This arrogant, immature, self-centered man has no sense of honor, or simple decency.

While this posture is disrespectful in any culture, it is not appropriate in any executive setting. Further, in over half of the cultures of the world,

it is recognized not only as disrespectful, but as an extreme insult.

He thinks of himself as a king, not as a servant of the people, humbly occupying our White House for his term in office.

Electing him was an enormous mistake and will cost us in many ways, for generations.

 

The Obama administration from top to bottom
in a nutshell:

No Leadership.
No shame.
No ethics.
No morals.
No conscience.
No decency.
No patriotism.
No honesty.
No accountability.

---

Obama’s Plot To Steal The 2012 Election

The Washington Times:January 1st, 2012

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. claims Jim Crow is returning. In a recent speech, Mr. Holder said that attempts by states to pass voter identification laws will disenfranchise minorities, rolling back the clock to the evil days of segregation. He said that a growing number of minorities fear that “the same disparities, divisions and problems” now afflict America as they did in 1965 prior to the Voting Rights Act. According to the Obama administration, our democracy is being threatened by racist Republicans. Hence, the Justice Department must prevent laws requiring a photo ID to vote from being enacted.

Mr. Holder argues that voter ID laws disproportionately discriminate against poor blacks and Hispanics – citizens who cannot afford to acquire a driver’s license, passport or other form of photo identification. The latest victim is South Carolina; its voter ID law has been blocked by the Justice Department. Liberal Democrats – taking their cue from the White House – are portraying the national movement for election reform as an authoritarian assault upon civil liberties. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has even petitioned the United Nations, asking it to declare states’ voter ID laws human rights abuses. For the radical left, America has become Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

This would be comical if the consequences were not so serious. South Carolina’s legislation provides for free ID cards to be given to anyone who needs it. Not one person – white, black or brown – is discriminated against or discouraged from casting a vote at the ballot box. Moreover, the Supreme Court already has ruled on the issue – upholding state voter ID laws. In the 2008 Crawford v. Marion County Election Board decision, the high court held that an Indiana law mandating photo identification at the voting booth was indeed constitutional. If it is good enough for the Supreme Court and the overwhelming majority of the states, then it should be for Mr. Holder as well.

It isn’t. And the reason is simple: The administration is trying to whip up minority frenzy, propagating the myth of widespread ballot suppression. The goal is to foster a sense of racial persecution of blacks, intending to maximize voter turnout in November. The results, however, will be to poison race relations further. Mr. Holder is cynically playing the race card in order to achieve President Obama’s overriding ambition: re-election.

Racism has nothing to do with states implementing voter ID laws. Rather, it is about protecting the integrity of our electoral system. Voter fraud is rampant; abuses regularly take place. In Chicago, local elections are often marred by ballot stuffing and multiple voting – including by false voters who use the names of deceased individuals. Indiana election officials have found that, during the 2008 Democratic primary, countless pro-Barack Obama and pro-Hillary Rodham Clinton signatures were falsified. In Minnesota, voter fraud enabled Democrat Al Franken to steal the election from incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. It is precisely to preserve the fundamental basis of our democracy – one person, one vote – that voter ID laws are necessary.

Mr. Holder evidently wants to scuttle ID laws because he knows which organization will be hurt most: ACORN. For years, community activist groups, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, have engaged in massive electoral fraud – registering illegal aliens, offering bribes to numerous politically disinterested people in the inner cities as inducements to vote and pushing underage and multiple voting. Election reform, therefore, is a stake aimed at the heart of Democratic corruption and ACORN’s power. Clean up the voter rolls and Mr. Obama’s re-election is in serious jeopardy.

It is perverse to have a society that requires a photo ID to go through airport security, drive a car, purchase expensive consumer goods using Mastercard or Visa (as happened to me recently when I bought a stack of DVDs and the cashier asked for my driver’s license to check against credit card theft) or get a simple library card, but not to cast a ballot – the most sacred act of citizenship in a deliberative democracy.

Mr. Holder is a shameless demagogue. He has become the Democratic Party’s new Al Sharpton: Everything is seen through the lens of race. He has refused to prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party, who in the 2008 election stood at a polling booth wielding clubs in a blatant attempt at voter intimidation. Career Justice Department lawyers admitted that Mr. Holder’s policy is not to go after black perpetrators whose victims are white. He insists that Republican criticism leveled at him over Operation Fast and Furious is because of his race – not the obvious fact that, under his watch, thousands of guns were illegally smuggled into Mexico, resulting in hundreds of deaths including a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Mr. Holder says his department’s aim is to “expand the franchise.” This begs the question: Expand it for whom? Jim Crow is long dead; not one single eligible voter has been turned away because of an ID requirement. In other words, minorities are not being disenfranchised. What Mr. Holder really means is to expand the vote to groups that will help ensure a Democratic victory in 2012 – ACORN and its nefarious allies.

Stealing an election is not beyond this administration. After all, it’s the Chicago Way.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.

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Congress Is Getting Stinking Rich

You Won't Believe How Corrupt, Lazy And Stinking Rich Our Congress Critters Have Become!

 

 

If our founding fathers could see the cesspool that the U.S. Congress has become today, they would roll over in their graves. Most Americans don't realize this, but we already have a "part-time Congress". Members of Congress only "work" a little over a third of the days on the calendar.

The rest of the time they have off. It is no wonder why so many members of Congress are involved in so much corruption - they have so much free time on their hands that they are bound to get into trouble. Many members of Congress also use their positions of power and the information they learn during the course of their duties to become fabulously wealthy.

At a time when incomes nationally are actually declining, our Congress critters are becoming stinking rich at a staggering pace. Yes, politics in America has always been a game that is funded and played by wealthy individuals, but things have gotten so extreme that it is hard to argue that average Americans have any control over Congress at all at this point. Instead of a government "of the people, by the people and for the people", we now have a government "of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy". If you doubt this, just keep on reading.

Over the past couple of decades, the "wealth gap" between members of Congress and average Americans has grown to ridiculous proportions. Things have gotten so bad that now even the New York Times is reporting on these things....

"Largely insulated from the country’s economic downturn since 2008, members of Congress — many of them among the “1 percenters” denounced by Occupy Wall Street protesters — have gotten much richer even as most of the country has become much poorer in the last six years"

So how wealthy have members of Congress become?

Many of you won't believe the statistics posted below.  The truth is that Congress has become all about money.  It takes huge piles of money to get elected to Congress, it takes huge piles of money to stay in Congress, and most members of Congress seem to be able to accumulate gigantic piles of money while "serving" their country....

-Today, there are 250 members of Congress that are millionaires.

-According to the Wall Street Journal, the median net worth of members of Congress is now $913,000.

-The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress increased by 25 percent between 2008 and 2010.  Meanwhile, the standard of living in the United States has fallen farther over the past three years than at any other time that has ever been recorded in U.S. history.

-After adjusting for inflation, between 1984 and 2009 the median net worth of members of Congress rose from $280,000 to $725,000 while the median net worth of all Americans actually declined slightly over that same time period.

-The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress is now slightly over 2 billion dollars.  That is "billion" with a "b".

-In 2009, Congress was only scheduled to be in session for 137 days out of the 365 days of the year.  In 2010, Congress was also only scheduled to be in session for 137 days out of the entire year.  For much more on the pathetic "work schedule" of the U.S. Congress, just check out this video.

-The net worth of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi increased by 62 percent from 2009 to 2010.  In 2009 it was reported that she had a net worth of 21.7 million dollars, and in 2010 it was reported that she had a net worth of 35.2 million dollars.

-The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, saw his wealth grow by 29 percent from 2009 to 2010.  He is now worth approximately 9.8 million dollars.

-U.S. Representative Darrell Issa is worth approximately 220 million dollars.  His wealth grew by approximately 37 percent from 2009 to 2010.

-The wealthiest member of Congress, U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, is worth approximately 294 million dollars.

-Those that won U.S. Senate seats during the last election spent an average of nearly $10 million on their campaigns.

-More than 5 billion dollars was spent on political campaigns back in 2008, and it is being projected that 8 billion dollars will be spent on political campaigns in 2012.

-When it comes to federal elections, the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time.

-Since 1964, the reelection rate for members of the U.S. House of Representatives has never fallen below 85 percent.

It is also amazing how deeply corrupt Congress has become.  In a previous article, I detailed how a number of Congress critters used confidential information about the coming financial crisis that they received from U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in September 2008 to make beneficial stock market moves before the stock market crashed later that fall....

On September 16, 2008 Paulson and Bernanke held "closed door meetings" with members of Congress and warned them that the financial system was about to totally collapse.

But instead of racing out to save the financial system, author Peter Schweizer says that many of our representatives in Congress raced out to save their stock portfolios.

In his new book, Schweizer alleges the following....

