Obama Kills pipeline
When President Barack Obama rejected the construction of the Keystone Pipeline on January 18, 2012, he did more than cancel a necessary construction project for our nation.
He vetoed thousands of American jobs, maintained our nation’s dependence on foreign oil and unnecessarily wounded our relationship with Canada, a country that provides 20 percent of America’s oil imports every year. At a time when over 13 million Americans do not have a job and the average price of gas is $3.69, the President’s decision to cancel the pipeline’s construction is inexcusable.
Sponsored by TransCanada Inc., one of the leading energy infrastructure companies in North America, the Keystone Pipeline was to be a 1,600-mile long conduit connecting the tar sands of Canada to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Not only would this extensive pipeline have decreased America’s dependence on foreign oil, it would have stimulated thousands of desperately needed American jobs.
According to TransCanada’s estimates, the pipeline would have created 20,000 jobs in both the construction and manufacturing sectors right away. Upon completion of the connection, the company also projected 465,000 American jobs would have been created along with an eventual $521 billion increase in the America’s Gross Domestic Product. Over 830,000 barrels of oil would also have been delivered to refineries across America per day, doubling the amount of oil we currently receive from Canada.
Yet with all those positive factors to the Keystone proposal, the President still chose to cancel the plan, needlessly damaging America’s friendly diplomatic relations with our neighbor to the north. A few days after the President’s rejection, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded by asking China if they would accept the crude oil we rejected.
In short, not only would the pipeline have helped thousands of Americans rejoin the workforce, but, more importantly, it would have helped bring some hope to the dismal American economic outlook. Despite that, President Obama killed the plan. Whether this was a political move to appease environmental lobbyists or a part of his 2012 campaign strategy, the President has unfortunately cost the American people some of the hope he claimed his administration would produce.
Sadly, I cannot say that I am surprised by the President’s decision. This is not the only time the President has rejected plans that would have helped create American jobs. In the past year, my Republican colleagues and I have become increasingly frustrated as we present the President and his Democratic allies in the Senate with jobs bills. There are now 28 jobs bills just sitting in the Senate, waiting for action.
I believe we can get America’s economy up and running again. But President Obama needs to support job-creating measures such as the Keystone Pipeline and the other 28 bills stuck in the Senate. Through positive action in Washington on these measures, I believe our nation can see the unemployment rate fall when millions of Americans go back to work. We can have better days ahead
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
The Curious Case of the Disappearing NYSE
In what I
would consider one of my top
5 economic pieces of this blog I tie the majority of the stock market's
movement NOT to profits, earnings or dividends (as it should be) but rather to
the volume of retirement dollars flooding the stock market. The ramifications,
of course, is "what will happen to stock prices when the baby boomers retire and
withdraw their trillions of dollars?"
Economics would tell us "go down" but what's funny is markets are not rational all the time. Matter of fact they can remain quit bubbly for extended periods of time. ESPECIALLY when the market participants (AHEM AHEM, COUGH COUGH - AMERICANS) are addicted to "high asset prices" because it fools them into thinking they don't have to work for a living. Asset prices just magically go up without the necessary production and profits to rationalize the price increases. And this can go on "forever" or at least until the delusional (and lazy, I might add) Americans retire.
We see this today where the dividend yield is still at a historic low going back to 1890 and the PE ratio is still above it's historic average of 15x's. The profits are simply not there to rationalize the lofty prices. However, there is something more amiss going on beyond the simple "retirement dollars flooding market" and it may not be obvious to the naked eye.
Volume.
With the DJIA breaking 13,000 and the economy showing signs of a tepid recovery, you would think the market would be doubly flooded with money. The monies flowing in from automotonic 401k retirement drones AND the new monies flowing in from people with new-found hope that the economy is indeed turning around and America has a future once again.
There's just one problem - the volume isn't there to support it.
If you look at the volume of the NYSE, it's cratering. It's lower than it has been in over a decade
This doesn't jive with the prices we see in the market. In basic economic theory, the more trading volume there is in a market, the higher prices should be in that is shows a demand for those stocks. Additionally, with increased volume comes increased "liquidity" which in itself provides a premium that should translate into higher prices. We are now getting the opposite.
So what is happening?
Well, your humble Captain has a theory.
The reason volume is tanking is because, despite what heavily-spun news you might hear about GDP, consumer confidence, the reality is that the economy still sucks. Unemployment, though down, is still 2 full percentage points above the WORST it ever was under George Bush. If you want to consider the "underemployment" argument, that many people have left the labor force, you could argue unemployment is closer to 11%. Additionally, even with today's revision of 3% RGDP growth, it's nothing compared to the booming quarters we had after most recessions (even the hated, incompetent,evil puppy-kicker GW managed a quarter above 6%). Also delivering a dose of realistic doom to the economy is the massive amounts of debt we have. And finally, unemployment is particularly high amongst the youth, who are not only necessary to bail out older generations via their public pensions, but whose retirement dollars are also necessary to keep the 401k Bubble/Ponzi scheme going as well. But just like the housing market, you need jobs in order to afford a house. And so, I'm sure if you looked at it, a huge reason for the lower volume is the lack of "new blood" entering the retirement/401k market, plus the fact people just don't plain have the disposable income to afford IRA contributions.
While this explains the collapse in volume, it doesn't explain why prices are still so high. And here is the nefarious side of the theory:
Something nefarious is going on.
When you see Apple with a market cap of 1/2 trillion dollars, you start to wonder why Apple is so valuable. And as it turns out it's because hedge funds and mutual funds all want to own Apple. No real financial reason for it, hedge fund managers, mutual fund managers and other incompetent perma-bubble Wall Street dolts like shinny new electrical doo-dads just like their spoiled brat, humanities-majoring children at home in Connecticut do. But what this shows you (or at least alludes to) is that it is institutions, not individuals, that are accounting for the majority of the buying and selling of the stocks. You also throw in electronic trading programs or "computerized trading" and it's no longer real investors with real money, as much as it is a potentially rigged beast of its own trading on itself.
It reminds me of a now-deceased publication called "Lake Minnetonka Magazine." This magazine was basically the socialite magazine for Minneapolis' uber-rich western suburb. Here is where Cargill, Carlson Companies and many more firms are based, as well as the hundreds of trust-fund babies these empires spawned. The magazine itself though was a self-absorbed love fest within itself. Written by the trustfunders about the trustfunders and all the parties they went to and who bought what Italian car or what worthless trophy wife opened up what worthless trinket shop with her hubby's money. Essentially it was a club or an entity that didn't produce anything and when its founder (ahem ahem-Tom Petters) was arrested for what was then the largest fraud in the history of the US (soon to be outdone by Bernie Madoff), the magazine went bye bye (ironically, shortly after, there were a LOT of for sale signs on the prestigious Lake Minnetonka, what handsome, dashing, chiseled motorcycle riding, fossil-hunting, bad-boy economist would have predicted that!).
In short, the stock market is being artificially inflated, if not, limped along, by the sanctimonious (or perhaps, oblivious) yutzes trapped in their own nepotistic, inbred echo chamber called "The East Coast." They trade amongst themselves, they believe that the stock market is a finite, mathematical beast that can be predicted. They have NEVER seen a real stock market crash, as they're perpetually bailed out by Dotcom Bubble after Housing Bubble after QE-LXI Bubble. They are truly oblivious to all the work, toil, labor and entrepreneurialism that gives those worthless pieces of paper (they so love to trade and sell and take commission on) value.
The question is if you wish to join this little clique or social party. Do you want to "hang" with all the fake and plastic of the paper-rich, asset-poor, and soon to be bankrupt class? Then by all means, throw that $16,500 max of your money into an inflated stock market every year. You'll be one of the cool people. But if you're more like me and want to hang out with your non-stab-you-in-the-back buddies at a reasonably priced bar, entertained with good intelligent conversation, and darn fine food, you may want to look elsewhere and hang out where there is real value.
In the meantime, enjoy the decline!
Economics would tell us "go down" but what's funny is markets are not rational all the time. Matter of fact they can remain quit bubbly for extended periods of time. ESPECIALLY when the market participants (AHEM AHEM, COUGH COUGH - AMERICANS) are addicted to "high asset prices" because it fools them into thinking they don't have to work for a living. Asset prices just magically go up without the necessary production and profits to rationalize the price increases. And this can go on "forever" or at least until the delusional (and lazy, I might add) Americans retire.
We see this today where the dividend yield is still at a historic low going back to 1890 and the PE ratio is still above it's historic average of 15x's. The profits are simply not there to rationalize the lofty prices. However, there is something more amiss going on beyond the simple "retirement dollars flooding market" and it may not be obvious to the naked eye.
