The War Is Over
Federal courts have just surrendered in the war against radical Islam.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

The war is over. Our peerless armed forces took Tora Bora and, when we finally let them, Fallujah. But al-Qaeda won in Washington, and that has made all the difference.

The War on Terror has radically altered the compact between the American people and their government by dramatically changing the nature of the U.S. courts. Until this new, unaccountable monster is caged, it will continue to devour our political community’s capacity to wage war and to defend itself.

And that caging had better happen soon, because the word “war” in this context refers only to our nation’s forcible military response after the 9/11 attacks finally made the atrocities of radical Islam impossible to ignore any longer. Our response did not start the war. That war, radical Islam’s jihad against the United States and the West, continues — and ever more perilously. As we hollow ourselves out by the day, we become a much softer target.

Last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dealt a crushing blow to national defense. The three-judge panel’s ruling in al Odah v. United States has gotten scarce media attention. Perhaps that’s understandable: It’s a mind-numbing technical dispute over “discovery” in litigation, vying for attention against the socializing of our economy and the consequent collapse of the stock market. But the discovery in question is the most vital kind, namely, that of classified national-defense information. What is in dispute is how much sensitive intelligence we must share with enemies bent on annihilating Americans — enemies against whom the people’s representatives have authorized, by overwhelming margins, the use of force. That is, these “petitioners” are the militants who — along with al-Qaeda’s hierarchy and affiliates — use the intelligence we give them against the soldiers we have dispatched to fight the battles Congress has authorized, under the direction of a president whose first duty is the prosecution of the war.

Most significantly, the issuing court has declared an end to the war. No formal armistice has been announced, of course. Instead, as T. S. Eliot would have it, the judges are ending the war not with a bang, but a whimper. They are declaring it over by failing to acknowledge that it is, or ever was, on. It isn’t even background noise.

BOUMEDIENE AND THE REMAKING OF FEDERAL COURTS
Some background, though, is in order. Last June, in its cataclysmic Boumediene decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled — against the weight of precedent, tradition, and common sense — that non-U.S. nationals, held by the military outside sovereign American territory (i.e., beyond the writ of American judges) as prisoners captured in a war authorized by Congress, are nevertheless vested with a constitutional right to challenge their detention as enemy combatants in our courts. The decision was a calamity on many levels, but two merit our immediate attention.

First, the 5–4 majority dramatically and dangerously revolutionized the separation-of-powers doctrine that is the cornerstone of our liberty. For more than two centuries, we proceeded under the assumption that a self-determining people makes its most significant decisions through the political process, with policymakers answerable to voters and therefore removable if they fail either to protect our security or to respect our freedom. Courts were insulated from the political process, but only because it was understood that they respected their limited role (safeguarding the individual rights of Americans) and refrained from entering the political sphere — especially the formulation of national-security policy, which involves the most important decisions a political community makes, decisions for which the courts have no institutional competence.


Boumediene cast all of that aside. It did not merely vest constitutional rights in hostile aliens with no claim on them. It supplanted Congress and the commander-in-chief in prescribing the entitlements of enemy prisoners, a function hitherto understood to be military and diplomatic — not legal. And worse still, the Court refused to concede its duty to defer to the supremacy of the political branches in their realms of constitutional responsibility, or, indeed, that there are any areas in which politically insulated judges are institutionally incompetent. Rather, in the breathtaking decree of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the “Executive’s powers as Commander in Chief” are “vindicated” when they are “confirmed by the Judicial Branch” — that those powers are assigned by the Constitution to the executive rather than the judiciary apparently is irrelevant.

The courts no longer see themselves as part of the U.S. government. The U.S. government, like the American people, is at war — or at least it has been. The courts are not part of that effort. They are spectator turned critic turned detached manager. Their self-perception is that of a shadow outside and above the U.S. government, serving not a Constitution of limited powers but “the law” — an ever-evolving, all-encompassing corpus of cosmic justice. The courts are not a forum to which Americans come to vindicate their rights against government; they are an overlord available to humanity to lodge its grievances against the American people and their government.

The second Boumediene calamity was its commitment to federal judges of the task of designing procedures for the vindication of our enemies’ new constitutional rights. Prescribing procedures for court proceedings is the job of Congress, which can weigh national-security needs against due-process concerns. The job of courts — which have no national-security responsibilities and are hardwired to maximize due-process protections against the U.S. government — is to conduct proceedings in accordance with the rules Congress fashions. Allowing courts to make up their own rules regarding enemy-combatant proceedings inevitably means that the defense of the United States will be subordinated to “justice” for the detainees.

That is precisely what has happened in al Odah. At issue was: In a challenge to the military’s designation of someone as an enemy combatant, what disclosures of classified information must the government make to the combatant about its basis for concluding that he is one of the enemy? The Justice Department took a position that, accounting for the fact that we are at war, was generous: The detainee is entitled to learn enough information to support the conclusion that he is an enemy combatant. As for other information in the government’s possession, the detainee is entitled only to that which is actually exculpatory — i.e., information that shows he is not an enemy combatant. Beyond that, he does not have a need to know. We are at war, and it endangers both the public and our troops in harm’s way to give our enemies unnecessary insights about what we know and how we know it.

The government, moreover, reserved to itself the power to determine what information in its files was exculpatory. This was consonant with criminal procedure, where the stakes for our security are not remotely as high. A criminal suspect, for example, has no right to force the government to present any exculpatory evidence to a grand jury, and the government is not required to produce all the information in its file at any stage — it must merely produce enough to establish probable cause at the indictment stage, and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. Further, the prosecutor is not required to hand over his file so the judge may independently determine what is discoverable and what is not. The prosecutor is trusted, in fidelity to his oath, to disclose that which the law mandates and to withhold the rest.

ANYTHING TO HELP THE ENEMY
For the D.C. Circuit, however, these standards, though good enough for American citizens accused of crime, are somehow not good enough for alien enemy combatants trying to kill American citizens. The panel found the government’s “mere ‘certification’” that information was immaterial, and should not be disclosed, to be insufficient. Allowing such a “naked declaration,” the judges harrumphed, would turn courts into mere “rubber-stamps.” Therefore, they said, “it is the court’s responsibility to make the materiality determination itself.”

More alarming is the judges’ understanding of what constitutes materiality — and what informs, and more significantly does not inform, that understanding. The court never takes into account that the nation is under siege, that we are in a state of war against people trying to destroy our way of life, and that this war has been ordained by our citizens through the procedures laid out in our Constitution — with the executive dispatching troops and taking prisoners under the sweeping authorization and continued funding support of Congress. One might think that would make the war’s prosecution the highest priority of our political community. It is one thing, and quite a bad thing, to force the executive to defend our nation in court against our enemies. It is quite another thing, though, to suggest our enemies are entitled to a shred of information beyond the minimum necessary to demonstrate that their designation as enemy combatants is rational.


Not, alas, according to this court. The judges believe the highest national priority is not winning a war but vindicating the Boumediene injunction to conduct “meaningful” judicial review of the military’s detention decisions. Therefore, it holds, the government must surrender anything in its file that might be helpful to an individual combatant’s case.

It makes no difference that the information is not exculpatory. The judges reason that information that is not “actually inculpatory” (emphasis in original) could be helpful to the detainee. After all, they speculate, withheld information might shed light on the reliability of the government’s sources (those would be the intelligence sources we are trying to conceal from al-Qaeda because they help us only at great danger to themselves). In fact, the judges go so far as to say: “Information that is not exculpatory on its face may also be material if it contains the names of witnesses who can provide helpful information” — such as names of detainees alleged to have trained in al-Qaeda camps. That we’d have sound intelligence reasons not to reveal to our enemies what we know about their training programs, who attended them, and how we might have come about that knowledge is apparently beside the point.

While the judges fret over the biases of our informants, Americans ought to be aghast at the biases of our judges. Throughout the opinion, there is a sense that the good faith of those fighting the war and defending it in court is always in question — the judges take umbrage at any suggestion that they should simply “accept the government’s own designation.” But they do not extend that same skepticism to the defense lawyers, human-rights activists, and anti-American agitators, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, who have volunteered their services to those captured making war on our country. These thoughtful folks, we must implicitly trust, are just trying to do their job. Whatever helps them helps the court — and what could possibly be more important than that?

Tellingly, the panel repeatedly observes that both sides agree these detention hearings are “analogous” to criminal proceedings. The judges seem to miss, however, that an analogy is a comparison between things that are similar, not a finding that things are equivalent. They treat wartime detention as if it were no different from criminal detention — as if the commander-in-chief were owed no special deference, as if the standards for holding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shouldn’t be materially different from those determining whether the garden-variety drug dealer gets bail. Except that here, KSM is actually treated better. In sum, this court has given alien enemy combatants — who have no constitutional entitlement to the due-process protections accorded to American citizens at trial — discovery rights superior to those the Supreme Court requires in the domestic criminal context.

