it’s possible that Romney could win big, any serious examination of this race should recognize several enormous changes that have taken place in our national political environment in the past three decades, shifts that work against a repeat of Reagan’s rout of Carter. (Thank God for planned Parenthood and Row v. Wade. If all the black babies aborted in the last 40 years had been born, Obama would sweep in. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: On July 18, a bomb killed at least three top officials from Bashar al Assad's crumbling regime. Among them was Assef Shawkat, the deputy defense minister and former head of Syrian military intelligence. Different accounts of how Shawkat and the others were killed have been offered to the media. Either a suicide bomber or a remotely detonated explosive device did them in. In either case, it was a remarkable turn of events--a boomerang of sorts. For years, Shawkat and his fellow Assad family cronies directed this sort of attack at others, particularly American soldiers in Iraq.

Obama Spokeswoman Race Baits Romney Supporters
Excerpt: Portsmouth Democrat State Senator Louise Lucas, a member of Barack Obama’s official “Truth (or more appropriately ‘Lies’) Team” in Virginia, appeared on the John Fredericks Morning Show. She accused Mitt Romney of engaging in racial tactics against Barack Obama and yet though she blathered about how she views things, she didn’t cite one instance or example of a racial tactic that has been employed.

Obama thanks 'gay porn kingpin' for fundraiser
Excerpt: “I want to thank someone who put so much work into this event, Terry Bean," President Obama said as the crowd began to cheer. "Give Terry a big round of applause.” Terry Bean is, according to the New York Post, a "gay-porn kingpin." The Post reported in 2008, during the president's first run at the office: "One of the 'bundlers' who has raised $50,000 to $100,000 for the Barack Obama presidential campaign is Terrence Bean, who once controlled the biggest producer of gay porn in America."
Obama switches to Mr. Nice Guy
Excerpt: President Obama is taking a softer, gentler approach in some of his campaign ads in light of poll numbers that show his own favorability ratings taking a lashing amid the incessantly negative tone of the campaign. Team Obama’s pivot to the positive—a throwback to the campaign’s “hope and change” theme of 2008 — comes as a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that voters have increasingly negative views about both Obama and his opponent, Mitt Romney.

Liberals worry Obama would agree to entitlement cuts in second term
Excerpt: Liberal Democrats and their allies are concerned that President Obama has not made more of an effort to talk on the campaign trail about protecting Social Security and Medicare. Obama has criticized Mitt Romney and Republicans for endorsing the budget from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), which would create a premium support system to compete with Medicare, but that rhetoric is of little comfort to liberals who remember the concessions he floated in last year’s deficit negotiations.

The Problem with a "Green Domestic Product"
Excerpt: One of the recurrent themes at the United Nations' spectacularly unsuccessful Rio+20 summit in June was the need to change how we measure wealth. Many argue that we must abandon our obsession with gross domestic product (GDP) and develop a new "green" accounting standard to replace it. Such a system, advocates suggest, would incorporate economic decisions to preserve the natural environment, says Bjørn Lomborg, an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School. However, greater understanding of such a metric reveals the fallacies involved. Notably, by placing a disproportionate focus on preserving the environment and maintaining the status quo, a "green" standard would stifle economic innovation and discourage civilization-altering discoveries.

Senate Votes to Raise Taxes on Small Businesses
Excerpt: Yesterday, the Senate narrowly voted (51-48) to raise taxes on 1.2 million small businesses, which will likely kill more than 700,000 jobs at a time when nearly 13 million Americans are out of work. Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jim Webb (D-VA) joined all Republicans in bipartisan opposition to the tax hike. This is President Obama's economic plan. This is what he asked Congress to do. And he recently told a fundraising crowd that his economic plan has been working.

Obama urges tighter background checks on gun buyers after Aurora massacre
Excerpt: "A lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals -- that they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities," the president, who has called for reimposing the Assault Weapons Ban, said in a speech to the National Urban League. (If this commie gets re-elected, I guarantee he and Holder will start outlawing firearms. Guaranteed. I used to think the American people were smart enough not to vote for this guy again, but I don't believe that anymore. There are more stupid Americans than smart ones. –LW. Well, I don’t think he’s a Commie. Commies have principles, however misguided, they put above self-interest. He doesn’t. ~Bob.)