Volume.
With the DJIA breaking 13,000 and the economy showing signs of a tepid recovery, you would think the market would be doubly flooded with money. The monies flowing in from automotonic 401k retirement drones AND the new monies flowing in from people with new-found hope that the economy is indeed turning around and America has a future once again.
There's just one problem - the volume isn't there to support it.
If you look at the volume of the NYSE, it's cratering. It's lower than it has been in over a decade
This doesn't jive with the prices we see in the market. In basic economic theory, the more trading volume there is in a market, the higher prices should be in that is shows a demand for those stocks. Additionally, with increased volume comes increased "liquidity" which in itself provides a premium that should translate into higher prices. We are now getting the opposite.
So what is happening?
Well, your humble Captain has a theory.
The reason volume is tanking is because, despite what heavily-spun news you might hear about GDP, consumer confidence, the reality is that the economy still sucks. Unemployment, though down, is still 2 full percentage points above the WORST it ever was under George Bush. If you want to consider the "underemployment" argument, that many people have left the labor force, you could argue unemployment is closer to 11%. Additionally, even with today's revision of 3% RGDP growth, it's nothing compared to the booming quarters we had after most recessions (even the hated, incompetent,evil puppy-kicker GW managed a quarter above 6%). Also delivering a dose of realistic doom to the economy is the massive amounts of debt we have. And finally, unemployment is particularly high amongst the youth, who are not only necessary to bail out older generations via their public pensions, but whose retirement dollars are also necessary to keep the 401k Bubble/Ponzi scheme going as well. But just like the housing market, you need jobs in order to afford a house. And so, I'm sure if you looked at it, a huge reason for the lower volume is the lack of "new blood" entering the retirement/401k market, plus the fact people just don't plain have the disposable income to afford IRA contributions.
While this explains the collapse in volume, it doesn't explain why prices are still so high. And here is the nefarious side of the theory:
Something nefarious is going on.
When you see Apple with a market cap of 1/2 trillion dollars, you start to wonder why Apple is so valuable. And as it turns out it's because hedge funds and mutual funds all want to own Apple. No real financial reason for it, hedge fund managers, mutual fund managers and other incompetent perma-bubble Wall Street dolts like shinny new electrical doo-dads just like their spoiled brat, humanities-majoring children at home in Connecticut do. But what this shows you (or at least alludes to) is that it is institutions, not individuals, that are accounting for the majority of the buying and selling of the stocks. You also throw in electronic trading programs or "computerized trading" and it's no longer real investors with real money, as much as it is a potentially rigged beast of its own trading on itself.
It reminds me of a now-deceased publication called "Lake Minnetonka Magazine." This magazine was basically the socialite magazine for Minneapolis' uber-rich western suburb. Here is where Cargill, Carlson Companies and many more firms are based, as well as the hundreds of trust-fund babies these empires spawned. The magazine itself though was a self-absorbed love fest within itself. Written by the trustfunders about the trustfunders and all the parties they went to and who bought what Italian car or what worthless trophy wife opened up what worthless trinket shop with her hubby's money. Essentially it was a club or an entity that didn't produce anything and when its founder (ahem ahem-Tom Petters) was arrested for what was then the largest fraud in the history of the US (soon to be outdone by Bernie Madoff), the magazine went bye bye (ironically, shortly after, there were a LOT of for sale signs on the prestigious Lake Minnetonka, what handsome, dashing, chiseled motorcycle riding, fossil-hunting, bad-boy economist would have predicted that!).
In short, the stock market is being artificially inflated, if not, limped along, by the sanctimonious (or perhaps, oblivious) yutzes trapped in their own nepotistic, inbred echo chamber called "The East Coast." They trade amongst themselves, they believe that the stock market is a finite, mathematical beast that can be predicted. They have NEVER seen a real stock market crash, as they're perpetually bailed out by Dotcom Bubble after Housing Bubble after QE-LXI Bubble. They are truly oblivious to all the work, toil, labor and entrepreneurialism that gives those worthless pieces of paper (they so love to trade and sell and take commission on) value.
The question is if you wish to join this little clique or social party. Do you want to "hang" with all the fake and plastic of the paper-rich, asset-poor, and soon to be bankrupt class? Then by all means, throw that $16,500 max of your money into an inflated stock market every year. You'll be one of the cool people. But if you're more like me and want to hang out with your non-stab-you-in-the-back buddies at a reasonably priced bar, entertained with good intelligent conversation, and darn fine food, you may want to look elsewhere and hang out where there is real value.
In the meantime, enjoy the decline!
“Who’s calling?” “The Conservatives.”
Now, we’ve had some highly publicized disagreements with Elections Canada in the past, so the campaign leadership made it clear to everyone before they stepped into the building that accountability standards were to be incredibly high. We added new language to our volunteer and employee agreements, and even had an in-house independent accountability officer available to us at all times.
Have we been accused of being aggressive and rough-and-tumble in the past? Of course. Did we go after Liberal leaders with everything we had? You bet. But did the campaign organize a widespread voter suppression exercise in the 2011 campaign? No way.
And yet, in a matter of only a few days, we’ve gotten to a place where any misleading or erroneous call by a campaign or individual anywhere in the country during 2011 federal election is being treated as the work of Conservative masterminds. But some things don’t add up.
There seem to be three sets of allegations being made:
1. specific allegations about riding-level activity—mostly in the Guelph area—in which seemingly misleading information went out to voters in a very targeted way;
2. complaints from voters in several ridings who got some sort of notification that their polling station had changed in the waning days or hours of the campaign;
3. vague allegations of harassing phone calls from opposition campaigns (mostly Liberal campaigns in Toronto).
On the first point, the only information I have is what I have read in the media. It appears that Elections Canada is investigating, and that a campaign aide has resigned. This leads me to believe that something was definitely amiss in Guelph; if that’s true, I hope those responsible are caught. Goodness knows Elections Canada will let us know of progress, either through official channels or through Postmedia, as it is wont to do.
On the second point, things get tougher. The allegation seems to be that we organized a widespread campaign to confuse Liberal voters into going to the wrong place, and thus get them to give up on voting altogether. The Toronto Star cites three call centre “whistleblowers” who seemed to have known on election day that they were directing people to the wrong voting stations. Of course, in the same breathless article, the three call centre employees also report that: call centre employees sometimes changed scripts on their own, without the knowledge of their superiors or the party; the callers were clearly instructed to identify themselves as representatives of the “Conservative Party of Canada;” some of their co-workers decided on their own to falsely say they were calling from Elections Canada.
To sum up, then, the allegation is that the Conservative Party used its official call centre to attempt to misdirect non-CPC voters to polling stations across town, while telling them the Conservative party is responsible for the message. As a strategy, it seems preposterous. It just doesn’t make any sense.
The third allegation is that Conservatives organized a number of “harassing” phone calls to Liberal supporters in a number of ridings, sometimes posing as “Liberal” operatives. These were supposedly intended to annoy Liberal voters, to make them angry and turn them off the otherwise seaworthy Ignatieff ticket.
The following is a list of specific allegations and complaints; these are in the words of my friends in the LPC, so I am not making them up:
- calling people at mealtimes;
- mimicking accents;
- treating people rudely;
- calling on the Sabbath;
- calling late at night or early in the morning;
- pronouncing Guy Gallant in an anglicized manner;
- jamming a Cambridge fax machine with calls; and,
- my personal favourite, calling Dr. Carolyn Bennett by the name of “Doctor Carolyn Bennett.”
One other helpful reminder: the Liberal party of Canada debuted a new “national” database system for the 2011 campaign, one that was finally going to compete with CIMS. Given the number of complaints about Liberal contact lists and irregularities, it’s probably time to ask the LPC about how it handled the data and parceled it out to call centres.
Oh, and those CPC people that were impersonating Liberals? Here’s a great passage from Postmedia’s February 24 story that shows the depth of the deception:
Then, on the afternoon of April 11, a phone in Volpe’s own campaign phone bank rang. Volunteer Marsha Sands described the call in an affidavit.I added the emphasis above. Let me get this straight: the best quote we have to show that Conservatives were impersonating Liberal campaign workers is one in which they identify themselves as Conservatives?
“I picked it up and said hello several times. No voice responded but I could hear voices in the background. I then said, ‘Hello, speak please. You’ve called me.’
“A female voice, soft and young-sounding, said, ‘Are you going to vote for Joe Volpe in the up and coming election?’ I responded, ‘Who are you? Where are you calling from?’ several times.