This gravely damages the ability of the United States to fight wars successfully. The primary reason enemy combatants may be detained under the laws of war is to prevent their return to the battlefield. The depletion of enemy assets brings the war to a more rapid, more humanitarian conclusion. American courts now stand this principle on its head. Henceforth, the price of detaining an enemy operative will be the coerced disclosure of intelligence that may be more valuable to the enemy than is the combatant himself. Factor in the enormous resource drain the litigation requires, and holding prisoners becomes a net loss for the war effort. And the war effort becomes a waste of time unless you only kill rather than capture — which is al-Qaeda’s way of doing things, but not ours.

This outcome has always been the fondest dream of the anti-war Left. That is why the Democrat-dominated Congress turned a deaf ear when, after Boumediene, the Bush administration (especially Attorney General Michael Mukasey) implored lawmakers to fashion rules and procedures for combatant-detention hearings. “We don’t have to pass anything,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler told Newsweek. “Let the courts deal with it.” Democrats knew that, if they sat on their hands, the courts would do their dirty work for them. And so it has come to pass. The war is over, at least until the next 9/11 — we can make ourselves defenseless, but radical Islam is not calling off the jihad.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).


— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDQyYjEzMTg3ZDBjZTA4MzExNjU1MTE2MzkwYTRiMTc=

Out of chaos, a new world order
Exclusive: Joseph Farah exposes sinister plot for 'permanent' global governance

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: March 09, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

By Joseph Farah

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Henry Kissinger wrote a very important article in the International Herald Tribune Jan. 12.

I believe it was meant as a signal – marching orders, if you will, for a disparate band of elitists determined to bring about a new form of global rule that will supersede our notions of national sovereignty, limited government and personal freedom.

I would also offer it up as exhibit A in making the case that our current financial crisis is almost entirely manufactured by forces trying to bring about the long-hailed "new world order."

Here is how that plan is going to work: America, the most prosperous and freest nation on earth, will be brought to its knees in an economic leveling process that will purposely make it reliant on other nations of the world – so much so that America will, in the hopes of people like Kissinger and David Rockefeller, eagerly accept and submit to world government.

I urge you to read Kissinger's entire article for yourself, but, even two months later, it is impossible to interpret it in any other way than as a blueprint for what Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress would do with their "unique opportunity."

"That opportunity involves a seeming contradiction," Kissinger wrote. "On one level, the financial collapse represents a major blow to the standing of the United States. While American political judgments have often proved controversial, the American prescription for a world financial order has generally been unchallenged. Now disillusionment with the United States' management of it is widespread."

Kissinger goes on to say that every nation will be tempted to act independently to extricate itself from the "crisis" or "debacle." However, this course of action will be futile and counterproductive. Only "common action" will be acceptable.

"Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources," he continued. "Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being. It will fragment disastrously if the various priorities cannot be reconciled."

Kissinger added: "The alternative to a new international order is chaos."

In other words, that's the choice – chaos or submission to rule by an unaccountable global elite.

Kissinger goes on to predict what will happen – and is happening already: There would be "rescue packages" designed by domestic governments relying on seemingly unlimited credit – the mirage that created the crisis in the first place.

Since the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, Kissinger explains, there has been a "period of nearly uninterrupted global growth." That fact "induced too many to equate world order with the acceptance of American designs, including our domestic preferences."

That, to Henry Kissinger and his global banking masters, is undesirable.

And here's where Barack Obama fits into the plan: "Not since the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy half a century ago has a new administration come into office with such a reservoir of expectations. It is unprecedented that all the principal actors on the world stage are avowing their desire to undertake the transformations imposed on them by the world crisis in collaboration with the United States. The extraordinary impact of the president-elect on the imagination of humanity is an important element in shaping a new world order. But it defines an opportunity, not a policy."

Kissinger hints that even the fear-inducing terror of the global jihad may be part of the orchestrated plot by the masters of the universe.

"The ultimate challenge is to shape the common concern of most countries and all major ones regarding the economic crisis, together with a common fear of jihadist terrorism, into a common strategy reinforced by the realization that the new issues like proliferation, energy and climate change permit no national or regional solution," he writes.

Kissinger then hits on the major contributing factor to America's economic crisis – its abandonment of a manufacturing economy and its transformation into a debt-based consumption economy.

"China made possible the American consumption splurge by buying American debt; America helped the modernization and reform of the Chinese economy by opening its markets to Chinese goods," he writes. "Both sides overestimated the durability of this arrangement. But while it lasted, it sustained unprecedented global growth. It mitigated as well the concerns over China's role once China emerged in full force as a fellow superpower. A consensus had developed according to which adversarial relations between these pillars of the international system would destroy much that had been achieved and benefit no one. That conviction needs to be preserved and reinforced."

No one knows more about this subject than Kissinger. He was the grand maestro – even to the point of becoming a well-compensated agent of the Chinese in the process.

What Kissinger and his friends in the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group want to see and construct is a "permanent" form of global governance. They seek to serve as the architects of a new empire.

"An international order can be permanent only if its participants have a share not only in building but also in securing it. In this manner, America and its potential partners have a unique opportunity to transform a moment of crisis into a vision of hope," he concludes.

Look for more directed chaos from the masters of the universe.

They believe it serves their interests well.

Political Pundit Delcares:

"Deception at the core of Obama Plans"

Nationally known political columnist, and talking head for the FOX News channel, Charles Krauthammer has just published a column entitled:

"Deception at Core of Obama Plans"

Here below is a brief excerpt from the start of the column:

"Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the "$2 trillion dollars in savings" that "we have already identified," $1.6 trillion of which President Obama's budget director later admits is the "savings" of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 -- 11 years after George Bush ended it, and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely."

"Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama's tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto the end. But that's a matter of scale, not principle."

All presidents do that. But few undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama's radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed.

Krauthammer continues with a lengthy review of President Obama's words and actions to date and again at the end he notes that Obama's clever politics are "intellectually dishonest to the core."

Big deal? So what does that have to do with Biblical Prophecy?

In a word - "Antichrist."

Do not misunderstand my point. I am NOT saying that President Obama is the Antichrist. He is, however, exhibiting a key symptom or sign or if you will a method of not only the Antichrist, but moreover of Satan. Satan always operates or uses deception. It is his primary method of interacting with humanity. For more on this - see The A-O Report, special Prophecy Studies article: "How Satan Operates in Our World" - LINK HERE.

See 2 Corinthians 11 3,4 and 13-14 where Paul notes Satan's method of operation involves deception.

3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

4 For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.

13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.

14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

While I do not claim that President Obama is the Antichrist is functioning with a hallmark tactic of Satan, deception. For this reason, Obama's actions bear careful scrutiny.

Deception at Core of Obama Plans
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the "$2 trillion dollars in savings" that "we have already identified," $1.6 trillion of which President Obama's budget director later admits is the "savings" of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 -- 11 years after George Bush ended it, and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely.

Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama's tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto the end. But that's a matter of scale, not principle.

All presidents do that. But few undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama's radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed.

The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this:

"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the entire banking system. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful homebuyers.

The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe in the first place.

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.

What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.

Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Copyright 2009, Washington Post Writers Group

Open your eyes!

By N. Richard Greenfield

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | With each announcement of a new appointee to the Obama Middle East foreign policy team the tilt against Israel increases.

Samantha Powers and James Jones, both with long records of antagonism towards Israel, were followed by lesser-known names of the same persuasion. Fred Hof will deal with Syria and Susan Rice represents American interests at the United Nations. George Mitchell, who carries the flag for moral equivalence is directed to mediate the Arab-Israeli impasse and, if past experience is any guide, will call on Israel to sacrifice its security and safety in exchange for an Arab promise not to wantonly kill Israeli civilians. Isi Liebler describes Mitchell as a man whose "obsessive even-handedness resulted in an inability to distinguish between terrorists and victims."

But last week the administration did more than appoint. It shifted policy about 90 degrees towards Hamas in Gaza.

Secretary of State Clinton announced 300 to 900 million dollars in aid for Gaza, which is part of an almost 3 billion dollar EU package that makes the Israeli incursion into Gaza a joke. To underline the absurdity of this move, rockets again came down on southern Israel, hitting a school in Ashkelon that, fortunately, was not in session.

To believe that Hamas terrorists who control life and death in that forlorn sliver of land will not have access to those funds, as it has access to anything else that comes into that area, is naive.

Ed Lasky of the American Thinker warns that the removal of sanctions against Burma, one of the world's most odious regimes, presages a possible reversal of U.S. policy towards Iran.