*Schweizer says that U.S. Senator Dick Durbin sold $74,715 worth of stock on September 17th and $42,000 worth of stock on September 18th.

*Schweizer says that U.S. Representative Jim Moran sold off shares in 90 different corporations on September 17th.

*Schweizer says that U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse sold off at least $250,000 worth of stock between September 18th and September 24th.

*Schweizer says that U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus bet very heavily against the stock market in the days following the September 16th meeting and made tens of thousands of dollars doing so.

*Schweizer says that U.S. Senator John Kerry bought up approximately $350,000 of Bank of America stock and approximately $550,000 of Citigroup stock during October 2008 and November of 2008.  It was during this time period that the bailout programs for the big banks were being developed and debated.

So has anyone gotten into trouble for any of that?

Of course not.

Congress critters play by an entirely different set of rules than the rest of us do.

At this point, the American people are absolutely disgusted with Congress.  According to the latest polls, the approval rating for Congress is sitting at about 12 percent.

But of course the vast majority of our Congress critters will be re-elected over and over and over again.

Most members of Congress do not care about you.  What they do care about is taking care of their political careers and taking care of their big donors.  As noted earlier, it takes enormous amounts of money to win national elections in America, and most members of Congress are not about to do anything that will threaten the gravy train.

Our system is fundamentally broken.  It is time to quit pretending.

But of course the mainstream media will never admit this, because mainstream media outlets are owned by many of the same corporations and wealthy individuals that fund political campaigns.  For the establishment, the current system is working just fine.

So until the American people wake up and start demanding fundamental reforms, our Congress critters are going to continue to live the high life and we are going to keep on getting the same pathetic results out of Washington.

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Paul Ryan's Old-Fashioned American Vision

BY: Larry Kudlow Townhall columns .com

When you think of Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, terms like earnest, serious and important come to mind. So does the term old-fashioned. Ryan comes from an old-fashioned place, the blue-collar town of Janesville, Wis. He cherishes the old-fashioned values of a faithful family man. He even looks old-fashioned, with his white shirts and striped ties. And he uses old-fashioned argument skills, persuasively weaving big-picture themes with the numbers that back them up.

And Ryan has old-fashioned goals, too, like saving America from fiscal bankruptcy, economic stagnation and a European-style entitlement state.

"Just look at what happened across the Atlantic," Ryan told me in a year-end interview. "We have to avoid that. We must reclaim our founding principles of economic freedom and free markets. We must preserve the American Idea."

With this vision, and with a pro-growth budget framework called "A Roadmap for America's Future," Ryan's serious ideas have seriously gotten under President Obama's skin.

In a White House meeting this year, Ryan's superior knowledge of health care baffled Obama and left him speechless. And the serious Ryan budget, which lowers spending by $6.2 trillion and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion over 10 years, totally outflanked the White House. It embarrassingly exposed the Obama administration's flimsy and inconsequential 2012 budget, which even rejected the findings of Obama's own Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission (another Oval Office embarrassment).

And when Ryan unveiled his first Medicare-reform package, which featured patient-centered consumer choice and market competition, the White House went nuts. Team Obama whipped up a Mediscare panic, resorting to a fictional caricature of Ryan forcing old ladies off a cliff. But the charge that the Ryan plan "ends Medicare" couldn't be further from the truth. The website PolitiFact labeled this "the lie of the year."

Ryan later amended his Medicare reform to keep the existing system as an option, and bolstered it with a menu of market-based private insurance plans to promote cost-cutting choice and competition. But he did so with the bipartisan support of Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. How did the White House react? It went rhetorically ballistic, although it couldn't put together a serious response.

No, Ryan's reforms didn't quite resonate in the White House. But they did force a serious debate about domestic policy and the economy throughout the country. With his comprehensive budget of deep spending cuts, entitlement reform and tax simplification -- a plan that would strictly limit government and unleash growth at the same time -- Ryan became the most influential Republican of his younger generation. Quite likely, he became the most influential thinker in today's GOP. For these reasons, Paul Ryan has been chosen as the Human Events Man of the Year.

The Ryan "Path to Prosperity" budget passed the House this past spring. In effect, it became Republican policy. Unfortunately, things went downhill after that.

The summer debt-ceiling crisis produced a meager $1 trillion in spending restraint, way below the Ryan goals. Then the supercommittee, which couldn't even produce a policy, fell back on the trigger of another $1 trillion in automatic spending cuts. And now the year is ending in a chaotic and unserious gridlock over the temporary extension of a temporary payroll tax holiday that has no economic-growth content and ultimately would blow more holes in the Social Security trust fund and the overall budget.

A disappointed Ryan told me: "Tea party enthusiasm hasn't yet translated into the kind of reforms we need. One-third of the government has only limited political power." He added that the 2011 budget narrative shows "the total un-seriousness of the left in tackling problems."

Nevertheless, the Republican budget leader is an eternal optimist. He believes "there is a shift to the right" in the country, "toward free-market approval." He sees evidence that "we are winning this debate." He says, "The country will not accept a permanent class of technocrats that will diminish freedom, enhance crony capitalism and allow the economy to enter some sort of managed decline."

Ryan talks about "reclaiming founding principles," and about "fighting paternalistic, arrogant, and condescending government elites who want to equalize outcomes, create new entitlement rights and promote less self-government by the citizenry."

In other words, Rep. Paul Ryan is offering a completely different vision than the one Obama outlined in his Osawatomie, Kan., campaign speech in early December. Ryan wants "the right to rise," not a third wave of liberal progressivism. He wants to stop Obama's attempt to add to the New Deal/Great Society with the statist universal health care program called Obamacare and an effective nationalization of the energy and financial sectors. And he completely rejects Obama's divisive, big-government, punish-wealth, tax-the-rich leftist populism.

"A ruling system of big business, big government and big-government unions does violence to the notion of entrepreneurial capitalism," Ryan told me. "Whether it's TARP, Fannie or Freddie, cap-and-trade, or Obamacare, this must be stopped." Ryan stands against what he calls "the moral endgame to equalize outcomes." He says: "No consolidation of power into a permanent political class. Equality of opportunity, not result."

Drawing from the Declaration of Independence, Ryan believes that individual citizen power in a democracy comes from God and natural rights, not government. And he believes these natural rights flow directly to the people. It complements what Reagan always said: Government works for the people; the people don't work for government.

The congressman calls himself a second-generation supply-sider, flowing from his mentor Jack Kemp. He knows that growth incentives work and that our tax system should reward success, not penalize it. Ryan frequently notes that Obama's vision would raise federal tax rates toward 50 percent, which doesn't even include increasing state and local tax burdens. Countering this, the Ryan roadmap features a modified flat tax, with two brackets and a 25 percent top rate.

But Ryan also believes that under the threat of fiscal insolvency, supply-side tax cuts must be accompanied by entitlement reform, deep spending cuts and an end to corporate welfare. Rounding out his policy proposals, the budget chief wants the Federal Reserve to move to a single mandate for price stability and a stable dollar.

So, many have asked, why didn't the intellectual and policy leader of the GOP run for president? His supporters continue this drumbeat, with many hoping for a deadlocked convention in August, and the emergence of an optimistic, pro-growth, center-right man with a clear vision to save the country.

Well, here comes the old-fashioned Ryan, a man who's interested in policy, not personal ambition. He also has to help raise his young family. He and his wife Janna have two boys ages 7 and 8 and a girl age 9. He's been teaching his 9-year-old Liza how to shoot a .243 light-caliber Remington 700 bolt-action hunting rifle. The weekend before Christmas, he took his crew to Medieval Times on the North Shore of Chicago, where they watched knights on horseback jousting with each other while eating a little junk food. Family is clearly more important right now than presidential ambition.

So would he become Office of Management and Budget director in a Republican administration? "I don't think about it," he said. But for the 2012 election, Ryan has a political vision: Republicans must develop and communicate a clear policy agenda along the lines of his "Path to Prosperity." Then, should they win, the GOP can use this agenda to govern effectively.

"Reagan had this right," Ryan told me. For the congressman from Wisconsin, it's the American Idea. That's Ryan's vision. And the Republican party better take notice, because this election could be America's last chance for a very long time.

 

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Why Is The Tea Party Lining Up With Newt?

By Tom Tillison 12/16/2011

Politicos, both left and right, are beside themselves trying to understand why the tea party is beginning to align with Newt Gingrich.

(Which is ironic in and of itself. The media continues to feed us a steady diet of how the tea party has lost it’s influence, yet, whomever the movement gets behind quickly finds themselves in the lead.)

With all his history, the many inconsistencies in his record and Glen Beck screaming from the rafters that this man is a progressive, more and more tea party folks are shifting toward Newt. Even with Charles Krauthammer using the ‘S’ word – socialist – he remains comfortably atop the polls.