Overpaid unemployment benefits top $14 billion
Excerpt: Overpayments are a rampant problem in the unemployment insurance system. The federal government and states overpaid an estimated $14 billion in benefits in fiscal 2011, or roughly 11% of all the jobless benefits paid out, according to reports from the U.S. Labor Department.

Worth Reading: U.K. Experience Casts Doubt on Viability of Keynesian Remedies
Excerpt: The plight of the United Kingdom’s economy is a useful rejoinder to those who believe the fixed exchange rate is the main driver of the economic problems in the euro zone. The U.K. responded to the financial crisis by running large fiscal deficits, cutting interest rates to zero, and “printing money” through several rounds of quantitative easing. Over this period, the result has been worse macroeconomic performance in the U.K. than in Spain, a country “trapped” in the euro straightjacket. This outcome is fundamentally inconsistent with the Keynesian view that the key to recovery in peripheral Europe is devaluation and monetary-financed deficit spending. (One would think that long experience with the results of Keynesian Economics would have removed any doubts long ago. But that would underestimate the devotion of progressives to dogma in the face of results and suffering for real people. That they don’t care about. ~Bob.)

Worth Reading: Protectionism alert: The world should heed warnings that barriers to trade are creeping up.
Excerpt: WHEN the financial crisis hit, the G20, grouping together countries that produce more than 85% of the world's GDP, made all the right noises about trade. World leaders were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the 1930s, when protectionism led to economic disaster; and their apparent success in ensuring that global markets stayed open has been a rare glimmer of light in the economic gloom. Yet even this optimism may be misplaced. As a report from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) warns this week, the barriers are creeping back up.

Excerpt: Despite controversy surrounding the disposal of spent nuclear fuel, nuclear power will continue to occupy an essential role in the United States’ electricity production for the foreseeable future. The 19 percent of the electricity generated in the United States by nuclear power plants is comparable to the electricity used in California, Texas, and New York combined. Besides that, nuclear power accounts for 8.5 percent of our total domestic energy consumption. [1] Nuclear plants—of which there are 104 total in the United States—produce far less waste than traditional power plants:

White House tailors minority health care pitch
Excerpt: But his administration has a far more specific pitch to black and Hispanic audiences. The message: Blacks and Hispanics, among whom uninsured rates are significantly higher than among whites, stand to benefit disproportionately under the health law, gaining access to free preventive care and other services that will help reduce existing health care disparities. (Short version: Reelect me and I’ll make someone else pay for your care. ~Bob.)

South Korean Says China Tortured Him in Custody
Excerpt: A South Korean advocate for democracy in North Korea claimed on Wednesday that he was tortured by Chinese state security agents during his three-month detention in China.

The Most Arrogant Man in the World
Good anti-Obama ad. ~Bob.

Excerpt: The following is just one example of why there is a need to have voter ID laws. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is being asked by the Romney campaign to look into voter-registration forms that are being sent out to residents in Virginia and addressed to deceased relatives, children, family pets and others that are ineligible to vote. Haven’t we heard this before? (In Chicago politics, they have a name for candidates who do not engage in vote fraud—loser. ~Bob.)

Why Is the Voter Participation Center Spoofing the Virginia State Board of Elections’ Return Address?
Excerpt: Earlier today, news broke that the Romney campaign is requesting a state-level investigation of a voter registration group in Virginia. That group, the Voter Participation Center, has been sending out voter registration forms to people all over the commonwealth, hundreds of thousands of forms per month. The Washington Post and the Richmond Times-Dispatch have published stories on the Voter Participation Center and the allegations that the Romney campaign has levied against it. But both stories barely hint at what the VPC may be doing.