In the meantime, Galid Shalit is in captivity in Gaza for nearly a thousand days. If he is alive, and the U.S. hands over that almost billion dollars without as much as mentioning his name, it can only be termed a studied indifference to Israel's well being. It's not naivete.

To top this all off, the appointment of Chas Freeman is the one move that is most problematical. One can grasp the problems with Freeman just by listening to him:

"The problem of terrorism that now bedevils us has its origins in.....the Middle East. To end this terrorism we must address the issues in the region that give rise to it. Principal among these is the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation. ....Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians..." Freeman, May 2007.

JWR columnist Frank Gaffney comments on this appointment as follows:

"It strains credulity that a man with such pronounced — and anti-American — policy views can serve effectively, let alone objectively, as the arbiter of National Intelligence Estimates. ..... The evidence suggests that he is what he appears to be: an aggressive partisan in the service of many of America's most dangerous actual or potential adversaries."

Freeman is a paid shill for both Saudi Arabia and China. His foundation just received a million dollar gift from a Saudi Prince. The Middle East Policy Forum, among other things, urges the inclusion of a sanitized version of Whahabbism in our school system's textbooks. A former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman is the President's choice to head the National Intelligence Council. The facts tell us that he is an unlikely candidate for any vital planning position which requires a studied objectivity, as opposed to partisanship. As such he will help shape Middle East strategy for our President, instead of foreign policy for the princes of Saudi Arabia. Not only does Freeman's appointment endanger Israel, but his commercial ties to China also bring into question his views on Taiwan which, like Israel, he disdains and sees as an impediment to US interests.

JWR columnist Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post characterizes his appointment as such: "Freeman is an outspoken opponent of Israel. He has stated repeatedly that the source of Islamic and Arab hostility toward the U.S. and violence against Americans — including the September 11 attacks — is the American alliance with Israel. Were the U.S. to abandon Israel — which he believes is solely to blame for the Arab world's rejection of its right to exist and for Iran's stated intention to destroy it — then the U.S. would have no further difficulties with the Arabs or Iran."

Add to all of this an in-and-out re entry into the Durban process; Obama's team players who provide running commentary on Israel's election that can only be interpreted as meddling with Israeli democracy; and a European-style curtailment of arms shipments to Israel except for those deemed 'defensive only,' and one can't help but believe that the Obama Administration has traveled far in six short weeks.

For many who feel the jury is still out, the obeisance to the Arab world at the expense of Israel makes it clear that there is a verdict in the offing here.

One thing is clear: American Jews who supported and voted for change should open their eyes to this reality and rethink their blind allegiance to this administration in terms of its policy towards Israel. Congress, which has always been a bulwark of support for Israel in this country can take the lead in this initiative, and Americans would do well to be supportive of its efforts.

Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, has called for an investigation on the closeness of Freeman to the Saudis. Democrat Steve Israel of New York has also written a letter to the Investigator General of the National Security Council asking for an investigation of Chas Freeman's fitness for this appointment.

Americans did not vote in this last election for a major realignment to the historical alliance we have with Israel. Asking our senators and representatives to inject greater oversight of our newly appointed Middle East foreign policy team and Chas Freeman in particular is a constructive exercise. Supporting those who are making this inquiry is a good start.

I may run for president of Texas
Exclusive: Chuck Norris declares, 'We're not going to take it anymore'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: March 09, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

By Chuck Norris

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Glenn Beck's radio show last week, I quipped in response to our wayward federal government, "I may run for president of Texas."

That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.

From the East Coast to the "Left Coast," America seems to be moving further and further from its founders' vision and government.

George Washington advised, "The great rule of conduct in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations [and] having with them as little political connection as possible." Yet the Obama administration just pledged $900 million in U.S. taxpayer-funded aid to Hamas-controlled Gaza and Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority.

Thomas Jefferson counseled us, "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." Yet the Feds have just skyrocketed our national deficit and debt by trillions of dollars, and it plans much more fiscal expansion with few expectations of resistance. Despite that George Washington admonished, "To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones," we keep borrowing and bailing, while we watch the stock market plunge further every time we do.

Patrick Henry taught that, "Our Constitution is … an instrument for its people to restrain the government." Yet our Congress and president stampede that founding document, overlook its explicitness and manipulate its words to abandon a balance of power and accommodate their own desires, partisan politics and runaway spending.

John Adams declared that, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." Yet we've bastardized the First Amendment, reinterpreted America's religious history and secularized our society until we ooze skepticism and circumvent religion on every level of public and private life.

How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution? We the people have the authority according to America's Declaration of Independence, which states:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
When I appeared on Glenn Beck's radio show, he told me that someone had asked him, "Do you really believe that there is going to be trouble in the future?" And he answered, "If this country starts to spiral out of control and Mexico melts down or whatever, if it really starts to spiral out of control, before America allows a country to become a totalitarian country (which it would have under I think the Republicans as well in this situation; they were taking us to the same place, just slower), Americans won't stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up." Then Glenn asked me and his listening audience, "And where's that going to come from?" He answered his own question, "Texas, it's going to come from Texas. Do you agree with that Chuck?" I replied, "Oh yeah!" Definitely.

It was these types of thoughts that led me to utter the tongue-n-cheek frustration on Glenn Beck's radio show, "I may run for president of Texas!"

I'm not saying that other states won't muster the gumption to stand and secede, but Texas has the history to prove it. As most know, Texas was its own country before it joined the Union as its 28th state. From 1836 to 1846, Texas was its own Republic. Washington-on-the-Brazos (river) served as our Philadelphia, Pa. It was there, on March 2, 1836, where a band of patriots forged the Texas Declaration of Independence. (We just celebrated these dates last week.)

On March 1, 1845, then-President John Tyler signed a congressional bill annexing the Republic of Texas. Though the annexation resolution never explicitly granted Texas the right to secede from the Union (as is often reported), many (including me) hold that it is implied by its unique autonomy and history, as well as the unusual provision in the resolution that gave Texas the right to divide into as many as five states. Both the original (1836) and the current (1876) Texas Constitutions also declare that "All political power is inherent in the people. … they have at all times the inalienable right to alter their government in such manner as they might think proper."

Anyone who has been around Texas for any length of time knows exactly what we'd do if the going got rough in America. Let there be no doubt about that. As Sam Houston once said, "Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may."

Just last Friday, the Alamo celebrated its 173rd commemoration, when on March 6, 1836, Texans under Col. William B. Travis were overcome by the Mexican army after a two-week siege at the Alamo in San Antonio. But they didn't go down without a hell-of-a-fight, as those roughly 145 Texans fought to their dying breaths against more than 2,000 Mexican forces under Gen. Santa Anna. (Casualties in the battle were 189 Texans vs. about 1,600 Mexicans.) They lost that battle, but would provide the inspiration to win the war. Their fighting spirit rallied the new-found republic, and still does to this day. So when you think all is lost in America, remember the Alamo!

For those losing hope, and others wanting to rekindle the patriotic fires of early America, I encourage you to join Fox News' Glenn Beck, me and millions of people across the country in the live telecast, "We Surround Them," on Friday afternoon (March 13 at 5 p.m. ET, 4 p.m. CT and 2 p.m. PST). Thousands of cell groups will be united around the country in solidarity over the concerns for our nation. You can host or attend a viewing party by going to Glenn's website. My wife Gena and I will be hosting one from our Texas ranch, in which we've invited many family members, friends and law enforcement to join us. It's our way of saying "We're united, we're tired of the corruption, and we're not going to take it anymore!"

Again, Sam Houston put it well when he gave the marching orders, "We view ourselves on the eve of battle. We are nerved for the contest, and must conquer or perish. It is vain to look for present aid: None is at hand. We must now act or abandon all hope! Rally to the standard, and be no longer the scoff of mercenary tongues! Be men, be free men, that your children may bless their father's name."

(Note: Speaking of showdowns, Chuck is also inviting anyone near the Houston area this weekend to see a good example of the raw Texas fighting spirit by joining him and others for the national martial arts event, "Showdown in H-Town.")

Washington experts: Iran has fissile material for 50 nuclear bombs

DEBKAfile Special Report

March 8, 2009, 10:31 AM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKAfile's Washington sources quote experts familiar with the Iranian program maintain that it is far more advanced than the US and Israeli governments are willing to admit.

On March 4, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published a paper with two important disclosures:

1. Iran has enough fissile material available for making up to 50 nuclear bombs. One of the paper's authors, William Schneider, undersecretary of state in the Reagan administration, who has made a study of Iran and its nuclear strategy, estimates that Tehran can go from low enriched uranium to weapons-grade uranium in a relative brief period of time, perhaps a year or so.

Israeli officials, while evading action to curb a nuclear-armed Iran, now go about suggesting that the Jewish state can live in its shadow. They discount the crude threats coming from Iran and argue that Israel is not really the Islamic Republic primary objective; its true goal is subjugation of the Sunni Muslim world.