How can this be? Does this confirm that the tea party was never serious about all this limited government and fiscal responsibility stuff? That they’re a bunch of hypocrites?

It seems that too many on the right are looking to the eventual GOP nominee to not only defeat Obama, but to right decades of misguided policy and reset the course of American history and do it all in a single election cycle.

With feet firmly on the ground and heads free of the clouds, many in the tea party understand that the myriad of problems that plague this country are deep rooted and will take years to resolve, if ever.

Having spent the better part of 3 yrs battling Barack Obama and the Progressive Left, the tea party is well aware of how successful they have been in implementing their ideology in this country.

It’s understood that they dominate the institutions of government, the universities and, subsequently, the minds of the younger generation. That they control the national media, the entertainment industry and, along with that, the ability to define what is ‘hip’ in America, a desperately important motivational factor for the shallow minded.

Most tea partiers understand this is a war for the future of America, pitting collectivism against self reliance, and that it will take many years to play out.

And the critical first step in that battle is to remove Barack Obama from the White House, a man who’s greatest achievement to date may be the extent in which he has emboldened the enemies, both foreign and domestic, of a free and prosperous America.

A sentiment pundits would be wise not to downplay.

Another factor that is tattooed in the minds of many tea partiers is the stark contrast that existed between Barack Obama and John McCain in the debates leading up to the 2008 election. McCain’s painful oratory skills and total inability to expose Obama’s inexperience and idealism played a key role in the unfortunate outcome of that election. A blunder many do not want to see repeated.

If the past three years have taught us anything, it is that the Left will hold nothing back in their quest to retain the White House. The 2012 election will be as nasty as recent memory will allow and the right had better have a fighter in their corner.

And when surveying the GOP presidential primary field, I submit that these are the factors that lead many to Newt Gingrich.

Newt is not only a feisty individual quick to challenge the propaganda arm of the Far Left, better known as the national media, but he also has the intellectual capacity to overshadow Obama in a debate.

But more importantly, as was accurately stated by Scott Baker of The Blaze, ‘there is a cool, analytical detachment to his brutal and effective dissection of liberal failure’, that will enable Newt to win the moral argument over what kind of country America is, or should be.

The very argument that will make up the cornerstone of Obama’s campaign strategy.

And that, in a nutshell, ideology aside, is why many feel Newt Gingrich is the best candidate to go head to head with Barack Obama.

With little confidence that Mitt Romney has a ‘killer instinct’, that Rick Perry won’t end up babbling to himself, or that Ron Paul has the ability to articulate his message in a coherent manner, or that Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann can be anything but negative, it’s “Newt or Bust’ for many in the tea party.

 

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Gingrich Is Inspiring—and Disturbing

The Wall Street Journal: December 10, 2011

By Peggy Noonan

I had a friend once who amused herself thinking up bumper stickers for states. The one she made up for California was brilliant. “California: It’s All True.” It is so vast and sprawling a place, so rich and various, that whatever you’ve heard about its wildness, weirdness and wonders, it’s true.

That’s the problem with Newt Gingrich: It’s all true. It’s part of the reason so many of those who know him are anxious about the thought of his becoming president. It’s also why people are looking at him, thinking about him, considering him as president.

Ethically dubious? True. Intelligent and accomplished? True. Has he known breathtaking success and contributed to real reforms in government? Yes. Presided over disasters? Absolutely. Can he lead? Yes. Is he erratic and unreliable as a leader? Yes. Egomaniacal? True. Original and focused, harebrained and impulsive—all true.

Do you want evidence he’s a Burkean conservative? Start with welfare reform in 1996. A sober, standard Republican? Go to the balanced budgets of the Clinton era. Is he a Tea Partier? Sure, he speaks the slashing lingo with relish. Is he moderate? Yes, that can be proved. Michele Bachmann this week called him a “frugal socialist,” and there’s plenty of evidence of that, too.

One way to view this is that he is so rich and varied as a character, as geniuses often are, that he contains worlds, multitudes. One senses that would be his way of looking at it. Another way to look at it: In a long career, one will shift views, adapt to circumstances, tack this way and that. Another way: He’s philosophically unanchored, an unstable element. There are too many storms within him, and he seeks out external storms in order to equalize his own atmosphere. He’s a trouble magnet, a starter of fights that need not be fought. He is the first modern potential president about whom there is too much information.

What is striking is the extraordinary divide in opinion between those who know Gingrich and those who don’t. Those who do are mostly not for him, and they were burning up the phone lines this week in Washington.

Those who’ve known and worked with Mitt Romney mostly seem to support him, but when they don’t they don’t say the reason is that his character and emotional soundness are off. Those who know Ron Paul and oppose him do so on the basis of his stands, they don’t say his temperament forecloses the possibility of his presidency. But that’s pretty much what a lot of those who’ve worked with Newt say.

Former New Hampshire governor and George H.W. Bush chief of staff John Sununu told The Wall Street Journal this week: “Listen to just about anyone who worked alongside Gingrich and you will hear that he’s inconsistent, erratic, untrustworthy and unprincipled.” In a conference call Thursday, Jim Talent, who served with Mr. Gingrich in the House from 1993 through 1999, said, “He’s not reliable as a leader.” Sen. Tom Coburn, a member of the House class of 1994, called the former speaker’s leadership “lacking,” and according to a local press report, he told Oklahoma constituents last year that Mr. Gingrich was “the last person I’d vote for for president of the United States.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham told a reporter that Mr. Gingrich could be a historic president if he has “matured as a person and is, for lack of a better word, calmed down.” That is as close as most of those who’ve worked with him get to a compliment.

Yet the reservations and criticisms of the politico-journalistic establishment are having zero effect on Gingrich’s support. In a Quinnipiac poll this week he moved into a double-digit lead over Mr. Romney in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The antipathy of the establishment not only is not hurting him at this early date, it may be helping him. It may be part of the secret of his rise. Because establishments, especially the Washington establishment, famously count for little with the Republican base: “You’re the ones who got us into this mess.”

Republicans on the ground who view Mr. Gingrich from afar, who neither know nor have worked with him, are more likely to see him this way: “Who was the last person to actually cut government? Who was the last person who actually led a movement that balanced the federal budget? . . . The last time there was true welfare reform, the last time government was cut, Gingrich did it.” That is Rush Limbaugh, who has also criticized Mr. Gingrich.

And that is exactly what I’ve been hearing from Newt supporters who do not listen to talk radio. They are older voters, they are not all Republicans, and when government last made progress he was part of it. They have a very practical sense of politics now. The heroic era of the presidency is dead. They are not looking to like their president or admire him, they just want someone to fix the crisis. The last time helpful things happened in Washington, he was a big part of it. So they may hire him again. Are they put off by his scandals? No. They think all politicians are scandalous.

The biggest fear of those who’ve known Mr. Gingrich? He has gone through his political life making huge strides, rising in influence and achievement, and then been destabilized by success, or just after it. Maybe he’s made dizzy by the thin air at the top, maybe he has an inner urge to be tragic, to always be unrealized and misunderstood. But he goes too far, his rhetoric becomes too slashing, the musings he shares—when he rose to the speakership, in 1995, it was that women shouldn’t serve in combat because they’re prone to infections—are too strange. And he starts to write in his notes what Kirsten Powers, in the Daily Beast, remembered: he described himself as “definer of civilization . . . leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.”

Those who know him fear—or hope—that he will be true to form in one respect: He will continue to lose to his No. 1 longtime foe, Newt Gingrich. He is a human hand grenade who walks around with his hand on the pin, saying, “Watch this!”

What they fear is that he will show just enough discipline over the next few months, just enough focus, to win the nomination. And then, in the fall of 2012, once party leaders have come around and the GOP is fully behind him, he will begin baying at the moon. He will start saying wild things and promising that he may bomb Iran but he may send a special SEAL team in at night to secretly dig Iran up, and fly it to Detroit, where we can keep it under guard, and Detroiters can all get jobs as guards, “solving two problems at once.” They’re afraid he’ll start saying, “John Paul was great, but most of that happened after I explained the Gospels to him,” and “Sure, Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize, but only after I explained how people can think fast, slow and at warp speed. He owes me everything.”

There are many good things to say about Newt Gingrich. He is compelling and unique, and, as Margaret Thatcher once said, he has “tons of guts.”

But this is a walk on the wild side.

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Mitt Romney vs. Newt Gingrich

Friday, December 2, 2011

From Charles Krauthammer, at Washington Post, "Mitt vs. Newt" (via Memeorandum). It's an astute analysis, and I think objectively more harsh on Gingrich. Read it all. I'm adding the conclusion here for contemplation:

My own view is that Republicans would have been better served by the candidacies of Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan or Chris Christie. Unfortunately, none is running. You play the hand you’re dealt. This is a weak Republican field with two significantly flawed front-runners contesting an immensely important election. If Obama wins, he will take the country to a place from which it will not be able to return (which is precisely his own objective for a second term).

