Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Political Digest for May 18, 2011

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. Help your friends and relatives stay informed by passing the digest on.

The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
Info about my book. All royalties go to wounded veterans. Please forward and post where possible.

The Coming Collapse now available as an e-book!
They tell me the have versions that will work on all readers. The price for an e-book is only $7.99, but because of reduced production costs, the veterans’ charity will still get the same royalty. And I’ll still get nothing!

Excerpt: It is a universal truth that some are won over by love and others through fear. Those without a natural malice toward others are naturally drawn by acts of love and charity. Those who harbor ill-will and whose natural tendency it is to harm others, typically require a solid dose of fear to encourage change in their inclinations toward others. It is wise to keep this in mind as we peruse the deluge of reporting and Monday morning quarterbacking of the unfolding events following the demise of Osama Bin Laden. The only truly wise thing I have heard from the typical news agencies and prognosticators in the past two weeks has come from an unlikely source. During Mike Huckabee's show Sunday night, Ted Nugent was asked if he thought the removal of Osama Bin Laden from the roles of the living would have a significant affect on the war/unwar. His answer was definitive and without hesitation; No. Score one for common sense and understanding!

Slaves to Words By Thomas Sowell
Excerpt: We could definitely use another Abraham Lincoln to emancipate us all from being slaves to words. In the midst of a historic financial crisis of unprecedented government spending, and a national debt that outstrips even the debt accumulated by the reckless government spending of previous administration, we are still enthralled by words and ignoring realities. President Barack Obama's constant talk about "millionaires and billionaires" needing to pay higher taxes would be a bad joke, if the consequences were not so serious. Even if the income tax rate were raised to 100 percent on millionaires and billionaires, it would still not cover the trillions of dollars the government is spending. More fundamentally, tax rates -- whatever they are -- are just words on paper. Only the hard cash that comes in can cover government spending. History has shown repeatedly, under administrations of both political parties, that there is no automatic correlation between tax rates and tax revenues.

US charges 6 Pakistani Americans, including 2 imams, with aiding Taliban
Didn't get the "Islam is a Religion of Peace" memo. ~Bob. Excerpt: The US Department of Justice has charged six Pakistani Americans today with aiding the Pakistani Taliban. Three of those charged, including two imams at mosques in southern Florida, have been arrested, while three others are currently in Pakistan. The six people have been identified as Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan; his two sons, Irfan and Izhar; his daughter Amina and her son Zeb; and another man known as Faisal Ali Rehman. Hafiz and Izhar were arrested in Florida today, while Irfan was arrested in Los Angeles. Amina, Zeb, and Rehman are currently in Pakistan, beyond the reach of US officials. Both Hafiz and Izhar are imams at mosques in southern Florida. Hafiz is the imam at the Miami Mosque, which is also known as the Flagler Mosque. Izhar is the imam at the Jamaat Al-Mu'mineen Mosque in Margate. ,,, "On another occasion in September 2010, Hafiz Khan participated in a conversation in which he stated that he would provide that individual with contact information for Pakistani Taliban militants in Karachi, and upon hearing that mujahideen in Afghanistan had killed seven American soldiers, declared his wish that God kill 50,000 more."

South Florida Imams Accused of Taliban Support
Excerpt: Two South Florida imams and a relative made initial court appearances Monday after being arrested over the weekend for alleged material support to the Pakistani Taliban. Hafiz Khan, 76, along with two sons and a daughter, a grandson and a Pakistani man, are charged with four counts of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and actually providing the support. Like his father, Izhar Khan is an imam at a South Florida mosque. The two, along with Irfan Khan, were arrested Saturday. The three other defendants are believed to be in Pakistan.

Elevating liberty as a value for Muslims
Excerpt: Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (which describes its mission as advocating for "the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom"), may be the most important American Muslim you never heard of. He doesn't, as leaders of groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations do, spend his time accusing his fellow citizens of Islamophobia. He doesn't serve as a mouthpiece for the Palestinian Authority. (Instead he describes himself as "pro-Israel.") And he certainly doesn't buy the idea that radical Islam is irrelevant to the war on terror. Moreover, he heads an organization dedicated to "confronting the ideologies of political Islam and openly countering the common belief that the Muslim faith is inextricably rooted to the concept of the Islamic State (Islamism)." For all these reasons he may also be the most vilified American Muslim.