Another part of this argument is that Tehran will not go into production of single bombs but wait until it can produce batches of 10-15 bombs or nuclear warheads.

This proposition is knocked over by the Washington think tank's report and the briefing delivered to the Israeli cabinet by Israel's intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, Sunday, March 8.

Both confirm that Iran is no more than months away from being able to start a nuclear stockpile.

2. Schneider estimates that Israel will face the moment of no-return on action against a nuclear-armed Iran when Russia begins delivering sophisticated S-300 missile interceptors to Tehran. Not if but when, he says, although Israeli officials suggest the Russian-Iran deal has not been finalized.

The US experts' presumption is that these interceptors once installed will make it almost impossible for the US or Israel to attack Iran's nuclear sites.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2000-2009 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.

Manchurian Candidate’ Starts War on Business: Kevin Hassett

Commentary by Kevin Hassett

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs. Now that we have seen President Barack Obama’s first-year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage.

It is no wonder that markets are imploding around us. Obama is giving us the War on Business.

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue?

He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.

Another diabolical idea would be to significantly increase taxes on whatever firms are still standing. That would require subterfuge, since increasing tax rates would be too obvious. Our Manchurian Candidate would have plenty of sophisticated ideas on changing the rules to get more revenue without increasing rates, such as auctioning off “permits.”

These steps would create near-term distress. If our Manchurian Candidate leader really wanted to knock the country down for good, he would have to provide insurance against any long-run recovery.

There are two steps to accomplish that.

Discourage Innovation

First, one way the economy might finally take off is for some entrepreneur to invent an amazing new product that launches something on the scale of the dot-com boom. If you want to destroy an economy, you have to persuade those innovators not even to try.

Second, you need to initiate entitlement programs that are difficult to change once enacted. These programs should transfer assets away from productive areas of the economy as efficiently as possible. Ideally, the government will have no choice but to increase taxes sharply in the future to pay for new entitlements.

A leader who pulled off all that might be able to finish off the country.

Let’s see how Obama’s plan compares with our nightmare scenario.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been so slow to act that even liberal economist and commentator Paul Krugman is criticizing the administration for “dithering.” It has gotten so bad that the Intrade prediction market now has a future on whether Geithner is gone by year’s end. It currently puts the chance of that at about 20 percent.

No More Deferral

On the tax hike, Obama’s proposed 2010 budget quite ominously signaled that he intends to end or significantly amend the U.S. practice of allowing U.S. multinationals to defer U.S. taxes on income that they earn abroad.

Currently, the U.S. has the second-highest corporate tax on Earth. U.S. firms can compete in Europe by opening a subsidiary in a low-tax country and locating the profits there. Since the high U.S. tax applies only when the money is mailed home, and firms can let the money sit abroad for as long as they want, the big disadvantage of the high rate is muted significantly.

End that deferral opportunity and U.S. firms will no longer be able to compete, given their huge tax disadvantage. With foreign tax rates so low now, it is even possible that the end of deferral could lead to the extinction of the U.S. corporation.

If any firms are to remain, they will be festooned with massive carbon-permit expenses because of Obama’s new cap-and- trade program.

Importing Drugs

Obama’s attack on intellectual property is evident in his aggressive stance against U.S. pharmaceutical companies in the budget. He would force drug companies to pay higher “rebate” fees to Medicaid, and he included wording that suggests Americans will soon be able to import drugs from foreign countries. The stock prices of drug companies, predictably, tanked when his budget plan was released.

Obama will allow cheap and potentially counterfeit substitutes into the country and will set the U.S. price for drugs equal to the lowest price that any foreign government is able to coerce from our drugmakers.

Given this, why would anyone invest money in a risky new cancer trial, or bother inventing some other new thing that the government could expropriate as soon as it decides to?

Finally, Obama has set aside $634 billion to establish a health-reform reserve fund, a major first step in creating a universal health-care system. If you want to have health care for everyone, you have to give it to many people for free. Once we start doing that, we will never stop, at least until the government runs out of money.

It’s clear that President Obama wants the best for our country. That makes it all the more puzzling that he would legislate like a Manchurian Candidate.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He was an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@aei.org

Last Updated: March 9, 2009 00:01 EDT

Tension rises as N Korea cuts off hotline
By Christian Oliver in Seoul

Published: March 9 2009 04:21 | Last updated: March 9 2009 16:42

North Korea on Monday cut its military hotline to Seoul and put its million-man army at battle stations, ratcheting up tensions as South Korean and US troops began war games that Pyongyang warned could spark open conflict.

UN forces last week tried to counter North Korean claims that the exercises were a smokescreen for an invasion by promising to keep the hotline open, giving Pyongyang advance warning of anything that could cause a misunderstanding.

North Korea’s official KCNA news agency quoted an army spokesman as saying: “It is nonsensical to maintain the normal channels of communication when the South Korean puppets are in a frenzy about these military exercises, levelling their guns at fellow countrymen in league with foreign forces.”

Severing military communications had an immediate effect on workers trying to reach South Korea’s investment zone at Kaesong in North Korea. Some 726 South Koreans could not reach their factories in Kaesong on Monday because all crossings require clearance on the military hotline.

The communist state also warned that any attempt to shoot down a rocket it plans to launch soon would be an act of war. Pyongyang argues it is simply planning to blast a satellite into space whereas spies insist this is a ruse for testing the Taepodong-2 long-range missile, which could hit Alaska.

South Korea said it deeply regretted North Korea’s moves and sought the immediate resumption of traffic to and from Kaesong.

“As we have mentioned several times, the US-South Korean exercises are defensive in nature and are part of annual training,” said Kim Ho-nyoun, spokesman for the unification ministry.

Even by its own standards, Pyongyang’s rhetoric has been exceptionally bellicose during recent months.

The reclusive state has torn up its non-aggression pacts with the South, vowed not to recognise a tense maritime border and last week said it could not guarantee the safety of South Korean passenger aircraft in its airspace. Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s dictator, is furious that Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s conservative president, has not courted him in the manner of previous leftwing administrations and has made vital aid to the North contingent on progress in talks about dismantling Pyongyang’s atomic work. Although it tested its first nuclear device in 2006, most military experts do not believe Pyongyang has mastered the technology required to fit a warhead on a missile.

On the home front, Kim Jong-il was, as expected, returned to his country’s most powerful body, the Supreme People’s Assembly, with a vote of 100 per cent in Sunday’s elections. Although that result was a foregone conclusion, analysts are eager to see whether one of his sons has also gained a seat. That would be the clearest sign yet that Mr Kim is grooming a successor, following intelligence reports he suffered a stroke last year.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

China says U.S. naval ship was breaking law: report
Mon Mar 9, 2009 10:17pm EDT
By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - China accused a U.S. naval vessel of conducting illegal surveying off southern Hainan island, a Hong Kong TV website reported on Tuesday, after the Pentagon said Chinese ships had harassed the vessel in international waters.

Global oil prices rose 3 percent on Monday, partly driven by concerns over tensions between the world's top oil consumers.

The United States urged China to observe international maritime rules after the Pentagon said five Chinese ships, including a naval vessel, harassed the U.S. Navy ship in international waters.

The Chinese vessels "shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity" to the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, on Sunday, with one ship coming within 25 feet, a U.S. Defense Department statement said.

The tropical resort island of Hainan is the site of a Chinese naval base that houses ballistic missile submarines, according to independent analysts.

An unnamed spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington denied the Chinese ships had violated maritime rules and said U.S. ships had been conducting illegal surveying, the website of Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television (news.ifeng.com) reported.

"The U.S. claim about operating in high seas is out of step with the facts," the report quoted the spokesman as saying. "The U.S. navy vessel concerned has been consistently conducting illegal surveying in China's exclusive economic zone," the station quoted the spokesman as saying.

"China believes this contravenes international laws of the sea and China's relevant laws."

Chinese authorities had "repeatedly used diplomatic channels to demand that the U.S. side cease unlawful activities in China's exclusive economic zone," the report added.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry was unavailable for comment.

U.S. defense officials said the incident followed days of increasingly aggressive Chinese conduct in the area, including fly-bys by Chinese maritime surveillance planes.

It comes just weeks after the two sides resumed military talks, postponed in November after a U.S. announcement of arms sales to Taiwan, a self-ruled island China claims as its own.

And it echoes a stand-off in 2001 between U.S. and Chinese military forces after a U.S. spy plane made an emergency landing on Hainan after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet. China released 24 crew after a U.S. apology.

NO MAJOR FALLOUT TO TIES-ANALYST

The dispute is unlikely to do deep damage to Sino-U.S. ties when both sides are grappling with the global financial crisis, but it suggests Beijing will take a tougher stance as its naval ambitions grow, said Shi Yinhong, an expert on regional security at Renmin University in Beijing.