Every conservative has thus to ask himself two questions: Who is more likely to prevent that second term? And who, if elected, is less likely to unpleasantly surprise?

 

Super committee: Stacked with untouchables to kick the can

 Posted by Hank Richards

not one participating u.s. senator faces re-election in 2012 and all house members up 

for re-election won their last contests by a 62% or greater vote margin

 

Super Committee was stacked with untouchables; Kick the can was the pre-planned outcome  - Hank Richards, Managing Partner at PRonlineNews.com

 

Sources close to Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell explained that there would never be a deal from the super committee and the decision was sealed well beyond a month ago.

 

Members of both parties in the House are furious with their leadership since the failure can have re-election effects on all but six (6) members.

 

First: The goal for the [s]uper [c]ommittee was to actually fail and not cut the budget by $1.2 - $1.5 trillion because the concept of 'business as usual' had to be the outcome. That decision was made even before the committee was selected.

This is the partisanship that the voter has been looking for.

Next: The [s]uper [c]ommittee was organized with 'protected politicians,'  actually called the 'untouchables' in the chambers, who were not necessarily the best people for the job but ones who could take the blame on the senate's side.

Failure without political impact in the senate was decided, so all that was left to do was select safe 're-electable senators and house representatives' to take the heat for the failure; a task so skillfully performed by Reid, McConnell, Boehner and Pelosi.

There's that partisanship again.

Finally: The committee had to be made up of members with little or no skin in the game, meaning their level of risk [not being re-elected because of failure] needed to be nearly zero.

 

The U.S. Senate was easy since no one faces re-election in 2012; all House members are up for re-election but each committee member won their last contest by a 62% or greater vote margin.

 

Given that statistically, 85% or greater of all incumbents get re-elected because of re-districting, gerrymandering or literally stacking the voters in their favor, there's little to no risk that the [s]uper [c]ommittee House members will be replaced for this budgetary failure exercise that was supposed to happen anyway because the census mandates redistricting for the 2012 elections.

 

U.S. Senate Super Committee Member/s 2012 status

Kyl - Republican - Retiring in 2012

Baucus - Democrat - Re-election in 2014

Kerry - Democrat - Re-Election 2014

Murray - Democrat - Re-election 2016

Portman - Republican - Re-election 2016

Toomey - Republican - Re-election 2016U.S. House of Representatives Member/s last election results

Upton - Republican - 62%

 Clyburn - Democrat - 63%

 Camp - Republican - 66%

 Hensarling - 71%

 Van Hollen - Democrat - 73%

 Becerra - Democrat - 84%

  

So what does the failure by the [s]uper [c]ommittee mean? Nothing since any budget changes are not going to take effect until after 2012; and that's at least 14 months from now which is eternity for a D.C. politician including a president who managed to kick the can again.

So what has really changed? Nothing since the process provides for budget increases of at minimum 6% for most department levels at and after the 2012 elections.

So what happened? Nothing except the voter and taxpayer got scammed, bamboozled and hoodwinked again by both sides of the aisle  from  people sent there to take an oath of office.

And what of President Obama's rant about his veto pen? Nothing and there will be nothing to veto except changing election talking point hypotheticals announced daily throughout the media.

Conclusively: The goal of any politicians upon election to any office, including the presidency, is to get re-elected and to begin that re-election campaign the day after the prior election cycle completes.

The Bottom Line: The words 'Failed Super-Committee' coincided with another failed phrase at weeks end by the First Lady, 'Gentleman Start Your Engines' interpreted by some to mean the official opening of Election 2012.

 

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Kicking our spending habit

By Jeff Jacoby THE TREASURY Department reported last week that the national debt had surpassed $15 trillion, clocking in at precisely $15,033,607,255,920.32 as of the close of business Tuesday. Since President Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, the amount owed by the federal government to its lenders has soared more than $4.4 trillion, an increase of 41 percent in less than three years. To put those figures in perspective, consider these: When Bill Clinton was president, the national debt rose by an annual average of $193 billion; when the profligate George W. Bush was in the White House, the yearly debt increases averaged $612 billion. On Obama’s watch, by contrast, the federal debt has been skyrocketing by more than $1.5 trillion per year. It took 40 presidents and nearly two centuries, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan , for the US government to accumulate $1.5 trillion in indebtedness. The 44th president - aided and abetted by Congress - enlarges the federal debt by that amount every 12 months. And the political class has its knickers in a twist because the much-vaunted “supercommittee’’ was only given until Thanksgiving to come up a plan for trimming the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Washington’s refusal to take spending reduction seriously amounts to an almost criminal abdication of its responsibilities to the taxpayers, and politicians of both parties share in the guilt. As a candidate for president in 2008, Barack Obama properly blasted what was then a $9 trillion national debt as “irresponsible’’ and “unpatriotic.’’ Just weeks after moving into the White House, he vowed that by the end of his first term he would cut the $1.3 trillion federal budget deficit in half . “We cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, the next administration, or the next generation,’’ Obama told a White House summit on fiscal responsibility . “You don’t spend what you don’t have.’’ But Washington continues not only to spend what it doesn’t have, but to do so at a record-setting pace . In the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, the federal government burned through a staggering $3.6 trillion - “well above amounts recorded before 2009,’’ as the Congressional Budget Office dryly noted. The budget deficits of the last three years have been the largest in American history , whether measured in dollars or as a percentage of GDP. For all the hyperventilating in recent months about “Draconian’’ cuts and “slashing spending’’ and the “brutal’’ scope of the automatic reductions that are supposed to take effect if Congress doesn’t approve an alternative, the bottom line is unchanged: The federal budget, like the federal establishment it funds, is grotesquely overweight and getting fatter by the day. The frantic stimulus spendathon has done nothing to heal the economy, and it is ludicrous that anyone can speak of the government’s current “austerity’’ with a straight face. The deal that raised the federal debt ceiling last summer didn’t impose austerity on Washington’s budget-makers. It averted austerity. Sequestration - the triggering of automatic spending cuts if the supercommittee’s required deficit trims don’t materialize - will barely slow the spending train. Between 2013 and 2021, the federal budget is expected to grow by another $1.7 trillion. And if the sequester trigger is pulled? By another $1.6 trillion . If that’s “brutal,’’ I’m Katy Perry. Like any morbidly obese patient, the federal behemoth needs to go on a diet. Ultimately the only prescription for reducing the government’s parade of yearly deficits and mounting debt without suffocating economic growth is to cut spending. Politicians find that a frightening prospect, and special interests and pressure groups don’t hesitate to exploit their fear . But kicking out-of-control spending isn’t impossible. Other governments (and earlier administrations) have done it. Under Prime Minister Jean Chretien in the 1990s, Canada slashed spending across the board, reduced its federal payroll by 45,000 jobs, and privatized the national railway and air traffic control system. The result, as Fred Barnes recently chronicled in National Affairs , was an economic rebound. A deficit of nearly $37 billion turned into a $3 billion surplus, and a national economy that had been growing at an anemic 1 percent kicked into overdrive, expanding by an annual average of 3.4 percent between 1994 and 2006. The longer Washington avoids serious and permanent spending cuts, the higher the debt will climb and the more painful the ultimate reckoning will be. “We cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences,’’ the president said in 2009. It was true then. It’s even truer now.   Tweet

The Worst of All Possible Presidents

Let’s just stick to skills. Let’s not talk about how bad his policies are.

Because I can’t think of a person who is less suited and less interested in being president of the United States than Barack Obama is.

I’m reminded of this as I see Europe drift from debt to crisis to dissolution.

“Events in Greece over the past 24 hours have underscored the importance of implementing the plan, fully and as quickly as possible,” said the US president according to Euronews.

I didn’t understand that there was a real plan for the Greek debt crisis. If there is one, certainly Obama has nothing to do with it.

People like to pretend at times that who our president is doesn’t matter. They say presidents get either too much blame or too much credit. Can’t say much about the credit part, but it’s not possible to blame Obama enough for the poor state of the United States and the lack of leadership and confidence the United States engenders around the world today.

In our economy, our relations with other powers, our reputation around the globe, we’ve become a laughingstock under Obama. “Hope and Change” has become a hackneyed punch line of lost chances, hopes destroyed and dreams knowingly betrayed by golf vacations.

Obama has offered us nothing but our blood, our toil, our tears and our sweat; and for what?

So public employees can continue to bust public budgets on Cadillac benefits that you and I can’t afford. All this while he pushes austerity down the throats of a sovereign Greece.

I’m tired of Obama’s “leading from behind.” That’s not leading, that’s pushing

Don’t think for one minute that Obama would accept for his union friends the type of cuts he says he favors for Greece.

