The ‘flexibility’ doctrine

The ‘flexibility’ doctrine
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: March 29

“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it’s important for him [Vladimir Putin] to give me space. . . . This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”

— Barack Obama to Dmitry Medvedev, open mike, March 26

You don’t often hear an American president secretly (he thinks) assuring foreign leaders that concessions are coming their way, but they must wait because he’s seeking reelection and he dares not tell his own people.

Not at all, spun a White House aide in major gaffe-control mode. The president was merely explaining that arms control is too complicated to be dealt with in a year in which both Russia and the United States hold presidential elections.

Rubbish. First of all, to speak of Russian elections in the same breath as ours is a travesty. Theirs was a rigged, predetermined farce. Putin ruled before. Putin rules after.

Obama spoke of the difficulties of the Russian presidential “transition.” What transition? It’s a joke. It had no effect on Putin’s ability to negotiate anything.

As for the U.S. election, the problem is not that the issue is too complicated but that if people knew Obama’s intentions of flexibly caving on missile defense, they might think twice about giving him a second term.

After all, what is Obama doing negotiating on missile defense in the first place? We have no obligation to do so. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a relic of the Cold War, died in 2002.

We have an unmatched technological lead in this area. It’s a priceless strategic advantage that for three decades Russia has been trying to get us to yield. Why give any of it away?

To placate Putin, Obama had already in 2009 abruptly canceled the missile-defense system the Poles and Czechs had agreed to host in defiance of Russian threats. Why give away more?

It’s unfathomable. In trying to clean up the gaffe, Obama emphasized his intent to “reduce nuclear stockpiles” and “reduce reliance on nuclear weapons.” In which case, he should want to augment missile defenses, not weaken, dismantle or bargain them away. The fewer nukes you have for deterrence, the more you need nuclear defenses. If your professed goal is nuclear disarmament, as is Obama’s, eliminating defenses is completely illogical.

Nonetheless, Obama is telling the Russians not to worry, that once past “my last election” and no longer subject to any electoral accountability, he’ll show “more flexibility” on missile defense. It’s yet another accommodation to advance his cherished Russia “reset” policy.

Why? Hasn’t reset been failure enough?

Let’s do the accounting. In addition to canceling the Polish/Czech missile-defense system, Obama gave the Russians accession to the World Trade Organization, signed a START Treaty that they need and we don’t (their weapons are obsolete and deteriorating rapidly), and turned a scandalously blind eye to their violations of human rights and dismantling of democracy. Obama even gave Putin a congratulatory call for winning his phony election.

In return? Russia consistently watered down or obstructed sanctions on Iran, completed Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr, provides to this day Bashar al-Assad with huge arms shipments used to massacre his own people (while rebuilding the Soviet-era naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus), conducted a virulently anti-American presidential campaign on behalf of Putin, pressured Eastern Europe and threatened Georgia.

On which of “all these issues” — Syria, Iran, Eastern Europe, Georgia, human rights — is Obama ready to offer Putin yet more flexibility as soon as he gets past his last election? Where else will he show U.S. adversaries more flexibility? Yet more aid to North Korea? More weakening of tough Senate sanctions against Iran?

Can you imagine the kind of pressure a reelected Obama will put on Israel, the kind of anxiety he will induce from Georgia to the Persian Gulf, the nervousness among our most loyal East European friends who, having been left out on a limb by Obama once before, are now wondering what new flexibility Obama will show Putin — the man who famously proclaimed that the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century was Russia’s loss of its Soviet empire?

They don’t know. We don’t know. We didn’t even know this was coming — until the mike was left open. Only Putin was to know. “I will transmit this information to Vladimir,” Medvedev assured Obama.

Added Medvedev: “I stand with you.” A nice endorsement from Putin’s puppet, enough to chill friends and allies, democrats and dissidents, all over the world.
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To read a related article, click here.
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To read another article by Charles Krauthammer, click here.

The State Department's Jerusalem Syndrome

The State Department's Jerusalem Syndrome
By Caroline Glick
3/31/2012

I went to the US Consulate this week to take care of certain family business. It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I think it is ironic that two days after my extremely unpleasant experience at the consulate, State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refused to say what the capital of Israel is. It was ironic because anyone who visits the consulate knows that the US's position on Jerusalem is in perfect alignment with that of Israel's worst enemies.

Last time I went to the consulate was in 2007. At that time the building was located in the middle of an Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem. It was unpleasant. In fact it was fairly frightening. Once inside the building I couldn't shake the feeling that the Americans had gone out of their way to make Israeli-American Jews feel uncomfortable and vaguely threatened.

But then, I was able to console myself with the thought that the US has been upfront about its rejection of Israel's right to assert its sovereignty over eastern Jerusalem. By treating Jews as foreigners in their capital city and behaving as though it belongs to the Arabs by among other things hiring only Arabs as local employees, the US officials on site were simply implementing a known US policy. True, I deeply oppose the policy, but no one was asking me, and no one was hiding anything from me.

The new consulate is much different, and much worse. The State Department opened its new consulate in Jerusalem in October 2010. It is located in the Jewish neighborhood of Arnona. It was built on the plot that Israel allocated for the US Embassy after Congress passed Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995 requiring the US government to move its embassy to Jerusalem. I read that construction began in 2004. I haven't been able to find out whether when construction began it was to build the embassy or a new consulate so I don't know yet whether the Bush administration thought it was building an embassy that the Obama administration turned into a consulate or if the Bush administration thought it was building a consulate that the Obama administration completed.

Whatever the case, the fact that the building that was supposed to be an expression of US recognition of Israel's capital in Jerusalem is being used as the consulate is an unvarnished act of aggression against Israel and Congress.

If I am not mistaken, the US Consulate General in Jerusalem is the only US consulate in the world that is not subordinate to the embassy in the country where it is located. When it was located in a hostile Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, the fact that it was not subordinate to the US Embassy in Tel Aviv was upsetting. But it was also easily justified in light of US policy of not recognizing Israeli sovereignty in eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem.

But Arnona is in western Jerusalem. It is a Jewish neighborhood that even the most radical Israeli leftists don't envision transferring to the Palestinians in any peace deal. Putting the consulate in Arnona - and on the site reserved for the embassy no less - is the clearest expression of American rejection of all Israeli sovereign rights to Jerusalem imaginable. And the fact that it is located in the heart of a Jewish neighborhood is far from the only problem with the building.

Israelis who live in Jerusalem and need US consular services are required to go to the consulate in Jerusalem. You can't just go to Tel Aviv to avoid the unpleasantness. This again is due to the fact that the US does not recognize ANY Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. From the State Department's perspective, people who live in Jerusalem -- even in Arnona and Rehavia and Ein Kerem etc. -- live in a DIFFERENT COUNTRY from people who live in Tel Aviv and Netanya. We can no more receive services from the embassy in Tel Aviv than we can receive services from the embassy in Amman.

I will be writing more about the US's adversarial treatment of Israel as embodied in its treatment of Jerusalem in next week's Jerusalem Post column. But suffice it to say here that Victoria Nuland's statement to AP reporter Matt Lee, (posted below in case you missed it), is a true depiction of America's policy on Jerusalem - and though it, on Israel.

It would be useful for someone to get Mitt Romney on record discussing his position on Jerusalem. Assuming that he says - like every other Republican presidential candidate - that he supports transferring the US embassy to Jerusalem, he should further be asked to explain how, if he is elected president, he will force the State Department to change its policies towards Israel and respect US law by treating Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Watch this video by clicking here.
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To read another article by Caroline Glick, click here.

Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate

Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate

Yes, pictures of copies have been found and are circulating all over the web. Let's review what we know so far...

Obama supplied us with a phony, photo-shopped copy of his birth certificate that's supposibly from Hawaii. Why would he do this?

Obama has a phony Social Security Number, which used to belong to a dead guy from Connecticut.

The Supreme Court is aware of Obama's shady, criminal, fraudulent past. Obama has spent major bucks to hide his fraudulent past.

OK, so some new photos...