“The caller said, ‘The Conservatives.’ I said ‘What? Who are you?’ Response: ‘Um, we are conducting a survey.’ “
And have you checked the alleged riding lists for these abuses? Niagara Falls? Haldimand-Norfolk? St. Paul’s?! Um, we won Haldimand-Norfolk by 13,000 votes and Rob Nicholson beat the Liberal candidate in Niagara Falls by 18,000. We weren’t even close in St. Paul’s.
I realize this looks like I’m excusing some of the questionable behavior I’m hearing about. I’m not. If there was wrongdoing, I agree with everything the Prime Minister has said—the facts should be given to Elections Canada and they should investigate.
I don’t dismiss the possibility of individuals acted on their own to skirt the rules. But I also know that it wasn’t just Liberal or NDP supporters who received inaccurate information on polling day. On a day when probably a combined 20 million GOTV calls go out from the campaigns, mistakes happen.
There are also instances of Conservative supporters receiving irritating or “harassing” calls, which we believe came from the opposition campaigns. And given the number of polling station location changes made by Elections Canada, which we had to tell our supporters about, it’s no wonder that mistakes were made. For instance, our best information tells us the RMG calls from Thunder Bay were made to people we thought were Conservative supporters.
We are being accused of behaving with both Machiavellian brillance and Keystone Kops ineptitude: impersonating Liberals by identifying ourselves as Conservatives and suppressing votes by calling candidates by their actual names. It’s time to step back, and rely on facts.
Oh, and how about that Adam Carroll…?
Jason Lietaer is a political strategist and communicator who wishes he was golfing. He ran the Conservative party’s war room during the 2011 campaign. Follow him on Twitter: @jasonlietaer.
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Here Comes Obama's 3 AM Phone Call
By James LewisIn the next 60 days Obama's presidential career will finally meet that concrete wall of reality. He will either fail or survive. Trouble is, he might take many innocent people with him if he fails.
So far, the most hyped-up and unqualified president in US history has shown no capacity at all to act, in the face of a do-or-die challenge. This is the ultimate test of character, the one that John F. Kennedy met well enough in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. This is the test that Jimmy Carter failed so miserably that Ronald Reagan beat him handily in the following election. This is the same test of reality that every single Democratic Administration has tried to avoid; it's the reason why Bill Clinton refused to do anything about Osama Bin Laden when he had four separate chances to take him out.
This time, abject apologies to ranting Pakistani mobs will not make a smidgen of difference. Even Axelrod's disinformation campaigns can't save Obama now, because that 3 am phone call is almost sure to come by April Fool's Day of 2012, when the real fool will stand revealed to the world.
On or about April 1 of 2012, that 3 AM phone call will reach the White House. We know what it will be -- which is itself a sign of stunning incompetence in this White House. None of this information should ever be public. Ever.
But this administration has chosen its Secretary of Defense to publicly leak the most closely guarded secret of Israel's back-against-the-wall defense against Iranian nuclear weapons.
Such public leaks amount to near treason in time of war. Imagine if someone leaked General Eisenhower's plans for the D-Day invasion in June of 1944. FDR would have fired them instantly, or if they were foreigners he would have felt justified to have them killed. Hundreds of thousands of American and Allied lives were at stake on D Day. In Israel today, hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives are at stake. Don't expect countries fighting for their national survival to act any differently.
The Israelis have now publicly retaliated against the Panetta leak. They have accused General Dempsey, our top general, of publicly taking the Iranian side in the confrontation. But General Dempsey is not the target. The General knows better. The real target is his boss in the White House.
This is the moment every sane person knew had to come, ever since Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski knowingly allowed the radical suicide regime of Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow the modernizing Shah of Iran. That was the single most self-destructive decision by any American President in modern history.
Jimmy Carter empowered the first Islamic throwback regime since Kemal Ataturk modernized Turkey in the 1920s.
Since Khomeini, Islamic radicalization has only accelerated, culminating in the 9/11/01 attack on New York City. Obama's equally suicidal "Arab Spring" has now brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, instead of our long-time ally Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and Obama knowingly chose to support Sadat's assassins.
So much for America's loyalty and word of honor.
Now Egypt is in economic and political despair, along with the other "Arab Spring" countries. The Saudis are ordering their own nuclear weapons, because they cannot trust the United States to protect their vital interests any more.
Obama thrives on crisis and chaos. He is a gambler and a con artist who follows Napoleon's slogan of "audacity, audacity, always audacity." But Napoleon met his Moscow winter and his Waterloo. The only question is when Obama will crash into his own brick wall of reality.
April Fool's Day would be a very suitable target date for the coming Iranian nuclear crisis. The Administration has already started to undermine Israel's case for defending itself by claiming, dontchaknow, that the Iranians are not making nukes after all. They are just making highly enriched uranium, folks. Nothing to worry about. False alarms, all you fools! It's just that Zionist plot again.
Obama's string puppets at J Street and other Soros fronts are bound to start anti-Israel propaganda again, aided by the New York Times and its ilk. But the Iranians just said (again!) that they are bound and determined to "wipe Israel off the map."
It will make no difference. The Israelis are sensitive to hate propaganda by the international left, except when survival is at stake. Then they act to survive. That used to be US policy as well, until the fantasy-ridden Democrats took over the country. Today Obama is cutting our defense budget and reducing US nuclear weapons to the lowest level ever, even while nuclear proliferation breaks out all over the world. Good timing, BHO.
The conventional wisdom is that Israel must attack Iranian nuclear sites soon, because Ahmadinejad is moving his nuclear industry into deep mountain tunnels on an emergency basis. Once his nuke industry is deeply bunkered it is essentially invulnerable to conventional weapons. It is the point of no return.
The conventional wisdom also claims that Israel cannot maintain a long-term bombing campaign. Only the United States can do that. But the US is refusing to be the cop on the block, leaving the defense of the world's biggest oil supply to ... nobody. No one else has the power to do it. Which is why the Saudis are nuking up.
Israel will act as in defense of its right to live. The left will predictably turn reality upside-down, the way it always does. They keep their brains in the darkest place they can find. Nothing will change those facts.
The United States is the only nation with the power to knock down the Iranian threat with reasonable safety to itself and other countries. We have done it before. If Israel acts without our active help, the risks of great casualties on all sides will be much, much greater. In 1973 Golda Meir came close to using Israel's own nuclear arsenal when invading tank divisions from Egypt threatened to overrun Israel's cities. That decision was barely averted when Israeli tanks broke through the Egyptian lines.
Obama is by far the most mentally fixated president in the nuclear age. Nobody else has come even close to having his mental blinders, not even Jimmy Carter. Obama has little regard for human life, which is why he whipped up regional chaos in the "Arab Spring," by demanding the resignation of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. Obama is happy to empower radical Islamist regimes, just like Jimmy Carter. With a solid phalanx of media liars, Obama has been able to evade responsibility for three years of solid misgovernment in foreign and domestic affairs.
But the coming crisis cannot be evaded. Obama and his propaganda media will spin and spin -- before, during, and after the coming crisis between Israel and Iran. Obama wanted above all to force Israel to retreat back to 1948 or face a nuclear Iran. It was a choice between slow genocide and fast genocide.
It looks like Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the left and the right of Israel's parliament, called Obama's bluff. No American president has ever allowed an international crisis to come so close to the brink. Obama has now allowed the Middle East to deteriorate so far that he has lost control. He now owns whatever is going to happen. His fingerprints are all over it.
Around April 1, the biggest fool of the 21st century will stand revealed to the world.
After that, the American people will have to decide.
This time, abject apologies to ranting Pakistani mobs will not make a smidgen of difference. Even Axelrod's disinformation campaigns can't save Obama now, because that 3 am phone call is almost sure to come by April Fool's Day of 2012, when the real fool will stand revealed to the world.
On or about April 1 of 2012, that 3 AM phone call will reach the White House. We know what it will be -- which is itself a sign of stunning incompetence in this White House. None of this information should ever be public. Ever.
But this administration has chosen its Secretary of Defense to publicly leak the most closely guarded secret of Israel's back-against-the-wall defense against Iranian nuclear weapons.
Such public leaks amount to near treason in time of war. Imagine if someone leaked General Eisenhower's plans for the D-Day invasion in June of 1944. FDR would have fired them instantly, or if they were foreigners he would have felt justified to have them killed. Hundreds of thousands of American and Allied lives were at stake on D Day. In Israel today, hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives are at stake. Don't expect countries fighting for their national survival to act any differently.