We’ve gone from each according to his means to each according to his union. We’ve gone from a post-partisan, post-racial America, to all partisan, all the time.

The president of the United States once, not long ago, stood up to Communism when they tried to take over South Korea- in this, he was sustained by the whole world. Today we’re left with the president being lectured to by Chinese Communists regarding reckless spending; and after being lectured to by Chinese Communists, in return, all Obama can offer to Europe is lectures about their own profligate ways.

It’s inconceivable that a Reagan or a Kennedy would let things drift with a world in crisis. A Reagan or a Kennedy would have acted, if only in a moral sense. Both George Bushes had enough sense for that.

"I am confident that Europe has the capacity to meet this challenge. I know it isn't easy, but what is absolutely critical, and what the world looks for in moments such as this, is action," said Obama after a G20 meeting on Europe’s debt crisis, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But don’t look for action from Obama. If he could attack Greece with a covert drone missile strike, he’d probably do so in order to avoid having to exercise real leadership.

He’s been the "drone" president on fiscal issues here in the US too, having dinner with his family and getting a hair cut while his aides bickered about bailouts.

There was a day when the US could help exercise some leadership on the European stage. But if Obama’s interested in the European debt issue, then that’s news to me, German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Sarkozy, members of the G20, fans of All My Children or anyone with electricity.

Obama has become the absentee landlord of the world, not presiding over the budget; abstaining from the debt ceiling; absent from Europe during the debt crisis; issuing a bull against a tsunami as enjoyed his own National Lampoon’s Brazilian Vacation.

If I were Greek, I’d be worried about the missile strike.

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Corporatism Is Not Capitalism:

7 Things About The Monolithic Predator Corporations

That Dominate Our Economy

That Every American Should Know

 

Eric Holder to Testify Before House Committee About Fast & Furious

By Doug Powers • October 29, 2011

Written by Doug Powers

This should be interesting:

Barack Obama and Eric Holder Belong in Prison

CBS News has learned Attorney General Eric Holder has agreed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee regarding “Fast and Furious.” The hearing will take place Dec. 8th.

Judiciary Committee member and head of the House Oversight Committee Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) had requested that Holder appear, in part to dig deeper into when-he-knew-what about ATF’s so-called “gunwalking” operation Fast and Furious.

To date, eight Republicans have called for Holder’s resignation.

Predicted first question to Holder on December 8th: “What is your exact definition of ‘a few weeks’?”

 

Must Read : Lots of Fast & Furious background HERE

**Written by Doug Powers

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Congress And Federal Employees Are Living The High Life At Our Expense

Oct 29, 2011

I10 Mind Blowing Facts Which Show How Members Of Congress And Federal Employees Are Living The High Life At Our Expense

If you were asked to guess, what area of the United States would you say has the highest average income?  New York City?  Los Angeles?  Silicon Valley?  Well, would you believe that it is actually the Washington D.C. area?  Median household income in the region is $84,523, which is the highest in the nation. 

One of the biggest reasons for this are the huge salaries being pulled down by federal employees in the Washington D.C. area.  According to the latest numbers, the average federal employee in the D.C. area brings in total compensation worth more than $126,000 a year.  Of course members of Congress are even doing far better than that.  Most of the members of Congress are millionaires, and somehow the vast majority of our politicians leave Washington D.C. far wealthier than when they arrived.  So if you want to live the high life, you might want to move to the Washington D.C. area.  Our "representatives" in Congress and the bureaucrats that work for the federal government are swimming in cash, and it is all at our expense.

Before you read the following facts, keep in mind that median household income in the United States has declined for three years in a row.  While the bureaucrats in D.C. are living the high life, most of the rest of us are going through some really hard times.

Today, median household income in the United States is about $50,000 a year, and in most families both parents have to work or the bills will not get paid.

So it just does not seem right that the "average" federal worker in the Washington D.C. area is hauling down more than $126,000 a year in total compensation.

After all, are they not supposed to be "public servants"?

Instead, it feels like we are serving them.  They get to drive around in their shiny new cars and they get to enjoy their shiny new McMansions in the D.C. suburbs while the rest of us pay for it.

Trust me, I have seen the beautiful suburbs in Maryland and in northern Virginia that seem to go on forever, and it is the U.S. taxpayers that are footing the bill.  Spending by the federal government accounts for approximately one third of the GDP of the entire region.

According to the Washington Post, the Washington D.C. area has become a great place for those that enjoy "living the dream"....

Washingtonians now enjoy the highest median household income of any metropolitan area in the country, and five of the top 10 jurisdictions in America — Loudoun, Howard and Fairfax counties, and Falls Church and Fairfax City — are here, census data shows.

The signs of that wealth are on display all over, from the string of luxury boutiques such as Gucci and Tory Burch opening at Tysons Galleria to the $15 cocktails served over artisanal ice at the W Hotel in the District to the ever-larger houses rising off River Road in Potomac.

All of this wealth did not get created because the D.C. area is a great center for industry or finance.

Rather, all of these people are becoming very wealthy because of our big, fat bloated federal government.

The following are 10 mind blowing facts which show how members of Congress and federal employees are living the high life at our expense....

#1 When you total up all compensation (including health care and benefits), the average income for a federal worker in the Washington D.C. area last year was $126,369.

#2 In 2005, 7420 federal workers were making $150,000 or more per year.  In 2010, a whopping 82,034 federal workers were making $150,000 or more per year.  That is more than a tenfold increase in just five years.

#3 In 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense had just nine civilians earning $170,000 or more.  When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. Department of Defense had 214 civilians earning $170,000 or more.  In June 2010, the U.S. Department of Defense had 994 civilians earning $170,000 or more.

#4 Last year, federal employees "earned" approximately 447 billion dollars in total compensation.

#5 According to a study by the Heritage Foundation, federal workers earn 30 to 40 percent more money on average than their counterparts in the private sector.

#6 Today, one out of every 12 people living in Washington D.C. is a lawyer.  In New York City, only one out of every 123 residents is a lawyer.

#7 More than 50 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress are millionaires.

#8 The median wealth of a U.S. Senator in 2009 was 2.38 million dollars.

#9 Insider trading is perfectly legal for members of the U.S. Congress - and they refuse to pass a law that would change that.

#10 The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population.

Meanwhile, most of the rest of America has been going through economic hell....

-The standard of living in the United States has fallen farther over the past three years than at any other time that has ever been recorded in U.S. history.

-According to the Federal Reserve, the combined net worth of American families has fallen by $5.5 trillion since 2007.

-Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

-According to Paul Osterman, a professor of economics at MIT, approximately 20 percent of all employed Americans are making $10.65 an hour or less.

While the average American family is deeply struggling to pay the mortgage and put food on the table, the bureaucrats in Washington D.C. are busy shopping for the latest cell phones and trying to figure out what brand of new car to buy next year.

Over the past couple of decades, the federal government has absolutely exploded in size, but this has not helped the poor.  We now have more poor people in this country than ever before and over 2 million additional Americans slipped into poverty last year.

No, the reality is that the people that have reaped the rewards of a much larger federal government are the lawyers, the lobbyists and the bureaucrats.

This is the kind of thing that the American people should be protesting.  Almost everybody in Congress is rich.  Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are living the high life.  The lawyers, the lobbyists and the bureaucrats are having a field day.

Meanwhile, most of the rest of the country is deeply suffering.

It just doesn't seem right, does it?

 

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Be Furious Over Operation Fast and Furious

Barack Obama and Eric Holder Belong in Prison

Who in their right mind would think using criminals to smuggle thousands of guns in to Mexico was a good idea?
Our Justice Department refuses to reveal the creator or cost of Operation Fast & Furious. Why?

What the hell is going on in this country? And why don't our federal officials just man-up and admit when mistakes have been made?

Now, keep in mind -- I don't write about politics so this is not a partisan attack. I write about crime and justice. So, take what I'm about to say in that spirit.

And remember the name "Fast and Furious" because I predict you'll be hearing a lot about it in the days ahead.

Here's the backstory: Someone at the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (the ATF is a division of the Justice Department) decided a couple years ago that it would be a good idea to allow thousands of firearms to flow from Arizona into Mexico to help identify gun routes and the drug cartel kingpins buying illegal weapons. The idea behind the program was that if we followed the weapons, massive arrests would surely follow.

Yeah, well -- it didn't quite turn out that way. We promptly lost track of most of the 2,000 firearms involved. And, sadly, some of those weapons are linked to the death of a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent.

The official record doesn't reveal exactly when Fast and Furious came to be, but it started sometime in 2009. The operation focused on Arizona gun shops and ATF agents were ordered to watch for buyers with suspected ties to Mexican drug cartels. These mules were then supposed to be monitored to see which cartel leaders took possession of the smuggled weapon.

