I lasted about 2 hours only by telling myself something worthy MUST be going on, listening while working. Then I decided to watch the Sound of Music for the 1318th time. At least it's meaning endures.

This farce of a congress needs the public to simply keep pulling the lever of the challenger until someone gets it right. And the president is THE MOST RESPONSIBLE for the state of affairs, and the most invested in its lengthy extension.

Arrogant and narcissistic, he exceeds the Congress by about 5% in such measure, and 50% in boring dead weight.

Today will achieve absolutely NOTHING. Change NOTHING. Move NOTHING.

TIMES UK:

Try to stay awake: the President has a healthcare Bill to pass

Warning: watching American politicians argue about healthcare can be seriously damaging to your health. Symptoms may include migraines, extreme fatigue and sudden violent urges. In the event of exposure to competing statistics -- regarding "donut holes", "HMO deductibles", "reconciliation devices" or suchlike -- seek immediate medical help.

The public affairs television channel C-Span 3 might as well have put such a message at the bottom of its screen today as it broadcast President Obama's epic six-hour "bipartisan" debate on US medical reform.

Of course, by the usual standards of C-Span programming -- which can induce sleep faster than an IV drip of propofol -- the summit was the equivalent of a bikini mud wrestling contest. You half expected the picture to shake as the camera operator struggled to compose himself.

For the rest of us, however, it was mainly an opportunity to see how many conciliatory-looking poses Obama could strike while listening to his Republican opponents explain why the entire first year of his administration has been a gigantic waste of time, and why the telephone directory-sized health Bills produced by both the Democrat-controlled House and Senate should be fed into a shredder the size of Connecticut, before they . . . well, no one seems to know exactly what these vast pieces of legislation would do.

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Barack Obama is CORRECT to use drones liberally inside Pakistan

Barack Obama using (and continuing) the use of american forces inside Waziristan is CORRECT

Barack Obama's belief that Afghanistan is the central front in the war on terror is a huge strategic error.

Barack Obama's inner compulsion that KSM, et al, and AND ALL COMERS retain the rights of American citizens and constitutional persons is, IMHO, not justified historically, and represents an attitude dangerous to the safety of the people and the survival of the republic.

Barack Obama's feeling that Gitmo is a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda and all the other Islamic inspired war fighters and killers of soft targets is correct. Unfortunately it is a minor one, and the US Constitution and way of life represents the CENTRAL RECRUITING TOOL for these people. Compared to our CIVILIZED, and civilization's need to get information from these mass murderers (as Eric Holder told us in 2002) their 'rights' are not even those of WW2 POW's.

Biden has today criticized an outspoken Dick Cheney saying:

In an interview taped Saturday night for "Meet the Press," Biden unloaded on his predecessor, saying Cheney is "wrong," is "trying to rewrite history," and "either is misinformed or he is misinforming."

"I'm not gonna guess about his motive," Biden told "Meet the Press" moderator David Gregory. "Dick Cheney's a fine fellow. He's entitled to his own opinion. He's not entitled to rewrite history. He's not entitled to his own facts. ... What is he talking about? ... I'm not being facetious: Maybe he's not fully informed of what's going on ... I don't know where he has been. Where was he the last four years of the last administration?" 

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Absolutely beautiful symmetry of hypocrisy
There is most definitely a god.
From ABC WH correspondent Jake Tapper:

In an oped in USA Today, John Brennan -- Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism -- responds to critics of the Obama administration's counterterrorism policies by saying "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda."

I guess if you feel the kumbaya-ism of the plan to treat KSM and all comers caught alive as some kind of super car thieves and American citizens or constitutional PERSONS,- being detrimental to the national well being and the safety of the american people, instead of acting as FDR did ..YOU ARE HELPING AL QAEDA. Exsqueeze me, but isn't this PRECISELY what caused all these same people to shriek FASCISM when they were criticized by Dick Cheney?

Brennan writes that, "Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill."

In the oped, titled "'We need no lectures': Administration disrupts terrorists' plots, takes fight to them abroad," Brennan writes that politics "should never get in the way of national security. But too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points, instead of coming together to keep us safe."

The administration op-ed is in response to a USA Today editorial entitled "National security team fails to inspire confidence; Officials' handling of Christmas Day attack looks like amateur hour."

Brennan provides a detailed defense of the administration's handling of failed Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab whom, he says, was "thoroughly interrogated and provided important information."

He suggests that many critics are hypocritical and clueless.

That is PRETTY good coming from the man Michael Scheurer identified recently as THE MAN who stopped the CIA from killing Bin Laden during 1996-2000.

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Ask yourselves if this could have happened 2 weeks ago
From THE HILL:

Feinstein says Obama should move terror trials from NYC

By Michael O'Brien - 01/28/10 01:21 PM ET

President Barack Obama should order the trial for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other accused terrorists moved out of New York City, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Thursday.

Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is the highest-ranking Democrat to urge the administration to reverse course on its decision to bring the terror leaders to Manhattan for trial.

"I think the dynamic has changed now," Feinstein said on MSNBC, citing confidential intelligence briefings.

That's right, for presidential authority it's Feb 1979 ALL OVER AGAIN.

WOW

JUST WOW

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DUH!
RIA here but here are the money lines....

• Jihadi Penetration: Part of a War - failures were about the military's ability to "stop foreign terrorists from using American soldiers against the United States."
  
  Such a statement is extremely important, as it finally informs the public that the U.S. personnel roster is indeed being infiltrated and recruited by foreign jihadists, who are described politically by the administration as "extremists." Hence, the first logical conclusion from that finding is that jihadi networks are performing acts of war (and thus of terrorism) against U.S. defense assets and personnel in the homeland. This warrants the reevaluation of the conflict and a re-upgrading of it to a state of war, even though it would still need to be determined "with whom."
• Self-Radicalization - Secretary Gates said that "military supervisors are not properly focused on the threat posed by self-radicalization and need to better understand the behavioral warning signs." He added that "extremists are changing their tactics in an attempt to hit the United States. Unfortunately, the Bush and Obama administrations were both poorly advised by their experts. They were told, wrongly, that if they try to identify a "doctrine," then they will be meddling with a religion. Academic and cultural advisers of the various U.S. agencies and offices (the majority of them, at least) failed their government by triggering a fear of theological entanglement. To the surprise of our Arab and Muslim allies in the region, who know how to detect the jihadist narrative, Washington disarmed its own analysts when bureaucrats of the last two years banned references to the very ideological indicators that could enable our analysts to detect the radicalization threat.
  
  And it is not about "extreme religious views" as much as it is about an ideology. If Arabs and Muslims can identify it in the Middle East, why can't Americans also? It is simply because jihadi propaganda has already penetrated our advising body and fooled many of our decision-makers into dropping the ideological parameters.
  
  
  
  
• The Strategic Threat Ahead -The report raises "serious questions" about whether the military is prepared for similar attacks, particularly "multiple, simultaneous incidents." -- not just in terms of terrorizing the public, but in the framework of a chain of strikes widening gradually until it would evolve to coordinated, simultaneous attacks. In 2006-2007, I served on the then Task Force on Future Terrorism of the Department of Homeland Security and developed an analysis clearly showing the path to come. My briefings to several entities and agencies in the defense sector clearly argued that implanting, growing, and triggering homegrown jihadists to strike at U.S. national security is at the heart of the enemy's strategy.

But even in the face of all this, many show their main concern for is for backlash, which in many cases is an imaginary fear.

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What's it going to take before we examine the ROOT of what the Quran inspires? Something at least in the present we APPARENTLY DO NOT SEE from within the Old or New Testament, or in Buddhism, or virtually any other major religion present within our borders.

Will it be the Foley, Larry Craig, Bob Packwood social conservative holier than thou variety?

Or should we pick the Harry Reid, Jess Jackson, Barack Obama holier than thou variety?

Will it be predatory homosexual liars and heterosexual gropers trying to tell us about family values, or fair skinned negro dialect, hymietown, Trent Lott should resign for using such language social justice champions lecturing about what is correct?

Will we have two america's John Edwards tell us about how it should be while apparently creating and juggling two families?

Or will we have military heroes like Randy "Duke" Cunnigham wondering if what made him an ace made him a crass bribe taking creep?

Should we have the Al Sharpton's using preztel imaging to explain Reid and then Obama's justification for excusing him, or should we have Bob Livingston exposed by Larry Flynt?

I will make ONE POINT.

The republicans GOT RID OF TRENT LOTT. Livingston resigned as well under pressure (leaving us with David Vitter who then became a senator with his own sex scandal, then Hastert - and a quick end for the republican majority).