“ Barack Hussein Obama II General Hospital , Mombassa , Kenya where Obama was born a few hours later at 7:21 pm on August 4, 1961 (what a sad day for the USA). Four days later his mother flew to Hawaii and registered his birth in Honolulu as a certificate of live birth which omitted the place and hospital of birth.”

Well, well, well … at last the ‘real’ thing. Now, what will happen?

If these documents are as authentic as they certainly seem to be, Obama is NOT qualified to be our President and he sits in the White House illegally!

This is what Obama has spent almost $2M (so far) to hide.

Here’s a close-up of the top of the document where you can plainly read his name and his parents’ names, etc...

A British history buff was asked if he could find out who the colonial registrar was for Mombassa in 1961.

After only a few minutes of research, he called back and said “Sir Edward F. Lavender. Note the same name near the bottom of the photo above.

Source(s): Kenya Dominion Record 4667 Australian library.”

Here’s a close-up of the bottom of the document where you can read “Coast Province of Kenya” and the official signature of the Deputy Registrar:

The above document is a “Certified Copy of Registration of Birth,” but below is a copy of the actual Certificate of Birth – the real-deal legal kind of certificate.

The Mombassa Registrar of Births has testified that Obama’s birth certificate from Coast Province General Hospital in Mombassa is genuine. This copy was obtained by Lucas Smith through the help of a Kenyan Colonel who recently got it directly from the Coast General Hospital in Mombassa , Kenya. Here it is:

Note the footprint!














The local Muslim Imam in Mombassa named Barack with his Muslim middle name Hussein so his official name on this certificate is Barack Hussein Obama II.

The grandmother of Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. reveals the story of his birth in Mombassa, Kenya, a seaport, after his mother suffered labor pains while swimming at ocean beach in Mombassa.

“On August 4, 1961 Obama’s mother, father, and grandmother were attending a Muslim festival in Mombassa, Kenya.

His mother had been refused entry to airplanes due to her nine-month pregnancy. It was a hot August day at the festival so the Obamas went to the beach to cool off. While swimming in the ocean his mother experienced labor pains so was rushed to the Coast Provincial General Hospital, Mombassa, Kenya where Obama was born a few hours later at 7:21 pm on August 4, 1961.

Four days later his mother flew to Hawaii and registered his birth in Honolulu as a certificate of live birth which omitted the place and hospital of birth.”

Letter from Kitau in Mombassa, Kenya:

“I happen to be Kenyan. I was born 1 month before Obama at Mombassa medical center. I am a teacher here at the MM Shaw Primary School in Kenya. I compared my birth certificate to the one that has been put out by Taitz and mine is exactly the same. I even have the same registrar and format. The type is identical. I am by nature a skeptical person. I teach science here and challenge most things that cannot be proven. So I went to an official registrar today and pulled up the picture on the web. They magnified it and determined it to be authentic. There is even a plaque with Registrar Lavender’s name on it as he was a Brit and was in charge of the Registrar office from 1959 until January of 1964. The reason the date on the certificate says republic of Kenya is that we were a republic when the “copy” of the original was ordered. I stress the word “copy.” My copy also has republic of Kenya . So what you say is true about Kenya not being a republic at the time of Obama’s birth, however it was a republic when the copy was ordered.

The birth certificate is genuine. It will be authenticated by a forensic auditor. We are very proud Obama was born here. We have a shrine for him and there are many people who remember his birth here as he had a white mother. They are being interviewed now by one of your media outlets.

Fortunately, they even have pictures of his parents with him immediately after his birth at the Mombassa hospital with the hospital in the background.

It will be a proud day for us when it is proven that he was born here and a Kenyan became the most powerful man in the world.

I encourage anyone to come here and visit. I will be happy to take you and show you the pictures at the hospital myself as well as my document and many others that are identical to what Taitz posted. God Bless. Kitau.”

So, how much more proof do we need? WELL, HERE IT IS:

Lolo Soetoro, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, baby Maya Soetoro, and 9-year-old Barry Soetoro.

This registration document, made available on Jan. 24, 2007, by the Fransiskus Assisi school in Jakarta, Indonesia, shows the registration of Barack Obama under the name Barry Soetoro made by his step-father, Lolo Soetoro.

Name: Barry Soetoro
Religion: Islam
Nationality: Indonesian

How did this little INDONESIAN Muslim child - Barry Soetoro,(A.K.A. Barack Obama) get around the issue of nationality to become President of the United States of America?

PART 2:

In a move certain to fuel the debate over Obama’s qualifications for the presidency, the group “Americans for Freedom of Information” has released copies of President Obama’s college transcripts from Occidental College.

The transcript indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia while an undergraduate at the school. The transcript was released by Occidental College in compliance with a court order in a suit brought by the group in the Superior Court of California. The transcript shows that Obama (Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program.

To qualify for this scholarship, a student must claim foreign citizenship.

This document provides the smoking gun that many of Obama’s detractors have been seeking - that he is NOT a natural-born citizen of the United States - necessary to be President of these United States. Along with the evidence that he was first born in Kenya, here we see that there is no record of him ever applying for US citizenship.

Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation has released the results of their investigation of Obama’s campaign spending. This study estimates that Obama has spent upwards of $950,000 in campaign funds in the past year with eleven law firms in 12 states for legal resources to block disclosure of any of his personal records.

Mr. Kreep indicated that the investigation is still on-going but that the final report will be provided to the U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder. Mr. Holder has refused comment on this matter. Let other folks know this news - the media won’t!

Some things will just not go away... as Ronald Wilson Reagan said, "Facts are stubborn things"

"In God We Trust"
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To read a repost of the link that continues this investigation, click here. Keep following the links to learn more.

The Nation's Top 50 Progressives… and Socialists and Communists

The Nation's Top 50 Progressives… and Socialists and Communists
By Paul Kengor on 3.30.12 @ 6:08AM

Did Katrina vanden Heuvel think no one would notice her magazine's affinity with friends of Joseph Stalin?

The left-wing magazine The Nation has published what it deems America's all-time, most influential top 50 progressives. The list is very revealing. I will not mention all 50 names, which you can review for yourself, but a few are especially interesting.

For starters, it's fascinating that The Nation leads with Eugene Debs at number 1. Debs was a socialist -- a capital "s" "Socialist." Fittingly, it was 100 years ago this year, in 1912, that Debs ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket, placing fourth in a contest dominated by a progressive Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, and a progressive Republican, Teddy Roosevelt. Today's progressives get annoyed if you call them socialists. Well, then, why is a pure socialist the no. 1 "progressive" on The Nation's list?

Of course, progressives really get annoyed if you suggest they bear any sympathies to communism. That being the case, two other "progressives" on The Nation's list are quite intriguing: Paul Robeson and I. F. Stone.

Paul Robeson was a communist and gushing admirer of Stalin's Soviet Union, a proud recipient of the Kremlin's "Stalin Prize." Even the New York Times could not help but admit that Robeson was "an outspoken admirer of the Soviet Union." When Robeson in 1934 returned from his initial pilgrimage to the Motherland, the Daily Worker thrust a microphone in his face, and Robeson glowed about the new world he had discovered. The Daily Worker rushed its Robeson interview into print, running it in the January 15, 1935 issue under the headline, "'I Am at Home,' Says Robeson At Reception in Soviet Union."

The Bolsheviks, explained Robeson, were new men, unshackled by the glories of Stalinism. When he got there, Robeson said he had not been "prepared for the happiness I see on every face in Moscow." He had been "aware that there was no starvation" in Russia, but was bowled over by the "bounding life," "endless friendliness," and "feeling of safety and abundance and freedom" he found "wherever I turn."

Paul Robeson had discovered sheer equality under Joseph Stalin. When asked about Stalin's purges, which the Daily Worker's faithful comrades characterized as warranted executions of a "number of counter-revolutionary terrorists," Robeson retorted: "From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!"