This plan was so secret our government never informed Mexican officials that it was underway.
According to a Congressional report the purpose of Fast and Furious was, "To wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case." Well, that didn't work out because there was no plan to adequately track the buyers and the weapons once they crossed into Mexico.

ATF's field agents, who were used to stopping suspicious gun sales, began to complain up their chain of command about the weaknesses of the program. It was impossible to follow all the guns, they said, and Fast and Furious wasn't rooting out any Mexican kingpins. The agent's biggest fear was that the guns might be used to commit crimes in the United States. But the program continued.

And, sure enough, their fears were realized. On the night of December 14, 2010 a deadly gun battle broke out in a border canyon near Rio Rico, Arizona. When the dust cleared U.S. Border agent Brian Terry, 40, was dead and near his body were two or three (depending on which account you believe) of those suspect firearms.

The Attorney General of Mexico said at least 200 Mexican deaths were traced to weapons from the Fast and Furious program.

Our Attorney General, Eric Holder, has told Congress he didn't know anything about his ATF's Fast and Furious program until things went bad. But then, documents surfaced indicating Holder had been briefed about it nearly a year earlier. When challenged, Holder dismissed his critics as "politically motivated" and took no responsibility for the misguided plan.

Holder's chief at the ATF in Washington certainly knew about Fast and Furious. He was getting weekly briefings and, according to a congressional report, "Was able to sit at this desk in Washington and ... watch a live feed of straw buyers entering the gun stores and purchasing dozens of AK-47" rifles.

Earlier this week, Congress took the bold step of slapping A.G. Holder with a wide-ranging subpoena. The House Oversight Committee has demanded massive amounts of e-mails and other communications that flowed between Holder's office and those running the Fast and Furious project. Sad that it takes an act of Congress to find out the truth.

Think of what this program did. It introduced huge numbers of top-shelf firearms into an area of the world that has suffered through 40 thousand drug-related murders in the last five years. Who in the world thought the solution to that murderous drug rampage would be to add more guns in to it?

The creator of Fast and Furious has never been identified and neither has its total price tag.

There are so many questions. Why, after the scandal was exposed, were four top ATF officials in charge of Fast and Furious promoted to higher paying positions? Why has no one taken responsibility for this monstrous waste of manpower and taxpayer dollars? Why is our top law enforcement official, Eric Holder, being so defensive instead of aggressively going after a special prosecutor to look into this boondoggle? The Department of Justice should not investigate itself.

At a hearing on Capitol Hill last June, the mother of slain agent Brian Terry was asked if she had anything she'd like to say to whoever came up with the Fast and Furious idea. Josephine Terry's emotional response was, "I don't know what I would say to them, but I would like to know what they would say to me."

Someone in our government owes Mrs. Terry -- and all of us -- an apology. I doubt we'll ever get one.

 

 

The U.S. government purposely armed Mexican drug cartels.

This Is Why Barack Obama and Eric Holder Belong in Prison

 

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22 Shocking Facts About The Scandal

That Could Bring Down The Obama Administration

Could Fast and Furious be the scandal that brings down the Obama administration?  With the full knowledge of the Department of Justice, ATF agents facilitated the sale of thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels and dropped all surveillance of those weapons once they crossed the border.  Weapons sold during Operation Fast and Furious have been used to shoot U.S. border control agents. 

Weapons sold during Operation Fast and Furious have been found at dozens of crime scenes in Mexico.  Nobody has been held accountable for this scandal yet.  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been stonewalling all efforts by members of Congress to look into Fast and Furious. 

A CBS reporter that has been aggressively investigating this story was recently screamed at and cussed at by a high ranking official that works in the White House.  It has become abundantly clear that the Obama administration desperately wants to hide what went on during Operation Fast and Furious.  So will they succeed or will we eventually find out the truth?

What you are about to read should shock the living daylights out of you.  The U.S. government purposely armed Mexican drug cartels with thousands of guns and then ordered agents not to follow the weapons across the border.

This should be a story that the mainstream media is pounding on every single day.

But they aren't.

In fact, they are mostly ignoring it.

However, if the truth starts getting out and the American people start grasping what really happened this thing could become absolutely huge.

In fact, this could end up being Obama's Watergate.

The following are 22 shocking facts about the scandal that could bring down the Obama administration....

#1 During Operation Fast and Furious, ATF agents purposely allowed thousands of guns to be sold to individuals that they believed would get them into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

#2 ATF agents were specifically ordered not to intercept the guns before they crossed the border.  The following is a brief excerpt from a CBS News report that detailed the fierce objections that many ATF agents expressed when they were ordered to stand down....

On the phone, one Project Gunrunner source (who didn't want to be identified) told us just how many guns flooded the black market under ATF's watchful eye. "The numbers are over 2,500 on that case by the way. That's how many guns were sold - including some 50-calibers they let walk."

50-caliber weapons are fearsome. For months, ATF agents followed 50-caliber Barrett rifles and other guns believed headed for the Mexican border, but were ordered to let them go. One distraught agent was often overheard on ATF radios begging and pleading to be allowed to intercept transports. The answer: "Negative. Stand down."

CBS News has been told at least 11 ATF agents and senior managers voiced fierce opposition to the strategy. "It got ugly..." said one. There was "screaming and yelling" says another. A third warned: "this is crazy, somebody is gonna to get killed."

#3 Operation Fast and Furious remained a secret until the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.  Two guns that were sold during Operation Fast and Furious were found at the scene of the murder.

#4 ATF Special Agent John Dodson was one of the first to blow the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious.  Dodson explained to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on June 15, 2011 that many ATF agents were becoming extremely frustrated when they were ordered to cut off surveillance on the weapons that were being sold because they knew "that just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico."

#5 It appears that Operation Fast and Furious began some time around September 2009.  At that time, the ATF began pressuring gun shops near the border with Mexico to participate in a new covert operation that was being set up.  The gun store owners were told to help the ATF get guns into the hands of people that would take them back to the Mexican drug cartels.

The following description of the mechanics of Operation Fast and Furious comes from a recent Los Angeles Times article....

In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard's Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.

For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semiautomatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns, and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him. So hundreds of thousands of dollars more in weapons, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, walked out of the front door of his store in a Glendale, Ariz., strip mall.

#6 In some gun stores, cameras were set up so that top ATF officials could actually watch these transactions take place.  Back in June, U.S. Representative Darrell Issa stated the following....

"Acting Director Melson was able to sit at his desk in Washington and himself watch a live feed of straw buyers entering the gun stores and purchasing dozens of AK-47 variants."

#7 It has also come out that in some cases ATF agents were actually the ones buying the guns and getting them into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.  The following is how author Michael A. Walsh recently explained this in an article in the New York Post....

This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.

#8 According to the Los Angeles Times, guns that were purchased during Operation Fast and Furious have "turned up at dozens of additional Mexican crime scenes, with an unconfirmed toll of at least 150 people killed or wounded."

#9 Mexican authorities were never informed that thousands upon thousands of guns were being allowed into Mexico.

#10 Authorities in Mexico have asked the U.S. government over and over to explain what in the world happened during Operation Fast and Furious but they have not been given an adequate answer.  In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, the Obama administration has not even responded to questions from the attorney general of Mexico....

Marisela Morales, Mexico's attorney general and a longtime favorite of American law enforcement agents in Mexico, told The Times that she first learned about Fast and Furious from news reports. And to this day, she said, U.S. officials have not briefed her on the operation gone awry, nor have they apologized.

#11 U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been withholding key documents about Fast and Furious from Congress and has been consistently stonewalling U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley and other members of Congress that have attempted to look into this matter.

#12 The acting director of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, had been cooperating with the investigation.  At the end of August he was suddenly transferred to the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy.

#13 Several other key officials that were heavily involved in Operation Fast and Furious actually got promoted.

#14 On May 3rd, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testified under oath in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious.  During that testimony, Holder made the following statement....

"I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

#15 Since that time, a large amount of evidence has come out that Holder was not telling the truth.  For example, a recent Fox News article discussed some of the very revealing memos about Fast and Furious that have been discovered recently....

However, newly discovered memos suggest otherwise. For instance, one memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels."

Other documents also indicate that Holder began receiving weekly briefings on the program from the National Drug Intelligence Center "beginning, at the latest, on July 5, 2010,"

#16 Holder now claims that he simply misunderstood the question.  He now says that he had heard of Operation Fast and Furious previously but that he was not aware of the specific details.

#17 Emails exchanged between two Department of Justice officials last October make it abundantly clear that high level officials at the DOJ were very aware of what was going on...

Two Justice Department officials mulled it over in an email exchange Oct. 18, 2010. "It's a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked but is a significant set of prosecutions," says Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division. Deputy Chief of the National Gang Unit James Trusty replies "I'm not sure how much grief we get for 'guns walking.' It may be more like, "Finally they're going after people who sent guns down there."