The democrats have excused themselves. Perhaps they better understand being in POWER trumps a guilty conscience

They apparently DO feel if you have the right social justice profile, then these little poof mistakes can be excused.

Accepting this all seems quite banal, doesn't it? Just another human foible in a long list of imperfections.

These people want to soon be appointing those who decide what kind of health care you are allowed to receive when you are considering your wife's lump in the name of egalitarianism and moral right.

Moral right?

Said anything publicly to your friends and neighbors lately? Is one of them going to be appointed to some committee at the hospital to decide how resources are applied (sound innocent enough?), or do you even know?

Every once in a while a reinforcement comes along which tells you AGAIN, you just don't fit properly. This makes two in two days. (SPOILER ALERT) The first came about 2/3 of the way through "It's Complicated", Ms. Meyers ("Something's Got to Give") belly laugh filled, upper bourgeoisie (again), navel contemplating, 2 hours good time, when the children, all of whom are of or passed college, approach emotional collapse when informed that their 10 year divorced parents are having an affair, and might be getting together again. I expected some kind of joy. As did Alec Baldwin. Clearly I don't understand divorce. Or children of divorce. Maybe women too.

The second alert from Commentary Mag. I post the abstract, the full article will be in the extended window:

For more than a year, Sarah Palin has been a national Rorschach test. The views expressed about her reveal the distinctions and conflicting perceptions of often antagonistic groups of Americans--the religious and the secular, the conservative and the liberal, the urban and the small town, the elitist and the populist. And now, with the publication of her autobiography, Going Rogue, and Matthew Continetti's The Persecution of Sarah Palin, the Rorschach tests are being administered anew, and with increasing fervor. For her conservative admirers, she continues to exemplify independence, moxie, common sense, the superiority of the common American over the nation's elites, and the embodiment of modern womanhood and Christian faith. For her detractors, both conservative and liberal, she is uncouth, unschooled, a hick, anti-science and anti-intellectual, an upstart, and a religious fanatic. There is no group so firmly in the latter camp as American Jews. And there is much to learn in their reaction to Palin, both about her and about the sociological makeup of American Jewry today.

While Palin enjoys support from some prominent Jewish conservatives, it is not an exaggeration to say that, more so than any other major political figure in recent memory (with the possible exception of Patrick J. Buchanan), she rubs Jews the wrong way. In a September 2008 poll by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), Jews disapproved of Palin as the pick for McCain's vice-presidential running mate by a 54 to 37 percent margin. (By contrast, 73 percent approved of the selection of Joseph Biden as Obama's.)

Now I may regret that she immediately didn't shove Plessy vs Ferguson down Katie Couric's throat, or comment that Robert Jackson MIGHT HAVE redeemed his silence over Japanese internment camps by taking out the Nazis in Nuremberg, and then becoming a really fine justice, or waxing angry over Wilson's use of the Sedition laws, and the Supreme's acquiescence at the time ...but given aptitude, study and DESIRE TO EXCEL that can be corrected. I may not agree with her attitude about creation but so long as she doesn't seek to enforce that on others she is certainly more liberal than those who while naming themselves liberal,  seek to confiscate the money of those who feel abortion is murder, for that murder they fear they will have to answer for to a higher authority.
But otherwise, Sarah holding that salmon she caught, and standing infront of the reverse turkey head chopper as the turkeys get chopped on thanksgiving alerts us all to the fact that Sarah Palin IS REAL (turkeys are whacked and then .. we EAT THEM...seeeeeee?) ... and that's is why she scares the hell out of most of the jews, and a lot of others as well, speaking of Alec Baldwin...

CNSNEWS:

FCC Official Says He's Not Carrying Out 'Secret Plot Funded by George Soros to Get Rid of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck'
Monday, December 14, 2009
Mark Lloyd, the chief diversity officer and associate counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), says he is not carrying out a "secret plot funded by George Soros" aimed at getting rid of conservative talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
 
Lloyd, the keynote speaker at a Monday forum sponsored by the Media Access Project (MAP), also said that there was a "right-wing smear campaign" against him.
 
"I am not a Czar appointed by President Obama," said Lloyd. "I am not at the FCC to restore the Fairness Doctrine through the front door or the back door, or to carry out a secret plot funded by George Soros to get rid of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or any other conservative talk show host. I am not at the FCC to remove anybody, whatever their color, from power. I am not a supporter of Hugo Chavez. The right wing smear campaign has been, in a word, incredible, generating hate mail and death threats. It is the price we pay for freedom of speech. And I do support free speech."
Soros is a billionaire liberal philanthropist and Chavez is the socialist leader of Venezuela. The Fairness Doctrine was an FCC regulation introduced in 1949 that said that if a broadcaster discussed an issue of public controversy on the air it needed to present opposing points of view on the issue.  The rule effectively stifled vigorous debate of public policy on the airwaves. The FCC stopped implementing the rule in 1987.

Lloyd said the "right-wing smear campaign" against him involved outlets ranging from blogs to church groups.

AND HERE IS THE RIGHT WING SMEAR:



As everyone knows, if you says something, and it's on video, and someone to the right of Che repeats it along with the original video, THAT'S A SMEAR.

THE SKY IS BLUE.
A smear.

Here is another smear, unfortunately with the FCC not czar, not smearing himself several not times

Now we can agree or disagree about Beck's fear of Obama's 'army', but it's pretty hard to claim you are being smeared by your own words, live, on TV by yourself. After all, what are you going to believe, Mark Lloyd the not czar, or your lying eyes and ears and Mark Lloyd and his clearly sincere, pre FCC, plea to his own people's cheers and approval. Chalk it up. Van Jones, Cass Sunnstein, his absurd wife, Jarrett, Wright, McPeak, Jennings, Ayers, all with one thing in common, One person. One philosophy. In reality the apex of all that is ANTI-LIBERAL.

SICK

OF

IT.

I don't see the middle class out there.

If it's going to be the Robespierre and Danton solution, which is the only one which will obviate the nuclear question, then we need to see men and women 35-60 out there.

Whether thru fear or caution, or lack of support for this spontaneous action, there are none of the critical core I have seen in any youtube or broadcast of the age group whose participation would break the back of the mullahs.

Only growing nationwide strikes provoking ever more extreme backlashes might do this.

And statements of SUPPORT FOR ALL MENS FREEDOMS by the man at the helm of the nation which had a revolution over precisely that issue.

SHAME to him, his legacy and, for him, worst of all, HIS IMAGE

:"[Our] principles [are] founded on the immovable basis of equal right and reason." --Thomas Jefferson to James Sullivan, 1797. ME 9:379

"An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hay, 1807. ME 11:341

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774. ME 1:209, Papers 1:134

"Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:48

"The Declaration of Independence... [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and of the rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Adams Wells, 1819. ME 15:200

"Truth is certainly a branch of morality, and a very important one to society." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:139

"It's not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling." -- Barack Obama to the World, 2009

So, in case you wondered what we stand for:

We stand for not meddling with brutal, fascist, theocracies and the way they treat their people, since it might make even more disagreeable the conversations we might have to have with them

Ballmer Says Tax Would Move Microsoft Jobs Offshore (Update3)

June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world's largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama's plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies' foreign profits.

"It makes U.S. jobs more expensive," Ballmer said in an interview. "We're better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S."

Obama on May 4 proposed outlawing or restricting about $190 billion in tax breaks for offshore companies over the next decade. Such business groups as the National Foreign Trade Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have denounced the proposed overhaul.

U.S. tax rules let companies defer paying corporate rates as high as 35 percent on most types of foreign profits as long as that money remains invested overseas. Obama says he wants to end such incentives to keep foreign profits tax-deferred so that companies would invest them in the U.S.

Microsoft reported an overall effective tax rate of 26 percent for 2008 in its last annual report. "Our effective tax rates are less than the statutory tax rate due to foreign earnings taxed at lower rates," the report said.

Barry Bosworth, an economist in Washington at the Brookings Institution research center, said many software companies such as Microsoft have exploited tax and trade rules in the U.S. and other countries to achieve a low overall tax rate.

Ireland Subsidiary

Typically, he said, a company like Microsoft develops a product like Windows in the United States and deducts those costs against U.S. income. It then transfers the technology to a subsidiary in Ireland, where corporate tax rates are lower, without charging licensing fees. The company then assigns its foreign sales to the Irish subsidiary so it doesn't have to claim the income in the United States.

"What Microsoft wants to do is deduct the cost at a high tax rate and report the profits at a low tax rate," Bosworth said. "Relative to where they are now, the administration's proposals are less favorable, so there will be some rebalancing on their part."