Paul Robeson was deadly serious. To shoot such malefactors, said Robeson emphatically, was "the government's duty." How dare anyone oppose "this really free society" run by Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrenti Beria, the NKVD, the GRU, and regulated by the vast Gulag archipelago? Any such villain, by Robeson's estimation, ought to be "put down… with a firm hand." Robeson hoped that "they [Soviet authorities] will always do it" -- that is, always employ such just executions.

Robeson told the Daily Worker that he felt a "kinship" with the Soviet Union. It was "a home to me." So much so, in fact, that Robeson moved his family there.

It would take almost a half century more, after Robeson's death, for Communist Party USA to publicly concede the obvious: Paul Robeson had been a longtime secret member. In May 1998, the centennial of Robeson's birth, longtime CPUSA head Gus Hall finally, proudly revealed the truth.

In this birthday tribute to "Comrade Paul," Hall and CPUSA came bearing gifts. "We have a birthday present for Paul that no one else can give," said Hall, "the full truth and nothing but the truth." And what's that truth? "Paul was a proud member of the Communist Party USA," stated Hall unequivocally. Paul had been a man of communist "conviction." This was "an indelible fact of Paul's life," in "every way, every day of his adult life." He "never forgot he was a Communist." A teary-eyed Hall recalled that his "own most precious moments with Paul were when I met with him to accept his dues and renew his yearly membership in the CPUSA."

None of this, naturally, is mentioned in The Nation profile, which blasts anyone who dared consider Robeson a communist. Such people, of course, are pure retrograde, Neanderthal McCarthyites.

Instead, The Nation insists that "comrade Paul" was a "progressive." That is particularly remarkable for another reason: a frustrated Gus Hall had warned about progressives trying to portray Robeson as one of their own. A vigilant Hall said that communists "cannot allow … liberal, progressive" forces "to turn Robeson into a liberal. The real Robeson was a revolutionary, a Communist…. Paul Robeson was one of ours -- a Communist leader, a beloved comrade."

Nonetheless, modern progressives continue to do just that. Such are the witting depths of their self-delusion. They believe what they want to believe.

And that brings me to I. F. Stone.

Stone is listed at number 26 on The Nation's list. Likewise, there is no mention of words like "communist" or "Soviet Union" anywhere in his profile. That's no surprise. Stone has been hailed by liberals for decades as the literal "conscience" of journalism. The Los Angeles Times dubbed him the "conscience of investigative journalism," and CNN's Larry King called him a "hero." When Stone died, an Oliphant cartoon showed him outside the Pearly Gates, with Saint Peter telephoning God, "Yes, THAT I. F. Stone, Sir. He says he doesn't want to come in -- he'd rather hang around out here, and keep things honest."

But we now know that Stone was not always so honest. At one time, he was a paid Soviet agent. In their latest work, published by Yale University Press, historians John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev conclude that Stone was a "Soviet spy." In an article excerpted from the book and published in the April 2009 online version of Commentary magazine, they wrote: "To put it plainly, from 1936 to 1939 I. F. Stone was a Soviet spy." Also closely studying Stone's case is Herb Romerstein, the authority on the Venona papers. In The Venona Secrets, Romerstein and co-author Eric Breindel wrote: "it is clear from the evidence that Stone was indeed a Soviet agent." One of the stronger confirmations from the Soviet side is retired KGB general Oleg Kalugin, who stated flatly: "He [Stone] was a KGB agent since 1938. His code name was 'Blin.' When I resumed relations with him in 1966, it was on Moscow's instructions. Stone was a devoted Communist." Kalugin added that Stone "changed in the course of time like many of us"; in other words, he did not remain a communist -- but for a time he was a Soviet agent.

None of this appears at Stone's "progressive" profile at The Nation.

And speaking of progressives with communist sympathies, also on The Nation's list is Margaret Sanger. Like Paul Robeson and numerous other hope-filled leftists, the Planned Parenthood matron sojourned to Stalin's Potemkin villages in 1934. "[W]e could well take example from Russia," advised Sanger upon her return, "where birth control instruction is part of the regular welfare service of the government." Sanger enthusiastically reported this in the June 1935 edition of her publication, Birth Control Review.

The Planned Parenthood founder was, however, taken aback by the explosion in the number of abortions once legalized by the Bolsheviks. No fear, though. Sanger offered this stunning prediction: "All the [Bolshevik] officials with whom I discussed the matter stated that as soon as the economic and social plans of Soviet Russia are realized, neither abortions nor contraception will be necessary or desired. A functioning Communistic society will assure the happiness of every child, and will assume the full responsibility for its welfare and education."

This was pure progressive utopianism, an absolute faith in central planners.

Even guiltier of such misguided Soviet infatuation was John Dewey, founding father of American public education, who was so suckered by the Soviets that I would need a few thousand words here just to detail the outrage (click here and here for more). Oh, yes, Dewey is also on The Nation's list of influential progressives -- at number 5.

Overall, the number of socialists, communists, and Soviet sympathizers on The Nation's list is dizzying: Upton Sinclair, Henry Wallace, W. E. B. DuBois, Norman Thomas, Lincoln Steffens, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Tom Hayden, Barbara Ehrenreich.

Thus, I'm compelled to ask: Is this "progressivism"? Is progressivism synonymous with liberalism, or is it to the left of liberalism? Is it socialism? Is it somewhere on the spectrum between socialism and communism? Does it include liberals, socialists, and communists?

I ask progressives, I plead with them: This is your ideology, could you better define it, if that's even possible? Or is the definition of progressivism always progressing? Actually, it is always progressing -- which is precisely the problem with this train-wreck of an ever-elusive ideology.

The Nation's list of leading American "progressives" is an illuminating insight into the American left and the very essence of "progressive" thought -- whatever that might be. Take a look at it, study it, think about it. This is truly a teachable moment.
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To read another article by Paul Kengor, click here.

Media Hackery: Subtle, But Insidious

Media Hackery: Subtle, But Insidious
By Quin Hillyer on 3.30.12 @ 6:09AM

Leftist bias is worse than ever.

Yeah, yeah, I know: Noting the leftward bias of the establishment media is about as newsworthy as noting that cows moo, the sun rises in the East, and Hollywood stars tend to rut around like bonobos. But what's different these days is the flagrant and willful dishonesty that often accompanies the bias.

It has gotten so bad that sometimes editors will refuse to listen to audiotapes directly disproving their stories making conservatives look ignorant -- instead, insisting that it is better to go with the (incorrect) account of a major news leader rather than to get it right, even when presented with irrefutable proof of what was and wasn't actually said.

Yes, that really happened.

And that sort of thing has been rampant in recent months -- or, actually, just within the past week.

Consider a story by The Associated Press's Laurie Kellman that ran in Wednesday morning papers, about how both parties are stepping up efforts to appeal to unmarried women voters. Here is how the final sentence (in my paper at least) read: "Democrats have been trumpeting a 'Republican war on women,' a phrase coined because of GOP objections to birth control access."

Come again? The sentence didn't say "a phrase coined because Democrats say GOP positions will lead to less access to birth control." No, it reported as fact that Republicans actually object to birth control access. And that, of course, is to frame the issue exactly as the Democrats frame it, in the guise of stating a (supposed) fact.

Conservatives, of course, contend that there is a huge difference between not forcing churches to pay for other people's abortifacients and restricting access to birth control, which is inexpensive and readily available elsewhere. To ascribe to them, as a fact, a motive they claim to utterly reject is to completely and deliberately bias the news against them. Plus, of course, Republicans say the issue isn't about contraception anyway, but instead about religious freedom.

This isn't a small matter. To state as fact one side of a political dispute, while not even crediting the other side's contentions, is the antithesis of objective journalism.

Consider an almost perfectly analogous situation: Sarah Palin's description of Obamacare as having the effect of forming "death panels." All throughout the brouhaha over that issue, the AP belittled the Palin position, and continues to do so almost up to this day (as this piece at NewsBusters makes clear).