#18 House Republicans are now asking for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate whether or not U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress during his recent testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious.

#19 U.S. Representative Darrell Issa believes that those involved in the Fast and Furious gun trafficking operation may have violated international arms trafficking agreements and could potentially face very serious criminal charges.

#20 U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is absolutely convinced that a major coverup is going on....

"But I can tell you this. They're doing everything they can, in a fast and furious way, to cover up all the evidence or stonewalling us. But here's the issue, if he didn't perjure himself and didn't know about it, the best way that they can help us, Congressman Issa and me, is to just issue all the documents that we ask for and those documents will prove one way or the other right or wrong."

#21 Did Barack Obama ever know about Operation Fast and Furious?  He says that he did not authorize the program.  On March 22, 2011 Obama made the following statement....

"I did not authorize [Fast and Furious]. Eric Holder, the attorney general, did not authorize it. There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made. If that’s the case, then we’ll find — find out and we’ll hold somebody accountable."

#22 CBS News investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson claimed on the Laura Ingraham show the other day that officials in the Obama administration were literally screaming and yelling at her for aggressively investigating the Fast and Furious scandal....

Ingraham: So they were literally screaming at you?
Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House."

Where there is smoke there is usually fire.

Something about this whole thing really stinks.

It would be a shame if Operation Fast and Furious is allowed to be swept under the rug.

The weapons sold during Operation Fast and Furious are going to be used to kill a lot of people.  The legacy of this scandal will be felt on both sides of the border for years to come.

The Mexican government deserves some answers.

The American people deserve some answers.

Hopefully we will get some.

 

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Newt's New Contract

By Peter Ferrara on 10.5.11

As previewed at the last debate, he's delivered a product "far bolder, far deeper, far more profound" than 1994's Contract, not to mention 1980's.

Last week, Newt Gingrich released his 21st Century Contract with America, composed of 10 specific legislative proposals he would enact if elected President. In the 1994 Congressional campaigns, Republicans not only rode Newt's Contract with America proposals to Republican majorities in Congress. They maintained their House majority for 12 years, after Republicans had only held a House majority for 2 of the previous 74 years.

Newt's 21st century contract is similarly a document on which the entire Republican Party can campaign next year, and win a generation of governing majorities.

Booming Recovery, Long Overdue

Gingrich pledges in his new contract to "Return to robust job creation with a bold set of tax cuts and regulatory reforms that will free American entrepreneurs to invest and hire, as well as by reforming the Federal Reserve."

That includes a proposal for corporate tax reform, closing loopholes and reducing the federal rate from 35%, second highest in the developed world, all the way down to 12.5%. Ireland, long a poor, economically backward nation, adopted that rate in 1988 when it suffered the second lowest per capita income in the EU. The Irish rode the resulting boom over the next 20 years to the second highest per capita income in the EU. Jack Kemp used to advance this policy for America as well, noting that our own Treasury Department issued a study showing that Ireland raises more corporate tax revenues as a percent of GDP with this low rate than we do with our rate nearly 3 times as high.

Gingrich's economic recovery plan would also abolish the capital gains tax, because "At a zero percent rate, hundreds of billions of dollars in new investments would pour into the United States to create new firms and build new factories." By effectively double-taxing capital income, the capital gains levy discourages the venture capital that feeds start-ups and creates jobs. That is why 14 out of 30 OECD countries, plus China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and others, already enjoy zero capital gains taxes. Gingrich's Contract would further eliminate double taxation by abolishing the death tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax.

Gingrich's new contract also includes the proposal for an optional flat tax long advocated by Wall Street Journal senior economics writer Steve Moore. Gingrich explains:

All tax filers would be given the option to pay their income taxes subject to current income tax provisions or to pay under a lower single rate of taxation with limited deductions. A revenue neutral flat tax reform would save hundreds of billions of dollars in compliance costs each year and would eliminate the need for taxes on savings, dividends, and capital gains. A faster, flatter, fairer tax structure would be simple: tax returns could be done on a single page. Subtract from your income a standard deduction and deductions for charity and home ownership, multiply the result by a fixed single rate of taxation, and the process is over. 

This is a complete answer to President Obama and Warren Buffett arguing that corporate CEOs should pay the same tax rate as their secretaries. Under a flat tax, they would. In my recent book America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, I explain that with the resulting economic boom from these policies, on a dynamic basis the revenue neutral flat tax rate could be as low as 15% for all.

Gingrich adds, "To further empower job creators, we must get rid of regulations that prevent them from growing and hiring. This means taking decision-making power from bureaucrats who don't know how job creation works." That would include repealing the Dodd-Frank regulatory tsunami threatening to swamp the nation's financial system, and replacing the Environmental Protection Agency with an Environmental Solutions Agency "that will operate on the premise that most environmental problems can and should be solved by states and local communities…and focus on incentives for new solutions, research and technologies." Gingrich would also replace the National Labor Relations Board with "a new common sense organization for labor-management relations," and reform the Food and Drug Administration to fast track wonder drug breakthroughs.

Gingrich provides for a complete Reagan style economic recovery plan by also proposing to fundamentally reform the Federal Reserve. Besides "a full-scale audit of Federal Reserve activities," Gingrich proposes that "The Fed's monetary policy discretion should be limited to following a price rule guiding the conduct of monetary policy. The Fed should monitor the signals provided by sensitive commodity prices with the goal of maintaining stable prices, thereby contributing to a stable dollar without inflation." Among those sensitive commodity prices would be gold, providing a formal, legislatively mandated link to gold in monetary policy for the first time in 40 years.

Gingrich displays an understanding of the libertarian, Hayek-Von Mises, Austrian school of economics in writing in regard to monetary policy:

Artificial interest rates distort investment decisions all across the economy, resulting in a misallocation of productive resources that cannot be sustained over the long term. Eventually, artificially low interest rates lead to an economic bust and widespread job losses. Only when interest rates are no longer manipulated can businesses and entrepreneurs determine the right investments that can in turn lead to sustainable job creation throughout the economy.

Art Laffer, a central architect of Reaganomics, says regarding Gingrich's economic recovery plan, "The combination of pro-growth tax reform, spending restraint, and sound money will restore robust economic growth with low unemployment and low inflation," and praises "the powerful effect it will have on the future growth path of the United States economy." Indeed, Gingrich has the formula for another generation long economic boom achieved by freeing a dynamic economy that is straining to break out of the bonds of Obamanomics.

Repeal and Replace Obamacare

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Fast and Furious fallout puts Holder
on collision course with Congress

By Jordy Yager

The fierce battle over a botched gun-tracking operation is intensifying and has put Attorney General Eric Holder on a collision course with his critics in Congress.

Republicans are calling for his resignation in the wake of Fast and Furious, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives operation that may have inadvertently contributed to the death of at least one federal agent.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has called for an independent investigation of Holder, and the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wants to have Holder testify again before Congress.

READ FULL STORY HERE

 

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Fast and Furious’ docs reveal Holder was given multiple detailed accounts of gun program

By Matthew Boyle

New Department of Justice documents the House Oversight Committee released Thursday morning show Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed on Operation Fast and Furious many more times than previously discovered documents suggested. They also show that Holder was given detailed information on what happened in Fast and Furious.

These new documents show Holder received information and updates on Fast and Furious in at least five weekly memos starting in July 2010 — including over four consecutive weeks last summer.

In summer 2010, Holder received briefing memos from National Drug Intelligence Center Director Michael Walther on July 5, July 12, July 19, July 26 and August 9. Each briefing memo contains the name “Operation Fast and Furious.” Each memo also contains a description of what appears to be how Operation Fast and Furious was conducted.

“This investigation, initiated in September 2009 in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Phoenix Police Department, involved a Phoenix-based firearms trafficking ring headed by Manuel Celis-Acosta,” each one of those briefings reads. “Celis-Acosta and straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”

This new revelation suggests Holder may have withheld information on the gunrunning program from President Barack Obama. Speaking to reporters Thursday morning, Obama said Holder has “indicated that he was not aware of what was happening in Fast and Furious. Certainly, I [Obama] was not [aware].”

“I think both he [Holder] and I would have been very unhappy if somebody had suggested that guns were allowed to pass through that could’ve been prevented by the United States of America,” Obama said. “He’s assigned an inspector general, and I have complete confidence in him, and in that process, to figure out who was responsible for that decision,” Obama added.

One of these newly released briefing memos — from July 5 — and a November 1, 2010 memo to Holder from Deputy Attorney General Lanny Breuer, the head of the DOJ Criminal Division, surfaced earlier this week.

In a statement on the newly released documents, House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa said he’s worried about Holder’s behavior as head of the U.S. Justice Department.