Telegraph UK:

Barack Hussein Obama. Say it proud. Say it out loud. The middle moniker that dared not speak its name during the election campaign is now front and centre of the US president's attempt to woo the Muslim world, the theme of his visits to Riyadh on Wednesday and Cairo on Thursday.

No words can express my disgust for the gullibility, stupidity, naivety, and wishful thinking fantasy voting 53%, ESPECIALLY 78% of the idiot liberal wishing, seeing Seymour or Irving or Shoshana 'do good' , Tikkun Olan (heal the world) Americans who happen to be Jewish who swallowed the absolute MANURE put out by Barack Hussein Obama and his lying, disgusting, sleight of hand running dogs who portrayed HONEST QUESTIONING as vile extremism and then accused the right of doing PRECISELY what they knew they were guilty of.

Americans, you are idiots.

Petrified of the potential political fallout of being branded a Muslim, Candidate Obama - a practicing Christian - never used the name "Hussein" and its use was frowned upon as a forbidden code for the nutty accusation that he was some kind of Islamic Manchurian candidate.

No more. To say Barack Hussein Obama - BHO for short - now appears to be the height of political correctness.

As I argue in this analysis for the Telegraph dead tree edition, Obama is seeking to return to a Middle East policy based on realism - buttressed by the bona fides of his own multi-cultural (including Muslim) background.

In other words it's back to George Marshall speaking to Truman in 1947, who told the president if he recognized Israel not only would he lose his Secretary of State (Marshall) but he would lose his vote in 1948.

The State Dept wins. And all of American Israeli policy is conflated with American Jews, 2500 years of history, a president who is now liable to admit (or CLAIM) he was born Muslim, and the idea that American interests are served by oil from Wahabbis scared of nuclear Shia for a year or two who might be induced to not hate hate us with 205% of their souls, reducing it temporarily to 189%, and we will all be AGOG at the politics of religion mixed into this complete coming FIASCO

Make no mistake about the path we are on.

Israel and the USA are going in opposite directions, and will very shortly find themselves on OPPOSITE SIDES in the middle east.

OPPOSITE SIDES

The USA is going to try and impose a peace and will find Israel resistant to ideas which will kill it and in absolute, black and white terms RESIST AMERICAN POLICY GOALS.

Freeing Barack Hussein Obama to tack the other way, and radically change American policy AGAINST DEMOCRACY and TOWARDS OUTRIGHT POLICE STATES, AND THEOCRATIC DICTATORSHIPS for blurry goals of soft landings among those who see lions and lambs in the same bed.

This is NOT A LIBERAL POLICY.

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS
JIMMY CARTER ON CRACK

Can you believe it?

Days after we are informed that given the same facts a female latino judge can reach a better conclusion than a white male judge we get this ...

The inner assumptions of the progressive left are NAKEDLY revealed.

DISGUSTING

These people are the results of elections.

We are totally screwed.

For some time now I have been pondering the direction this administration has taken with regard to those it clearly considers domestic ENEMIES. The flip flop actions over the water boarding, and imminent release of photos will create firestorm of stupidity which will increase the incline on our slope from the Gracchi, to Drusus, to Saturninus, which ended with Sulla and Caesar. What began over Robert Bork is a straight line thru Lewis Libby and that this process will lead now to trials of those whose actions saved many lives in LA is unconscionable. I have said this before...what do these people imagine was going on, on Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Tarawa, Okinawa? What would have been the reaction if FDR and his people had faced ex post facto war crimes trials over the Japanese Internment policies? Policies opposed by his OWN AG, Robert Jackson who went on to become a highly respected Supreme Court Justice. Suppose Dwight Eisenhower was in such a mind in order to demonize his political opposition for domestic political purposes?

Harry Truman who COULD HAVE BEEN looked at as the war criminal murderer of 250,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and was at LEAST as unpopular as Bush the day he left DC, is instead ..

REVERED.

Precisely because among his other qualities, he stood first for those actions which saved his countryman's lives. UNASHAMEDLY

Today, though, one of the possibilities is that the dedicated leftists can brook no domestic opposition AT ALL. Are so enamored with their idea of social and economic justice that opposition can only be evil.

All this can only lead, as I have said with regret repeatedly, to several really undesirable outcomes. Obama simply cannot be this stupid. He and his supporters are forcing these issues. If the republicans gain control after some national tragedy, what then ... trials of former Obama admin personnel for TREASON?

We cannot go on this way. They cannot make us enemies without factionalism DESTROYING THE NATION, PRECISELY as Madison warned.

From HERE:

You want me on this wall

By J.J. Jackson
web posted April 6, 2009

This article is directed at those in the conservative movement who find my existence grotesque. You know who you are. You are the people that do not know how to get from point A to point B without being led around by the nose. You are the people who might be able to recite Jefferson, Madison, Washington and other founding fathers but cannot understand what you are quoting and the meaning of those words. You are the people that want to stop one step short, take options off the table and who think that when push comes to shove, there is still always more talking that can be done. These words I am about to write come forth because of an email exchange I had with a friend of mine who is a retired Marine and also made necessary because of wishy washy comments I have heard coming as of late from some on the right who think that I am far too radical, being too realistic, too rational in reviewing historic facts and in the process offending their sensibilities which have been generated by false beliefs.

Last week my Marine Corps. buddy and I were discussing the current state of America and the exchange eventually led into what the options for the nation were moving forward. He, like myself, has become very concerned about the direction this great nation is heading and he foresees America as quickly becoming far too weak to correct its course. He asked me straight, "What do you think needs to be done?" I responded, without even a second thought, that I thought there were three options that faced us; convert the hearts of Americans to embrace liberty through proselytizing on its virtues and retake our government through peaceful means, acquiesce to the current majority and join them in socialist misery or, lastly and ultimately, have an armed revolution that would either allow those of us that believe in liberty to part ways and divide the nation or that would retake the entire nation. I added that I did not believe that those who are currently destroying America would let us leave willingly and without a fight making that last option inevitable should they not be converted and considering that many Americans would never chose to join them willingly and would need to forcibly defend their right to cease being part of yet another failed socialist non-utopia utopia.

He then responded with what was obvious surprise, but relieved surprise, that I even mentioned that last course as an option. I made sure that he understood that it was not my favored option and that I certainly believed that we had not come to such a point in this nation yet even if I did fervently believe that we were rapidly approaching it. But he was still none-the-less very happy to hear someone else say what he told me he was also thinking might be a necessary path to walk. Talking about this further it became clear that he had been scorned by some of his other friends, so-called conservatives, for bringing up such an option when he and they had a similar conversation last month. They had scolded him for even mentioning such a thing. Revolution? Violence? How utterly droll! The problem was that they misconstrued his statement of such as a possibility as his endorsement of such an option even, according to him, after he made it clear that he certainly did not want it to come to that.

I can relate to all this because I get the same sort of response when I tell people that an armed revolution in America may be coming our way. Whether we want it or not is a moot point. If we do not correct ourselves and right this sinking ship it may become the only tenable option left to those that seek liberty for themselves and their fellow man. A few weeks ago I wrote an article titled, "This Power Keg Has Long Sought A Spark," in which I discussed how America just needs a single event to set us off into what was not at all a thinly veiled reference to civil war where citizens would no longer take governmental abuses of power and begin to fight back violently. Most of you that read my weekly articles cannot imagine the amount of visceral hate mail that I received from so-called conservatives for even broaching the topic.

I was called everything from a, "dangerous radical," to a, "trigger happy lunatic whose blood lust for innocent life was insatiable." And that was just for putting forth a lesson on how Americans have long looked the other way as the federal government has overstepped its bounds and trampled the rights of citizens in exceedingly violent manners. Shattering urban legends and popular myths about what actually happened leading up to and during events like the raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco to Ruby Ridge was also not taken at all well by those with their blinders on. And remember, these were the responses from people that called themselves conservatives! You can imagine what the responses were from the lefties that stumbled blindly upon my article with their guard down.

So believe me, I can relate to my retired Marine Corps. friend. When I shared with him some of this, his next sentence to me in the conversation was a reworking of some lines from the movie, "A Few Good Men." It was something that I had not thought of. He said, "Believe it or not, and not to sound cliché, they don't want the truth because deep down in places they don't talk about at parties, those people that claim to be conservative and who attack you don't know what to do when liberty is under attack and they want you guarding the wall. They need you on that wall. They need you rattling the cages, sounding the horn and standing that post with a pistol on your hip and a rifle within reach reminding the tyrant class that if they push too far there are patriots who will rise up against them using more than just words."