Land of The Freebies, Home of the Enslaved

DOJ Voter ID Letter Generates Cash for DCCC
Excerpt: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has immediately started fundraising off of Eric Holder’s partisan letter to Pennsylvania demanding information about the Keystone State’s voter ID program. (See, Rule of Law: Eric Holder’s Keystone State Voter ID Shakedown). Yesterday the DOJ sent an outrageously partisan letter to Pennsylvania demanding stacks of information about voter ID. Today, the DCCC is starting to cash in.

CAIR Strikes Out. By Michael Ledeen
Excerpt: It’s always a happy day when would-be censors fail to silence voices they don’t agree with, and it’s particularly satisfying when the losers are a well-known crowd of politically correct anti-1st Amendment vigilantes. The losers in this case are the hyperactive folks over at CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and their intended victim is “Reza Kahlili,” the former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps who for some years worked inside that murderous organization on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency. He’s well known to PJ Media readers, having posted here on many occasions, and his book, A Time to Betray, is a must-read for anyone who wants to get an accurate picture of life inside the Islamic Republic’s praetorian guards. (I admit I’ve had—and expressed here—occasional doubts about Kahlili’s credibility in the past. Over the course of the past 18 months or so, many of his claims, revelations and predictions have proven correct. It is reassuring that the Defense Department has made a rare public statement in his support, and reinforces his credibility. That it comes at the expense of CAIR is a bonus. Kahlili has a website/blog called A Time to Betray at http://atimetobetray.com/iran-update/ . He often has stories and viewpoints not found anywhere else. Just remember to treat “single-source” reports with healthy skepticism until or unless confirmed. Ron P.)

Is Rahm Emanuel Planning to Shut Down Over 50% of Chicago Area Businesses? http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/07/25/is-rahm-emanuel-planning-to-shut-down-over-50-of-chicago-area-businesses/
Excerpt: “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a statement to the Chicago Tribune. “They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents.” Emanuel was vowing his support for Alderman Proco Moreno’s announcement that he would block construction of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in his district. With no other reason given by any of these dicta- oops, I mean “city leaders”, it is now apparently not possible to conduct business if you hold traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs.

The Big Fail: Hispanics Not Better Off Under Obama
Excerpt: Hispanics “Have Been Hit Harder By The Bleak Economy Than Any Other Group.” “The rise in childhood poverty is another signal of distress for the nation’s 50.5 million Hispanics, who have been hit harder by the bleak economy than any other group.” (Older political piece, but worth circulating. ~Bob.)
Huma Abedin and the Muslim Brotherhood: Closely Connected. By Andrew C. McCarthy
Excerpt: What is going on here is classic misdirection: While everyone is focused on Huma Abedin and the demagoguing of Michele Bachmann, no one seems to be noticing that the administration — with GOP leadership’s apparent approval — is serially aligning American government policy with Muslim Brotherhood priorities. Senator McCain is probably hopeless. But perhaps Speaker Boehner and Chairman Rogers could find a way to attack the Muslim Brotherhood rather than their conservative colleagues.

Real reason D.C. embraces Muslim Brotherhood. Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy on Huma's family ties: 'It's all very troubling'
Excerpt: He said the family of Clinton aide Huma Abedin has been involved in the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, or IMMA, since the late 1970s. “That outfit was started, it looks like, with the sponsorship of a guy named Abdullah Omar Naseef, who is connected to al-Qaida, who has been connected to financing of al-Qaida,” he explained. “He ran not only the Muslim World League, which is the front of Muslim Brotherhood ideology, but also something called the Rabita Trust, which not only is a designated terrorist organization under American law, but it was actually run for a time by one of the guys who’s a founder of al-Qaida.”

Obama's Job Approval Remains High While Blacks' Economic Prospects Remain Bleak
Excerpt: A study by the Pew Research Center released last summer found that 53 percent of black household wealth had vanished between 2005 and 2009. Almost a quarter of black borrowers have lost their homes to foreclosure since the housing market cratered. While the jobless rate for the country as a whole sits at 8.3 percent, black unemployment rests at around 13.6 percent. …

Excerpt: Years ago, our own Dan McLaughlin defined ”swiftboating” as “Accurately quoting a Democratic politician’s own words.” By that definition, President Obama is being swiftboated up a creek without a paddle right now, as constant repetition of his own words has the campaigner-in-chief and every attack dog he can muster working day and night to “clarify” his remarks on small business.