"The United States is present everywhere on the world's seas, but these kinds of incidents may grow as China's naval activities expand," said Shi.

The Impeccable is one of five ocean surveillance ships that serve with the U.S. 7th Fleet, which is based in Yokosuka, Japan. The ships use low-frequency sound to search for undersea threats including submarines, a U.S. military official said.

A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said the Chinese vessels had surrounded the Impeccable, waving Chinese flags and telling the U.S. ship to leave.

The Pentagon also described accounts of half a dozen other incidents dating back to March 4, in which the Impeccable and its sister vessel, USNS Victorious, were subjected to aggressive behavior.

Oil jumped more than 3 percent to $47 a barrel amid the naval incident between China and the United States and as dealers pondered the possibility of deeper production cuts by

OPEC.

The incident coincides with two sensitive anniversaries in Tibet, making China especially sensitive to outside scrutiny of its affairs. It also comes as neighboring North Korea says it is on full combat readiness in response to the start of annual military exercises by U.S. and South Korean troops.

Analyst Shi said the seas off Hainan were important to China's projection of its influence with a modern naval fleet.

"The change is in China's attitude. This reflects the hardening line in Chinese foreign policy and the importance we attach to the strategic value of the South China Sea."

A recent study of China's rising power by a top People's Liberation Army thinktank said the country should seek to avoid confrontation with Washington but not shrink when pressed.

"We don't want to stir up trouble, but nor will we fear it," said the study published last year by the PLA Academy of Military Science in Beijing.

"Especially on core interests involving our country's national unity and territorial integrity, we must keep an actively enterprising stance, defying brute force and daring to flash our sword."

(Additional reporting by Ian Ransom in Beijing and David Morgan in Washington; Editing by Nick Macfie and Dean Yates)


© Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world.

Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.

What's Dead (Short Answer: All Of It)
Just so you have a short list of what's at stake if Washington DC doesn't change policy here and now (which means before the collapse in equities comes, which could start as soon as today, if the indicators I watch have any validity at all. For what its worth, those indicators are painting a picture of the Apocalypse that I simply can't believe, and they're showing it as an imminent event - like perhaps today imminent.)

All pension funds, private and public, are done. If you are receiving one, you won't be. If you think you will in the future, you won't be. PBGC will fail as well. Pension funds will be forced to start eating their "seed corn" within the next 12 months and once that begins there is no way to recover.
All annuities will be defaulted to the state insurance protection (if any) on them. The state insurance funds will be bankrupted and unable to be replenished. Essentially, all annuities are toast. Expect zero, be ecstatic if you do better. All insurance companies with material exposure to these obligations will go bankrupt, without exception. Some of these firms are dangerously close to this happening right here and now; the rest will die within the next 6-12 months. If you have other insured interests with these firms, be prepared to pay a LOT more with a new company that can't earn anything off investments, and if you have a claim in process at the time it happens, it won't get paid. The probability of you getting "boned" on any transaction with an insurance company is extremely high - I rate this risk in excess of 90%.
The FDIC will be unable to cover bank failure obligations. They will attempt to do more of what they're doing now (raising insurance rates and doing special assessments) but will fail; the current path has no chance of success. Congress will backstop them (because they must lest shotguns come out) with disastrous results. In short, FDIC backstops will take precedence even over Social Security and Medicare.
Government debt costs will ramp. This warning has already been issued and is being ignored by President Obama. When (not if) it happens debt-based Federal Funding will disappear. This leads to....
Tax receipts are cratering and will continue to. I expect total tax receipts to fall to under $1 trillion within the next 12 months. Combined with the impossibility of continued debt issue (rollover will only remain possible at the short duration Treasury has committed to over the last ten years if they cease new issue) a 66% cut in the Federal Budget will become necessary. This will require a complete repudiation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, a 50% cut in the military budget and a 50% across-the-board cut in all other federal programs. That will likely get close.
Tax-deferred accounts will be seized to fund rollovers of Treasury debt at essentially zero coupon (interest). If you have a 401k, or what's left of it, or an IRA, consider it locked up in Treasuries; it's not yours any more. Count on this happening - it is essentially a certainty.
Any firm with debt outstanding is currently presumed dead as the street presumption is that they have lied in some way. Expect at least 20% of the S&P 500 to fail within 12 months as a consequence of the complete and total lockup of all credit markets which The Fed will be unable to unlock or backstop. This will in turn lead to....
The unemployed will have 5-10 million in direct layoffs added within the next 12 months. Collateral damage (suppliers, customers, etc) will add at least another 5-10 million workers to that, perhaps double that many. U-3 (official unemployment rate) will go beyond 15%, U-6 (broad form) will reach 30%.
Civil unrest will break out before the end of the year. The Military and Guard will be called up to try to stop it. They won't be able to. Big cities are at risk of becoming a free-fire death zone. If you live in one, figure out how you can get out and live somewhere else if you detect signs that yours is starting to go "feral"; witness New Orleans after Katrina for how fast, and how bad, it can get.
The good news is that this process will clear The Bezzle out of the system.

The bad news is that you won't have a job, pension, annuity, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and, quite possibly, your life.

It really is that bleak folks, and it all goes back to Washington DC being unwilling to lock up the crooks, putting the market in the role it has always played - that of truth-finder, no matter how destructive that process is.

Only immediate action from Washington DC, taking the market's place, can stop this, and as I get ready to hit "send" I see the market rolling over again, now down more than 3% and flashing "crash imminent" warnings. You may be reading this too late for it to matter.

COULD OBAMA DO MUCH WORSE THE FIRST FEW MONTHS?

By Dr. Laurie Roth
March 6, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

The gifts of the first few months

Obama has moved to nationalize banks and health care. He and his administration play word games with us by calling it partnerships instead of national takeovers. They can call it Pee Wee Herman’s financial playhouse for all I care. It’s still socialism and nationalism!

Then there is the total betrayal of manipulating health care criteria and payments!

We are seeing the payment criteria to Medicaid and Medicare go from “safe and effective” treatment to “cost effective” treatment. You realize that this shift puts a target right in the middle of senior’s heads and will make treatment harder and harder to get! Anything I guess to save money so we can give more bonus checks to CEOs and bankers.

Then there is the glowing strength of foreign policy

Recently Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has offered up 900 million to Hamas, PLO and Gaza restoration. Never mind that Hamas continues to attack Israel and says in their charter that Israel should not be a state. Never mind that our friend Israel is the one that has been horrendously attacked to this day and bodies strewn all over. We have nothing extra to help them with?

Did anyone notice that our country is in a severe recession/depression? Could any of our states with their hands out to the Government use 900 million for REAL projects instead of for terrorists attacking our allies?…..just a thought.

Lets see, Russia revealed a secret letter sent by Obama promising to take the defense system out of Europe that would only protect all of Europe if they would encourage Iran to stop their nuclear program. Of course, Russia revealed this letter and said to Obama we would be glad to talk with you about closing down your defense system in Europe but won’t consider talking to Iran. I would say that was an Obama, body slam.

Isn’t it grand what it says about our loyalty and commitment to our allies in Europe? Here, twist in the wind some more! We are doing very good so far, we have insulted Israel, kissed up to the terrorist group Hamas, been body slammed by Ahmadinejad, insulted Great Britain, all of Europe and been faced by Russia. Not bad for only the first two months.

At least Obama plans to close GITMO even though his own report and investigation demonstrated AGAIN that there was no torture and total compliance with the Geneva Convention. The detainees there get treated better than our prisoners…..so quickly, lets close it!

Through the horror and realization of the socialist and communist actions of this administration, I can only hope that the conservatives will snap out of their confusion and coma in time! They must redefine their vision, laced with a real commitment, values and the guts to see it through! Life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness has always been the core of the Republican Party until they decided that compromising and popularity contests were more important.

The only line that should be crossed is when the Democrats are drawn to the conservative’s integrity, passion, values and vision. Let’s pull them across the aisle not the other way around!

© 2009 Dr. Laurie Roth - All Rights Reserved

SIGNS OF THE TIMES: SYNCRETISTIC SPIRITUALITY
PART 3
By Debra Rae
March 8, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

Where’s the Hope in 2009?

Our founding fathers understood the criticalness of establishing law and order. They saw to it that the very essence of the Ten Commandments, enhanced by New Testament amplification, served as overarching world view for our legal system. Former Prime Minister of Great Britain Mrs. Margaret Thatcher believes, rightly so, that the triumph of America’s prosperity is her free market system based on individual effort, fair dealing and (last but not least) respect for rule of law—all biblical principles.

Still, media mogul Ted Turner begs to differ. To this self-proclaimed secular humanist, the Ten Commandments are “out of date.” “If you are going to have ten rules,” he adds, “I don’t know if [prohibiting] adultery should be one of them.” Turner may not agree but, by definition, all world views (his included) are fundamentally religious. Without exception, all speak to an ideology or movement offering an overarching approach for comprehending God, the world and man’s relationship to both.