At first I cringed at being compared to the maniacal Colonel Jessep who in the movie used much of his speech about walls and the need for them to be guarded to justify in his own mind how he had not been complicit in the murder of a young Marine and then the conspiracy and cover-up of such an act. But I quickly realized that this part of the speech is right even if the whole of it was meant to be self-serving. Those that react so viscerally to the truth seem to forget that from time to time, as Jefferson once said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." They either have no idea what must at times occur for their own rights to continue on or are simply unwilling to accept such costs.

Any talk of taking to the streets and any warning that blood may be required to be spilled in the defense of liberty causes them to wince and turn up their noses in either pretend or real anger at anyone that even says that such actions may be necessary. Not that they are necessary mind you; just the insinuation that that they may become necessary. Perhaps they agree to allow the people to take to the streets but remove from the table any acceptance of further action and wring their hands at the very thought that some citizens may decide that a line in the sand has been crossed while the wishy washy continue to think more talking is needed. Those that do so in pretend anger do so because they know the truth and that history has shown us this truth over and over again. But they and their circle of friends have chosen to simply ignore it. Those that do so in real anger do so because they think that they are smart enough to never have to resort to such, as they see them, barbaric actions. To do so would cause them to have to break a nail or mess up their finely quaffed hair and offend their metrosexual facade.

But when push comes to shove both of you sorts, I firmly believe, want me on this wall banging the pots and pans and shouting from atop it as the hordes from without are assaulting it with weapons of ever increasing power. For you do love liberty. Yes you do, even if you are not willing to say so and perhaps even do what is necessary to defend it from time to time when your back is against the wall and the hordes are rushing at you with their own weapons drawn. You are like leaches and leaches are often content to let the host do all the work while they draw off their own sustenance from it. They, like you, remain unaware of trouble until the host has been killed and the blood stops flowing. You may not listen to me as you sit around the table at the local tavern sipping your wine and pontificating about how strong the wall is and how it can never be breached. But you do so while ignoring that at the table next to you sits a group of the enemy who have already breached the defenses and who plot your demise openly and loudly. But once those men plotting your demise finish their planning and begin to strike you will cry out for those of us on the wall to come save you without fail.

The thought of blood may be grotesque to you. The mere thought of me speaking of it perhaps at some point being necessary may cause you to wretch and require the fainting couch to be fetched for you to fall upon. But as long as the enemy believes that the option for revolution and a violent defense by the people of their liberties is off the table, they will run roughshod over all who stand in their way. Yes, even you as you try to talk to them and make agreements and capitulations. It is not you that will say when that one spark hits the powder, causes this nation to explode and the citizens to do what is necessary. It is not you that keeps the enemy from complete control and who keep the wall from crumbling entirely. It is not you who will make the hordes think twice about how far and how fast to advance. But it can be you who will make them think that we no longer guard the walls and give them too much comfort, even when we are still guarding vigilantly, and encourage them to make their final move.

And to tell the truth, there may not be enough of us guardians upon the wall any more to stop them. So rest well under the blanket of the very freedom I and others provide by keeping the hordes second guessing whether it is finally safe to begin their final assault. For tonight may be your last night underneath that blanket if you continue to undermine the guards.

Sleep tight.

J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the lead editor contributor to American Conservative Daily and also the founder of SignalCongress.com. He is the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at http://www.libertyreborn.com.

Where will this end?
It is UNBELIEVABLE...hot off the wires

Put it in the catalog with the others.
You know... Glover, Penn, Cindy.


CARTER.

And now Obama.

PORT OF SPAIN, April 17 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday greeted and shook hands with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez during an impromptu meeting with the anti-U.S. leader at the Summit of the Americas.

Photographs released by the Venezuelan government showed Chavez, a fierce foe of former President George W. Bush, smiling and clasping hands with Obama at the start of the summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Trinidad.

HARMLESS TO OUR ENEMIES

TREACHEROUS TO OUR FRIENDS

Mr. Obama would you have been so jovial with the leaders of South Africa in the 1960's?

So happy in greeting Ross Barnett?

So warm with a never to be out-ni**ered George Wallace?

Would there be anything but disdain for such men? Why is there not disdain here?

We have not forgotten the words of McPeak, Brezhinski, Powers, Wright.

Do you really have a  problem?

A perfect consonant fit with the public attempts by this administration to cast all criticism and dissent as extremism
Wash Times:

Liberal actress and political activist Janeane Garofalo, in all seriousness, said activists who attended tea parties are racists with dysfunctional brains in a recent prime-time television appearance.

"Let's be very honest about what this is about. This is not about bashing Democrats. It's not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea party was about. They don't know their history at all. It's about hating a black man in the White House," she said on MSNBC's "The Countdown" with Keith Olbermann Thursday evening. "This is racism straight up and is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. There is no way around that."

Olbermann did not once try to challenge her on those assertions.

The actress went on to describe the brain size of typical "right-winger, Republican or conservative or your average white power activist." 

"Their synapses are misfiring. ... It is a neurological problem we are dealing with," she said. This isn't the first time she's offered this analysis, either. Ms. Garofalo said similar things about Alaskan GOP Governor Sarah Palin's brain last February in an interview with an environmental blog.

The actress went on to bash the GOP on MSNBC Thursday because it had "crystallized into the white power movement" as well as Fox News, which she said has captured the "Klan demo[graphic]."

"Who else is Fox talking to? Urban older white guys and their girlfriends who suffer from Stockholm Syndrome," she said.

The model citizen, for tolerance, the Obama way.

NONE

Two days after the release of a political attempt to cast probably 30-40% of americans within a set of parameters which would fit the label 'right wing extremists', in the middle of a protest, a peaceful protest, of citizens, over a government which is paying off banks, GM,  Chrysler, foolish HUGE businesses, the UAW, and spending a previously wild spending Bush into the minor leagues, and has made the term 'billion' chump change, we have one of the major news networks adopting outright the FAR LEFT position of MOVEON, and this administration that anyone to their right (which is the CENTER), with a legitimate and potentially citizen warming position - RIGHT WING.

Those people are attempting to make the idea of the WORD conservative, or even those who believe in PROPERTY RIGHTS, EXTREME.

Those people are attempting to make those who protest, as THOSE PEOPLE SPENT EIGHT YEARS DOING, anti government (anarchists? WHAT?).

Sorry but the correct characterization would be that they oppose an anti-founder, anti free enterprise, and counter FREEDOM and FAIRNESS group, MISTAKENLY ELECTED, as well as others who simply think that govt bureaucrats know better than the citizens do what is best for them. BARNEY. NANCY. HARRY.

We are not talking segregation, Ross Barnett, Jim Crow, or defending abhorrent practices based in ignorance and denying equal opportunity. We are talking about WHOEVER is in power gethering more in every way until the everyday lives of its citizens cannot be about life liberty and you know what. It has become about SPREADING THE WEALTH. In another presidency it might be about SECURITY. The precendents set for the future are daunting.

And it is the govt attitude towards those who oppose them on the basis of the constitution which frees the insane media at large to promote this agenda. 'Domestic political opponents should be dealt with ruthlessly, and every opportunity which presents itself must be utilized in this endeavor' which will end up being what Rome's was from 110 BC to 49 BC. Conservatives are to be THE ENEMY, far more consistently than AQIM, or Somali sea going terrorists, or the Taliban who threaten to make Pakistan into the instant Nuclear Caliphate.

This attitude by this government, and its drooling infatuated media is at heart ANTI AMERICAN.

CNN should fire this correspondent, Susan Roesgen IMMEDIATELY.

Barack Obama should VERY CAREFULLY CONSIDER where this is all leading. Unless of course he has decided to make the loyal opposition, into REAL ENEMIES to foster an attempt to do away with any other framework of ideas, by driving these enemies to extremes. That would be ALMOST inconceivable. ALMOST.

These are all NOT LIBERAL IDEAS. They are something else. They should be called so by the opposition.

By stupid decisions, and not intent, this process HAS HAPPENED BEFORE.

Any political intent to make those who believe that human nature means that the fruit of ingenuity, labor, and risk are synonymous with American Freedom into extremists in the mind of the masses can only lead to the most unpleasant consequences imaginable.

This is my observation.