Obama shows serial indecision on foreign policy
Excerpt: An administration that lacks a consistent foreign policy philosophy has nevertheless established a predictable foreign policy pattern. A popular revolt takes place in country X. President Obama is caught by surprise and says little. A few days later an administration spokesman weakly calls for “reform.” A few more days of mounting protests and violence follow. Then, after an internal debate that spills out into the media, the president decides he must do something. But hoping to keep expectations low, his actions are limited in scope. By this point, a strategic opportunity is missed and the protesters in country X feel betrayed. (…) It is no longer credible to blame these failures on inexperience — an argument that years of experience tends to undermine. A novice can learn from his mistakes. Obama apparently doesn't view these outcomes as mistaken.

Worth Reading: Visegrad: A New European Military Force
Excerpt: With the Palestinians demonstrating and the International Monetary Fund in turmoil, it would seem odd to focus this week on something called the Visegrad Group. But this is not a frivolous choice. What the Visegrad Group decided to do last week will, I think, resonate for years, long after the alleged attempted rape by Dominique Strauss-Kahn is forgotten and long before the Israeli-Palestinian issue is resolved. The obscurity of the decision to most people outside the region should not be allowed to obscure its importance. The region is Europe — more precisely, the states that had been dominated by the Soviet Union. The Visegrad Group, or V4, consists of four countries — Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary — and is named after two 14th century meetings held in Visegrad Castle in present-day Hungary of leaders of the medieval kingdoms of Poland, Hungary and Bohemia. The group was reconstituted in 1991 in post-Cold War Europe as the Visegrad Three (at that time, Slovakia and the Czech Republic were one). The goal was to create a regional framework after the fall of Communism. This week the group took an interesting new turn.

Bombing Libya Without Congressional Approval
Excerpt: If a recent report by The New York Times is accurate, the Obama administration is attempting to figure out a way to continue bombing Libya without the Congressional approval required by the War Powers Resolution of 1973. The act requires the president to terminate the prosecution of such activities 60 days after formal notification of Congress regarding the deployment of forces “into hostilities or into situation (sic) where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.” The 60 day period ends on May 20th. “Mindful of the passage of time including the end of the two-month period, we are in the process of reviewing our role, and the president will be making decisions going forward in terms of what he sees as appropriate for us to do,” said James Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, in response to a question about the deadline at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last Thursday. Steinberg also provided written testimony to the Committee outlining U.S. and NATO objectives in the country in which he concluded the “way forward is not easy. It will take sustained effort. And it will take continued close consultation with Congress.” (Remember the good old days, when Obama and Biden were ready to impeach Bush if he attacked without Congressional approval? I suppose they think the "Commerce Clause" gives them the power to bomb anyone without approval, since bombs are sold in interstate commerce. ~Bob)

Economics 101
I dunno. The public doesn't vote like it has a clue about economics. ~Bob. Excerpt: For the basic issues are by no means complex. We recall that the word “economy” comes from the Greek oekonomia, namely, household affairs, domestic management, as Aristotle lays it out in the Politics. High finance and market speculation, for all their daunting ramifications, are only an esoteric derivative of straightforward economics. Of course, managing a nation involves many more factors and “parameters” than attending to the family budget. But the underlying structure is the same. As every responsible householder is aware, there are, in effect, four basic principles that must be taken into account to ensure economic viability. 1. You must earn and produce. 2. You must try to spend less than you earn. 3. The remainder should be saved or carefully invested in case of emergency and for the future. 4. And if you borrow beyond your present means, for reasons that are deemed necessary (e.g., mortgages, auto purchases, domestic appliances, education, etc.), there must be an empirical presumption of feasible repayment that does not lead to destitution.

FBI Task Force Refuses to Join 'Hyped' New York City Terror Case
Muslims killing Jews isn't terrorism--just business as usual. The FBI knows that Obama wouldn't look kindly on suggestions to the contrary. ~Bob. Excerpt: The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force has opted out of the case of two New York men allegedly involved in a plot to blow up a local synagogue over concerns it is not a bona fide terrorism case, WNYC reports. Two federal law enforcement sources, who spoke to the station on condition of anonymity, said the FBI did not take the case of the two alleged New York City terrorists because the end result was being over-hyped and the agency felt the case would not hold up in court. Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne rejected the Federal critique, saying, "When somebody acquires weapons and plans to bomb the largest synagogue in Manhattan he can find, what do you call it, mischief?"