If AP had written that Palin story in completely neutral fashion at the time, it would have written (in exact parallel to Wednesday's story on single women voters) that "Republicans have been trumpeting what former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin called 'death panels' because Republicans say Obama's policies will lead to rationing of medical care." Now that phraseology would have been fair to all sides.

If AP had written to bias it in favor of Republicans the same way Wednesday's story took Democrats' side, it would have been "Republicans have been trumpeting Obamacare's threat of 'death panels,' a phrase coined because of Democratic support for rationing health care."

Instead, we get the editorializing within the relevant sentence that the death panel phrase is "now widely debunked." Worse, at the time the AP actually went out of its way to "fact-check" the "death panel" phrase -- even though Palin herself used it only figuratively, within quotation marks -- just to make sure the public knew how off-base Palin had been.

So where is the AP fact check showing the considerable remaining "access" to contraception even if Republicans had their way and the status quo ante (the exact situation that applied before the brand new Obama regulations were implemented) were re-established?

Even worse, as Monica Crowley noted on Thursday, AP can't even write about a unanimous House rejection of Obama's budget without editorializing in the lead paragraph that the very act of actually holding a vote on the president's proposal (oh -- the horror!) was "forced by GOP lawmakers to embarrass Democrats."

Sorry to keep bashing AP, but its Will Weissert filed a story a week ago that was outrageously sloppy, if in that case not necessarily stemming from bias. Here's how he started the story: "Presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Thursday said Republicans should give President Barack Obama another term if Santorum isn't the GOP nominee…." Of course, Santorum had said no such thing, even though at least it is fair to say he left himself open to the interpretation that he was suggesting such a thing. Even then, though, to state as a blanket fact that Santorum said Obama would be preferable to any Republican but Santorum himself was outrageous -- especially since the Santorum campaign that very evening clarified his remarks. Weissert's story did not even bother noting the clarification, a failure that directly lent itself to sensationalist headlines like the one in my paper that read: "Santorum: Take Obama over Romney."

Balderdash.

Of course the establishment media has been awful for a long time. Allen Drury skewered its leftist biases more than 50 years ago in Advise and Consent. In 1992 the elder Bush's campaign put out a bumper sticker saying: "Annoy the media: Vote Bush." And our good friends at NewsBusters/Media Research Center and Accuracy in Media (among others) have been documenting media perfidy for years, and the MRC's annual media bias awards are always a hoot.

Yet at least most reporters once took their "adversarial" role seriously enough that they gave the prior Democratic president, Bill Clinton, a fair amount of grief (not enough, but still a noticeable amount) when he strayed in numerous ways. They certainly didn't pander much in the late 1970s to Jimmy Carter. But now they have become such lapdogs for President Obama that it's a wonder they don't fetch his slippers and newspaper for him when he wakes up.

The bigger problem, though, isn't the obviously and/or flamboyantly outlandish statements by reporters in supposedly straight-news roles; the bigger problem occurs in the constant shadings of a subtler character, such as the one that began this column making it sound oh-so-matter-of-factly as if Republicans seek to restrict "access" to birth control. Witness the Washington Post's main story Thursday summing up the end of the Supreme Court's Obamacare hearings, beginning by describing the conservative justices' being "at least open" to declaring the individual mandate unconstitutional and then immediately reporting that "much can happen between now and the expected ruling this summer, and a far more moderate tone may emerge [emphasis mine]."

Note how the idea of being "open" to jettisoning the mandate is juxtaposed against the idea of a "moderate tone" -- as if moderation is equivalent to supporting the mandate, which makes striking it down, by logical extension, extreme.

Actually, that exchange was in the second and third paragraph of the article. The first paragraph is even worse. It would be "the conservative majority," according to this supposedly unbiased news story, that "may be on the brink of a redefinition of the federal government's power."

Oh, really? And all along we were under the impression that the court was deciding if President Obama and Congress had tried to "redefine" federal power. Even the most ideological of liberals have acknowledged that the mandate is an "unprecedented" use of power; that isn't even in dispute. The only question was whether the unprecedented use of power is or isn't allowable under the Constitution -- but, either way, the redefinition of power, if it exists at all, is coming from the left, not from the high court's conservatives.

The Post's account is absurdly tendentious. The tone continued throughout the story: If the high court rules the mandate unconstitutional, it would be "insert[ing] itself into a partisan battle." (Somehow, I doubt the Post reported that the court "inserted itself" into the dispute over the Texas anti-sodomy law, and its potential repercussions for homosexual "marriage," in the 2003 case of Lawrence v. Texas. Likewise, was it "inserting itself" into the Kelo case about property rights?)

Every day, in newspapers and news broadcasts across the country, the examples abound of this sort of casual shading of news. The trend is despicable.

It's not as if it is impossible for a person with strong views to keep those views out of reporting. There are neutral approaches, and standards of reporting, that are not tremendously difficult to abide. As just one example, when the inimitable David Rogers was covering Capitol Hill for the Wall Street Journal, those of us who worked as Republican press staffers were rather sure, from friendly interactions with him, that his personal opinions listed leftward. But not once, in my years up there, do I remember ever seeing a trace of bias in the reports Rogers produced. Thorough, knowledgeable, detailed, balanced, and fair: Those were the inevitable insignia of a David Rogers news story.

No good reason exists for other reporters to fail to do the same. Instead, we get Republicans portrayed as "objecting" to birth control access merely by virtue of wanting the keep the law the same as it always has been. Instead, we get conservative justices portrayed as trying to redefine federal power.

Instead, we get dreadfully dishonest dreck.

One wonders how some of these reporters and editors even live with their own professional consciences, if they possess consciences at all.
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To read another article by Quin Hillyer, click here.
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To read about another example of liberal media hackery, click here.

Beginning of the End

Beginning of the End
By George H. Wittman on 3.30.12 @ 6:08AM

Like the the British and Soviet empires, the U.S. has learned there's only one way out of Afghanistan -- and that's to get out.

It was not an auspicious beginning in November-December 2001 as Osama bin Laden was pursued from Jalalabad to the White Mountains and on to the caves of Tora Bora by a small force of CIA Special Activities Division paramilitary personnel, U.S. Army Special Forces, and even a contingent of the British Special Boat Service. Recently recruited Pushtun tribal fighters were supposed to provide the local knowledge that would allow OBL to be captured, killed, or driven toward the waiting Pakistan army at the Afghan border. It didn't happen.

The Afghans drifted away just when it looked like the al Qaeda group would be cornered. Urgent calls for the injection of U.S. Army Rangers to block the al Qaeda retreat were denied. On the Pakistani side the well-positioned units of their army became functionally blind and Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda protective force slipped through. The principal leaders of the Taliban with key fighters also infiltrated uninhibited across the border into Pakistan and the scene was now set for what would become the longest war in American history.

The entire tactical plan of the United States and its NATO allies was predicated on being able to count on friendly elements in the Pushtun areas to ferret out the pro-Taliban elements and for the Pakistanis to hold firm on their side of the border as a blocking force. The strategy was not illogical; it was just not realistic in terms of the kaleidoscope of ever-changing Afghan -- and Pakistani -- local and national politics.

Washington persisted in the belief there were good Afghans (those who supported the national government of Hamid Karzai) and bad Afghans (the Taliban who had gone to ground in the tribal sanctuaries of the east and south and others hiding in Pakistan.) They continue to think that way today. The problem is that it is just not true. Neither is the parallel concept that the political problems of Afghanistan are primarily the result of the eco/socio disadvantages from which the country suffers. The root of the Afghan conflict in the past, the present, and will be in the future is the deeply embedded structure of tribal life and pervasive xenophobia. This situation can not be solved by massive aid programs and the superimposition of western democratic tenets.

Having finally admitted that "nation-building" was not a viable commitment for the U.S. and NATO in the year 2012, and that the Taliban insurgency should be left to the Afghan National Army to contain, the current White House has decided to withdraw all Western combat forces by 2014, with a major draw-down during 2013. In the end only a relatively small collection of Special Forces and a training cadre will remain behind. The magic of the next two years is supposed to be the growth of the Afghan Army. This is plain and simple wishful thinking. There is no evidence that the current Afghan military force will be able to contain a reformed and reenergized Taliban in two years.