Draw back Mr. Obama, and get rid of those around you who promulgate such disgusting ideas for short term political gain.
Want bypartisan action?
Then TAKE IT
TODAY

• you have recently focused on themes such as the loss of U.S. manufacturing capability to China and India, Russia's control of energy resources and use of these to pressure other countries, and China's investment in U.S. real estate and corporations as a part of subversion strategy.
• you are concerned illegal immigrants were taking away American jobs through their willingness to work at significantly lower wages and frustration over a perceived lack of government action on illegal immigration has the potential to incite individuals or small groups toward violence.
• you perceive recent gun control legislation as a threat to their right to bear arms and in response have increased weapons and ammunition stockpiling

Well, that's anyone who wants a secure border (but might want relatively open immigration), believes we need to make things a at a profit to have real wealth, and the NRA as well as every gun owner.

Congratulations, we can't adequately differentiate between you and Timothy McVeigh

Anyone wonder where Patrick Henry, or Sam Adams might fit in the USA now?

Oh that's right, they really WERE extremists.

Having downloaded the DHS report, and read Mr Johnson's inexplicable conclusion that real 'right wing' extremists were the target of this report (a la Timothy McVeigh?), and expressing that he was oh so sad that so many bloggers were 'overreacting' it became compulsory to read the thing.

1) I find the language of LEFT WING newspapers rampant...for instance in the 2nd amendment discussion (gee there's a radical document to defend, huh?):

Because debates over constitutional rights are intense, and parties on all sides have deeply held, sincere, but vastly divergent beliefs, violent extremists may attempt to co-opt the debate and use the controversy as a radicalization tool.

'observers say', 'analysts think', may attempt? I may fart in a crowded room or jump out the window on a bad day. You might swear at your wife or husband.

2) Foreign studies on foreign people with foreign traditions and VERY different histories are used to predict american behavior, and justify conclusions:

According to a 2007 study from the German Institute for Economic Research, there appears to be a strong association between a parent's unemployment status and the formation of rightwing extremist beliefs in their children--specifically xenophobia and
antidemocratic ideals.

I guess that makes Alvin York a dangerous radical.

3) The race card is key, AND plagued with conclusion 1

Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.

Let me rephrase that... Strict constitutionalists, and economic conservatives have been very loud in their condemnation of and opposition to the first truly socialist-leftist, and BELIEVING president, whose claims that no crisis should go to waste have alarmed many as to his intentions regarding both the founding document and the idea that property is sacrosanct, and basic to American freedom as outlined by the founding brothers. These constitutionalists and economic conservatives do not believe they need to remove their consent to be governed and therefore are not planning ANYTHING ... except in extremis, civil disobedience.

Listen, those who 'have not yet turned to attack planning' from 2000-2008 list among their members, John Conyers, Barney Frank, Al Franken, Rhandi Rhodes, Judea Benjamin and all the others who claimed Bush stole the election, illegally invaded Iraq, was a torturer and should be impeached. In other words those who exercised FREEDOM OF SPEECH to heavily criticise the govt.

Where Charles Johnson went way off the rails is to conclude that what the DHS is after is Aryan Nation and other such hate groups as the focus of this report ... CONSIDER THIS
This is Homeand Security using the SPLC as sacrosanct arbiters of definition and fact regarding hate groups.

Now I have been a PRIME THINKER along the lines that the SPLC has a lot to be congratulated for, but the ENTIRE focuse of their lives is to find, and excoriate the hate groups that fit the profile that the KKK filled. That is a descending curve (which will never be eliminated, though) One note song. One tool carpenter, and when all you use is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

SPLC doesn't even BOTHER with islamic extremism calling for overthrow of the US, and the outright hate and racism and calls for violence streaming from that which are undeniable, and that is what is missing from the outlook of DHS as well.

SPLC, for instance, considers that ALL attempts to stop illegal immigration are racist in nature and that therefore those who believe in a secure border and act on that are dangerous hate group members, and now we have DHS using them as definers of fact.

Given the facts of statements of the Obama admin, the plans admitted to since election of attacks on the right, attacks on people like Mr Limbaugh, I find that this DHS report, following on the heels of the Missouri police report is CONSONANT with the idea that what is intended is INTIMIDATION of political opponents. It is this admi saying .."Let's see what we can do" and inspiring among those seeking to enhance their careers, typical organizational behavior.

Groups like the KKK, Aryan Nation, Christian Identity loons, Stromfront etc, and their prettier face, the CCC ARE FREE to be assholes. But so long as they JUST keep talking about being assholes they are within the rights of this nation no matter how much I hate it. The same rights Judea Benjamin excersized. The DHS' job is to PROTECT those rights, not squeeze them by the massive intimidative power fo the federal govt. Whether we like it or not we have to protect the rights of the most obnoxious americans among us, if we are to protect our own.

It is amusing and offensive both to find 'disgruntled war veterans', an icon of the left since Viet Nam held up as volunteers brought to these hate groups, BY THE FEDERAL GOVT.

It is no defense for the left to believe that all who stand in oppostion to their ideas of social and economic justice, even if they are one inch to their right, must be some kind of evil and therefore should be watched and intimidated.

This is all a case study in how to create a strong, organized and well motivated politcial opposition out of one the greatest opportunities in american history to garner bypartisan support.

I am trying to imagine what would have come tumbling out of the media if George Bush and HIS Dept of Homeland Security had published warnings about radicals from the ACLU

But since the left is interested in social justice, those who warn against them and their methods as being ultimately fascist and ultimately using the coercive power of the federal govt as the final argument, MUST BE DISLOYAL, and interested in something EVIL.

Wash Times : The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in "rightwing extremist activity," saying the economic recession, the election of America's first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.

A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines "rightwing extremism in the United States" as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.

"It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration," the warning says.

The White House is trying to distance itself, but give me a break. HEADS SHOULD ROLL.

The nine-page document was sent to police and sheriff's departments across the United States on April 7 under the headline, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."

It says the federal government "will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months" to gather information on "rightwing extremist activity in the United States."

The joint federal-state activities will have "a particular emphasis" on the causes of "rightwing extremist radicalization."

And these guys think Iraq was taking the EYE OFF THE BALL?

Let's get something straight, these people are not liberals. Men like Hubert Humphrey are SPINNING IN THEIR GRAVES.

With every step in this direction the federal authorities are guaranteeing the outcome they warn against, and it is hard not to imagine the possibility  THIS IS WHAT THEY SEEK.

OH REALLY?

The (now clearly) EMINENCE GRIS to bank CEO's:

Earth population 'exceeds limits'

There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.

Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth's "limits of sustainability".

Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.

Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton.

"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people," Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing "wild lands", and in particular water supplies.

Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: "There are probably already too many people on the planet."

The world economy sucks, there are too many people, there are worldwide overseas contingencies against man caused disasters, threats of regional nuclear wars, religious wars, oil addiction, overspending on Margarita machines, incipient economic wars, dollar wars, Nork nukes, Persian nukes, and now demands to abolish money ..and behind it all,

Don't make me laugh.
By any economic measure which rules out Mary Jane induced optimism, THE US IS NOT VIABLE after creating a budgetary mess which will break the next three generations, and see interest as our largest single expense.

Neither General Motors nor Chrysler submitted acceptable plans to receive more federal bailout money, the Obama administration said as it set the stage for a crisis in Detroit that would dramatically reshape the nation's auto industry.

The White House pushed out GM's chairman and directed Chrysler to move quickly to forge a partnership with Fiat if it expects to receive additional government assistance.

President Barack Obama and his top advisers have determined that neither company is viable and that taxpayers will not spend untold billions more to keep the pair of automakers open forever.

In a last-ditch effort, the administration gave each company a brief deadline to try one last time to convince Washington it is worth saving, said senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to more bluntly discuss the decision.

The govt CANNOT manage these things.
The unintended consequences will be, I guarantee you, STAGGERING and UNIMAGINBLE

FDR, in an effort to prevent the banks from unnecessary risk in the 30's, since the FDIC was now underwriting the people's accounts, approved REDLINING. This practice created, BY FEDERAL FIAT, areas of risk too high for banks to loan. FDR acted to protect the people's moneys, by protecting the banks which had failed and created crisis, and then created something which, 40 years later was seen as a linchpin of segregationist bank policy by denying mortages, and business loans to minorities (who lived in the redlined areas) thus prolonging increasing blight and despair.

The result? The Community Redevelopment Act, Fannie and Freddie which enforced legally and morally by FEDERAL FIAT the imperative to specifically LOAN in what were redlined areas, thus increasing risk to such levels that mortgage backed securities were invented to defray risk, and spread it out and make profit FAST, perhaps even knowing the situation was impossible. Louis XV and his paramour come to mind.

The result?

We all know.

The very bank failures FDR sought to prevent with HIS interventions.

Government intervention must be limited, sparing and exceptional.

Obama and his followers see it as a typical tool to be wielded against the greedy industrialists, bankers, and other who rape the workers and middle class. It's a domestic equivalent of the argument the muslim radicals have used about the USA despoiling the natural resources of their nations.