Thailand: Jihadists murder two Buddhist monks
Excerpt: Clearly Buddhist monks constitute a serious threat to the umma.

Agents followed new politically correct rules when arresting Florida imam accused of funding Taliban
Excerpt: The feds are trying to win the trust of the Muslim community. It never seems to occur to anyone, in light of all the jihad plots that have been uncovered in the U.S. over the last two years, that the Muslim community should be trying to win the trust of the feds.

Do no harm: How a Gazan baby’s life became tangled in politics
Thanks for saving my kid--I hope he grows up to murder your kids. Sick culture. ~Bob. Excerpt: Raz Somech, director of immunology at Israel’s largest pediatric hospital, is trained to save children’s lives. But in the Middle East, even a heroic struggle to keep a baby alive can become entangled in the region’s politics. The documentary Precious Life has turned the unassuming Dr. Somech into a celebrity with its portrayal of his effort to save a Palestinian baby born without an immune system. On Monday night he will be the star attraction at a screening of the film in Montreal as part of the Israel Film Festival ... And even after the funding has been secured and the transplant performed, Mohammed’s mother, Raida, makes a statement that calls into question all the efforts to save his life. As she and the filmmaker, Israeli TV reporter Shlomi Eldar, discuss the status of Jerusalem, Raida says she would be proud to see her son grow up to be a suicide bomber.

Tunisia arrests al Qaeda suspects carrying bombs
Excerpt: Tunisian security forces have arrested two people suspected of being members of al Qaeda near the Libyan border who were carrying an explosives belt and several bombs, a security source told Reuters on Sunday. The men, thought to be members of al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM), were arrested near Ramada in the south of the country. The men were carrying Afghan identity papers and were of Libyan and Algerian origin, the source said, adding that they were also connected to two men arrested in Tunisia last week. Arab and Western officials have said that al Qaeda could be exploiting the Libyan conflict to acquire weapons and smuggle them into other countries. (Tell me again why we are helping these folks in Libya? ~Bob.)

Surprise! ~Bob. Excerpt: Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district. That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.

U.S. speeds up direct talks with Taliban
These people see negotiation as an admission of weakness. They will say anything to get us out and get back in power, but, like the North Vietnamese communists in 1973, they will keep no promises no matter what they sign. Obama is looking for “Defeat with Dignity.” ~Bob. Excerpt: The administration has accelerated direct talks with the Taliban, initiated several months ago, that U.S. officials say they hope will enable President Obama to report progress toward a settlement of the Afghanistan war when he announces troop withdrawals in July. A senior Afghan official said a U.S. representative attended at least three meetings in Qatar and Germany, one as recently as “eight or nine days ago,” with a Taliban official considered close to Mohammad Omar, the group’s leader.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Destroyed Private-Sector Jobs
Excerpt: In a new study, Timothy Conley, an economist at the University of Western Ontario, and Bill Dupor, an economist at the Ohio State University, use variation across states to estimate the number of jobs created or saved as a result of the spending component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The key sources of identification are ARRA highway funding and the intensity of state sales tax usage. Conley and Dupor estimate the ARRA created or saved 450,000 government-sector jobs and destroyed or forestalled one million private sector jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. The majority of destroyed or forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services. The best-case scenario for an effectual ARRA has the Act creating or saving a net 659,000 jobs, mainly in government.

UK’s NHS Seeks to Limit Care for Smokers, Obese
Excerpt: British citizens who smoke, drink, or tip the scales because they’ve eaten too many fish and chips could soon be denied medical treatment for lifestyle-related illnesses. It’s a system the United States will be forced to implement under ObamaCare. Great Britain’s government-run health care system, the National Health Service (NHS), has long considered limiting coverage for people with illnesses deemed to be lifestyle-related. In 2005 the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the NHS's guiding body, advised that smokers and obese people be refused health care. Now NHS North Yorkshire and York is preventing certain operations for the obese or smokers because they say unhealthy lifestyles lower their chance of success. Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, told UK reporters, “These policies are being introduced because of financial constraints,” said Gerada.