The Israelis have now publicly retaliated against the Panetta leak. They have accused General Dempsey, our top general, of publicly taking the Iranian side in the confrontation. But General Dempsey is not the target. The General knows better. The real target is his boss in the White House.
This is the moment every sane person knew had to come, ever since Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski knowingly allowed the radical suicide regime of Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow the modernizing Shah of Iran. That was the single most self-destructive decision by any American President in modern history.
Jimmy Carter empowered the first Islamic throwback regime since Kemal Ataturk modernized Turkey in the 1920s.
Since Khomeini, Islamic radicalization has only accelerated, culminating in the 9/11/01 attack on New York City. Obama's equally suicidal "Arab Spring" has now brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, instead of our long-time ally Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and Obama knowingly chose to support Sadat's assassins.
So much for America's loyalty and word of honor.
Now Egypt is in economic and political despair, along with the other "Arab Spring" countries. The Saudis are ordering their own nuclear weapons, because they cannot trust the United States to protect their vital interests any more.
Obama thrives on crisis and chaos. He is a gambler and a con artist who follows Napoleon's slogan of "audacity, audacity, always audacity." But Napoleon met his Moscow winter and his Waterloo. The only question is when Obama will crash into his own brick wall of reality.
April Fool's Day would be a very suitable target date for the coming Iranian nuclear crisis. The Administration has already started to undermine Israel's case for defending itself by claiming, dontchaknow, that the Iranians are not making nukes after all. They are just making highly enriched uranium, folks. Nothing to worry about. False alarms, all you fools! It's just that Zionist plot again.
Obama's string puppets at J Street and other Soros fronts are bound to start anti-Israel propaganda again, aided by the New York Times and its ilk. But the Iranians just said (again!) that they are bound and determined to "wipe Israel off the map."
It will make no difference. The Israelis are sensitive to hate propaganda by the international left, except when survival is at stake. Then they act to survive. That used to be US policy as well, until the fantasy-ridden Democrats took over the country. Today Obama is cutting our defense budget and reducing US nuclear weapons to the lowest level ever, even while nuclear proliferation breaks out all over the world. Good timing, BHO.
The conventional wisdom is that Israel must attack Iranian nuclear sites soon, because Ahmadinejad is moving his nuclear industry into deep mountain tunnels on an emergency basis. Once his nuke industry is deeply bunkered it is essentially invulnerable to conventional weapons. It is the point of no return.
The conventional wisdom also claims that Israel cannot maintain a long-term bombing campaign. Only the United States can do that. But the US is refusing to be the cop on the block, leaving the defense of the world's biggest oil supply to ... nobody. No one else has the power to do it. Which is why the Saudis are nuking up.
Israel will act as in defense of its right to live. The left will predictably turn reality upside-down, the way it always does. They keep their brains in the darkest place they can find. Nothing will change those facts.
The United States is the only nation with the power to knock down the Iranian threat with reasonable safety to itself and other countries. We have done it before. If Israel acts without our active help, the risks of great casualties on all sides will be much, much greater. In 1973 Golda Meir came close to using Israel's own nuclear arsenal when invading tank divisions from Egypt threatened to overrun Israel's cities. That decision was barely averted when Israeli tanks broke through the Egyptian lines.
Obama is by far the most mentally fixated president in the nuclear age. Nobody else has come even close to having his mental blinders, not even Jimmy Carter. Obama has little regard for human life, which is why he whipped up regional chaos in the "Arab Spring," by demanding the resignation of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. Obama is happy to empower radical Islamist regimes, just like Jimmy Carter. With a solid phalanx of media liars, Obama has been able to evade responsibility for three years of solid misgovernment in foreign and domestic affairs.
But the coming crisis cannot be evaded. Obama and his propaganda media will spin and spin -- before, during, and after the coming crisis between Israel and Iran. Obama wanted above all to force Israel to retreat back to 1948 or face a nuclear Iran. It was a choice between slow genocide and fast genocide.
It looks like Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the left and the right of Israel's parliament, called Obama's bluff. No American president has ever allowed an international crisis to come so close to the brink. Obama has now allowed the Middle East to deteriorate so far that he has lost control. He now owns whatever is going to happen. His fingerprints are all over it.
Around April 1, the biggest fool of the 21st century will stand revealed to the world.
After that, the American people will have to decide.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/here_comes_obamas_3_am_phone_call.html#ixzz1nlev7WBP
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
February 25, 2012
The liberal Jackboot
The wing-nuts questioned why firearm enthusiasts hated the registry?Not that the Tories are going to do anything about the warrant-less search and seizure parts of C68. Oh, no. You have no rights when there may be the tinkling of an idea that a firearm may be somehow involved. Even if, you know, one isn't.
Where are last weeks defenders of warrant requirements now?
I truly hope this 'free' and law-abiding citizen sues the pants off of everyone involved. Then I hope that they are left destitute and lose what-ever certifications these social scientists had.
Oh, but it's alright though, it's for the children, “Our community would have an expectation if comments are made about a gun in a house, we’d be obligated to investigate that to ensure everything is safe.”
Cause, you know, if you aren't with them, you're with the child pornographers, or something like that.
Update: Ezra: h/t Occam
Posted by lance at February 25, 2012 1:24 AM
Sunday, 26 February 2012
Sabbath Meditation: Nigerian Christians Club Jihadi to Death After He Bombed Their Church
I hope they were Calvinists.
(The Times of Nigeria) — Angry worshippers at the headquarters of Church Of Christ In Nations (COCIN) in Jos on Sunday killed one of the two suspected bearers of the explosives that hit the Church in the morning.HT: GWP
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the bomber and one other, who both wore army camouflage, drove into the Church and beat the security before hitting the building.
NAN correspondent, who was at the scene, reports that the suspect appeared to be in his early 30s.
The suspect, who wore a neatly carved moustache, looked well-fed.
But probably afraid of dying, the bomb carrier jumped out of the vehicle just before the blast went off and attempted to run but could not move as he was affected by the blast.
The angry worshipers, however, descended on him and clubbed him to death.
An eyewitness and a worshipper in the Church, Joyce Dalyop, told NAN that there were arguments among the worshipers over what to do with the bomber before he was finally killed.
“Immediately they (bombers) entered the Church, one of them jumped out of the black jeep but luck ran out of him as the explosion affected him and so he could not run very fast before he was caught.’’
“Some people even pleaded that he should not be killed; they suggested that he should be handed over to Police for further investigation, but others argued that the police could not be trusted and opined that the suspect may be released,” she said.
Another worshipper in the Church, Elder Bulus Haruna, said that the other bomber, who drove the vehicle, was blown into pieces together with the vehicle that was reduced to only the engine.
“His (bomber) body parts were scattered everywhere — the legs and hands were charred and had become roasted by the fire from the explosion,” he said. (NAN)
Saturday, 25 February 2012
Friday, 24 February 2012
Only in Canada would you get stupidity like this !
see link below
Police arrested a Kitchener, Ont., father outside his daughter's school because the four-year-old drew a picture of him holding a gun.
Jessie Sansone told the Record newspaper that he was in shock when he was arrested Wednesday and taken to a police station for questioning over the drawing. He was also strip-searched.
"This is completely insane. My daughter drew a gun on a piece of paper at school," he said.
Officials told the newspaper the move was necessary to ensure there were no guns accessible by children in the family's home. They also said comments by Sansone's daughter, Neaveh, that the man holding the gun in the picture was her dad and "he uses it to shoot bad guys and monsters," was concerning.
Police also searched Sansone's home while he was in custody. His wife and three children were taken to the police station, and the children were interviewed by Family and Children's Services.
Sansone's wife, Stephanie Squires, told the newspaper no one told them why her husband had been arrested.
"He had absolutely no idea what this was even about. I just kept telling them, 'You're making a mistake.'"
Several hours later, Sansone was released without charges.
http://bcove.me/k10y5ira
see link below
Police arrested a Kitchener, Ont., father outside his daughter's school because the four-year-old drew a picture of him holding a gun.
Jessie Sansone told the Record newspaper that he was in shock when he was arrested Wednesday and taken to a police station for questioning over the drawing. He was also strip-searched.
"This is completely insane. My daughter drew a gun on a piece of paper at school," he said.
Officials told the newspaper the move was necessary to ensure there were no guns accessible by children in the family's home. They also said comments by Sansone's daughter, Neaveh, that the man holding the gun in the picture was her dad and "he uses it to shoot bad guys and monsters," was concerning.
Police also searched Sansone's home while he was in custody. His wife and three children were taken to the police station, and the children were interviewed by Family and Children's Services.
