Saturday, June 19, 2010

$7-a-gallon gas?

The folly of O's oil-spill 'fix'

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/gallon_gas_9GlF3o1xIcIBelOV3k0RsK#ixzz0rFnQhv4c

Could the Obama Administration be Blocking Gulf Clean-up Efforts Intentionally?

At first blush this sounds like an outlandish question with a conspiratorial twist. The corollary question goes like this: Is the Obama administration intentionally scaling back clean-up efforts in the Gulf in an attempt to maximize the damage so Democrats in Congress will have an excuse to take effective control over yet another major sector of our economy and impose crippling and draconian new taxes on the American people?

READ MORE HERE: http://www.westernjournalism.com/could-the-obama-administration-be-blocking-gulf-clean-up-efforts-intentionally/

WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: Overwhelm the system

In case you haven't figured out what's happening, here's a wrap-up of the program:

Barack Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos -- thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.

Barack Obama is my college classmate (Columbia University, class of '83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University. They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival ... and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.

-- Universal health care. The health care bill had very little to do with health care. It had everything to do with unionizing millions of hospital and health care workers, as well as adding 15,000 to 20,000 new IRS agents (who will join government employee unions). Obama doesn't care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?

-- Cap and trade. Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama's biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama "spread the wealth around."

-- Make Puerto Rico a state. Why? Who's asking for a 51st state? Who's asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers. But this has been Obama's plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressman and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.

-- Legalize 12 million illegal immigrants. Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free health care alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America. But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security.

-- Stimulus and bailouts. Where did all that money go? It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions -- including billions of dollars to save or create jobs of government employees across the country. It went to save GM and Chrysler so that their employees could keep paying union dues. It went to AIG so that Goldman Sachs could be bailed out (after giving Obama almost $1 million in contributions). A staggering $125 billion went to teachers (thereby protecting their union dues). All those public employees will vote loyally Democrat to protect their bloated salaries and pensions that are bankrupting America. The country goes broke, future generations face a bleak future, but Obama, the Democrat Party, government, and the unions grow more powerful. The ends justify the means.

-- Raise taxes on small business owners, high-income earners, and job creators. Put the entire burden on only the top 20 percent of taxpayers, redistribute the income, punish success, and reward those who did nothing to deserve it (except vote for Obama). Reagan wanted to dramatically cut taxes in order to starve the government. Obama wants to dramatically raise taxes to starve his political opposition.
With the acts outlined above, Obama and his regime have created a vast and rapidly expanding constituency of voters dependent on big government; a vast privileged class of public employees who work for big government; and a government dedicated to destroying capitalism and installing themselves as socialist rulers by overwhelming the system.

Add it up and you've got the perfect Marxist scheme -- all devised by my Columbia University college classmate Barack Obama using the Cloward and Piven Plan.

Guess who holds patent for carbon trading plan

Disgraced Fannie Mae CEO set to cash in for millions http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=168077

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

OBAMA VS. PRESS FREEDOM

By DICK MORRIS, Published on TheHill.com on June 15, 2010

Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of Obama's Federal Trade Commission, is at the epicenter of a quiet movement to subsidize news organizations, a first step toward government control of the media. In our book, 2010: Take Back America -- A Battle Plan, we reported that he had commissioned a study to examine plans for a federal subsidy for news organizations. Among the measures under consideration are special tax treatment, exemption from antitrust laws and changes in copyright laws.

Now Leibowitz has begun to pounce. A May 24 working paper on "reinventing" the media proposes that the government impose fees on websites such as the Drudge Report that link to news websites or that it tax consumer electronics such as iPads, laptops and Kindles. Funds raised by these levies would be redistributed to traditional media outlets.

While Leibowitz distanced himself from the proposals for the taxes, calling them "a terrible idea," his comments appear to be related only to the levies proposed in the working paper. Nobody is commenting on the other part of his proposal -- a subsidy for news organizations.

By now, the Obama MO should be clear to all. As he has done with the banks, AIG and the car companies, he extends his left hand offering subsidies and then proffers his right laden with regulations. Should the government follow through on Leibowitz's ideas and enact special subsidies and tax breaks for news organizations, it will induce a degree of journalistic dependence on the whims of government not seen since the days when the early presidents bestowed government advertising on favored periodicals.

Is it too difficult to imagine that the Democrats might pass laws favoring news organizations, only to question -- as former White House communications director Anita Dunn did -- whether or not Fox News is a news organization or an "arm of the Republican Party"? We can see a future in which news media are reluctant to be too partisan or opinionated for fear that they would endanger their public subsidy.