On the humanism continuum, cosmology is the skewed, albeit trendy world view in which lawful authority resides entirely with the individual. Instead of biblical principles, laws of the universe regulate conduct in the shifting paradigm of our emerging New Earth. This supposedly science-based belief system presumes that every person is god, and god is every person.

Even more, the universe itself is god—or treated as if. At all costs, humans must not be permitted to mess with biodiversity. No longer may one rejoice in the fruit of his labor, viewed as a gift from God. Rather, trendy eco-socialists work to supplant rightful private ownership with public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.

Cosmic Humanists, as these, claim to be Mother Earth’s consciousness, thus blurring the line between physics and metaphysics. Furthermore, they support classic Marxism as defined by the Robin Hood philosophy of global resource redistribution.

Illusion Sells

A Course in Miracles teaches that the mind is split between truth (our oneness with God) and illusion (the world, our bodies, actions and egos). Those awakened to cosmic truth purportedly withdraw from illusion once they discover their inborn godhood.

Passed as truth, deception sells when it strokes the ego or promises special privilege. Case in point: A favorite boutique outfits its dressing rooms with flattering lights and what my sister and I laughingly call “skinny mirrors.” Add to the ambiance a fawning sales’ staff, and women can’t resist shopping there. For many, the illusion of looking younger and trimmer trumps the reality of lumps and puffs proving otherwise!

Similarly, rather than acknowledge sin and personal accountability to a holy God, many concede reality to a skewed, though self-pleasing esoteric world view. What’s not to like about the so-called Law of Attraction with its bogus promise of getting what you want simply by attracting it to yourself?

Sorry to say, a recent doctoral-level survey out of Australia demonstrated that, despite claim to spiritual illumination and wholeness, Cosmic Humanists nonetheless are subject to higher rates of anxiety, disturbed and/or suspicious patterns of thinking, depression and anti-social behavior.

But, then, this is to be expected. In the 1820s, gifted orator Daniel Webster warned: “If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.” In my view, Webster was spot on.

When questioned by His disciples regarding “the close of the age,” Jesus warned of these signs, all accompanied by deception of self-god-itis which pretty much nails the core belief of Cosmic Humanists. History will show that diversion from the one true God opens floodgates to economic and political upheaval, armed conflicts, ecosystem breakdown, undermining of biblical ethics and persecution of the Church.

Hitch Your Wagon to Obama’s Star

Understanding the pseudo-Christian patchwork of spiritism and avant-garde psychology is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree, yet cosmologists brace a widely funded, globally united coalition with a well-argued political platform.

In the afterglow of the 2008 presidential election, Oprah told her television audience of an e-mail written by Forest Whitaker and sent to her at two in the morning. Whitaker, she gushed, “captured the essence of the moment best” in proclaiming that, with Obama in the White House, “the light of a new age is here.” Furthermore, its power is manifest in “spontaneously uniting as conspirators for the sake of the earth.”

Purportedly spirit-channeled in 1965 through Oprah’s longtime friend Marianne Williamson, the so-called “new revelation from Jesus” as embedded in The Course on Miracles presumes to guide humanity through such a time as this. And who better to take the helm than Barack H. Obama?

Man for all Pleasing

In politics, the right use of energy characterizes historic optimism. Apart from the God of the Bible, and aided by negotiation and collectivism, historic optimism contends that humanity improves progressively with the passing of time by means of the right use of energy among “intuitive friends.”

Described as a “powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity," Obama has made his mark as none other. “Dismiss it all you like,” Gladnick says; "but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence.” It’s “not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence.”

President Obama has emerged as “a messiah-like figure” whose true mission is to usher in “a quantum leap in American consciousness” (Deepak Chopra). This mission seemingly trumps executing the law in accordance with the Constitution; serving as commander-in-chief of the armed forces; creating a cabinet of advisers; granting pardons or reprieves and, with the "advice and consent" of the Senate, making treaties and appointing federal officers, ambassadors and federal judges.

Obama’s rise to leadership is so extraordinary, it’s believed that “another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance” (U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., Dem-Ill). Yet another highly visible, Chicago-based political figure, Louis Farrakhan pontificated that, when Obama talks, "the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”

Just before the New Hampshire Primary, the alleged Messiah spoke to students at Dartmouth College and referenced "a beam of light” coming down. Students, he claimed, would “experience an epiphany” and suddenly realize a compelling need to go to the polls and vote. And vote they did.

“Reasoned Faith”

Movie director Spike Lee likens the ascension of Obama to a “seismic change in the universe”—in the words of Frank Schaeffer, a sort of “spiritual revolution.” It’s about time, he adds, for “reasoned faith” to become fashionable once again. Raised by notable leaders within the American evangelical subculture, Schaeffer now regrets having participated in forming the born-again religious right.

Other prominent leaders in the emerging church likewise proclaim that the entire planet is now in “deep shift” (five, not four letters intended!). While Christian discipleship requires death to self, Obama at his best allegedly is “able to call us back to our highest selves” (Ezra Klein).

Sadly, what many fail to realize is that “no lie is so damaging as one that contains a lot of truth” (Dr. Robert Morey).

Lean, Mean Green Machine

To enable “light, love and power” to restore the illuminist’s plan on earth, God-given law must bite the dust. In its place, “soft law” addresses ecologist Garrett Hardin’s overshadowing argument that “freedom in a commons brings ruin to us all.” To avoid this inevitable fate, citizens of the world are held accountable for achieving rapid transition to community sustainability.

The good news: President Barack Obama calls for a new era of responsibility in government and corporate America in the race toward sustainable society. Moreover, Obama asks Americans to recommit to national values of service and responsibility.

The bad news: Credited to Janine Benyus, the emerging new eco-science takes inspiration from nature’s models. It elevates nature as supreme ecological standard and mentor. Consequently, nature itself dictates how humans are to live out inherent connections in life. This is known as the Law of Biomimicry.

Because planet earth was meant to be “a house of worship,” it stands to reason that a simple rule of reference for planetary management is to make earth a paradise. Green strategies for doing so include shopping locally, recycling waste as a resource, consuming materials sparingly and gathering and using energy efficiently—all reasonable, responsible choices for good earth stewardship—however, if truth be told, green labels more reflect a company’s environmental campaigns and political activities than any realistic ecological impact.

“The One” for All and All for “the One”

While Obama may not proclaim himself to be “the One,” a good number of starry-eyed groupies extol his greatness in religious terms. For example, Steve Davis contends that the President “communicates God-like energy”; and Oprah Winfrey describes him as having “an ear for eloquence and a tongue dipped in unvarnished truth.” Perhaps he’s right when clinical psychologist James Houran insists there’s a celebrity stalker in all of us! Listening to an Obama speech of messianic magnitude, MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews admitted he felt “a thrill going up his leg.”

Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam has pronounced Obama “a savior to us all.” Indeed, many diverse faith traditions—from Cosmic Humanism to Islam to denominational Christianity—identify with the President as somehow “one of theirs.” Unfortunately, mingling Eastern enlightenment with the conciliatory gospel of the postmodern West misses the mark big time.

In her live, worldwide web class on A New Earth, Obama enthusiast Oprah Winfrey admonished participants to “prepare to be awakened.” In politics, said awakening references a one-world order and spirituality for a new age of enlightenment. For many, the Obama administration renews hope for a better world characterized by borderless, Third Wave civil society.

When Mahatma Obama prevailed as forty-fourth President of the United States of America, Oprah Winfrey announced that “hope won.” But did it really? True, hope springs eternal in the human heart; but unless that hope is fixed on what’s real, it constitutes no more than a vapor destined to dissipate.

Powerful principles of any given world view drive geo-political policy, educate our youth and shape popular culture; therefore, those already invested in a world view do well to reflect upon that view’s reach and impact. Regrettably, too many choose to remain ignorant. Failing to grasp world views vying for supremacy in our changing times, the uninformed or misinformed, as the case may be, fall prey to winds of change that are certain to set their vessels adrift.

Where’s the Hope?

If a burgeoning, but deceptive one-world spirituality characterizes 2009, as it surely does, where’s hope to be found?

Hoping in “the arm of flesh” captures every man’s fancy, but produces nothing but fashionable faith at best. In contrast, a Christian’s “lively hope” comes by Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead, patience and comfort of the Holy Scriptures (1 Peter 3:15; Hebrews 6:19; Romans 15:4).

Recall that, in the wake of Viet Nam, John Lennon imagined “nothing to kill or die for”; and in similarly troubled times, Oprah pronounced “a civil rights movement for the soul” in which sin, evil and the devil are deemed illusory. It stands to reason that, in the promised New Earth, there remains nothing to kill or die for.