US government hits the debt ceiling
Excerpt: The U.S. government officially hit the federal debt limit Monday, prompting the Treasury Department to invoke new measures to prevent a default. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tapped into two government employee pension funds to free up cash, and warned in a letter to congressional leaders of “catastrophic economic consequences” if the ceiling is not hiked. (Fire up the printing presses. ~Bob.)

Senate bid would be colossal risk for fast-rising Paul Ryan
Excerpt: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is confronting a dilemma: run for the Senate and potentially vault into a GOP majority in the upper chamber, or stay put and keep climbing the House leadership ladder. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) announced Friday he wouldn’t seek a fifth term next year, opening one of the state’s Senate seats for the first time in more than two decades. Ryan is thought to consider time in the Senate a precursor to launching a bid for the White House. He’s already ruled out a 2012 presidential bid, but making a Senate run could also be a huge risk for the seven-term congressman.

Ryan declines run for Wisconsin's open Senate seat
Excerpt: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) won't run for Senate in 2012, he confirmed Tuesday. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said he would prefer to stay in the House, where he enjoys a key perch of power at the center of Washington's prolonged fight over spending. “I am grateful for the tremendous outpouring of encouragement that I have received from my friends and supporters since Senator Kohl announced he would not seek re-election to the U.S. Senate. For my family and me, the most important factor in making this decision was determining where I could make the biggest difference," he said in a statement.

Time Travel and Causation in the Climate Debate
Excerpt: A fundamental principle of physics is that causation is unidirectional in time. An event must follow its cause. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but you will soon see why I begin with such a simple statement. Outside of temporal anomalies in sci-fi movies, time travel is forbidden by thermodynamics, among other reasons (and not just because you could kill yourself at an earlier time and create a multiple-worlds crisis which calls for Spock to give future technologies to past counterparts of Scotty…). In the climate change debate, by contrast to physics, the force of GHGs and human evil is so great that it transcends time. Bad things happen BEFORE their cause. It is simply amazing. …[P]articularly in blog debates or press commentaries, the melting of glaciers is given as indisputable evidence for warming (often in responding to concerns like the CRU email scandal or the surfacestations project). Let’s consider the well-documented case of glaciers in Europe. During the LIA glaciers advanced and crushed many farms and villages. Between 1750 and 1800 many began to recede. They were thus receding for between 150 and 200 years before human activity could have been the cause, yet this melting is taken as proof of AGW.

Solar farm near Climax losing money because of property taxes
Excerpt: Producing 225,592 kilowatt hours of electricity in its first year of operation, a solar farm in eastern Kalamazoo County that went online in early 2010 has exceeded expectations. Also exceeding expectations is the property tax, said Sam Field, a Kalamazoo attorney and one of the owners of Kalamazoo Solar. The $27,689 tax bill for the Charleston Township property means that the owners are losing money, even when being paid a premium price of 45 cents a kilowatt hour by Consumers Energy, he said. “That Michigan property tax burden works out to a cost of 12.3 cents per kilowatt hour,” Field said. “That amount is more than the retail value of the electricity.” For comparison, Field researched the property tax for the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Covert Township along Lake Michigan. He found that the annual real and personal property taxes for Palisades are just over $12 million or .2 cents per kilowatt hour. (At least in theory, “property taxes” are based on the value of the “property” as property, not the income, if any, the property produces. Otherwise, most home owners—who earn little or nothing on their “property”—would be receiving negative tax bills (where the town owed them, instead of the other way around). Solar farms take a lot of land that might be more productively used for some other purpose. Perhaps as parking lots. Ron P. Or growing subsidized corn for ethanol. ~Bob.)

A different “Coexist” bumper sticker

Give Victory a Chance
Excerpt: The other day a scholarly panel at the University of Arkansas' branch here was discussing what everybody else in the country had been talking about, too: The causes and effects of the long-awaited demise of one Osama bin Laden at the hands of parties well known and much admired: SEAL Team 6. One of the speakers, the university's director of international studies, said the SEALs' signal achievement vindicated this country's counter-terrorism strategy. No arguing with that. But then he had to add that the highly effective commando raid illustrated -- by contrast -- how costly and ineffective the whole war in Afghanistan had been. To which I would add only this scholarly comment: Huh? Where does our foreign-policy expert think the choppers carrying these SEALs came from -- Mars?