Once such a subsidy is extended to news organizations, every company in the business must have it. Otherwise, the competitive advantage for the subsidized companies would prove too steep an obstacle to overcome.

In all the attention that has been given to the idea of an Internet tax on news aggregation sites and on tech equipment -- trial balloons that would obviously be shot down -- very little attention has been focused on the expenditure side of the proposal -- the subsidy of news organizations.

But The Wall Street Journal reported six months ago that Leibowitz had commissioned a study to determine "whether the government should aid struggling news organizations which are suffering from a collapse in advertising revenues as the Internet upends their centuries-old business model." Among the steps under consideration are changing "the way the industry is regulated, from making news-gathering companies exempt from antitrust laws to granting them special tax treatment to making changes to copyright laws."

These are exactly the kind of subsidies that could and would trigger government oversight and control.

Look at how radio stations squirm when their licenses are up for renewal before the FCC. We can imagine news organizations pulling their punches in order not to antagonize the hand that feeds them.

The Leibowitz study, and the subsidy proposals that are likely to emerge from it, represent a chilling threat to the First Amendment and to our civil liberties.
Go to DickMorris.com to read all of Dick's columns!

***COPYRIGHT EILEEN MCGANN AND DICK MORRIS 2010. REPRINTS WITH PERMISSION ONLY***

Impromptu Pro Israel Ralley: Two Became Twenty

by Margy Pezdirtz

It was a quiet Friday, one in which I wanted to study and prepare for the coming Shabbat, when my phone rang. Renee said, "Did you get the flyer? The one about the CAIR anti-Israel rally this afternoon at 4:30? I thought you might want to do something about it."

"No, I didn't get the flyer. What's happening." And that began the end of a quiet afternoon.

CAIR - Council on American-Islamic Relations - was sponsoring a rally from 4:30 to 6:00 to "to decry Israel's attack on humanitarian aid ship share." Probably the last thing in the world I wanted to do on this very hot June afternoon was to stand on a street corner and protest the protestors. I thought about it for a moment. Could I, in all honesty and integrity, sit back in my comfortable, air conditioned home and do nothing? And what about my ten-year-old granddaughter who was with me until her parents got off work. Should I take her to a rally like this that could conceivably turn dangerous?

READ MORE HERE:

Our World: Hamas rises in the West

Caroline Glick - www.jpost.com

By backing the terrorist group against Israel, western countries are backing Hamas against Fatah and Islamist states against ME moderates.

Since the navy’s May 31 takeover of the Turkish-Hamas flotilla, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his advisers have deliberated around the clock about how to contend with the US-led international stampede against Israel. But their ultimate decision to form an investigatory committee led by a retired Supreme Court justice and overseen by foreign observers indicates that they failed to recognize the nature of the international campaign facing us today.

Led by US President Barack Obama, the West has cast its lot with Hamas. It is not surprising that Obama is siding with Hamas. His close associates are leading members of the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit. Obama’s friends, former Weather Underground terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayres participated in a Free Gaza trip to Egypt in January. Their aim was to force the Egyptians to allow them into Gaza with 1,300 fellow Hamas supporters. Their mission was led by Code Pink leader and Obama fund-raiser Jodie Evans. Another leading member of Free Gaza is James Abourezk, a former US senator from South Dakota.

All of these people have open lines of communication not only to the Obama White House, but to Obama himself.

Obama has made his sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood clear several times since entering office. The Muslim Brotherhood’s progeny include Hamas, al-Qaida and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Last June, Obama infuriated the Egyptian government when he insisted on inviting leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood to attend his speech at Al Azhar University in Cairo. His administration’s decision to deport Hamas deserter and Israeli counterterror operative Mosab Hassan Yousef to the Palestinian Authority where he will be killed is the latest sign of its support for radical Islam.

Given Obama’s attitude toward jihadists and the radical leftists who support them, his decision to support Hamas against Israel makes sense. What is alarming however is how leaders of the free world are now all siding with Hamas. That support has become ever more apparent since the Mossad’s alleged killing of Hamas terror master Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at his hotel in Dubai in January.

In the aftermath of Mabhouh’s death, both Britain and Australia joined the Dubai-initiated bandwagon in striking out against Israel. Israel considers both countries allies, or at least friendly and has close intelligence ties with both. Yet despite their close ties, Australia and Britain expelled Israeli diplomats who supposedly had either a hand in the alleged operation or who work for the Mossad.

It should be noted that neither country takes steps against outspoken terror supporters who call for Israel to be destroyed and call for the murder of individual Israelis.