Egypt’s Candid Camera, Jew-Hate and Violence. By Nonie Darwish
Excerpt: Recently, an Egyptian Candid Camera prank type TV show turned very ugly and violent when the guest, an Egyptian actor, was told he was on Israeli TV. The prank was done on several guests with similar reactions: extreme violence and hate speech against Jews who were described as the most cursed by Allah in Islam.

Iraqi Ironies. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: Amid all the stories about the ongoing violence in Syria, the most disturbing is the possibility that Syrian President Bashar Assad could either deploy the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that his government claims it has, or provide it to terrorists. There are suggestions that at least some of Assad's supposed stockpile may have come from Saddam Hussein's frantic, 11th-hour efforts in 2002 to hide his own weapons of mass destruction arsenals in nearby Syria.

Public Pensions Fail Simple Math. By John Ransom
Excerpt: There is a dirty secret about state entitlements that liberals don’t want you to know. The collection of a state pension increases the chances that a pensioner will live in poverty. That’s because money put aside for state-guaranteed benefits can not be safely invested at rates that provide for more than a modest retirement unless the state subsidizes retirement benefits through taxes or if retirement savings are invested in riskier, higher yielding investments.

Look at what really cuts out carbon
Excerpt: As most of the country suffers under record-breaking temperatures, the “I told you so” crowd screams for even greater efforts to rein in our carbon emissions. What the green lobby hasn’t been so quick to broadcast is that the United States is actually leading the world in reducing our carbon footprint. … The drop has stemmed from the recession, but also increased use of natural gas instead of higher-emission fuels. Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute reports that in the first four months of this year, electricity produced from coal was down 21 percent, while power from natural gas rose 34 percent.

Adieu, two-state solution: Arab Spring punctures balloon. By Amir Taheri
Excerpt: The Arab Spring has punctured many received ideas about Middle Eastern politics — including the “two-state solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The “two-state” formula was always based on two questionable assumptions: 1) that Palestinians regarded themselves as a nation in a world of nation-states and wished to create a state of their own; 2) that creating a Palestinian state was something that Israel acting alone could magically make happen.

Let's Have "Transparency" For All
Excerpt: When I was commissioned an officer in our armed forces I had to meet a host of requirements. Two of the more important ones were swearing an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States and to turn over my college transcripts to prove I was a graduate in good standing from an acceptable institution. If I was required to show my transcripts as a humble military officer why is Obama exempt from doing so when assuming the highest office of the land?

Obscurity: No Crueler Punishment! By Ann Coulter
Excerpt: I feel awful about what happened in Colorado, but can we stop the hugging and the teddy bears? Just as society can become inured to violence, it can also become inured to sentiment. There is nothing so hackneyed in the world of photojournalism as pictures of the hugging and the shrines with candles and teddy bears after a tragedy, with a piano softly trilling in the background. This accomplishes nothing. If you want to do something, please write a check to a good charity, a family financially harmed by the shooting, or send flowers to a specific person.

The full Obama Quote
With Obama and his Media Minions working hard to convince people he really didn’t say what he said, you should keep the full quote handy. ~Bob. Excerpt: “Look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges.If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Congress warned that al-Qaida in Iraq is coming to America. By Brian Bennett
Excerpt: The terrorist organization that was once the scourge of the U.S. occupation in Iraq and likely is responsible for more than 100 deaths in the country over the past few days has set its sights on launching attacks inside the United States, intelligence officials said.

My Buyer’s Remorse
Good clip of a Jewish Democrat who used to support Obama and why he’s changed. ~Bob.