Obama's Anti-Business Stance
Excerpt: This summer, the huge Boeing assembly plant here will begin producing 787 Dreamliners -- up to three a month, priced at $185 million apiece. It will, unless the National Labor Relations Board, controlled by Democrats and encouraged by Barack Obama's reverberating silence, gets its way. Last month -- 17 months after Boeing announced plans to build here, and with the $2 billion plant nearing completion -- the NLRB, collaborating with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, charged that Boeing's decision violated the rights of its unionized workers in Washington state, where some Dreamliners are assembled and still will be even after the plant here is operational. The NLRB has read a 76-year-old statute (the 1935 Wagner Act) perversely, disregarded almost half a century of NLRB and Supreme Court rulings, and patently misrepresented statements by Boeing officials. South Carolina is one of 22 right-to-work states, where workers cannot be compelled to join a union.

We need leaders like this today
During World War II, an aide read to Churchill an account in a tabloid: A seventy-five-year-old man on a cold January day-with the temperature thirty-five degrees below freezing had propositioned a nineteen-year-old girl to have sex on the grass in Hyde Park. Churchill replied to the aide, "Over seventy-five! Below-zero temperature! It makes you proud to be an Englishman!"

Arnold Schwarzenegger Love Child Reignites Debate About Private Lives Of Politicians
Excerpt: And it matters, she [and American attorney] says, when a politician loudly attacks others’ values and builds an entire platform around so-called family values: Eliot Spitzer, when he was Attorney General before becoming Governor of New York, campaigned vigorously to prosecute and close down brothels. In 2008, he had to resign as governor after it came out he was soliciting prostitutes. That kind hypocrisy is so laughable one has to wonder about his sanity. Spitzer now has a primetime talk show on CNN. Never underestimate the power of redemption in American myth-making… America loves nothing more than a comeback. The real reason Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted his foibles to America? He has a fifth Terminator film in the works.

Bernard-Henri Defends Accused IMF Director
Excerpt: What I know is that nothing, no suspicion whatever (for let’s remind ourselves that, as I write these lines, we are dealing only with suspicions!), permits the entire world to revel in the spectacle, this morning, of this handcuffed figure, his features blurred by 30 hours of detention and questioning, but still proud. What I know as well is that nothing, no earthly law, should also allow another woman, his wife, admirable in her love and courage, to be exposed to the slime of a public opinion drunk on salacious gossip and driven by who knows what obscure vengeance. And what I know even more is that the Strauss-Kahn I know, who has been my friend for 20 years and who will remain my friend, bears no resemblance to this monster, this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast now being described nearly everywhere. Charming, seductive, yes, certainly; a friend to women and, first of all, to his own woman, naturally, but this brutal and violent individual, this wild animal, this primate, obviously no, it’s absurd.

Obama's Inexcusable Indecision on Syria
Excerpt: “The defining characteristic of the Obama administration's response to revolution in the Arab world has been its slowness," the Washington Post editorialized last month. Nowhere has this diffidence been more pronounced -- or less defensible -- than in connection with Syria. (Actually, there is one other, even more clear-cut case: Iran. Ron P.)

The Agency That Would Not Die
Excerpt: The EAC was intended to modernize state election equipment across the country. In 2002, the “Help America Vote Act” was passed, creating the agency but giving it a strict limit of three years of existence. To help states upgrade their equipment, the EAC doled out a staggering $4 billion. The commission distributed its allotted money and completed its studies. Yet it is still operating in 2011 — an agency without a mission with nearly 50 full-time federal employees. Its budget has doubled to $18 million, without having anything to do. As a testament to its uselessness, in the last two fiscal years President Obama’s budget officials “zeroed out” its core grant-making budget. Further, the commission cannot do business, as it doesn’t have a quorum of at least three commissioners. Two of the commissioners — both Democrats –have resigned, one of them under a political cloud. (Quick! Someone call Dr. van Helsing to bring the wooden stakes! I’ve heard the British finally closed down a system of “coast-watchers” at the end of WWII; they were still watching to warn of the invasion—by Napoleon’s army. This would be amusing if it was some other country’s money. Ron P.)