“Attorney General Holder has failed to give Congress and the American people an honest account of what he and other senior Justice Department officials knew about gun-walking and Operation Fast and Furious,” Issa said in the statement. “The lack of candor and honesty from our nation’s chief law enforcement officials in this matter is deeply disturbing.”

The new documents directly contradict what Holder told members of Congress at a May 3 House Judiciary Committee hearing, and what the DOJ has publicly claimed since documents surfaced earlier this week. Issa has said that Holder is either incompetent as a leader or has deliberately deceived Congress while under oath.

 

“I certainly believe that he either misrepresented the facts or he’s sufficiently incompetent that he didn’t know what was in his weekly briefings,” Issa told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Tuesday evening.

When the first round of documents came out earlier this week, Justice Department officials almost immediately claimed that Holder misunderstood questions from Issa and Rep. Jason Chaffetz at the May 3 hearing, where Holder said he had learned of Fast and Furious just a few weeks before his appearance. According to a CBS News report after those documents came out, the DOJ began claiming Holder did know of Fast and Furious, just not the details of the operation.

On Tuesday, Chaffetz told TheDC that the response from the DOJ won’t “hold any water” as Holder had several chances during the hearing — and many more since — to clarify his testimony and ensure it was accurate.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, who led the Congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious with Issa, said these new documents prove Holder knew the details of the operation, debunking the latest line that’s come out of the DOJ.

“With the fairly detailed information that the attorney general read, it seems the logical question for the attorney general after reading in the memo would be ‘why haven’t we stopped them?’” Grassley said in a statement. “And if he didn’t ask the questions, why didn’t he or somebody in his office?”

A Justice Department spokesperson has not responded to TheDC’s request for comment on this latest round of documents.

 

 

 

 

 

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Knowing the Enemy

BY: Judi McLeod Canada Free Press.com

If there is one description of himself that likely sends Barry Soetoro Obama into spasms of laughter, it’s ‘incompetent’.

The Obamas and their hippy czars get an even bigger laugh at the accusation ‘Obama is incompetent‘ than they do from the in-house hilarities watching the infighting among Republican candidates for president and their supporters.

The document-challenged 44th ‘President’ of the United States is anything but incompetent.

Nor is he stupid. The 44th ‘President’ of the US is a lifetime-trained, cold-as-a-proverbial-fish Marxist ideologue, whose relentless mission no one seems able to stop, is to take down America.

Barry Soetoro Obama is not a “man child”, unless you add to that description by calling him a “Marxist man child”.

The globalist elite revising history and working on the 2012 Yearbook have probably already air-brushed the photo of Obama, chin-up, showing him at his most arrogant.

Time is closing in on November 6, 2011, the official calendar kickoff for Election Year.

And at the starting gate, Obama’s wearing more diamond-flashing bling than his overbearing wife, who was wearing her imaginary crown over her baseball cap when she happened to “drop by” Target. The players to make it happen (or not) are already lined up as barbarians at the gate.

This time, Alex Jones, who fashioned a career on controversial conspiracy theories, got it right when he posted on Drudge a story indicating that the Wall Street protesters are out there actively working on the re-election of Obama.

And they’re just not trying to hand Obama re-election in the Big Apple. The protest which started off as a lead balloon has expanded to Denver, Los Angeles, Chicago and about to come on stream in other American cities.

Though the Wall Street protesters look like lazy bum hippies, they include the guidance of the rowdy organizers who helped turn Egypt back to the Muslim Brotherhood.

And that’s just Barry’s early openers in his today-the-pond-tomorrow-the-world forced march to One World Government.

In the Obama trajectory path that never ends, first came the release of his own (proven as fraudulent) birth certificate, followed a week later by the John Wayne claim he personally took down Osama bin Laden.

Some of his strategy is abandoned soon after launch date. Snitch line AttackWatch was aborted. Good news until the realization hits that it merely went underground.

False flag operations and scare tactics, including the one spreading alarm about the Internet being switched off on Nov. 29, abound.

It’s hard to tell who’s legit and who’s the drone in the Wild West known as the Worldwide Net.

People who lost their jobs and homes have to swallow their pride and rely on Government food stamps or the kindness of relatives and friends to feed hungry families. Protesters in lower Manhattan have three squares served up to them daily just for having the time and inclination to mill about and shout chants.

Before it’s all over (if it ever ends) police brutality will trump the important question of why so many are taking to the streets at once.

The “top down, bottom up, inside out” world predicted by Glenn Beck is happening before our very eyes.

The world is becoming an increasingly hostile place where it is getting harder by day to distinguish between fish and fowl.

But in the maelstrom of an America being pushed over the cliff there are still some absolutes, God in His Heaven being the first.

And the one that matters most after that is Barack Hussein Obama means ill will for America and by association, the Free World. The 44th ‘President’ of the United States is above all a Marxist ideologue working an agenda.

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Why Barack Obama and Eric Holder Belong in Prison

Barack Hussein Obama and his leftist, pro-terrorist Attorney General are accomplices to murder as a result of their Fast & Furious gunrunning operation. Countermoonbat Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County, Arizona makes the case:

Sheriff Paul Babeu implicates Eric Holder and the Obama Justice Department as accomplices in the crimes involving weapons used in the "Fast and Furious" scandal.

 

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The Federal Reserve's Flawed Approach To Monetary Policy

by James A. Dorn

This article appeared in Forbes on August 24, 2011.

After two rounds of quantitative easing, unemployment is still above 9% while annual CPI inflation stands at 3.6%. Technically, the U.S. is now facing the prospect of stagflation. Yet, some economists are calling for up to 4% inflation to get the economy moving again.

Printing money is not a panacea for the ailing U.S. economy. The unemployment/slow growth quandary is due to structural problems and to policy uncertainty, not to the lack of monetary stimulus. High marginal tax rates, especially on capital, uncertainty about pension and health care costs, and the lack of rules in the formation of monetary and fiscal policy have disrupted the normal course of commerce.

In particular, by keeping interest rates too low for too long, the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke has underpriced credit and increased risk taking, fueling asset bubbles in the bond and commodity markets.

The Bernanke Fed has kept the interest rate on federal funds near zero since December 2008, and that rate is likely to persist until mid-2013, as announced at the latest meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. The low rates signal that the Fed is targeting asset prices –that it is pegging interest rates at low levels to prop up the prices of bonds and other assets.

Investments that normally would not be made occur. But those "malinvestments" cannot be sustained once rates return to normal. F. A. Hayek long ago pointed out the dangers of monetary manipulation to underprice credit and encourage risk taking. Easy money and credit do more than affect the price level; they distort relative prices and production, and thus misallocate resources. Artificially low interest rates adversely affect the structure of production and cause recession when interest rates rise and bubbles burst.

When President Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971, the dollar lost its anchor — even though it was a "wobbly anchor." Today the world is on a pure fiat money standard, which is no standard at all. The Federal Reserve must comply with its "dual mandate," which requires adherence to price stability and full employment, but there is no penalty for failure.

The 2008-2009 financial crisis has increased the Fed's discretionary power, but no one has been fired for failing to prevent the crisis. In buying up massive amounts of government debt, the Fed has sacrificed stable money for funding excessive government spending. Monetizing debt and allocating credit, rather than stabilizing the growth of nominal demand and achieving long-run price stability, have brought the Fed into dangerous waters.

Monetary policy has become more politicized. The Fed pretends to be "independent," but in reality Bernanke and Co. have become part of the Obama Cabinet, except for a few dissenters.

The lack of any monetary rule to constrain the Fed and the lack of any convertibility principle, as existed under the classical gold standard, means the Fed has a monopoly on base money (currency held by the public plus reserves), the supply of which is determined by a small group of Fed officials who presume to be able to forecast the future.

Under a true gold standard, the optimal quantity of money is determined by market forces—the money supply spontaneously adjusts to the demand for money, and long-run price stability is achieved. The long-run value of money is certain, unlike in a pure fiat money regime without rules or convertibility.

In theory, a discretionary central bank could limit the quantity of money and achieve long-run price stability by controlling the growth of nominal final demand. But in practice, the knowledge problem and public-choice problems make such an ideal bank an illusion.

James Madison, the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution, recognized the problem with discretionary government fiat money and the benefit of a commodity standard and convertibility long ago. In 1831 he wrote, "The only adequate guarantee for the uniform and stable value of a paper currency is its convertibility into specie. The least fluctuating and the only universal currency."

The Federal Reserve's policy is flawed because the institution itself is flawed. As Madison noted, "I am sensible that a value equal to that of specie may be given to paper or any other medium, by making a limited amount necessary for necessary purposes; but what is to ensure the inflexible adherence of the Legislative Ensurers to their own principles & purposes?"

That is a question that needs to be answered.

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