For instance, in an interview last month with The Australian, Ali Kazak, the former PLO ambassador to Australia, effectively solicited the murder of The Jerusalem Post’s Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh. Kazak told the newspaper, "Khaled Abu Toameh is a traitor."

Allowing that many Palestinians have been murdered for such accusations, Kazak excused those extrajudicial murders saying, "Traitors were also murdered by the French Resistance, in Europe; this happens everywhere."

Not only did Australia not expel Kazak or open a criminal investigation against him, as a consequence of his smear campaign against Abu Toameh, several Australians cancelled their scheduled meetings with him.

AND OF course, this week we have the actions of Germany and Poland. They are considered Israel’s best friends in Europe, and yet acting on a German arrest warrant, Poland has arrested a suspected Mossad officer named Uri Brodsky for his alleged involvement in the alleged Mossad operation against Mabhouh. Israel is now caught in a diplomatic disaster zone where its two closest allies - who again are only too happy to receive regular intelligence updates from the Mossad - are siding with Hamas against it.

And then of course we have the EU’s call for Israel to cancel its lawful blockade of the Gaza coast. That is, the official position of the EU is that an Iranian proxy terrorist organization should be allowed to gain control over a Mediterranean port and through it, provide Iran with yet another venue from which it can launch attacks against Europe.

For their part, the Sunni Arabs are forced to go along with this. The Egyptian regime considers the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood took over Gaza a threat to its very survival and has been assiduously sealing its border with Gaza for some time. And yet, unable to be more anti-Hamas than the US, Australia and Europe, Mubarak is opening the border. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa’s unprecedented visit to Gaza this week should be seen as a last ditch attempt by Egypt to convince Hamas to unify its ranks with Fatah. Predictably, the ascendant Hamas refused his entreaties.

As for Fatah, it is hard not to feel sorry for its leader Mahmoud Abbas these days. In what was supposed to be a triumphant visit to the White House, Abbas was forced to smile last week as Obama announced the US will provide $450 million in aid to his sworn enemies who three years ago ran him and his Fatah henchmen out of Gaza.

So too, Abbas is forced to cheer as Obama pressures Israel to give Hamas an outlet to the sea. This will render it impossible for Fatah to ever unseat Hamas either by force or at the ballot box. Hamas’s international clout demonstrates to the Palestinians that jihad pays.

THERE ARE three plausible explanations for the West’s decision to back Hamas. All of them say something deeply disturbing about the state of the world. The first plausible explanation is that the Americans and the rest of the West are simply naïve. They believe that by backing Hamas, they are advancing the cause of Middle East peace.

If this is in fact what the likes of Obama and his European and Australian counterparts think, apparently no one in the West is thinking very hard. The fact is that by backing Hamas against Israel, they are backing Hamas against Fatah and they are backing Iran, Syria, Turkey, Hamas and Hizbullah against Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. They are backing the most radical actors in the region - and arguably in the world - against states and regimes they have a shared strategic interest in strengthening.

There is absolutely no way this behavior advances the cause of peace.
The second plausible explanation is that the West’s support for Hamas is motivated by hatred of Israel. As Helen Thomas’s recent remarks demonstrated, there is certainly a lot of that going around.

The final plausible explanation for the West’s support for Hamas is that it has been led to believe that by acting as it is, it will buy itself immunity from attack by Hamas and its fellow members of the Iranian axis. As former Italian president Francesco Cossiga first exposed in a letter to Corriere della Serra in August 2008, in the early 1970s Italian prime minister Aldo Moro signed a deal with Yasser Arafat that gave the PLO and its affiliated organizations the freedom to operate terror bases in Italy. In exchange the Palestinians agreed to limit their attacks to Jewish and Israeli targets. Italy maintained its allegiance to the deal - and to the PLO against Israel - even when Italian targets were hit.

Cossiga told the newspaper that the August 2, 1980 bombing at the Bologna train station - which Italy blamed on Italian fascists - was actually the work of George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Eighty-five people were murdered in the attack, and still Italy maintained its agreement with the PLO to the point where it prosecuted and imprisoned the wrong people for the worst terrorist attack in its history.

Cossiga alleged that the deal is still in place today and that Italian forces in UNIFIL have expanded the deal to include Hamas’s fellow Iranian proxy Hizbullah. It isn’t much of a stretch to consider the possibility that Italy and the rest of the Western powers have made a similar deal with Hamas. And it is no stretch at all to believe that they will benefit from it as greatly as the Italian railroad passengers in Bologna did.