Afghanistan is not divided into pro-Taliban and anti-Taliban. It is divided into families, clans, tribes, and subdivisions of each that have, in varying degrees, ties to several political military elements, Taliban and others, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some of these relations are close and supportive and others quite distant and barely connected. But for most in Pushtun-dominated areas these relations have been consistent over the years. What is it that is going to change in two years -- or ever?

The answer is that little will change other than to give some combat experience to the Afghan troops and their units mentored by U.S. and NATO forces. Also, the American military may have a chance to withdraw with honor from a field on which it has battled for over a decade. This is an ancient tradition and one that the Afghans know only too well. Whether the Taliban will allow such an honorable ending, however, before they return to their own struggle for dominance is up to question. Something that isn't open for question is the expectation of Iran and Pakistan moving to influence Afghanistan's future. Of course, the interests of India, Russia, and China also can be expected to rise to the surface.

Pakistan will have a major investment in the future of whatever government that comes to power in Kabul. That is a given and both a short and long-range target for Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI. It seems that unless Afghan territory becomes once again an international terrorist training ground, it will be the United States that has the least political military interest in this country on which it has expended so much in human and financial terms.

Not unlike Vietnam, where even far greater blood and treasure was spent by the United States, Afghanistan will become a slice of history close to American hearts for a generation -- but that's all. The world's Islamic terrorists have many other places in which to train and other more convenient sites as springboards for their terror. So-called al Qaeda franchises already have evolved around the globe along with other variously named jihadist terror groups.

What will remain the same is the historic route of the drug trade through the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan. From this some Afghan farmers will benefit and local tribal leaders as always will become rich. The Taliban will be divided as it was before over the degree they should accept the advantages of this unholy trade. The result will alternate between cooperation and condemnation.

A transformational leader may come along, after Mullah Omar and Hamid Karzai, to guide Afghanistan into a more modern society -- but that is doubtful. Afghanistan will remain at the crossroads of conflict in its region as it has done for ages. That is its history and its future. The American presence will disintegrate the same as the mud-walled forts of the outposts of the British Empire and the abandoned, rusted residue of the more recent short-lived Russian occupation.
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To read a related article, click here.
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To read another article by George H. Wittman, click here.

Conservative Interpretations

Conservative Interpretations
By Jonah Goldberg
3/30/2012

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg likes the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act and other ingredients of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka "ObamaCare." Why, she asked toward the end of three days of hearings, shouldn't the court keep the good stuff in ObamaCare and just dump the unconstitutional bits?

The court, she explained, is presented with "a choice between a wrecking operation ... or a salvage job. And the more conservative approach would be salvage rather than throwing out everything."

"Conservative" is a funny word. It can mean lots of different things. It reminds me of that line from G.K. Chesterton about the word "good." "The word 'good' has many meanings," he observed. "For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of 500 yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man."

Conservative can mean cautious in temperament -- a man who wears belts and suspenders. Similarly, it sometimes suggests someone who's averse to change. It can also refer to the political ideology or philosophy founded by Edmund Burke and popularized and Americanized by people like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley and George Will. It can mean someone who is averse to change.

Things can get complicated because these different meanings can overlap. Many strident liberals can have conservative temperaments, and many philosophical conservatives can have private lives that make a brothel during Fleet Week seem like a retirement-home chess club. Conservatives in America love the free market, which is the greatest source of change in human history. Liberals, alleged lovers of change and "progress," often champion an agenda dedicated to preserving the past. Just consider how much of the Democratic Party's rhetoric is dedicated to preserving a policy regime implemented by Franklin Roosevelt nearly 80 years ago.

You can also be conservative with respect to a given institution while being un-conservative in every other respect. The most ardent Communists in the Chinese or Cuban politburos are often described as "conservatives." The same holds true for every left-wing institution in America: Someone has to be the "conservative" at PETA or Planned Parenthood -- i.e., the person who is risk-averse when it comes to scarce resources or the group's reputation.

Anyway, sometimes people like to play games with the indeterminacy of the word "conservative" in order to sell a liberal agenda (and in fairness, conservatives often do the same thing with "progressive").

Which brings us back to Justice Ginsburg. She would have people believe that if the court rules the individual mandate unconstitutional, the conservative thing to do would be to preserve the rest of ObamaCare. She suggests that "wrecking" the whole thing would be an act of judicial activism, while "salvaging" it would be an act of conservation.

In other words, she's playing games with the word. The Supreme Court is supposed to be a conservative institution in that it serves as a backstop for the excesses of the other branches. Political conservatives, by extension, argue that the court should defer to Congress, the most democratic branch, when constitutional issues are not at stake. Hence, liberals contend, a "conservative" court should take a scalpel to ObamaCare, not an axe.

It sounds reasonable, but it isn't. As Justices Scalia, Kennedy and Roberts noted, if the court simply removes the requirement that everyone buy health insurance, they are left with the task of essentially rewriting the act. That prospect caused Justice Scalia to exclaim, "What happened to the Eighth Amendment (barring cruel and unusual punishment)? You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages? ... Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?"

The conservative thing to do -- and I don't mean politically conservative -- is to send the whole thing back to Congress and have it done right. Leaving aside the fact that ObamaCare largely falls apart if you remove the mandate, it's not the Supreme Court's job to design our health-care system from the scraps Congress dumps in its lap. What Ginsburg proposes is akin to a student handing in a sloppy, error-filled term paper, and the professor rewriting it so as to give the student an A.

Some liberals note that one option Congress could pursue would be to pass a far more left-wing piece of legislation that mandates a single-payer system, i.e., socialized medicine. That would -- or at least could -- be constitutional. And that's true: Congress could do that, and I'm sure Justice Ginsburg would be pleased if it did.

And if that happened, the right and conservative thing for the court to do would be to let it happen.
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To read another article by Jonah Goldberg, click here.
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To read another article about the ObamaCare fight, click here.

Left’s Orwellian Censorship Campaign

Left’s Orwellian Censorship Campaign
By Matt Barber
3/30/2012

Liberal theologian William Ellery Channing once observed, “The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.”

War has indeed been declared. Channing’s contemporary liberal counterparts have declared a war for our culture. But while Channing presumably held to the oft-bandied supposition that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism,” today’s secular-progressive has no choice but to endeavor that “all opposition should be hushed.”

Liberals recognize that when arguing on the merits, they cannot prevail. Not only are their morally relative, redistributionist philosophies untenable and utopian, but they read the same polls demonstrating that reasonable people reject their ideas outright. In fact, Americans identify as conservative over liberal by a two-to-one margin. Even those who call themselves “moderate” lean conservative.

It makes sense. The “progressive” movement wars against natural law, pushes perpetually failed secular-socialist policies and places — above constitutionally safeguarded individual liberty — thickheaded tenets of postmodern political correctness. Liberal elites demand tolerance for all things perverse and find intolerable all things righteous.

And so, the final, desperate act of the left-wing, lemon-hocking charlatan is to marginalize, smear and ultimately shut down the competition. As a result, liberals obfuscate, propagandize and strive to silence all dissent. They no longer even try to hide it.

The evidence of this calculated assault on free speech is overwhelming, but the most recent and high-profile examples include carefully orchestrated campaigns by three well-funded, interconnected, George Soros-linked organizations: Media Matters for America (MMFA); the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC); and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

After years of trying to censor the conservative voice of Rush Limbaugh, for instance, the George Soros-funded Media Matters recently pulled out all the stops to get him booted from the airwaves.

The pretext was Limbaugh’s unfortunate word choice in describing Georgetown “reproductive justice” radical Sandra Fluke’s attempt to compel the Jesuit university to violate its own Catholic doctrine. Democrats held a mock hearing in the Capitol building wherein Fluke demanded that Georgetown underwrite her admitted fornication practices and fork out free birth control. Limbaugh said this made her sound like a “sl*t” and a “prostitute.”