Sansone's wife, Stephanie Squires, told the newspaper no one told them why her husband had been arrested.
"He had absolutely no idea what this was even about. I just kept telling them, 'You're making a mistake.'"
Several hours later, Sansone was released without charges.
http://bcove.me/k10y5ira
Were was the outrage then ? maybe we should be rioting in the streets ? but that may make us barbarians as well !!
(CNN) — Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.
The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the United States were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of any religion from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said.
Such religious outreach can endanger American troops and civilians in the devoutly Muslim nation, Wright said.
“The decision was made that it was a ‘force protection’ measure to throw them away, because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims,” Wright told CNN on Tuesday.
Troops at posts in war zones are required to burn their trash, Wright said.
The Bibles were written in the languages Pashto and Dari.
This decision came to light recently, after the Al Jazeera English network aired video of a group prayer service and chapel sermon that a reporter said suggested U.S. troops were being encouraged to spread Christianity.
(CNN) — Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.
The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the United States were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of any religion from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said.
Such religious outreach can endanger American troops and civilians in the devoutly Muslim nation, Wright said.
“The decision was made that it was a ‘force protection’ measure to throw them away, because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims,” Wright told CNN on Tuesday.
Troops at posts in war zones are required to burn their trash, Wright said.
The Bibles were written in the languages Pashto and Dari.
This decision came to light recently, after the Al Jazeera English network aired video of a group prayer service and chapel sermon that a reporter said suggested U.S. troops were being encouraged to spread Christianity.
![The Greatest Gun Salesman In America: President Barack Obama [INFOGRAPHIC]](http://cdn1.ammo.net/media/images/infographics/Greatest-Gun-Salesman-In-America-President-Obama.jpg)
Thursday, 23 February 2012
It (finally) begins? Muslim businesses in UK targeted as revenge for rape gangs, grooming
By Kathy Shaidle on Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 | No Comments
Palin: When does Karzai apologize for his troops killing our soldiers over Koran-burning?
By Kathy Shaidle on Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 | No Comments
I told you we should have nuked Afghanistan no later than 2pm ET on September 11, 2001, but nobody listens to me.
Sharia in Pennsylvania: Muslim admits to attacking atheist over "Zombie Muhammad"; Muslim judge dismisses case, tells atheist he'd be killed in Muslim lands
This is enforcement of Sharia in a Pennsylvania court. The attacker supposedly got off because he "is an immigrant and claims he did not know his actions were illegal, or that it was legal in this country to represent Muhammad in any form. To add insult to injury, he also testified that his 9 year old son was present, and the man said he felt he needed to show his young son that he was willing to fight for his Prophet."
Then, Judge Mark Martin, himself a Muslim, told the atheist, Ernest Perce V.:
“Having had the benefit of having spent over 2 and a half years in predominantly Muslim countries I think I know a little bit about the faith of Islam. In fact I have a copy of the Koran here and I challenge you sir to show me where it says in the Koran that Mohammad arose and walked among the dead. I think you misinterpreted things. Before you start mocking someone else’s religion you may want to find out a little bit more about it it makes you look like a dufus and Mr. (Defendant) is correct. In many Arabic speaking countries something like this is definitely against the law there. In their society in fact it can be punishable by death and it frequently is in their society.Travesty upon travesty. It should be noted that no Catholics were reported to have assaulted the atheists over "Zombie Pope." "Muslim Admits to Attacking Atheist; Muslim Judge Dismisses Case," by Al Stefanelli at Opposing Views, February 23 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
The Pennsylvania State Director of American Atheists, Inc., Mr. Ernest Perce V., was assaulted by a Muslim while participating in a Halloween parade. Along with a Zombie Pope, Ernest was costumed as Zombie Muhammad. The assault was caught on video, the Muslim man admitted to his crime and charges were filed in what should have been an open-and-shut case. That’s not what happened, though.
The defendant is an immigrant and claims he did not know his actions were illegal, or that it was legal in this country to represent Muhammad in any form. To add insult to injury, he also testified that his 9 year old son was present, and the man said he felt he needed to show his young son that he was willing to fight for his Prophet.
The case went to trial, and as circumstances would dictate, Judge Mark Martin is also a Muslim. What transpired next was surreal. The Judge not only ruled in favor of the defendant, but called Mr. Perce a name and told him that if he were in a Muslim country, he’d be put to death. Judge Martin’s comments included,
“Having had the benefit of having spent over 2 and a half years in predominantly Muslim countries I think I know a little bit about the faith of Islam. In fact I have a copy of the Koran here and I challenge you sir to show me where it says in the Koran that Mohammad arose and walked among the dead. I think you misinterpreted things. Before you start mocking someone else’s religion you may want to find out a little bit more about it it makes you look like a dufus and Mr. (Defendant) is correct. In many Arabic speaking countries something like this is definitely against the law there. In their society in fact it can be punishable by death and it frequently is in their society."
Judge Martin then offered a lesson in Islam, stating,
“Islam is not just a religion, it’s their culture, their culture. It’s their very essence their very being. They pray five times a day towards Mecca to be a good Muslim, before you die you have to make a pilgrimage to Mecca unless you are otherwise told you can not because you are too ill too elderly, whatever but you must make the attempt. Their greetings wa-laikum as-Salâm (is answered by voice) may god be with you. Whenever, it’s very common when speaking to each other it’s very common for them to say uh this will happen it’s it they are so immersed in it."
Judge Martin further complicates the issue by not only abrogating the First Amendment, but completely misunderstanding it when he said,
“Then what you have done is you have completely trashed their essence, their being. They find it very very very offensive. I’m a Muslim, I find it offensive. But you have that right, but you’re way outside your boundaries or first amendment rights. This is what, and I said I spent about 7 and a half years living in other countries. when we go to other countries it’s not uncommon for people to refer to us as ugly Americans this is why we are referred to as ugly Americans, because we are so concerned about our own rights we don’t care about other people’s rights as long as we get our say but we don’t care about the other people’s say”Don't trash my essence, pal.
But wait, it gets worse. The Judge refused to allow the video into evidence, and then said,“All that aside I’ve got here basically.. I don’t want to say he said she said but I’ve got two sides of the story that are in conflict with each other.”
And,
“The preponderance of, excuse me, the burden of proof… “
And,
“…he has not proven to me beyond a reasonable doubt that this defendant is guilty of harassment, therefore I am going to dismiss the charge”
The Judge neglected to address the fact that the ignorance of the law does not justify an assault and that it was the responsibility of the defendant to familiarize himself with our laws. This is to say nothing of the judge counseling the defendant that it is also not acceptable for him to teach his children that it is acceptable to use violence in the defense of religious beliefs. Instead, the judge gives Mr. Perce a lesson in Sharia law and drones on about the Muslim faith, inform everyone in the court room how strongly he embraces Islam, that the first amendment does not allow anyone ” to piss off other people and other cultures” and he was also insulted by Mr. Perce’s portrayal of Mohammed and the sign he carried.
This is a travesty. Not only did Judge Martin completely ignore video evidence, but a Police Officer who was at the scene also testified on Mr. Perce’s behalf, to which the Judge also dismissed by saying the officer didn’t give an accurate account or doesn’t give it any weight.
Here is a link to the video that includes the audio of the Judge during the trial.
Here’s coverage of the incident from the local ABC affiliate.
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
This is like Homer building a car ! remember how that turned out.
very well thought out article ,interesting inner workings of the president .
There is a cliché in Washington. There are two things you do not want to see made: sausage and laws. To those we may add a third: Barack Obama's decisions.
Americans were warned by his opponents that Barack Obama was unprepared to be president. He had very little record to run on, and his one experience at being an executive was a failure -- his hushed up history running and running through a hundred million dollars as the head of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in Chicago. He had a record of avoiding tough decisions (the "voting present" issue); he was just a celebrity who was not ready for the 3 A.M. phone call. The presidency was not an "on the job" training program.
After three years we can judge those fears to be well-warranted.
There are many people who have problems with his policies. Barrels of ink and billions of pixels have been used to criticize his agenda. But surprisingly little analysis has gone into figuring out the mystery of how Obama actually goes about making decisions.
Fortunately, over the last few years journalists have been obsessing over Barack Obama almost as much as he has been obsessing over himself. They have provided various vignettes that give us a disturbing picture of a man floundering in his own careless if not willful ineptitude.
Americans should have been alert to the paucity of his own record of accomplishment. As a state senator he showed little interest in learning the intricacies of legislation. Instead, his political mentor, Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones, allowed him to "bill-jack" the legislative work of others and claim it as his own. This was a practice he continued as a U.S. senator. He was unprepared to do the homework and heavy lifting -- that was for others to toil over.