The End of an Idea — Why Affirmative Action Should Stop
Excerpt: First, what exactly is race today in America in which intermarriage and immigration have increasingly made it — and its ugly twin racial purity — often irrelevant? We are no longer a country largely 85-90% “white” and 10-12% “black,” but something almost hard to categorize in racial terms. Do university admission officers adopt the 1/16, one-drop racial rule of the old Confederacy? Does being one fourth African-American qualify one for consideration; three-fourths Japanese; half Mexican-American? Does a simple surname add — and often by intent — authenticity and credulity? The son of Linda Hernandez and Jason Smith — a Bobby Smith — is not considered, without genealogical investigation, Hispanic, but the son of Linda Smith and Jason Hernandez — a Roberto Hernandez of equal 50/50 ancestry — is almost instantly? If so, is race a state of mind and personal choice more than circumstances of birth? What exactly is white and what a minority — a dark-skinned Armenian-American is the former, a light-skinned Colombian American is the latter?

Obama's debt-limit truth-twistting
Excerpt: The battle over raising the federal debt limit is pretty confusing to most Americans -- and it doesn't help matters that the Obama administration is twisting the facts in a bid to get the public on its side against congressional budget-cutters. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, in particular, is playing the "dire warning" game. Back in April, he wrote Congress: "If the debt limit is not increased by May 16," Treasury will have to take "extraordinary measures . . . to temporarily postpone the date the United States would other wise default on its obligations." Well, here we are on May 17, with no sign that the sky has fallen. As his deadline approached last week, Geithner issued a new doomsday alert for Aug. 2, and took the rhetoric up a notch: "Default . . . would have a catastrophic economic impact . . . [including] sharply higher interest rates . . . declining home values and . . . [and an even worse] financial crisis." At risk are "military salaries, Social Security and Medicare payments, interest on debt, unemployment benefits and tax refunds … "

Understanding Liberals
Excerpt: Suppose the true source of income was a gigantic pile of money meant to be shared equally among Americans. The reason some people have more money than others is because they got to the pile first and greedily took an unfair share. That being the case, justice requires that the rich give something back, and if they won't do so voluntarily, Congress should confiscate their ill-gotten gains and return them to their rightful owners. A competing liberal implied assumption about the sources of income is that income is distributed, as in distribution of income. There might be a dealer of dollars. The reason why some people have more dollars than others is because the dollar dealer is a racist, a sexist, a multinationalist or a conservative. (Before “wealth” can be distributed or earned or stolen, it has to be created; wealth is the product of someone's creative mind. In addition to getting some of the other steps wrong, Liberals ignore this step completely. Ron P.)

Excerpt: A story in today’s Philadelphia Daily News shows why it’s so important that citizens be allowed to videotape cops – it can be citizens’ only way to fight back against police abuse of power.

And it eats time better spent on productive things. I watch very little, though liberal readers of my blog assume I’m following Fox 24/7. ~Bob. Excerpt: Television makes us fat, lazy, inattentive, unsociable, mistrustful, materialistic — and unhappy about all of that. It cheapens political discourse, weakens family ties, prevents face-to-face socializing, and exposes kids to sex and inures them to violence. Yet Americans can’t get enough. In 1950, just 9 percent of U.S. households owned a television; by 1960 it was 90 percent, and by the year 2000 TVs were just about everywhere. Now the average U.S. household has more TVs than people.

Video Page About Vietnam's Blueprint Of Ethnic Cleansing Against Montagnards
And where are the American liberals who supported the Vietnamese Communists? ~Bob.