True, no one has come out and admitted to supporting Hamas. So too, no one has expressed anything by love for Israel and the Jewish people. But the actions of the governments of the West tell a different tale. Without one or more of the explanations above, it is hard to understand their current policies.

Since the flotilla incident, Netanyahu and his ministers have held marathon deliberations on how to respond to US pressure to accept an international inquisition into the IDF’s lawful enforcement of the legal blockade of the Gaza coast. Their deliberations went on at the same time as Netanyahu and his envoys attempted to convince Obama to stop his mad rush to give Hamas an outlet to the sea and deny Israel even the most passive right of self-defense.

It remains to be seen if their decision to form an investigative panel with international "observers" was a wise move or yet another ill-advised concession to an unappeasable administration. What is certain, however, is that it will not end the West’s budding romance with Hamas.

The West’s decision to side with Hamas is devastating. But whatever the reasons for it, it is a fact of life. It is Netanyahu’s duty to swallow this bitter pill and devise a strategy to protect the country from their madness.

50 Statistics About The U.S. Economy That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

Most Americans know that the U.S. economy is in bad shape, but what most Americans don't know is how truly desperate the financial situation of the United States really is. The truth is that what we are experiencing is not simply a "downturn" or a "recession". What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end for the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen. Our greed and our debt are literally eating our economy alive. Total government, corporate and personal debt has now reached 360 percent of GDP, which is far higher than it ever reached during the Great Depression era. We have nearly totally dismantled our once colossal manufacturing base, we have shipped millions upon millions of middle class jobs overseas, we have lived far beyond our means for decades and we have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world. A great day of financial reckoning is fast approaching, and the vast majority of Americans are totally oblivious.

But the truth is... read more

Islamic Sharia Law to Be Banned in Oklahoma

Oklahoma is poised to become the first state in the nation to ban state judges from relying on Islamic law known as Sharia when deciding cases.

The ban is a cornerstone of a "Save our State" amendment to the Oklahoma constitution that was recently approved by the Legislature.

The amendment -- which also would forbid judges from using international laws as a basis for decisions -- will now be put before Oklahoma's voters in November. Approval is expected.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

US Asked to Look into American Backers of Gaza Flotilla

by Maayana Miskin

The United States should investigate the American backers of activist flotillas that challenge Israel's naval closure off the coast of Gaza, an Israeli human rights group said Monday. Shurat Hadin (Israel Law Center) chairwoman, attorney Nitzana Darshan-Leitner has sent a letter asking US Attorney General Eric Holder to look into the "Free Gaza" movement (FGM).

Free Gaza is a US-based group which aims to undermine Israel's control of waters off the Gaza coast.

The Free Gaza organization is providing military assistance to Hamas by attempting to break the Israeli blockade while Hamas continues its attacks on Israeli civilians, Darshan-Leitner said. In doing so, it is taking part in attacking a state friendly to America - a violation of the U.S. Neutrality Act (18 U.S.C. 960).

The Neutrality Act states, "Whoever, within the United States, knowingly begins or sets on foot or provides or prepares a means for or furnishes the money for, or takes part in, any military or naval expedition or enterprise to be carried on from thence against the territory or dominion of any foreign prince or state, or of any colony, district, or people with whom the United States is at peace, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."

"Nevertheless," Darshan-Leitner wrote, "despite the clear unequivocal policy of the United States to support Israel's right to control the security of the territorial waters around Gaza and to isolate Hamas from external support, the FGM and the American Educational Trust are attempting to undermine the foreign policy of both the United States and Israel, and attempting to aid and abet the Hamas terrorist organization, by raising money to smuggle in weapons and supplies in direct violation of the Interim Agreement regarding foreign vessels and to undermine Israel's sovereign authority."

Coast Guard Logs Show Administration Knew Extent of Oil Spill within 24 Hours

by Connie Hair 06/04/2010

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released documents Thursday night showing the Coast Guard recorded on April 21 -- less than 24 hours after the Deepwater Horizon explosion -- the magnitude of the oil leak disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Potential environmental threat is 700,000 gallons of diesel on board the Deepwater Horizon and estimated potential of 8,000 barrels per day of crude oil, if the well were to completely blowout," the Coast Guard reported in a log of events from the immediate aftermath of the April 20 explosion -- shedding new information on the first days of the disaster.

"These documents raise new questions about whether the White House was slow to respond to an incident that was quickly recognized by the Coast Guard as a potentially catastrophic threat to the environment," Issa said upon release of the documents. "It appears as if this administration would rather tell a half-truth if the full-truth doesn't fit the story they want to tell."

READ FULL STORY HERE: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37346