What's Washington smoking this time?
Exclusive: Chuck Norris warns,
Americans have become 'tea'd'!

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Posted: March 30, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

By Chuck Norris

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Smoke screening is an effective military maneuver used to mask the location or movement of units such as infantry, aircraft, tanks or ships. But those who have mastered that art of deception are not just those on the battlefield, but those in the halls of Washington.

Just five days after the election, back on Nov. 9, 2008, now White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel explained the Obama administration's philosophy for governing (for smoke screening): "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it is an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." Here's how they and Congress are living out those words today.

The present smoke hovering over the capital's landscape is the American International Group, or AIG, which has been bailed out four times by the government since last September – to the tune of roughly $170 billion. And, while our eyes have been on the AIG associates who have pilfered $165 million through bonuses, and congressional participants who have condoned such abuses, the Fed is running a quarterback sneak in areas ranging from funding European economies to unhinging America's conservative underpinnings.

First, while people blow a cork over AIG corruptions, far larger amounts of money are being funneled to European financial groups without a peep of protest. AIG employee bonuses are chump change in comparison.

Where is the roughly $170 billion of AIG bailout monies from taxpayers going? Some of the biggest beneficiaries of the bailout are European financial affiliates of AIG.

While AIG monies were distributed to American companies like Goldman Sachs ($13 billion), Merrill Lynch ($7 billion) and Bank of America ($5 billion), European partners were making out like bandits too. The banks include Societe Generale of France ($12 billion), the Deutsche Bank of Germany ($12 billion), Barclays of Britain ($8.5 billion) and UBS of Switzerland ($5 billion). Can you believe it?

And it should also be noted that while AIG associates in America are considering giving back their bonuses, AIG executives in Europe say they have no such intent. (By the way, about $85 million of the $165 million in AIG bonuses were given outside the U.S.)

Whatever justification of systemic risk might be proposed, there's no overlooking the fact that these funds are being given to foreign countries to build up their economies when they could be poured into our own in 1,000 different places – like to those who have lost their homes, good name and credit. These congressional permissions are not only outright abusive uses of taxpayers monies, but they are constitutionally criminal. Charity begins at home. It time for us to get our own house in order before helping others with theirs.

So why hasn't there been a major outcry over these bailout monies delegated by AIG to foreign powers? Could it be that the political smokescreens are that pervasive? Is the mainstream media's love affair with Obama still so intoxicating that they are also blind to toxic overseas messes? If foreign investors and institutions are so critically involved in AIG's recovery, why don't their governments help to foot the bill for AIG's rescue?

As pundits and the public have been mesmerized by AIG associate bonuses, Obama continued to slip in more bailouts and even link his 2010 staggering $3.6 trillion budget as another necessary instrument of economic recovery. Forget that the new Congressional Budget Office predicted that the Obama budget would create $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years –$2.3 trillion more than the White House predicted. Does anyone care about that type of debt being placed on our children and children's children's generations?

The majority of Congress is equally a part of the smokescreen plot. Can it not stop these financial sidebars and this legislative insanity? Does it not seem a bit skewed to anyone else that, after the government doles out $170 billion to AIG, it then also throws a 90 percent tax on those who received bonuses from that money? While it might feel like justified revenge, it is a gross abuse of Congress' constitutional powers. Is it the spoiled children (AIG executives) who need a spanking or the parent (Congress) who spoils the brats? As Fortune noted, "Yes, AIG has received vast amounts of bailout money from the government. But that doesn't mean that every bonus-receiving employee is some sort of troll or incompetent who deserves to be threatened with a 90 percent tax or with having his address made public so that people can picket his house." Abuse abounds on every level.

Everyone has become so accustomed to this ludicrous legislative licentiousness that the Obama administration went for broke this past week, when Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner came to Congress to try and obtain sole political and financial autonomy for bailing out select financial institutions the Feds deem necessary to be saved. Of course, Geithner's guise is not political power but economic welfare and concern, saying he merely sought the "broad authority governments need to manage financial crises effectively and protect the economy from the trauma that comes." Again, forget that the Constitution prohibits government from interfering with private contracts.

Of course financial institutions are not the only ones "benefiting" from Washington's smokescreens – so are pet projects and liberal philosophical platforms across the country. Here are just a few other arenas in which Congress and the president have made political headway, while we were sleeping under AIG corruptions and other alleged economic recovery incentives.

Let's not forget Congress and the president passed the $410 billion omnibus "stimulus" bill with its 9,000 earmarks (despite saying he wouldn't do so during his campaign).
More politicians with tax evasion problems have been appointed to the Obama cabinet than ever before in the history of the presidency (despite that he said his administration would perform some of the "most sweeping ethics reform in history").
Obama appointed (and Congress confirmed) David Ogden, a defender of child pornography, to the No. 2 position in the Justice Department
Obama's newly appointed secretary of education, Arne Duncan, isn't likely going to win the hearts of parents committed to private or homeschooling, as he explained in an NPR radio interview, "I'm a big believer in choice and competition, but I think we can do that within the public school framework." (Duncan, great to hear you can articulate what "I" think, but will you represent "We, the People" in your decisions? I hear you're a good man, so please don't abandon those of us who choose options other than public schools.)
Obama's new budget will reduce your tax deductibility for charitable gifts and severely cripple nonprofits, which are already hurting by America's recession.
If Congress passes Obama's new budget, increased taxes will fall upon a larger number of small business owners than once projected and only ultimately discourage economic growth and penalize productivity. As Yale University professor Michael Graetz noted, "We're shooting ourselves in the foot economically by relying as heavily as we do on income taxes when the rest of the world relies on consumption taxes."
Despite its history of fraud, ACORN, that alleged political bastion of election neutrality, will participate in the 2010 consensus.
An executive order was signed for Gitmo to be closed, and the War on Terror was reassigned as an "Overseas Contingency Operation"
And Obama announced just last week that he's sending 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan with possibly 30,000 more troops next year (despite that during his campaign he promised to reduce our troops and pull us out of the Middle East).
Pro-choice platforms and practices have been pushed in ways that America hasn't seen since the original 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. Obama overturned the "Mexico City Policy," now allowing federal funds to support international family planning groups who provide abortions. Restrictions for federal funding for embryonic stem cell research have been lifted. The Conscience Clause is about to be rescinded, if the public doesn't fight immediately. Parental rights are about to be handed over to the United Nations. And FOCA is closing fast on the horizon.
In two-thirds of his first 100 days, Obama has spent more money than any president to date (and most combined), grown big government larger than any administration, raised the debt ceiling and national budget higher than any government in the world, made more liberal changes than Planned Parenthood could plan, and gotten away with breaking any campaign promises he chooses. And he's done all of that with virtually few contests or rebuttals and a continued 65 percent approval rating.

One thing is certain: There's nothing that Obama can't get away with at this point. He is the orchestra leader of a new political blitzkrieg that makes the Clinton machine look like Tinker Toys.

And you thought AIG was the problem?

America, please wake up and let your voice be known to your legislatures that "We are TEA'D!"