Benjamin Franklin once mused, “There never was a good war or a bad peace,” but I disagree. Christians are called to “fight the good fight of faith.” Authentic peace is possible only as it flows from its source, the Prince of Peace Himself; otherwise, it’s a hollow counterfeit. My advice is from Proverbs 23:23—namely, it’s better to “buy [authentic] truth and sell it not.” The same applies to wisdom, instruction and understanding.

INDUSTRIALIZED CIVILIZATION MUST COLLAPSE

By Betty Freauf

March 4, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

Dr. D. L. Cuddy wrote in February 1995 The Daily Record, “Is World Financial Collapse Possible”? He referred to the May 1990 issue of West Magazine where a writer by the name of Daniel Wood related a conversation he had with Maurice Strong regarding a novel Strong wanted to write. Wood writes: “Strong explains as background to the telling of the novel’s plot, the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland… A small group of those world leaders ‘would come to the conclusion that the rich countries would not sign an agreement (like at the Earth Summit in 1992) reducing their impact upon the environment, so in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilization collapse?’”

President Obama has just released his $3.6 trillion budget which doesn’t even include the bank bailouts, the Stimulus package or the Omnibus bill under consideration, future promised entitlements and I’m betting this handful of evil world leaders – we can call the international banksters – are meeting in Davos, Switzerland knowing full well America’s current misleaders have absolutely no plan to pay off this monumental debt which is meant to reduce America to a third-world status, and they are talking of ways to bring in a global currency and in order to have a global currency, we’ll have to have a global tax. Catherine Austin Fitts in her February 14, 2009 article: Financial Coup d’Etat called this capital being sucked out of country after country a “global heist.”

Our federal government, our states, our counties and our cities are all bankrupt. You’ll recall President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, said no crisis should be wasted. The Money Powers are making their move and the Democrats are planning to keep Barack Obama in the White House until he dies. Who would have believed a leadership coup d’Etat could be pulled off right under our noses in America?

I even heard Rush Limbaugh mention a coup the week of February 23rd.

A European military bride and friend of mine recently said what is happening in America is exactly what happened in Europe and callers to radio shows who originate from other countries also say the same thing. They see it but Americans can’t see it until it’s too late. My friend reminded me of what Rev. Martin Neimoller, a German Lutheran pastor, arrested by the Gestapo in 1937 has often been quoted: In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. They they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left so speak up. In other words, we should never empower a lion and then complain when he eats us for lunch.

These world leaders had to find someone they could groom for a few years to pull this gigantic collapse off – enter President Democrat Barack Obama - a man with questionable credentials to even serve as our president and someone who no one heard about outside of Illinois until the presidential election. It was a Democrat Jimmy Carter replay.

Joan Veon says one-world government isn’t coming, it’s here. Foolish American voters in November 2008 didn’t realize they were embracing the iron fist of totalitarianism when they voted for the guy with a funny name. This messiah we now have in the White House relies on his Chief of Staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, to run the office of President while he travels around the country using his usual charismatic and persuasive ways to continue to mesmerize enough Americans to make him dangerous.

As I’m drafting this article, the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) is meeting this weekend in Washington, D.C. (Feb. 25, 26, 27, 28) Back in October 2006, Rush Limbaugh was doing everything to allegedly distance himself from the conservatives but now overflow rooms have been set up for those who wish to hear keynote speaker radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The news reports there are 9,000 in attendance.

The Hegelian Dialectic blame game is on. While the GOP’s new chairman, Michael Steele, talks about all the Democrat earmarks in the Stimulus bill, he fails to point out that 40% of those earmarks belong to Republicans. I have long been skeptical of The Heritage Foundation, a sponsor of the CPAC. Is that organization a wolf in sheep’s clothing as some claim? Is there really a connection between the Fabian Socialists and the Heritage Foundation? Is it possible they are more “radical” than “conservative?” The CPAC cheerleaders at the conference still promote Reaganomics as if it were Utopia. Are they trillions of dollars short and years too late? Have we been set up and sold out by the enemies from within?

Bill O’Reilly on FOX has been complaining if he’d known about this alleged crisis we are now facing, he would have called out the warning but where was Bill on February 24, 2007 when the little old housewife from Salem, Oregon wrote that America is Insolvent? Why did I without any staff to help me, see the writing on the wall while O’Reilly with his huge staff obviously missed? He blames President George W. Bush and his sidekick, Karl Rove for not alerting him. Hey Bill, Comptroller General David Walker from the General Accounting Office was traveling throughout the states warning federal dollars would not be coming to them as usual. CBS Sixty Minutes reported the same thing on March 4th. Of course, that was before our “savior” got elected. Walker was quietly preparing us for what we have seen since the end of 2008. This financial crisis was all planned! Our economy was not as bad at this time as it was when Reagan took office after Carter’s disastrous administration and those who mismanaged their corporations, banks and personal finances should have been allowed to fall. Hard lessons are always the best as some people in prison find out and this is where many of our bureaucrats belong.

But who is this Maurice Strong named in the first paragraph? New Age watchdogs can identify him easily as the leading environmentalist figure in the United Nations. Environmentalism is the “new religion” and former V.P. Al Gore is the false prophet leading the occult. Strong is a Canadian billionaire, a veteran United Nations policy-maker that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan from Ghana chose to “coordinate the effort to redesign the world organization for the future…” Strong’s plan for the United Nations reform is documented in Our Global Neighborhood, the report of the United Nations Commission on Global Governance on which Strong served. This report not only echoes Strong’s call for common values that oppose Biblical values, it also calls for a volunteer United Nations Army under the U.N. command, with the U.N. police stationed in every region of the world. President Obama called for “volunteers” of all stripes in his inaugural speech. Are there any volunteers for National Service? In November 2004 Maurice Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev were working on an agenda to replace the Ten Commandments with the Earth Charter. If there is any man who sits at the top echelon of authority and who is formulating the plan for the New World Order, without those pesky Christians, it is Maurice Strong.

For 2,000 years the prophecy of a global religious system has lain dormant in the book of Revelation seeming to be little more than an impossible fairy tale. It just didn’t seem plausible that the diverse religions of the world could ever find common ground. Yet the prophecy in Revelation 13 boldly declared a time when the whole world would merge together politically and religiously. On June 26, 2000 Episcopalians, Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews and even Wiccans, to name a few, joined themselves together in a great interfaith celebration of the Constitution signing for the United Religions. [1]

I notice Ron Paul’s name was about seventh on the CPAC straw poll for the next president but where was this CPAC crowd when Ron Paul was running strong and raising unheard amounts of money on the Internet last year about this time?

Laura Ingraham, a former Supreme Court clerk and a former speechwriter in the Reagan Administration and still thinks he walks on water, now has her very popular radio program since 2001. She is often a guest on the Bill O’Reilly Factor on Fox.

While introducing Ron Paul at the Iowa Straw Poll, Master of Ceremonies Laura referred to Paul’s cheering fans in front of the stage as “inmates” who had “left the asylum” (2) In early June 2007 she was promoting Fred Thompson who had pollsters numbers lower than Ron Paul and by December 2007, she was supporting Duncan Hunter who was also polling below Ron Paul. On one program she called Ron Paul a little weasel and wished Arizona Senator McCain would bop Ron Paul on the head. She said Ron Paul was infuriating and she didn’t understand him at all and said, “Get him out of there… people like Ron Paul have to start getting off the stage” because she only wanted to hear from people who had a chance of winning (like John McCain?)

She and her radio staff are strong supporters of the Heritage Foundation and she carries a Constitution in her purse and she promotes membership drives. She also relies on Heritage for what she claims is its excellent research, as do other neo-con radio talk show moderators such as Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh, the supporter of NAFTA and why our jobs are going to Mexico said on 3/12/1995 that his aide provides his eyes, ears and muscle from the Heritage Foundation’s Capitol Hill headquarters where he retains office space even though he no longer worked for the foundation. He checked with Heritage regarding GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the Heritage counsel assured him there was no sovereignty problem with GATT. However, in the 2004 book Where The Right Went Wrong, Patrick Buchanan said in 1994 (a Republican-controlled) Congress was allowed only a yes or no vote on the GATT treaty (which they didn’t read again). No amendments were permitted. With its yes vote, Congress put the U.S. under the jurisdiction of an institution of world government, the World Trade Organization.

And read how Rush Limbaugh handled a caller who brought up Ron Paul’s excellent showing in the Nevada primary. A caller tried to explain to Rush how disastrous NAFTA would be and Rush cut the caller short by saying his advisers were economists and told him that NAFTA was a good thing for our country. Rush has never repented. And if anyone dares to call his show about “conspiracies,” he’s been known to hang up on them.