The hard-left Media Matters pounced, rolling out a pre-packaged campaign against Limbaugh. It has targeted radio stations with ads and continues a floundering crusade to get Limbaugh’s radio sponsors to drop him. Ironically, this has resulted in a revenue increase for Limbaugh, and his already millions-strong listening audience has grown significantly.

Another example of this Orwellian censorship crusade involves the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, an outfit that, until recent years, was viewed as a relatively credible civil rights organization. Unfortunately, the SPLC has now cashed in most of its remaining political capital, taking the same cynical path as its fellow travelers over at Media Matters. The SPLC too has become little more than a mouthpiece for left-wing extremism.

In a “too cute by half” attempt to marginalize those who observe the traditional Judeo-Christian sexual ethic, or who embrace a constitutionalist view of government, the SPLC has moved from monitoring actual hate groups like the KKK and Neo-Nazis, to slandering mainstream Christian and tea party organizations with that very same “SPLC-certified hate group” label. Indeed, in its promotional materials and on its website, the SPLC indiscriminately lumps well-respected, highly influential Christian organizations like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association together with domestic terrorist and white supremacist groups.

But the SPLC’s transparent guilt-by-false-association ploy has largely backfired. Whereas the strategy was intended to discourage media outlets from engaging these Christian groups, the scheme has, instead, had the unintended effect of significantly marginalizing the SPLC. You can only cry wolf so many times before people ignore you.

Finally, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has picked up where the SPLC left off. This radical homosexual pressure group recently ramped up its tried-and-true practice of employing the very outrage it purports to oppose: defamation.

One of the left’s favorite pejoratives is “McCarthyism,” yet liberals employ it — as they mean it — masterfully. In an effort to strong-arm mainstream media outlets — already sympathetic to their cause — into blacklisting, once and for all, conservative and Christian professionals who oppose liberal sexual identity politics, GLAAD has issued an enemies list of 36 top pro-family leaders and luminaries (a list upon which yours truly is most honored and humbled to be included).

Engaging a scheme eerily reminiscent of the former Soviet Union, GLAAD’s euphemistically and paradoxically tagged “Commentator Accountability Project” enlists fellow progressives to dutifully report on a designated website anytime a pundit identified on the blacklist appears in media.

Because “hate is not an expert opinion,” GLAAD then takes the reports and browbeats the offending media outlet into disengaging the “inappropriate” conservative pundit.

As feeble justification for its censorship efforts, GLAAD provides a list of out-of-context, cherry-picked quotes — some accurate, some not — the organization finds offensive. This is paint-by-numbers, Saul Alinsky style: Rule 12, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.”

In their manuscript, “After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ’90s” (1989, Doubleday/Bantam), Harvard-educated marketing experts Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen meticulously laid out GLAAD’s approach — something they called “jamming.”

“Jamming” refers to the public smearing of Christians, traditionalists or anyone else who opposes left-wing sexual identity politics. “Jam homo-hatred [i.e., the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic] by linking it to Nazi horror,” wrote Kirk and Madsen (sound familiar, SPLC?). They go on to suggest that activists should try to associate all who oppose homosexuality with images of “Klansmen demanding that gays be slaughtered,” “hysterical backwoods preachers,” “menacing punks” and “Nazi concentration camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed.’”

“In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to adopt the role of protector,” they wrote. “The purpose of victim imagery is to make straights feel very uncomfortable.”

George Orwell famously said: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Today, conservative truth tellers are revolutionaries, fighting a guerilla war against an elitist establishment that blankets free speech with bunker-buster bombs.

Their motives are disgraceful, their tactics are cowardly and their actions are un-American. But these things rank high among the progressive “book of virtues.”

Paraphrasing Voltaire, British author Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

It’s little wonder that today’s progressives reject this noble sentiment. The success of the left-wing socio-political agenda relies upon deliberate suppression of the reality-based conservative alternative.

Such is life for the pamphleteer of bad ideas.
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To read another article by Matt Barber, click here.

Obama Doubling Down on His Leftist Radicalism

Obama Doubling Down on His Leftist Radicalism
By David Limbaugh
3/30/2012

You can't even casually surf the Internet on any given day without numerous reminders of just how radical President Obama is -- and this is during an election year, when it should be in his political interest to mask his radicalism.

Minding my own business, I happened on an article by Jacob Laksin on FrontPageMag.com, titled "Obama's Pick for World Bank Hates Capitalism." I'd heard a bit about this before but hadn't yet studied it. I'm so used to Obama's extremism that such revelations hardly move me, much less surprise me. I know where he stands; I just wish everyone else did.

Obama has nominated Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim to head the World Bank. In 2000, Kim edited a collection of studies under the title "Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor."

The "book's radical central premise," writes Laksin, is that "capitalism and economic growth (are) bad for the poor across the world." Kim co-wrote the introduction, which includes the claim that the book shows "that the quest for growth in GDP and corporate profits has in fact worsened the lives of millions of women and men." It says that even in those instances in which free trade and free markets have led to economic growth, they've done so without benefiting "those living in 'dire poverty,' one-fourth of the world's population." Can't you just hear Obama himself in those words?

One thing that helps the plight of the very poor, according to one chapter, is a socialized health care system, such as the one in Communist Cuba. The chapter's author touts that system because of the Cuban government's "commitment not only to health in the narrow sense but to social equality and social justice." As we opponents of Obamacare have said repeatedly, Obamacare is hardly just about making health care more affordable or more accessible, neither of which it will do in the end, but is a stealth vehicle to greatly expand governmental control over limitless aspects of our lives to enable the leftist central planners to effectuate "social equality and social justice" under the innocuous guise of providing health care.

As with so many of its ideas, the left is wrong about the record of free markets on the poor, notes Laksin, who points to "overwhelming evidence" that economic growth raises income levels and reduces global poverty. But again, leftist ideologues aren't motivated by a desire to improve the lot of the downtrodden, domestically or globally, but by a burning passion for statism.

This book is right out of Obama's playbook. Can you not see the common thread running through these alleged glories of the Cuban system and Obama's approach to health care and his war on oil, coal and gas, along with his corresponding commitment to green energy and his various stimulus bills, all of which increase our national deficits, debt and unemployment but greatly increase governmental control?

Obama's nomination of Kim should be no surprise to anyone, considering his consistent record of radical associations and appointments, from Van Jones to transnationalist Harold Koh. For Obama, one's radicalism is not a deterrent to one's resume, but an enhancement. His appointment of Van Jones was not a mistake owing to the administration's failure to vet him as Obama's defenders later claimed once Jones' radicalism was exposed. Obama appointed Jones precisely because his administration was intimately familiar with Jones' views; indeed, the White House carved out a new position -- green energy czar -- specifically tailored for his worldview and then happily placed him in it.

Tearing myself away from this uplifting article, I next encountered one detailing Obama's ongoing fulfillment of his promise to bankrupt the coal industry -- with his Environmental Protection Agency's issuance of new proposed rules on carbon emissions, which will please the goddess Gaia but won't do much for the production of energy, economic growth, jobs or the poor, for that matter. This was after watching a report on Fox News earlier that morning highlighting Obama's obstruction of oil shale production based on other dubious environmental doom-saying.

Next, I saw John Fund's piece on National Review Online outlining Obama's background in the sordid community organizing tactics of famed leftist radical Saul Alinsky and Obama's close ties with the now fallen ACORN. According to New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor -- in her new book on Obama -- Obama still thought of himself as a community organizer when he was senator. He still does today, and, Fund warns, conservatives should be prepared for his Alinsky tactics in the 2012 campaign.

Maybe this all wouldn't be so exasperating if Obama didn't hold himself out as a uniter, but he is the furthest thing from it, as he, if anything, is doubling down on his polarizing radicalism and his unswerving commitment to a statist agenda for America.
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To read another article by David Limbaugh, click here.

Subculture Clash

Subculture Clash
By Daniel J. Flynn on 3.30.12 @ 6:08AM

The sad story of two stereotypes, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.