If there is one constant to Barack Obama's life, it is his lack of a work ethic. I never doubted that the Barack Obama had stellar grades in college and law school. He surfed the wave of grade inflation that has probably always been a factor in his success. This is pure speculation, but the reason why he never released his transcripts was probably because they would have revealed that he took easy left-wing courses that would have reflected poorly on his work ethic. The laziness has persisted.
A leader has to be well-informed, consult with good advisers and experts, read and research, and make a decision. He has to prepare himself to be a leader.
We saw signs during the campaign that he had little interest in the issues of the day. The late Dean Barnett wrote in the Weekly Standard in a column titled "How Smart is Obama":
If anything, his television-watching has gone downhill. Now he watches Spongebob Squarepants and Hannah Montana -- albeit with his daughters (a fact that calls into question his fathering ability but it is a step above having them hear Jeremiah Wright's racist and anti-American rants).
Alas, how true Barnett's prophecy regarding Obama's ignorance and inability to govern has been.
Ron Suskind's book Confidence Men portrays Barack Obama as being confounded by his duties as president. Some of the scenes depicted by Suskind would be comical if they were not so tragic for America.
For example, when Obama's experts assembled to discuss the scope and intricacies of the stimulus bill, Barack Obama was out of his depth. He was "surprisingly aloof in the conversation" and seemed "disconnected and less in control." His contributions were rare and consisted of blurting out such gems of wisdom as "There needs to be more inspiration here!" and "What about more smart grids" and -- one more that Newt Gingrich would appreciate -- "we need more moon shot" (pages 154-5).
Suskind writes:
Presidential exhortations more befitting a summer camp counselor will evoke such reactions.
Perhaps if Obama had been a better leader he would have been able to assemble better advisers who could have prepped him for the rigors of the office. He was counseled by Washington veteran Erskine Bowles to "leave your friends at home. They just create problems when you get to Chicago." So what did Obama do? He ignored Bowles (presaging how he later ignored the Simpson-Bowles commission on fiscal responsibility).
As Timothy Noah wrote in the New Republic:
Should we be surprised by Barack Obama's choice of his closest adviser? Lest we forget, he described Jeremiah Wright as his "moral compass" and "sounding board."
This reliance is a particular problem because Barack Obama runs the most insular White House in memory. He rarely reaches out to members of the other party for their advice and suggestions (despite the fact that they represent millions of voters), and when he does so, it is mostly for photo-ops. The sessions are not productive. For instance, in January 2009 he met with congressional leaders to discuss the stimulus package. Senator Kyl questioned the plan. Obama's response was "I won." A year later there was another bipartisan meeting to discuss health care reform where Obama gave the Republicans short shrift and unequal time because, he said, "I'm the president."
Republicans should not fret, though, since Democrats are also frozen out. Barack Obama does not reach out to them for their ideas or input. Liberal Washington Post columnists noted his refusal to touch base with fellow Democrats. In her column "The Where's Waldo Presidency,"Ruth Marcus noted the "startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action -- unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issues of the moment." Memo to Marcus: check the links, the basketball court, or the East Room jazz club.
His having remained aloof from budget negotiations and his absence from supercommittee talks made for such an abdication of leadership that they earned a rebuke from Erskine Bowles. And so it goes -- the Invisible Man hiding in the Oval Office or reveling in adoration showered on him at expensive elite fundraisers.
Compare and contrast this behavior with President Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, or John Kennedy. They were all policy wonks -- able and eager to reach out to experts and politicians from across the aisle, day or evening and, in the case of Lyndon Johnson, even when he was in the bathroom. Instead, Barack Obama seems to avoid interaction with those who could help him make wise decisions.
Indeed, he showed a similar aversion as a law lecturer at the University of Chicago.
There was a revealing New York Times report during the 2008 campaign that portrayed him as a faculty member at the University of Chicago Law School who refused to have intellectual repartee with other teachers. He would just walk right by other academics who were chatting about the law. There seems to be a pattern of someone who wants to avoid having his intellect scrutinized (tellingly, of course, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship). Is he fearful of revealing that he is not the grand intellect that besotted journalists have proclaimed him to be? Is this why he is tethered to the teleprompter? Do his handlers know something we do not?
Certainly when he goes off the prompter he says some truly ridiculous things (Hawaii is in Asia, there are 57 states in America, "spread the wealth").
Despite his early boast that "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors," the reality is far different than the claim. That might explain why he just decided to stop receiving daily economic briefings early in his presidency, despite the pain and suffering that millions of Americans have experienced during his reign, and why he would just walk out on Stephen Chu, his energy secretary, after only a few slides had been shown (the rudeness punctuated with "Steve, I'm done") that explained the complexities of the BP oil spill? After all, when one "knows more about policy" than mere mortals, who needs to waste one's time with experts -- even Nobel Prize-winning scientists?
Why should taxpayers even fund experts when we have an omniscient president making up fact-free policy? Perhaps we should just lay off thousands of people who toil away in the federal government trying to find facts. American taxpayers can just rely on Barack Obama.
Indeed, a good rule of thumb to judge Obama is to take his boast, reverse it, and then apply it to Obama. He seems out of his depth when discussing policy, so he avoids press conferences and becomes irate during the rare times a non-fawning journalist poses a challenging question to him. Or he is just reduced to "gibberish," as Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson described his answer to ABC News's Jake Tapper over a question regarding his broken promise to reduce debt .
Or he relies on fluff as deep as "hope," "change," and "yes we can," as he did during the campaign. Now he depends on "fat cats" and "fairness." They are easy to remember and are not as challenging for him as being able to comprehend and explain actual policy.
His vanity leads to an aversion to showing how unprepared he is to be president.
The best ticket in town would be a debate between Congressman Paul Ryan and Barack Obama regarding the huge deficits and debt Obama has imposed on us and our children. Ryan has a fluency and knowledge of these vital issues that dwarf those of Obama. Instead of cooperating with Ryan, he ambushes and insults him in public and for good measure later insulted opponents of his job bill for being unable to understand the "whole thing at once" so "we're going to break it into bite-sized pieces."
Psychologists would call this "projection."
This refusal to do the homework necessary to make good decisions is worrisome on several levels. It led to not only legislation being outsourced to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but also to foreign policy decisions that seem to come from either the Arab League or the United Nations, or from some sudden inspiration of his disconnect from reality. After all, the path of least resistance is just to do nothing, "lead from behind," or let others do the work. At times, he appears to have adopted a "hear no evil, see no evil" approach that may conflict with the facts and with statements made by his own officials but has the virtue of avoiding the mere prospect of having to make a decision.
Did he not do his research or ask experts when he violated, for example, agreements made with Israel regarding settlements? Or seek counsel when he broke agreements with East European allies to station missiles on their land as part of his feckless reset with Russia? Or violated the War Powers Act by waging war in Libya?
Perhaps ignorance is bliss -- as blissful as a sunny day on the fairway.
Now, of course, he has gone full-bore into campaign mode, and his decisions are geared to improving his own re-election prospects (the omnipresent David Plouffe, Obama's senior political adviser, has become a de facto decider-in-chief).
One can point to myriad examples that prompt inquiries along the lines of "how did he make that decision?"
Yet, Barack Obama claims that he has gotten better as president. One can certainly hope so. But recent evidence does not show so. Ryan Lizza recently wrote a New Yorker column that gave readers insight into how the president makes decisions, and it is as unappealing as watching sausage being made. Mickey Kaus at the Daily Caller distilled the essence of Obama's decision-making:
Kaus is incredulous that Obama can't just "be an executive who spend his days checking boxes, accepting the choices presented by his aides, never reaching outside them through unconventional channels or reaching unconventional thinkers, never throwing over the framework with which he is presented."
Why not?
Can't the presidency be a multiple choice exam? Those are always the easiest tests especially for unprepared people in over their heads -- as President Obama has proven himself to be.
Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/how_obama_makes_decisions.html#ixzz1n4mht5PW
very well thought out article ,interesting inner workings of the president .
There is a cliché in Washington. There are two things you do not want to see made: sausage and laws. To those we may add a third: Barack Obama's decisions.
Americans were warned by his opponents that Barack Obama was unprepared to be president. He had very little record to run on, and his one experience at being an executive was a failure -- his hushed up history running and running through a hundred million dollars as the head of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in Chicago. He had a record of avoiding tough decisions (the "voting present" issue); he was just a celebrity who was not ready for the 3 A.M. phone call. The presidency was not an "on the job" training program.