Business is tough. Inventing is tough. Profit is hard, not easy. Producing is a battle, always. Sales is a knife fight in a dark closet.

The government appearing as some 'deus ex machina' as if they have a clue, ESPECIALLY in an admin virtually DEVOID of anyone who has truly been brought along in business ANYWHERE is a joke. COSMIC.

The government making a judgement that GM and Chrysler cannot survive is a POLITICAL STATEMENT. Who are the beneficiaries of that fix, one wonders? Levin supporters? Stabenow contributors? WHO KNOWS?

The feds saying they are underwriting the warranties of anyone who has a repair if they buy in the next 60 days is another political joke. Can you imagine trying to get service with a picture of Obama as your warranty? Who you gonna call? How fast will Uncle Sam pay? 150 days?

BELIEVERS IN GOVT CONTROL OF YOUR BATHROOM COMMENT HERE, ALSO RIGHT WINGNUTS

I'm sure somewhere out on the ice Sarah Palin is taking target practice. Can you imagine her thoughts this morning. Or what George Bush is thinking about the reaction if HE had said this?

President Obama Jokes About Being a Bad Bowler: 'It's Like the Special Olympics'

March 19, 2009 8:56 PM

The first appearance by a sitting president on "The Tonight Show" may well end up being the last.

President Obama, in his taping with Jay Leno Thursday afternoon, attempted to yuk it up with the funnyman, and ended up insulting the disabled.

Towards the end of his approximately 40-minute appearance, the president talked about how he's gotten better at bowling and has been practicing in the White House bowling alley.

He bowled a 129, the president said.

"That's very good, Mr. President," Leno said sarcastically.

It's "like the Special Olympics or something," the president said.

When asked about the remark, the White House said the president did not intend to offend.

Jimmy the Greek

Howard Cosell

Former Sen Allen of Virginia

Oh and by the way, I can't dance or jump.

But Oprompter and his ilk (anyone remember Biden and the 7-11?) are excused while they wipe the drooling from the press off of them.

COMMENTS FOR THE ABLED HERE

NRO:

In an article headlined "Moderate Is Said to Be Pick for Court," the New York Times reports that President Obama's first nominee to a federal appellate court seat is expected to be David F. Hamilton.  Hamilton, appointed by President Clinton to a district judgeship in Indiana in 1994 (despite the ABA's "not qualified" rating), is expected to be named to the Seventh Circuit.

 

It's far from clear what justifies the article's characterization of Hamilton as a "moderate" (or, as the article oddly puts it, as "represent[ing] some of his state's traditionally moderate strain"--how does one represent some of a strain?).  Was it perhaps Hamilton's service as vice president for litigation, and as a board member, of the Indiana branch of the ACLU?  Or maybe Hamilton's extraordinary seven-year-long series of rulings obstructing Indiana's implementation of its law providing for informed consent on abortion?  

Hamilton was a fundraiser for ACORN (nice ACORN payback, Mr. President) and served as vice president for litigation and a board member of the Indiana ACLU.

Governing from the center?

Politico:

For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList.

Proof of a vast liberal media conspiracy?

Not at all, says Ezra Klein, the 24-year-old American Prospect blogging wunderkind who formed JournoList in February 2007. "Basically," he says, "it's just a list where journalists and policy wonks can discuss issues freely."

But some of the journalists who participate in the online discussion say -- off the record, of course -- that it has been a great help in their work. On the record, The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin acknowledged that a Talk of the Town piece -- he won't say which one -- got its start in part via a conversation on JournoList. And JLister Eric Alterman, The Nation writer and CUNY professor, said he's seen discussions that start on the list seep into the world beyond.

"I'm very lazy about writing when I'm not getting paid," Alterman said. "So if I take the trouble to write something in any detail on the list, I tend to cannibalize it. It doesn't surprise me when I see things on the list on people's blogs."

Last April, criticism of ABC's handling of a Democratic presidential debate took shape on JList before morphing into an open letter to the network, signed by more than 40 journalists and academics -- many of whom are JList members.

And Obama's Gibbs accuses the repubs of a cabal?

But beyond these specific examples, it's hard to trace JList's influence in the media, because so few JListers are willing to talk on the record about it.

POLITICO contacted nearly three dozen current JList members for this story. The majority either declined to comment or didn't respond to interview requests -- and then returned to JList to post items on why they wouldn't be talking to POLITICO about what goes on there.

In an e-mail, Klein said he understands that the JList's off-the-record rule "makes it seems secretive." But he insisted that JList discussions have to be off the record in order to "ensure that folks feel safe giving off-the-cuff analysis and instant reactions." 

One byproduct of that secrecy: For all its high-profile membership -- which includes Nobel Prize-winning columnist Paul Krugman; staffers from Newsweek, POLITICO, Huffington Post, The New Republic, The Nation and The New Yorker; policy wonks, academics and bloggers such as Klein and Matthew Yglesias -- JList itself has received almost no attention from the media.

READ IT ALL

Somewhere near Hainan, the USS Chung Hoon (at LEAST this one ship), an Arleigh Burke Class destroyer, equipped with the Aegis missile system, and with the firepower of several WW2 fleet aircraft carriers, is escorting the unarmed ocean research/intelligence vessel Impeccable after interference with her by Chinese vessels in international waters.

In our hemisphere this morning both Cuba and Venezuela have announced they are ready to accept the basing of TU-160 Black Jack intercontinental bomber, which can carry 15-20 AS-15, or KS-55 Sunburn missiles, and a panoply of smart gravity weapons. These planes could be in American airspace in minutes.

James Monroe comes to mind.

In Afghanistan the Taliban have reversed the actions of 2001, and NO it wasn't because of Iraq, it's because it's is a different place. A place that took 10-11 years to get the Soviets out.  Soviets untrammeled by the fits of conscience and rules we have.

In Iraq a fragile near success still records suicide bombers as the jihadis watch Obama and his plans of a new American 'leadership' and 'cooperation' and 'respect'.

And the economic crisis, called dire and world ending (if we didn't listen to you...or GWB before you), every day by the new president as his minions face tax problems, attack republicans and radio personalities they hate, suddenly finds a newly confident Obama a day after his budget gets rammed down our throats in a transparent attempt to use FEAR to change America to something else, and in the background questions about the nature of his appointments and our closest ally in the middle east, and a vague sense that some kind of appeasement is under way.

In the meantime our very CLOSEST ally has a senior cabinet member express that in dealing with the Obama Admin, "there is no one there"

He now faces dwindling popularity, ENRAGED opposition, and greater polarization than even Mr. Bush faced.

You asked for this job.

Are you going to call for negotiations over what John Kennedy blockaded Cuba over? Will you say we cannot afford to bring on a confrontation now? Will you blame all this on the right? The Israel Lobby?  Will you just call this help on patrols and non-basing as a canard for Americans to continue their sleepwalk?

You are being asked who you are every day you display the lack of firm resolve and willingness towards risk in our favor. This will accelerate as you delay and seek to make no decision your decision, just as you voted PRESENT so many times.

This will occur until someone steps across a line they don't believe you have drawn, and then we will have the end of this economic downturn in the same old way, because we will then need a draft, and a lot of materials which will be used up in the most consuming activity of all....war.

I was no wild defender of Bush.

But what's going on now is the express elevator to hell.

GOING DOWN!

The American Jewish Committee rejected charges made by Ambassador Charles Freeman blaming the "Israel Lobby" for his decision to withdraw his acceptance of the position of chair of the National Intelligence Council.

Freeman was formerly the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and the chair of the Middle East Policy Council, funded in part by the Saudi government. His foreign policy views drew considerable scrutiny.

He lavishly praised Saudi King Abdullah as "Abdullah the Great," callously stated that the Chinese government's Tiananmen Square crackdown was a "monument to overly cautious behavior," demonstrated consistent hostility toward Israel, and bizarrely argued, "What 9/11 showed is that if we bomb people, they bomb back."

During the campaign we saw Obama's long association with Wright's church and it's sad history of frankly anti semitic statement masquerading as some kind of anti Zionism. We saw his appointments of Powers, Rice, Brezhinski all of whom adopted stands from praising Walt and Mearsheimer (Zbig) to calling for investing Israel with American troops to protect Palestinians (Powers).

Charles Freeman Jr., President Barack Obama's choice for a major intelligence post, has withdrawn his name and blamed pro-Israel lobbying groups for his decision, saying they had distorted his record and campaigned against him.

Freeman had come under sharp criticism for his past statements about Israel as well as his association with the Saudi and Chinese governments.