America's gifts to the world include the airplane, the polio vaccine, jazz, the gated community, and saggy-drawed, gold-toothed gangsta chic. These last two contributions came into deadly conflict last month at the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida.

America is the land of the free, home of the gate. When don't-tread-on-me meets law-and-order, unchecked liberty experiences the perils of lawlessness and over-the-top security discovers it in a jail cell. That's the sad story of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.

Gated communities are cul-de-sacs suffering from a more severe neurosis. For the roughly 94 percent of Americans who don't live in Fortress America, it's easy to stereotype the denizens of the enclaves as overly-suspicious people cowering behind walls. There, a stranger isn't a friend you've never met but a guy fixing to heist your flat-screen television. Residents behind the fences seem as eager to snitch to the homeowners association on a neighbor's gauche Christmas ornamentation as he is to speed-dial the police about an unfamiliar pedestrian.

George Zimmerman did nothing to disabuse ungated Americans of such stereotypes. Since 2004, he has called the authorities 46 times. Potholes, trash in the road, unfamiliar automobiles, and even open garage doors weren't safe from his phone fetish. This busybodyism ended tragically on February 26. The initiate of the community's citizen watch program pursued an African-American teenager after a 911 dispatcher advised him not to. The African-American teenager objected more vehemently to the pursuit. Zimmerman responded to the physical assault with a firearm. Might overreaction be an issue for him?

Zimmerman's victim is exactly the kind of person who the residents of the Retreat at Twin Lakes sought to retreat from.

Trayvon Martin's Twitter account is a world where friends are "n-ggas," women are "b-tches," and English is a foreign language. His nom-de-tweet, "No Limit N---a," boasted of new tattoos, habitually arriving late for class, and smoking marijuana. He made repeated, degrading, unprintable references to women and their anatomies. "F-K DA SKOOL, F-K DA LUNCH, ND MOST OF ALL F-K DA FACULTY," he said of his high school. His high school said of him that he vandalized the building, possessed a pot pipe, and stored a cache of jewelry -- including silver wedding bands -- and a burglar's tool in his locker.

Trayvon Martin may have looked like the president's son. He didn't act like it.

What happened in Sanford, Florida, was a culture clash, just not in the way that Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Bobby Rush imagine it. The Martin-Zimmerman conflict wasn't a black-white issue, or even a black-Hispanic issue. It's the culture of the urban gangsta conflicting with the culture of gated living. One might say that the former created the latter. From all appearances, the Miami high school student and the suburban Orlando neighborhood watch captain appear as archetypes of these two American subcultures.

We judge the actors, just as the actors judged one another, on the basis of limited information. Zimmerman assumed the hooded teenager to be a hoodlum. Martin assumed that he could manhandle the shorter, pudgier, older man in a fistfight. Their stereotypes proved correct, but only to a point. If Martin appeared as a nogoodnik, nobody but a dentist could say that he was up to no good that night by merely buying Arizona Iced Tea and a pack of Skittles. If Zimmerman looked an easy mark for a pugilist, the assessment erred in overlooking his weapon amidst his physical attributes.

Americans may have misconceptions about teenagers exuding thug fashion and gated-life busybodies. But they, in turn, have misconceptions about America. The bastion-dweller sees in the very real gates that surround an illusion that blocks out civilization -- or perhaps walls it in. The thug behaves as a barbarian with the unrealistic expectation those in the way will behave in a civilized manner. We live in our cocoons -- until reality invades.

There's bad news for both archetypes. Fifty-three percent of births in the U.S. to women under 30 -- the motherhood demographic -- occur without a father married to the child's mother. Teenage boys blindly grasping at models of faux-masculinity -- such as beltless, pants-dragging prison fashion -- is sure to rise with it. Gated developments have been booming in recent decades where the population has been booming (in the West and South). What the unwelcome mat in front of these communities seeks to keep out encroaches.

George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin were people. Now they're seen as clichés. This is their doing, not the media's.

The passionate partisans of both complain of the public's unfair stereotypes of them. A person who doesn't like being stereotyped shouldn't behave as one.
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To read a related article, click here.
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To read another article by Daniel J. Flynn, click here.

20 Phenomenal Fringe Benefits Of Being A Liberal

20 Phenomenal Fringe Benefits Of Being A Liberal
By John Hawkins
3/30/2012

You have to give liberalism a certain amount of credit. It doesn’t work, destroys lives, and pits people against each other, but that's not to say that there are no advantages to being a liberal. Sure, you may end up sleeping in a tent in Zuccotti Park, reading Noam Chomsky's laughably ignorant books, or having to watch Rachel Maddow babble incoherent nonsense on MSNBC, but the fringe benefits cannot be beaten!

1) If you're a politician, no matter how dumb you are or how poor your decision-making is, the press will still never question your intelligence.

2) You can claim to personally speak for everyone in your gender or racial group, like you're their leader, and the press will take you seriously.

3) You can feel completely superior to people who are more admired, more influential, richer, happier, more successful, and just generally better than you in almost every way (like Sarah Palin) because they’re conservatives.

4) You can declare that other people should have their money taken away and given to the government and still get credit for being "compassionate" even if you give nothing yourself.

5) You can leave a woman to die at the bottom of a tidal pool, use crack, or have a gay prostitution ring run out of your apartment and other liberals will STILL vote for you.

6) You can suggest that black Americans are too incompetent to handle something as simple as getting a photo ID without being called racist.

7) You can use capitalism to make huge piles of money and then turn right around and score brownie points with your fellow liberals by ripping an economic system that made it possible for you to actually become filthy rich writing, making music, or acting for a living.

8) No matter how many insults you lob at people you disagree with or how determined you are to refuse to listen to their arguments, you will never feel as if you're being uncivil or close minded.

9) You can be a white man who calls himself the first black President without getting in trouble with Al Sharpton and be a serial adulterer who even cheats with an intern without getting in trouble with NOW.

10) You can go an entire lifetime without having a single kind thing to say about America and still consider yourself to be patriotic.

11) Similarly, you can disregard the Bible, ignore slurs aimed at Christianity, and mock people who take their religious beliefs seriously and still consider yourself to be a Christian.

12) You can be perfectly fine with cheating on your own taxes while you call other people "greedy" for not wanting to pay higher taxes themselves.

13) If you're a minority, you can actually hold a prominent media job centered around regularly accusing other people of being racists.

14) You'll be considered "courageous" by your left-wing friends when you get up in front of a group of liberals and say things that all of you believe to be true.

15) If you run for office, you'll get questions like, "(Do you think your opponents are) uninformed, out of touch, or irresponsible?" from the media while your opponents will be getting asked questions that start with the presumption that they hate half the country or their economic policies couldn't possibly work.

16) You can be a former KKK member who drops the N-bomb on TV and people will still deny you're a racist.

17) You can ride around in an SUV, fly on a private jet, and have a mansion while you lecture other people about the importance of having a small environmental footprint and other liberals won't have a problem with it at all.

18) You can claim to hold the exact same position as conservatives on gay marriage and you won't be called a homophobe.

19) You can regularly call conservative women sluts, whores, tw_ts, and even the C-word and still call yourself a feminist without other people laughing out loud.

20) You get to feel comfortable with lying to other people because you know what's in their own best interests better than they do and if they were a little more enlightened -- like you -- they'd thank you for misleading them into doing the right thing!
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To read another article by John Hawkins, click here.

Liberal, Just Another Word For Stupid

Liberal, Just Another Word For Stupid
Friday, March 30, 2012
by Burt Prelutsky

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself how it is that so many of my fellow Americans can actually go out and vote for people as ignorant as Patty Murray, Barbara Boxer and Hank Johnson. Rep. Johnson, in case he’s slipped your mind, is the Democrat representing Georgia’s 4th congressional district, whose claim to fame is that during a House Armed Services Committee hearing, he asked Admiral Robert Willard if he shared the congressman’s concern that adding 8,000 servicemen and their families to the 175,000 civilians on the island could cause Guam to tip over and capsize.