After three years we can judge those fears to be well-warranted.
There are many people who have problems with his policies. Barrels of ink and billions of pixels have been used to criticize his agenda. But surprisingly little analysis has gone into figuring out the mystery of how Obama actually goes about making decisions.
Fortunately, over the last few years journalists have been obsessing over Barack Obama almost as much as he has been obsessing over himself. They have provided various vignettes that give us a disturbing picture of a man floundering in his own careless if not willful ineptitude.
Americans should have been alert to the paucity of his own record of accomplishment. As a state senator he showed little interest in learning the intricacies of legislation. Instead, his political mentor, Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones, allowed him to "bill-jack" the legislative work of others and claim it as his own. This was a practice he continued as a U.S. senator. He was unprepared to do the homework and heavy lifting -- that was for others to toil over.
If there is one constant to Barack Obama's life, it is his lack of a work ethic. I never doubted that the Barack Obama had stellar grades in college and law school. He surfed the wave of grade inflation that has probably always been a factor in his success. This is pure speculation, but the reason why he never released his transcripts was probably because they would have revealed that he took easy left-wing courses that would have reflected poorly on his work ethic. The laziness has persisted.
A leader has to be well-informed, consult with good advisers and experts, read and research, and make a decision. He has to prepare himself to be a leader.
We saw signs during the campaign that he had little interest in the issues of the day. The late Dean Barnett wrote in the Weekly Standard in a column titled "How Smart is Obama":
And there's also what appears to be a lack of intellectual curiosity. Abe Greenwald of Commentary's blog calls our attention to this nugget from an enjoyable New York Times profile of Obama "body man" Reggie Love:Perhaps that was why he could so readily dismiss Iran as being a "tiny country" that posed no threat. And that was just one of many statements that had a Republican made them would have been broadcast far and wide.
Along the way, some unofficial rules have emerged between the candidate and his aide. From Mr. Obama: "One cardinal rule of the road is, we don't watch CNN, the news or MSNBC. We don't watch any talking heads or any politics. We watch 'SportsCenter' and argue about that."So how, pray tell, is Obama staying informed about what's going on in the world? When he's pressing the flesh at crummy rural diners and speaking before 75,000 adoring acolytes, he's talking, not listening. Don't you think a guy who might be president would be obsessed with world events? Don't you think that obsession would have driven him into the race? And don't you think as a potential wartime leader he might be using his downtime to study, just in case he wins?
Obama has made a habit of coming across like a man who doesn't know what he's talking about. That's bothersome enough, but what's more worrisome still is how comfortable he is with not knowing what he's talking about, and how convinced he seems that his rhetorical flourishes will obscure his ignorance. That strategy may work on the campaign trail, but it certainly won't help him govern.
If anything, his television-watching has gone downhill. Now he watches Spongebob Squarepants and Hannah Montana -- albeit with his daughters (a fact that calls into question his fathering ability but it is a step above having them hear Jeremiah Wright's racist and anti-American rants).
Alas, how true Barnett's prophecy regarding Obama's ignorance and inability to govern has been.
Ron Suskind's book Confidence Men portrays Barack Obama as being confounded by his duties as president. Some of the scenes depicted by Suskind would be comical if they were not so tragic for America.
For example, when Obama's experts assembled to discuss the scope and intricacies of the stimulus bill, Barack Obama was out of his depth. He was "surprisingly aloof in the conversation" and seemed "disconnected and less in control." His contributions were rare and consisted of blurting out such gems of wisdom as "There needs to be more inspiration here!" and "What about more smart grids" and -- one more that Newt Gingrich would appreciate -- "we need more moon shot" (pages 154-5).
Suskind writes:
Members of the team were perplexed...for the first time in the transition, people started to wonder just how prepared the man at the helm was.He repeated a similar sorry performance when he had a conference call with Speaker Pelosi and her staff to discuss the details of the planned stimulus bill. He shouted into the speakerphone that "this stimulus needs more inspiration! Pelosi and her staff visibly rolled their eyes."
Presidential exhortations more befitting a summer camp counselor will evoke such reactions.
Perhaps if Obama had been a better leader he would have been able to assemble better advisers who could have prepped him for the rigors of the office. He was counseled by Washington veteran Erskine Bowles to "leave your friends at home. They just create problems when you get to Chicago." So what did Obama do? He ignored Bowles (presaging how he later ignored the Simpson-Bowles commission on fiscal responsibility).
As Timothy Noah wrote in the New Republic:
He brought Axelrod and Jarrett to the White House, made Emanuel chief of staff, and eventually replaced Emanuel with Daley. The rap against Obama's White House management style became that he was too dependent on old friends and fellow Chicagoans.Almost all have left -- as have a number of others. But who stayed? Valerie Jarrett -- his own Svengali -- who plays a key role in Obama's decision-making process. Should President Obama rely upon her in making decisions? Her own record as a businesswoman is flecked with failure. Matthew Continetti recently characterized her, with good reason, as "The Worst White House Aide," who has a perfect record of giving bad advice.
Should we be surprised by Barack Obama's choice of his closest adviser? Lest we forget, he described Jeremiah Wright as his "moral compass" and "sounding board."
This reliance is a particular problem because Barack Obama runs the most insular White House in memory. He rarely reaches out to members of the other party for their advice and suggestions (despite the fact that they represent millions of voters), and when he does so, it is mostly for photo-ops. The sessions are not productive. For instance, in January 2009 he met with congressional leaders to discuss the stimulus package. Senator Kyl questioned the plan. Obama's response was "I won." A year later there was another bipartisan meeting to discuss health care reform where Obama gave the Republicans short shrift and unequal time because, he said, "I'm the president."
Republicans should not fret, though, since Democrats are also frozen out. Barack Obama does not reach out to them for their ideas or input. Liberal Washington Post columnists noted his refusal to touch base with fellow Democrats. In her column "The Where's Waldo Presidency,"Ruth Marcus noted the "startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action -- unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issues of the moment." Memo to Marcus: check the links, the basketball court, or the East Room jazz club.
His having remained aloof from budget negotiations and his absence from supercommittee talks made for such an abdication of leadership that they earned a rebuke from Erskine Bowles. And so it goes -- the Invisible Man hiding in the Oval Office or reveling in adoration showered on him at expensive elite fundraisers.
Compare and contrast this behavior with President Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, or John Kennedy. They were all policy wonks -- able and eager to reach out to experts and politicians from across the aisle, day or evening and, in the case of Lyndon Johnson, even when he was in the bathroom. Instead, Barack Obama seems to avoid interaction with those who could help him make wise decisions.
Indeed, he showed a similar aversion as a law lecturer at the University of Chicago.
There was a revealing New York Times report during the 2008 campaign that portrayed him as a faculty member at the University of Chicago Law School who refused to have intellectual repartee with other teachers. He would just walk right by other academics who were chatting about the law. There seems to be a pattern of someone who wants to avoid having his intellect scrutinized (tellingly, of course, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship). Is he fearful of revealing that he is not the grand intellect that besotted journalists have proclaimed him to be? Is this why he is tethered to the teleprompter? Do his handlers know something we do not?
Certainly when he goes off the prompter he says some truly ridiculous things (Hawaii is in Asia, there are 57 states in America, "spread the wealth").
Despite his early boast that "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors," the reality is far different than the claim. That might explain why he just decided to stop receiving daily economic briefings early in his presidency, despite the pain and suffering that millions of Americans have experienced during his reign, and why he would just walk out on Stephen Chu, his energy secretary, after only a few slides had been shown (the rudeness punctuated with "Steve, I'm done") that explained the complexities of the BP oil spill? After all, when one "knows more about policy" than mere mortals, who needs to waste one's time with experts -- even Nobel Prize-winning scientists?
Why should taxpayers even fund experts when we have an omniscient president making up fact-free policy? Perhaps we should just lay off thousands of people who toil away in the federal government trying to find facts. American taxpayers can just rely on Barack Obama.
Indeed, a good rule of thumb to judge Obama is to take his boast, reverse it, and then apply it to Obama. He seems out of his depth when discussing policy, so he avoids press conferences and becomes irate during the rare times a non-fawning journalist poses a challenging question to him. Or he is just reduced to "gibberish," as Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson described his answer to ABC News's Jake Tapper over a question regarding his broken promise to reduce debt .
Or he relies on fluff as deep as "hope," "change," and "yes we can," as he did during the campaign. Now he depends on "fat cats" and "fairness." They are easy to remember and are not as challenging for him as being able to comprehend and explain actual policy.