Freeman's withdrawal Tuesday from consideration as chairman of the National Intelligence Council came just hours after Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence, vigorously defended him and said his comments had been taken out of context.

In a message to colleagues and friends, first posted Tuesday evening on Foreign Policy magazine's Web site, Freeman blamed pro-Israel groups for the controversy, saying the "tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth."

We have witnessed a marshalling over time of the the left and anti semitic forces until rote defending of this bigotry is EXPECTED as the new chic.

We have seen Obama's opening actions in his calling of a Holocaust Denier/Minimizer as his first foreign move, and his interview with ANTI JEWISH (not anti Israel) Al Arabiya as his first interview.

We have seen a world in a frenzy when jews defend themselves against REAL ATTACKS

And we DO see the shield Obama holds over his 'problem' with the appointments of men like Rahm Emanuel.

So where were you Rahm, on this?

Do you agree with Obama's inarguably BIGOTED appointment? Are you silent during his BIGOTED statements on departure?

Are you co opted, voting present, agree?

Who are YOU Rahm Emanuel?

Dennis Blair is Obama's man.

What say you Rahm?

Too amibitious?

All bigotry is the same.

Where ARE the liberals? The REAL liberals?

Too busy deciding who is going to be made rich brokering those cap and trade licenses, are we?

The presidential candidate [1] of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), the communist revolutionaries in El Salvador the Reagan administration battled in the 1980s, is, a Monday Washington Post story noted, "a former correspondent for CNN en Espanol [2]." In the March 9 article, "In El Salvador Vote, Big Opportunity for Leftists [3]," reporter William Booth relayed from San Salvador that the journalist-turned-politician "considers himself to be El Salvador's Barack Obama." Booth relayed:

After a 12-year civil war and a peace undermined by soaring crime, leftists in El Salvador are on the verge of completing a remarkable journey from armed struggle to the presidential palace.

Their candidate is a veteran TV broadcaster and morning talk show host, Mauricio Funes [4], whose Facebook page [5] lists his political views as "other." Funes, 49, a former correspondent for CNN en Español, was recently recruited by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), the revolutionary group-turned-mainstream political party that is favored by polls to win the presidency in a vote scheduled for March 15....

Funes considers himself to be El Salvador's Barack Obama -- an agent of change in a country beset by the highest murder rate in Latin America and an economy in free fall.

The comparison is overt: Funes and the FMLN use images of Obama in their ads (despite objections by the U.S. State Department), saying both candidates were smeared by their opponents as allies of extremists. The FMLN television spots complete the link by employing the Obama slogan in English and Spanish, vowing "Yes, we can!"...

Headline tomorrow - Riz Khan who left CNN international for Al Jazeera to be named Head of Fatwas at Al Azhar

Unbelievable considering what these people had to say all summer and fall about Bush and the repubs, and what they purported to be to the Americans who voted for them
TELEGRAPH UK:

Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

What a tawdry, idiotic, excuse riddled, naive, shambles of a beginning.

While touting the stimulus bill as a success in keeping 25 police recruits in Columbus, Ohio:

Calling the latest job losses astounding, President Barack Obama said Friday he will not accept a future marked by a recurring cycle of Americans forced out of work due to economic woes

In other words, economic cycles.
In other words, business cycles involving rising and falling values, either as commodities or services.
In other words the human desire to raise prices (or your wages) to make more money, and drop them to keep business in a downturn to survive.

"The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property
and in their management." --Thomas Jefferson

One of the prices of capitalism and property, is the sine wave of cycles.

There is only ONE WAY to overcome human nature.
SOME KIND of force. Ultimately just one kind. Ultimately.
And that sports fans IS the reason the 2nd Amendment exists.

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. "

PS on stimulus success:

The recruit class was laid off in January before they could even start walking the beat. Mayor Michael Coleman, a Democrat, blamed city budget problems.

But last week Coleman announced that the Justice Department had told the city it would get $1.25 million in stimulus funds to cover the officers' salaries through Dec. 31.

Breann Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Rep. Pat Tiberi, one of eight Ohio Republicans who voted against the stimulus, noted that the money that saved the recruits' job will run out next year. Coleman hasn't said how he'll pay the officers' salaries after that.

Gonzalez said Tiberi "is thrilled" that these officers were hired, but that the question of how to pay for them will confront the city again come January.

In other words the city of Columbus is TOTALLY dependent on the federal govt rather than ADAPTING to the needs of falling tax revenues, because business and personal incomes are falling. An absolure Rx for failure.

The 'View" from Bob Herbert:

• In the midst of the craziness, conservatives are busy trying to blame this epic economic catastrophe -- a conflagration of their own making -- on the new president. Forget Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and George Herbert Hoover Bush and the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth and Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich and all the rest. The right-wingers would have you believe this is Obama's downturn.

Well actually, the LACK OF FOCUSED DIRECTION DESPITE KNOWING THE SITUATION SINCE NOVEMBER (THIS IS MARCH...5 months later), and SPECIFICALLY THE LACK OF A SPECIFIC PLAN FOR BUSINESS GROWTH, ESPECIALLY SMALL BUSINESS GROWTH INDICATES SOMETHING ELSE IS ON HIS MIND OR HE HAS ANOTHER AGENDA

• As the columnist Charles Krauthammer was kind enough to inform us: "The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his 'big-bang' agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society."

"Never waste a good crisis". Attack Rush Limbaugh ..CYNICALLY and GRATUITOUSLY while the slobberingly slavish press actually finds out that an enemies list was the plan since November indicating good time was spent on these issues even though we can track the schwerpunckt of this crisis to Sept 15th and Lehman Bros being allowed to die.

• I don't know whether President Obama's ultimate rescue plan for the financial industry will work. He is a thoughtful man running a thoughtful administration and the plan, a staggeringly complex and difficult work in progress, hasn't been revealed yet.

A great line. First of all if this is a thoughtful man then Richardson, Daschle, Solis, Geithner, Freeman make that a remarkable claim. If this is a thoughtful man he has appointed to arguably THE most critical position not only a tax evader, but some who can't organzie himself enough to name ANY of his 20+ undersecretaries so that whatever the plan is can get unrolled out of plans and into reality.

1. Thoughtful .. the letter to Russia offering a system he denigrated, his secretary called ineffective as a chip to swap for Russian help with a power who would nvever give up their prime goal?
2. Thoughtful, the first interview with racist TV?
3. Thoughtful, the first phone call to a holocaust minimizer?
4. Thoughtful, the idea that peace can be achieved by pressuring Israel to give up settlements when the other sides target is giving up Israel?
5. Thoughtful, the plan to bankrupt coal AND have the tax evading lonely Sec Treas come out swinging against energy companies over global warming while we import a majority of our oil?
6. Thoughful 'outreach' to the Taliban?
7. Thoughtful ..throwing loyal NATO allies under the bus?
8. Thoughtful, sending back a bust of Winston Churchill, and his treatment of the British Prime Minister?
   

Second, the idea that the plan has not been revealed yet is a stunning claim. It's been five months. Surely at least a general direction exists in the mind of Obama. If not, after all this time..

Obama has eschewed UTTERLY the idea of post partisan cooperation
His ideas so far consist of the SAME kind of stupid REACTIONS that Mr. Bush undertook.
His team criticizes the opposition as people who want to do nothing about this crisis, while they foster an attitude among americans that you can't make a decent living without the government intervening, something now believed by a majority of his party. And yet the opposition has publicized their own ignored plans.

This man came to power amidst the prayerful hope of those who think of themselves as conservatives that his actions in service to the nation would be helpful to the nation and THUS be helpful to his party and his politcal suasion.

There is no evidence that this is true unless it is through the lens of a socialist reformation of the USA. Mr. Obama HAS convinced me he DOES believe in that, as his history has indicated, and as he spent the campaign denying.

Both domestically and in foreign affairs this administration is threatening to veer from disturbingly naive, unprepared and dumb, to cataclysmic failure amid what THEY see as their mandate to and chance to change America as the priority, as opposed to what he was was SPECIFICALLY elected for...FIX THE ECONOMY.

I didn't expect success in this economy in this amount of time.
I did expect a detailed plan which has a modicum of chance of success. Enough of a modicum to affect confidence and fear, and as we see from the jobs picture, 'GM',  and consumer spending ..the nation agrees with the conclusions here when they act, even though they retain hope in this man personally.

OKAY WHINERS, COMPLAIN HERE

Thanks to the prescient Frenchman, and the folks at the Weekly Standard who DID actually read it, and remember it- presented here without comment, for none is required

It seems that if despotism came to be established in the democratic nations of our day, it would have other characteristics: it would be more extensive and milder, and it would degrade men without tormenting them. .  .  .