The truth is, even if you ignore their politics, it would be hard to imagine any group of people in which this trio would not stand out by reason of their ignorance.

But just as often, I’ve found myself wondering why Fox keeps offering up the likes of Juan Williams, Leslie Marshall, Geraldo Rivera, Alan Colmes, Marc Lamont Hill and Bob Beckel. I sit at home listening to these donkeys braying the same predictable talking points to each and every question, and I find myself dismissing Fox’s claims to being fair and balanced. If that’s their intention, I say to myself, why is it they never invite some intelligent people on to present the liberal side of issues?

Then it struck me. There is no intelligent argument that can be made for liberalism. All any of them can do is parrot the same insipid sound bites dreamed up by the likes of Barack Obama, James Carville, David Axelrod, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and regurgitated ad nauseam by Jay Carney.

There is a very good reason why there’s nobody on the Left who is comparable to Charles Krauthammer, Mark Levin, Thomas Sowell, Brit Hume, Ann Coulter, Dennis Prager, Walter Williams, Mark Steyn, Steve Hayes, Bernie Goldberg, Harry Stein, Michael Medved, Mark Alexander, Bret Baier, Michelle Malkin and Lou Dobbs. The reason is that liberals never think for themselves. Aside from plotting how to game the system in order to steal elections, none of them ever has an original thought. Even questioning Barack Obama is regarded as an act of heresy.

What’s more, I can prove it. Every liberal in public life has called for abolishing the Second Amendment. Now why is that? I happen to know a number of liberals who own guns. What’s more, rich liberals who don’t own guns have security people on their payroll who carry them. Even anti-gun advocate Sen. Dianne Feinstein was once found to be packing a heater in her purse, and yet, with a single voice, liberals squeal for the abolition of all firearms. The only reason for all this hypocrisy is because some influential liberal along the way decided it was a divisive issue which could be used as a wedge between them and the rest of us.

How else could a Chicago punk at a San Francisco fundraiser be so certain that he would derive laughter, applause and huge campaign donations, from a bunch of limp-wristed fat cats by demeaning his betters as “those who cling to their guns and their religion”? For good measure, he was well-guarded at the event by a squad of Secret Service agents armed to the teeth.

If you still question my statement that liberalism is synonymous with stupidity, imagine a TV network whose intellectual heavyweights are Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton, or a now defunct radio network that headlined Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo, whose combined IQ would have to climb a stepladder and then stand on its tippy toes in order to reach triple digits.

The truth of the matter is that if liberals were as smart as they claim, they’d be conservatives.
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To read another article by Burt Prelutsky, click here.

2013 Real Estate Tax - ObamaCare

2013 Real Estate Tax - ObamaCare

This is what happens when the Democrats try to fob off a 2,000 plus page law on us...

The National Association of REALTORS is all over this and working to get it repealed, before it takes effect. But, I am very pleased we aren't the only ones who know about this ploy to steal billions from unsuspecting homeowners. How many REALTORS do you think will vote Democratic in 2012?

Did you know that if you sell your house after 2012 you will pay a 3.8% sales tax on it? That's $3,800 on a $100,000 home, etc. When did this happen? It's in the health care bill and goes into effect in 2013.
Why 2013? Could it be to come to light AFTER the 2012 elections? So, this is "change you can believe in"? Under the new health care bill all real estate transactions will be subject to a 3.8% Sales Tax.

If you sell a $400,000 home, there will be a $15,200 tax.

This bill is set to screw the retiring generation who often downsize their homes. Does this make your November and 2012 vote more important?

Oh, you weren't aware this was in the Obamacare bill? Guess what, you aren't alone. There are more than a few members of Congress that aren't aware of it either http://www.gop.gov/blog/10/04/08/obamacare-flatlines-obamacare-taxes-home >

I hope you forward this to every single person in your address book. VOTERS NEED TO KNOW.

Letter from Grandpa

Letter from Grandpa

John G. is 63 years old and owns a small business. He's a life-long Republican and sees his dream of retiring next year has all but evaporated. With the stock market crashing and new taxes coming his way, John assumes now that he will work to his dying day.

John has a granddaughter. Ashley is a recent college grad. She drives a flashy hybrid car, wears all the latest fashions, and loves to go out to nightclubs and restaurants. Ashley campaigned hard for Barack Obama. After the election she made sure her grandfather (and all other Republican family members) received a big I told-you-so earful on how the world is going to be a much better place now that her party is taking over.

Having lost both roommates, Ashley recently ran short of cash and cannot pay the rent (again) on her 3 bedroom townhouse... Like she has done many times in the past, she e-mailed her grandfather asking for some financial help.

Here is his reply:

Sweetheart, I received your request for assistance. Ashley, you know I love you dearly and I'm sympathetic to your financial plight. Unfortunately, times have changed. With the election of President Obama, your grandmother and I have had to set forth a bold new economic plan of our own...."The Ashley Economic Empowerment Plan." Let me explain.

Your grandmother and I are life-long, wage-earning tax payers. We have lived a comfortable life, as you know, but we have never had the fancier things like European vacations, luxury cars, etc... We have worked hard and were looking forward to retiring soon. But the plan has changed. Your president is raising our personal and business taxes significantly. He says it is so he can give our hard earned money to other people... Do you know what this means, Ashley? It means less for us, and we must cut back on many business and personal expenses.

You know the wonderful receptionist who worked in my office for more than 23 years? The one who always gave you candy when you came over to visit? I had to let her go last week. I can't afford to pay her salary and all of the government mandated taxes that go with having employees.... Your grandmother will now work 4 days a week to answer phones, take orders and handle the books. We will be closed on Fridays and will lose even more income.

I'm also very sorry to report that your cousin Frank will no longer be working summers in the warehouse. I called him at school this morning. He already knows about it and he's upset because he will have to give up skydiving and his yearly trip to Greenland to survey the polar bears.

That's just the business side of things. Some personal economic effects of Obama's new taxation policies include none other than you. You know very well that over the years your grandmother and I have given you thousands of dollars in cash, tuition assistance, food, housing, clothing, gifts, etc., etc. But by your vote, you have chosen to help others -- not at your expense -- but at our expense.

If you need money now sweetheart, I recommend you call 202-456-1111 202-456-1111 202-456-1111 202-456-1111. That is the direct phone number for the White House.. You can also contact the White House here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/%C2%A0;...


You yourself told me how foolish it is to vote Republican... You said Mr. Obama is going to be the 'People's President', and is going to help every American live a better life. Based on everything you've told me, along with all the promises we heard during the campaign, I'm sure Mr. Obama will be happy to transfer some stimulus money into your bank account. Have him call me for the account number which I memorized years ago.

Perhaps you can now understand what I've been saying all my life: Those who vote for a president should consider the impact on the nation as a whole, and not be just concerned with what they can get for themselves. What Obama supporters don't seem to realize is all of the money he is redistributing to illegal aliens and non-taxpaying Americans (the so-called "less fortunate") comes from tax-paying families.

Remember how you told me, "Only the richest of the rich will be affected"? Well guess what, honey? Because we own a business, your grandmother and I are now considered to be the richest of the rich. On paper, it might look that way, but in the real world, we are far from it..

As you said while campaigning for Obama, some people will have to carry more of the burden so all of America can prosper... You understand what that means, right? It means that raising taxes on productive people results in them having less money; less money for everything, including granddaughters.

I'm sorry, Ashley, but the well has run dry. The free lunches are over... I have no money to give you now. So, congratulations on your choice for "change." For future reference, I encourage you to try and add up the total value of the gifts and cash you have received from us, just since you went off to college, and compare it to what you expect to get from Mr. Obama over the next 4 (or 8) years. I have not kept track of it, Ashley. It has all truly been the gift of our hearts.

Remember, we love you dearly... but from now on you'll need to call the number mentioned above. Your "Savior" has the money we would have given to you. Just try and get it from him.

Good luck, sweetheart.

Love, Grandpa
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