His vanity leads to an aversion to showing how unprepared he is to be president.
The best ticket in town would be a debate between Congressman Paul Ryan and Barack Obama regarding the huge deficits and debt Obama has imposed on us and our children. Ryan has a fluency and knowledge of these vital issues that dwarf those of Obama. Instead of cooperating with Ryan, he ambushes and insults him in public and for good measure later insulted opponents of his job bill for being unable to understand the "whole thing at once" so "we're going to break it into bite-sized pieces."
Psychologists would call this "projection."
This refusal to do the homework necessary to make good decisions is worrisome on several levels. It led to not only legislation being outsourced to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but also to foreign policy decisions that seem to come from either the Arab League or the United Nations, or from some sudden inspiration of his disconnect from reality. After all, the path of least resistance is just to do nothing, "lead from behind," or let others do the work. At times, he appears to have adopted a "hear no evil, see no evil" approach that may conflict with the facts and with statements made by his own officials but has the virtue of avoiding the mere prospect of having to make a decision.
Did he not do his research or ask experts when he violated, for example, agreements made with Israel regarding settlements? Or seek counsel when he broke agreements with East European allies to station missiles on their land as part of his feckless reset with Russia? Or violated the War Powers Act by waging war in Libya?
Perhaps ignorance is bliss -- as blissful as a sunny day on the fairway.
Now, of course, he has gone full-bore into campaign mode, and his decisions are geared to improving his own re-election prospects (the omnipresent David Plouffe, Obama's senior political adviser, has become a de facto decider-in-chief).
One can point to myriad examples that prompt inquiries along the lines of "how did he make that decision?"
Yet, Barack Obama claims that he has gotten better as president. One can certainly hope so. But recent evidence does not show so. Ryan Lizza recently wrote a New Yorker column that gave readers insight into how the president makes decisions, and it is as unappealing as watching sausage being made. Mickey Kaus at the Daily Caller distilled the essence of Obama's decision-making:
The President's decision-making method...seems to consist mainly of checking boxes on memos his aides have written for him. ... He's presented with a list of $60 billion in cuts to his core stimulus policies, and writes "OK." ... He "authorize[s] his staff" to plan a likely-to-be-useless "bipartisan 'fiscal summit,'" asks "what are the takeaways" is told he could "ask .. for continued dialogue," and doesn't write "this is all BS" and cancel the summit, which in fact proves useless. ... He's given a memo on cutting government waste and writes "This is good stuff-we need to constantly publicize our successful efforts here." Does he later notice that either the efforts or the attempt to publicize them were wildly ineffective? ... He's asked to check a box saying whether he wants to fund his "child nutrition agenda" out of the money for community colleges. ... He's asked about including medical malpractice reform in his health care bill, and writes ("in his characteristically cautious and reasonable style") that "we should explore it." ... He's presented a plan for a watered-down tax on multinationals or a very watered down tax. He writes "worth discussing."His handlers have been reduced to managing the president in a way more appropriate for a child in grade school.
Finally, he's presented with a classic three-box-con memo-two extreme boxes (big new jobs package, big new deficit package) and a safer middle box ("smaller, more symbolic" deficit efforts), a matrix clearly designed to get him to choose the middle option. He chooses the middle option.
Kaus is incredulous that Obama can't just "be an executive who spend his days checking boxes, accepting the choices presented by his aides, never reaching outside them through unconventional channels or reaching unconventional thinkers, never throwing over the framework with which he is presented."
Why not?
Can't the presidency be a multiple choice exam? Those are always the easiest tests especially for unprepared people in over their heads -- as President Obama has proven himself to be.
Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/how_obama_makes_decisions.html#ixzz1n4mht5PW
Monday, 20 February 2012
A Government Agency with Nothing To Do
Your tax dollars "at work":A federal agency created by the Conservative government to mediate complaints about Canadian mining operations abroad has spent more than $1.1 million in the past two years, but has yet to mediate anything.At the same time, the agency — the Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility Counsellor — has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel, entertainment, training, meetings, reports and other expenses, documents obtained by CBC News show. Renovations to a federal government office to accommodate the agency's three employees alone cost Canadian taxpayers $189,000.
Those Moderate Muslims!
They don't hate our "freedoms". They hate our guts.The usual Sunday-Morning-talk-show explanation for this is that Pakistan is hedging its strategic bets: Pakistani military leaders doubt the United States military can tame Afghanistan before American combat forces’ scheduled exit in 2013. And rather than see the country degenerate into absolute chaos (as occurred in the early 1990s, in the wake of the Soviet departure), Pakistani military leaders want to be in position to turn Afghanistan into a semi-orderly Pashtun-dominated client state that provides Islamabad with “strategic depth” against India. And the only way for them to do this is to co-opt the Taliban.This elaborate Great Game theorizing all makes sense. But there is another, simpler explanation: Most ordinary Pakistanis loathe America — indeed, not only America, but the whole of the non-Muslim world — and are only too happy to support jihad against the NATO forces next door in Afghanistan.
h/t Kevin
Are Canadians Really a Free People?
In a fascinating new column, George Jonas ponders why Canada is exporting democracy but importing tyranny.In the narcosis of “progress,” the liberal state clings to its dogmas, sacrileges, holy things and taboos. It guards them as jealously and enforces them as rigidly as the Taliban guards and enforces its version of Islam. Maybe it doesn’t enforce them as cruelly — maybe.Exaggeration? You decide. In the year 1300, a period we call the Dark Ages, a pig was tried for blasphemy in France. In the year 2000, 200 years into the Age of Enlightenment, on the threshold of the 21st century, in the United States of America, the authorities charged a six-year-old boy with sexual harassment for kissing a six-year-old girl.
Sunday, 19 February 2012
Sunday Afternoon War Porn…
A-10 rips apart a column of Taliban fighters.
ZIP | Sunday, February 19, 2012 @ 4:00 pm | 
| 18 Comments »
| 18 Comments » Featured Comment
Long time reader "Shaken", via email;As our journalists continue to cast themselves under a self-made asteroid, hundreds of thousands of small investors find themselves on a ledge, wondering which version of The Truth is the one that will inform their retirement or educational fund management decisions. Reporting in the mainstream financial press of late has been at best like a ride on the vomit comet: Greece soon to default; ECB funds a bailout; oops not quite - actually China is our white knight; not so fast - the Greeks cannot agree to terms... On and on it goes.Related - Among European nations, debt-ridden Greece is most exposed to Iranian oil disruption.
Can anyone be surprised then when the Al Gore's invention glows red hot with rumor and speculation as a worried public experiences daily cognitive disconnects while trying to reconcile what their lying eyes see and or read from the professional financial journalists?
Is it any wonder, then, that in such a climate of fear, deliberate disinformation, misdirection, obfuscation and even plain lying that blog posts such as this one become viral within hours of publication?
When one reads through this blog post, pieces seem to fall into place, and otherwise paradoxical events and statements begin to form into a cohesive and logical pattern. Believability ensues. Caring relationships ensure rapid dissemination.
Millions of people around the globe stand ready to do what our professional journalists have forgotten to do, or have otherwise been convinced not to do: be one of us looking out for each other.
Perhaps the blog post to which this note refers is merely the speculation if an intelligent and well meaning individual that has been swept up in the milieu of anxiety which grips us all ever tighter each day, but that us beside the point. The point is, this post went viral as though cycled in a Swiss particle accelerator, evidencing the appetite of the public for reliable information, an appetite no longer satisfied by journalists.
The veracity of the rumor will soon be established or dismissed. Reading it through, one cannot but help sense that there may just be a tinge of truth to the rumor, especially as it has a large degree of congruence with the latest musings at established and credible blogs such as Mish's and Zerohedge.
If this rumor turns out to be true, and the MSM has once more been scooped by the humble blogosphere, it will be perhaps the nearest of the near misses - the biggest story in the lives of many today, unreported, either by malfeasance, or incompetence. Or both.
Saturday, 18 February 2012
By Kathy Shaidle on Friday, February 17th, 2012 | No Comments
I love to say we told you so.
My husband broke the original Mosqueteria story.
Now he has this followup, and adds:
My husband broke the original Mosqueteria story.
Now he has this followup, and adds:
Paging Barbara Hall, Paging the TDSB, Paging Dalton McGuinty. Look we all know why McGuinty’s Liberal Government allowed the Islamisization of our erstwhile secular public schools. The Liberals are craven vote whores who sacrificed principle and the security of your family & country to win Muslim heavy ridings.
Remember that.
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