When I think of the small passions of men of our day, the softness of their mores, the extent of their enlightenment, the purity of their religion, the mildness of their morality, their laborious and steady habits, the restraint that almost all preserve in vice as in virtue, I do not fear that in their chiefs they will find tyrants, but rather schoolmasters. .  .  .

I want to imagine with what new features despotism could be produced in the world: I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. .  .  .

Above these an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?

So it is that every day it renders the employment of free will less useful and more rare; it confines the action of the will in a smaller space and little by little steals the very use of it from each citizen. .  .  .

Thus, after taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which government is the shepherd. .  .  .

I have always believed that this sort of regulated, mild, and peaceful servitude, whose picture I have just painted, could be combined better than one imagines with some of the external forms of freedom, and that it would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.

--Alexis de Tocqueville

From Democracy in America, volume two, part four, chapter six: "What Kind of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear" (translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop)

COMMENT HERE

Rush Job: Inside Dems' Limbaugh plan

Top Democrats believe they have struck political gold by depicting Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party, a full-scale effort first hatched by some of the most familiar names in politics and now being guided in part from inside the White House.

The strategy took shape after Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville included Limbaugh's name in an October poll and learned their longtime tormentor was deeply unpopular with many Americans, especially younger voters. Then the conservative talk-radio host emerged as an unapologetic critic of Barack Obama shortly before his inauguration, when even many Republicans were showering him with praise.

Soon it clicked: Democrats realized they could roll out a new GOP bogeyman for the post-Bush era by turning to an old one in Limbaugh, a polarizing figure since he rose to prominence in the 1990s.

Limbaugh is embracing the line of attack, suggesting a certain symbiosis between him and his political adversaries.

"The administration is enabling me," he wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. "They are expanding my profile, expanding my audience and expanding my influence. An ever larger number of people are now being exposed to the antidote to Obamaism: conservatism, as articulated by me. An ever larger number of people are now exposed to substantive warnings, analysis and criticism of Obama's policies and intentions, a 'story' I own because the [mainstream media] is largely the Obama Press Office."

The bigger, the better, agreed Carville. "It's great for us, great for him, great for the press," he said of Limbaugh. "The only people he's not good for are the actual Republicans in Congress."

Don't these people have larger worries?

Isn't this the height of hypocrisy considering their inflated complaints about how Rove supposedly twisted Bush to use the war against dems?

"The only people he's not good for are the actual Republicans in Congress." in other words the real war is not about the economy, the Islamist freaks, or anything else. The real war is against the internal political OPPOSITION. Never to be pushed aside or forgotten.

I HEAR YOU

Scum.

The lot.

If their target is always the domestic opposition, then they are not fit to serve.

EITHER PARTY

"I want to send Rush a bottle of vitamins," said Begala. "We need him to stay healthy and loud and proud."

With President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney out of the White House and Tom DeLay gone from Congress, the left had been suddenly absent an unpopular right-wing figure.

My wife can't stand him. It's just that she agrees with his political positions.

HUBRIS is TOUGH, snakehead and company.

KEEP GOING

COMMENTS HERE

JUST WOW!

For Central Connecticut State University student John Wahlberg, a class presentation on campus violence turned into a confrontation with the campus police due to a complaint by the professor.

On October 3, 2008, Wahlberg and two other classmates prepared to give an oral presentation for a Communication 140 class that was required to discuss a "relevant issue in the media". Wahlberg and his group chose to discuss school violence due to recent events such as the Virginia Tech shootings that occurred in 2007.

Shortly after his professor, Paula Anderson, filed a complaint with the CCSU Police against her student. During the presentation Wahlberg made the point that if students were permitted to conceal carry guns on campus, the violence could have been stopped earlier in many of these cases. He also touched on the controversial idea of free gun zones on college campuses.

That night at work, Wahlberg received a message stating that the campus police "requested his presence". Upon entering the police station, the officers began to list off firearms that were registered under his name, and questioned him about where he kept them.

They told Wahlberg that they had received a complaint from his professor that his presentation was making students feel "scared and uncomfortable".

"I was a bit nervous when I walked into the police station," Wahlberg said, "but I felt a general sense of disbelief once the officer actually began to list the firearms registered in my name. I was never worried however, because as a law-abiding gun owner, I have a thorough understanding of state gun laws as well as unwavering safety practices."

Professor Anderson refused to comment directly on the situation and deferred further comment.

Now, you can't even talk about issues.

IHT:

WASHINGTON: A group of liberal bloggers said it is teaming up with organized labor and MoveOn to form a political action committee that will seek to push the Democratic Party farther to the left.

Soliciting donations from their readers, the bloggers said they are planning to recruit liberal candidates for challenges against more centrist Democrats currently in Congress.

The formation of the group marks another step in the evolution of the blogosphere, which has proved effective at motivating party activists to give money and time to political campaigns, especially in local races.

Organizers of the new group, to be called Accountability Now, said their intention is to enable Obama to seek more liberal policies without fear of losing support from the more conservative members of his party serving in Congress. But they did not rule out occasional friction with Obama, as well.

"We're going to be about targeting incumbents to make space for Obama to be more progressive," said Glen Greenwald, a liberal blogger with Salon who is part of the effort. "There may be other times when the Democratic Party, as led by Obama, is being unresponsive, so yeah, we have the potential to push back against that, as well."

Another founder of the group, Jane Hamsher, of Firedog Lake, said the group may also involve itself in Republican primary contests, though the focus for now seems to be primarily on the Democratic side.

Left-leaning bloggers have already proven themselves influential in congressional races, most notably providing muscle for the movement that helped Ned Lamont defeat Senator Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary in 2006. ( Lieberman went on to retain his seat after running in the general election as an independent.)

But organizers of the new effort said the new political action committee will mark the start of a more organized and concentrated approach.

Hamsher said Accountability Now -- which will also have support from the Service Employees International Union and DailyKos -- would concentrate more fully on candidate recruitment in the states.

GOOD. KEEP GOING !

COMMENT HERE

I think we can all agree that HAMAS in its bone deep attitude about jews (based, they say in the Quran..so sorry) is what we in the west commonly think of as racist, anti-semitic and most likely genocidal towards those jews who will never accept sharia based realities.

This govt of HAMAS is the result of the insistence of George Bush and his (dare I now use the hated word?) neo con overlords. He and they demanded elections and they got them. The Palestinians chose a govt whose priority truly reflected theirs - that before anything else, the jews had to go. That does not square very well with American strategic purposes (certainly not limited to Israel) nor with the theory that democracies don't go to war with each other.

Is it the reasoning of today's 'liberal' (self described Henry Wallace progressives in actuality) that when promoting democracy does not fit our needs this month we oppose democracy? That's what I read at places like Firedoglake.

Likewise, human rights cannot EVER be achieved in places like Egypt where a Hosni Mubarak stomps on them partly in our name and then points at the Muslim  Brotherhood as what will happen if the great unwashed get the vote (anyone channeling Andrew Jackson on that one?). Do today's progressive thinkers propose that Arabs cannot have human rights because they cannot manage a democracy with some sense, instead careening into the arms of jihadi freaks (even if they have the backing of Al Azhar)?
Instead we have a conflict between the ideal of how democracies behave and the instilled desire of the Islamic cultures to kill and force into submittal, 'Crusaders and Jews and polytheists' competing with our faith in human freedom and our need for security.

So when the inculcated value of an entire population is to eliminate others of what use is democracy?

ONLY THROUGH DEMOCRACY CAN THE INSTILLED DESIRE TO KILL OTHER BE ELIMINATED. NOT TODAY AND NOT TOMORROW, BUT MAYBE THE DAY AFTER.

We have now gone from ~1290 to today in full contact with the Islamic culture and religion. American democracy has been at it since Jefferson suffered the enslavement of Americans and sent in the Marines, and whatever we HAVE done hasn't changed a damn thing.

So we had better listen to the ideals and warning of Lincoln's better angels.

Democracy and the extremes of what has been taught simply will have to muddle through. There will be wars. As we can see. But if, in almost a millennium, absolutely nothing has been achieved by the cynical application of Machiavelli then out of enlightened self interest, it's time to apply Jefferson over the longer run, and allow free thought, REAL FREE THOUGHT to work it's way into Islamic culture.






Maybe this will fail as well, but it's time to make the effort over the long haul

What's the alternative?

Is that all there is?

Just watch the fear and loathing among those who see longer range over there.

If this was to be easy, trained dogs could do it.