Vietnamese MIA remains in Laos buried, DNA samples collected
Excerpt: The military command in central Vietnam on Saturday buried the remains of 141 Vietnamese soldiers who were killed in action when they were dispatched to Laos during the Vietnam War. Fourteen of the 141 soldiers were identified, and DNA samples of the remaining 127 were collected before burial for future identification, according to the Military Zone 4 High Command. (Of course, according to the Geneva Accords, there were to be no forays of Vietnamese military into neighboring countries. Interesting that they now admit to sending soldiers there starting as early as 1946, and that so far as many as 5,000 bodies have been found. And the purpose was to provide "assistance to Laos" against the French and US? Laos wasn't in armed conflict with the French or the US in those years. The truth is somewhat different, and related only to the communist exploitation of Laos as a cross-border base for their operations in Viet Nam. –Del)

How Drudge Has Stayed on Top
Excerpt: Using data from the Nielsen Company to examine the top 21 news sites on the Web, the report suggests that Mr. Drudge, once thought of as a hothouse flower of the Lewinsky scandal, is now more powerful in driving news than the half-billion folks on Facebook. (According to the study, Facebook accounted for 3.3 percent of the referrals to news sites, less than half as many as generated by The Drudge Report.) “When you look at his influence, it cuts across all kind of sites, both traditional news outlets and online-only sites,” said Amy S. Mitchell, the deputy director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism and one of the authors of the study. “He was an early and powerful force in setting the news agenda and has somehow maintained that even as there has been a great deal of change in the way people get their news.”

Iraqi donkey Smoke touches down in US
Excerpt: Mission accomplished. Smoke the Donkey has completed his journey from Iraq to the United States, landing at JFK International Airport in New York. SPCA International, at the forefront of efforts to get the Marine mascot to the US, confirmed at 9am on Thursday that Smoke had touched down. Working through the paperwork and bureaucracy to get Smoke out of Iraq and into Turkey, then on to the US, was no easy task, but he is now nearly at his new home in Omaha, Nebraska. (I've heard of and been a part of adopting dogs, cats and other critters, but never a donkey. --MasterGuns)

Welcome to Politiskt Inkorrekt, or Politically Incorrect, which is a hint to what this site is all about.
Excerpt: We are an alternative Swedish media source for people who are fed up with the ways of the old, established media and politicians in this country, who all share the belief that the impacts of the ”new” Sweden may not be discussed – and those who do are racists, nazis and all the usual flattering things. We tell it like it is, straight, without any kind of censorship. PI (short for Politically Incorrect) started in October of 2008 and has since then grown rapidly. We are now one of the most visited sites in Sweden. We are pro-USA and pro-Israel. Swedish mainstream media consists largely of left wingers and extreme liberals who refuse to write and report about the big changes this country, of only nine million inhabitants, is undergoing in the light of Europe’s most generous immigration policy. Politically Incorrect’s mere existence is a side effect, if you will, of the corrupt media.

Every Picture Tells A Story
Excerpt: You don’t have to understand Swedish to get the point about the photos posted yesterday at Politiskt Inkorrekt. Follow the link and take a look at the Old Sweden versus the New Sweden. My translation of the text in the post: A school photo says so much — The pictures below are of fourth-year class members. The top two of the old Sweden are from the 1970s through the 1990s. The two beneath are from Islamic schools in Sweden in the year 2011.

Allen West: Democrats' Prime 2012 Target
Excerpt: Republican Allen West represents a blue-leaning, senior-heavy district—and he’s sticking to his vote to privatize Medicare. Patricia Murphy talks to the Iraq vet about his risky stance. If any House Republican had a ready-made excuse to vote against Paul Ryan’s budget-slashing plan, it would be Allen West, the blunt-spoken freshman with a special talent for enraging Democrats. The retired Army colonel, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is a crowd-pleasing Tea Party favorite in his South Florida district, and one of two black congressmen belonging to the GOP. That’s in part why Democrats have made him a prime target in 2012, viewing the West seat as just the sort they can pick off with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket.

Obama's dilemma: Why Libya and not Syria?
Excerpt: The central question President Obama will have to answer this week as he defines his vision for the Middle East is this: Why Libya and not Syria? Two months after he dispatched U.S. fighter jets to Libya as part of a NATO campaign to aid anti-government rebels bent on ousting President Moammar Gadhafi, the president is being widely criticized for not taking similarly strong action in Syria, Israel's neighbor, which is facing the same kind of destabilizing popular uprising as Libya. "Those who threaten Israel also threaten us," National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said. But that's all the more reason, analysts said, for Obama to act more boldly on Syria.

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