The Mystery Continues: A Tale of Two Polls. By Bernard Goldberg
Excerpt: This is a tale of two brand new polls. If you think you’re confused now, wait till you read this. One poll, of registered voters, was conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News. It shows President Obama with a lead of six points over Mitt Romney, 49 to 43 percent nationwide. (Figures don’t lie—but liars figure. The NBC poll over-sampled Democrats. ~Bob.)

The Value in an Armed Citizenry. By Paul Leitner-Wise
Excerpt: For those who do not consider value in an armed citizenry, or consider such a thing dangerous, I offer the following. I apologize in advance for the length, I have tried to summarize as briefly as possible. (You didn't learn much about these events from the left-stream media. –Rod.)

SSDD (Blog Contributor Comment)
Well, a horrible event occurs in the country, and the first thing we hear from the MSM is that there's a Tea Party member with the same name as that of the shooter. With the obvious implication that it must be a Right Wing crazy with guns again...... Of course, a few seconds more of checking would have shown the Tea Party member was 30 years too old to be the shooter, but hey, doing that extra work would be real journalism, not propaganda, so no way, dude! Same as when the other nut job shot the Congresswoman, the instant reaction that it must be related to Tea Party conservatives somehow. Because they so much want it to be that way, even a slim tie of any sort would make them happy. The bias is so deep, so obvious, and people wonder why the credibility of the media is at an all time low. Does anyone remember that the Unabomber had heavily marked up copies of some Liberal manifestos? No, because the media never focused on that for a millisecond. Just coincidence, I guess. Riiight! And on the other hand, an Army officer shows up on base, wearing Arabic clothing, screams Allah Akbar while gunning down dozens of people, and that gets declared to be "workplace violence", and no one in the media jumps up to point out it's obviously Jihadism in action? Real journalism has fallen on very hard times. –Del

Excerpt: It shouldn’t matter that I, an author with the audacity to select such a title, am black. The arguments presented should stand or fall on their objective merit. Nevertheless, I declare my racial identity at the outset to defuse any prejudice readers may bring regarding the motivation behind this piece. Indeed, it is in part because I am black that the following must be said. All things considered, blacks and the civil rights culture surrounding them are the most open and prolific purveyors of racism in America.

Excerpt: The Justice Department’s inspector general found at least seven instances of federal employees engaging in illegal attempts to hire family members at the agency, according to a report issued Thursday. The report is the third investigation in less than a decade that has found numerous examples of illegal hiring practices, amounting to nepotism, within the DOJ. (What you’d expect in an agency where the top guy worries about “his people.” ~Bob.)

Obama Transparency: Silence All Critics
Excerpt: There are no lengths Obama will not stoop to silence those who fiercely oppose him. He can hide behind curtains of insulation and plausible deniability, but at the end of the day we know he and his administration are behind the attacks to silence critics. (Very Lincolnesque. --Jer)

Auschwitz-Like Conditions’: U.S. General Accused of Massive Afghan Cover-Up To Protect Obama During Election Year
Excerpt: US military officers accused one of the highest-ranking US commanders in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General William Caldwell, of trying to cover up a horrifying scandal at a taxpayer-funded hospital in Kabul to limit bad news in an election year, the AFP reports.

Obamacare Kills The Elderly. By Dick Morris
Back to plan B if Obama is re-elected. Rather get taken out by a lion, grizzly bear or going down fighting to save my family when chaos occurs. In the meantime I will continue my effort to ensure Obama is a one term President! --GBH

German Intelligence al Qaeda All Over Syria. By John Rosenthal
Excerpt: German intelligence estimates that "around 90" terror attacks that "can be attributed to organizations that are close to al-Qaeda or jihadist groups" were carried out in Syria between the end of December and the beginning of July, as reported by the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine. (This is the rebel side—the side the Obama administration is helping. Once they get control of Syria, they will use it as a resource and launching platform to murder Americans. Pay attention: There are no good guys in Syria. Everyone involved either hates the west and Americans (and Jews, of course) or is an outside country that is using the situation in a geo-political game (Russia and China) or fools (the USA). ~Bob.)


-- 
Robert A. Hall

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