Former Soviet Premier Khrushchev said America would be transformed into a socialist/communist country without firing a shot by slow, incremental changes in our system. He also said, we can spit in their face and they call it dew. Slowly and meticulously, without fan fare and with the media being irresponsible by not mentioning it, we have bought the rope that is hanging us as the United Nation’s dark tendrils of tyranny have spread across the globe and are now gradually tightening its grip.

Footnotes:

1- Jan/Feb. 2001 Endtime Magazine
2- 10/1/2007 New American (P.14)

© 2009 Betty Freauf - All Rights Reserved

AN ECONOMY UNDERWATER
PART 1 of 2

By Jon Christian Ryter
March 5, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

What happens when the whole economy sinks underwater like Atlantis? Other than fading into oblivion, that is. The tsunami-like impact will closely resemble what happens to a home owner with a mortgage that is construed to be underwater—only on a much grander, and much more devastating, scale. When the balance owed on the home's mortgage exceeds the appraised value of the home, that mortgage is said to be underwater. Conversely, when the aggregate sum of the debts owed by a nation to its creditors exceed the ability of the nation to repay those debts, one can honestly say that nation is "underwater" and risks becoming a 21st century version of Atlantis.

Think in terms of the money owed to the bankers who financed the debt compared to the ability of ensuring generations of taxpayers to pay back the largess of the State. Congress just enacted what the politicians called a "stimulus bill"—the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Rhetoric aside, Public Law 111-016 won't stimulate anything except more corporate welfare and a larger monkey on the backs of the middle class taxpayers who are expected to repay it.

The legislation that was supposed to save the economy cost the taxpayers $789.5 billion. It was preceded by the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which was preceded by HR 5830, the housing bailout bill that was supposed jumpstart the housing industry. (Buried in HR 5830 was a provision that would make permanent a temporary rule from 1988 [which expired last year] that let the IRS engage in a undercover sting operation in order to trap tax cheats. In 1994, the Clinton Administration reported that the IRS had 126 field agents involved in this program. The IRS was allowed to open tax preparation centers where IRS agents posed as civilian tax preparers. In the sting, the tax preparer tells his customer that "...I'm not sure that this deduction is entirely legal, but it will save you $1,000. Want to take it?") If you said "yes" you just got stung in a tax sting. Within a matter of weeks you would be notified by the IRS that your filing was flagged. So, if your vocally anti-IRS tax preparer tells you something like that next month, just say, "No thanks. I believe every American should pay their fair share. After all, someone has to pay back the three trillion, five hundred and seventy-nine billion dollars that Congress just saddled our children, grandchildren and great-great grandchildren with. We might just as well start paying it back now before accumulated interest turns that sum into real money."

The Barney Frank [D-MA] Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 that started the current rash of "stimulus giveaways," pledged $300 billion to let the banks cherry pick the worst subprime mortgage loans in their portfolios and shift the burden of paying them to the taxpayers—up to $300 billion. Now, add those "stimulus" programs together and we have a whopping $1,789,500,000,000 before adding in the $450 billion currently being voted on in Congress—HR 1105, the Omnibus Appropriations Bill for 2009—that was passed in the House on Feb. 25. It was an almost party line vote—245 aye votes and 178 nays. The Senate now takes up the measure. With a virtually filibuster-proof upper chamber that will march lockstep with the socialist drumbeat of the Obama Administration on spending someone else's money and growing the size of government, its passage is virtually assured. (For the benefit of conservatives who believe there is no difference today between Republicans and Democrats, let me give you one real important distinction. The Democrat believes that all of the money in your pocket belongs to the government and that its merely taking a circuitous route through your checking account before it ends up in the Treasury. The Republican understands that the money you earn belongs to you and the economy grows when you are allowed to keep most of it. Think about that next November when you vote for third party candidates that can't win. You can tell yourself you did the right thing as you scour the help wanted ads looking for a part-time job to earn the extra money you will need to pay your fair share of phase two of Obama's redistribution of wealth—that is, if you still have your full-time job.)

Appropriation bills for the following fiscal year are usually enacted each year in October. The far left Congress delayed the FY2009 funding bill because President George W. Bush threatened to veto it because it contained 8,570 earmarks. When Obama won the election the Democratic leadership simply tabled the measure until their guy made it to the Oval Office. When President Obama railed against earmarks in the appropriations bill he failed to tell the American people that he had a few in this piece of legislation. When the Republicans revealed that fact that then Sen. Barack Obama had earmarks for his favorite contributors in the Appropriations Bill, the Obama White House took an eraser to the legislation. No, they didn't remove the earmarks—they removed Obama's name as the sponsor of the earmarks so that he doesn't appear to be the hypocrite he actually is when he rails against them. Earmarks, if you will recall was a major campaign issue between Obama and his GOP opponent, Sen. John McCain [R-AZ] when Obama told cheering crowds across the country that "...we need earmark reform," assuring voters that when he was elected, he would "...go line by line to make sure we are spending our money wisely." Except a DC US District Court Judge ruled that the line item veto enacted by Congress during the Clinton years was unconsititutional, so presidents can't go line by line and eliminate pork.

When Obama signs the Omnibus Appropriations Act into law, it will bring the current bailout of everyone except the middle class taxpayers who are expected to pay for it, to $2,239,500,000,000. Just so you can really appreciate those mind-boggling numbers, let's put those numbers into words. That's two-trillion, two hundred thirty-nine billion, five hundred million dollars in real words—and in real money—or, at least, in real fiat money. Add in the interest we get to pay to the transnational bankers who own the Federal Reserve, and we're finally talking about real money here because, by the time our great, great, great, great grandchildren finish paying for our stupidity, "we-the-people" will have collectively been saddled with compounded debt totaling around $71,664,000,000,000.00 and some change. Again, in real words, that's seventy-one trillion, six hundred sixty-four billion dollars. In one dollar bills, evenly stacked on top of one another, that's one humonguous mess of greenbacks to pick up off the floor when someone kicks it over.

As the Bush-43 banking regulators began examining the collapsing subprime mortgage industry, they discovered that in at least 46,717 cases, the loans that Congress wanted credit worthy taxpayers to absorb through the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 were obtained by minority buyers through misrepresentation and/or out-and-out fraud—loans they could not get without lying. In most cases, the income levels, debt ratios, or other pertinent data needed to determine credit worthiness were never verified. Loans, arranged by commissioned mortgage brokers, that should never have been granted were given. For the most part, the loans granted were toxic adjustable rate mortgages that were, in and of themselves, ticking time bombs, waiting for the first ARM adjustment to implode.

Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, Uncle Sam was supposed to buy all of the foreclosed subprime mortgages, remove them from the banks' bad debt inventories, and with an influx of new money, restore liquidity to the banks and mortgage companies and jumpstart credit buying by consumers. Sounds simple. And, it was. Had Congress mandated that was what was supposed to happen with the $700 billion, and had it happened that way, this would have been a very short article because the financial crisis would be over, the stock market would have rebounded and the American people who voted for Barack Obama would all have bumper stickers on their cars that said: "Thank me, I voted for Obama." Instead, in a few more months you'll be seeing bumper stickers that say: "Don't blame me. I voted for Sarah Palin" or, my favorite: "Obama, 2008; Depression, 2009."

That's what happens when the American people elect a completely inexperienced novice as President. Obama lacks even the most basic rudimentary skills in the diplomacy of governance at this level. The man had slightly over one year's experience as a junior Senator when he threw his hat in the ring for the Oval Office. As of this writing, the man's been president for about 40 days and, giving him the benefit of doubt on the learning curve, 40 nights. Instead of governing, he's still campaigning against George W. Bush. Had the nation's Chief Executive, its politicians and the newly-installed bureaucrats on Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenue known what they were doing, they could have solved the financial debacle caused by the subprime mortgage mess before it became a mess. Had they invested enough dollars early on (not $2,239,500,000,000.00) —probably about $800 billion total—and sold the bad debt to the Resolution Trust Company, swift action would have restored liquidity to the nation's banks, there would be no crisis today. But, mess—and more mess—is what the far left needed to create a Rooseveltian "national emergency" that would require massive socialist government invention to fix. That is, after all, why Obama chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel laughingly told the media: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

No one understood that quip better than Franklin D. Roosevelt. With a mirror economy of 2008 in 1932, FDR had no intention of letting the Recession of 1929 go to waste. Roosevelt knew when people are hurting, you can do just about anything to them as long as they think you're trying to make life easier for them. FDR knew he could manipulate the economic and societal structure of America and create a socialist democracy in which all men would share equally in the cornucopia of the land of plenty. But they would share it at the expense of the middle class, not the rich. In every socialist society, the rich and the poor prosper. Only the middle class suffers.

The program that was supposed to fix the financial crisis in America is known by the acronym TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), Public Law 110-343, and is part of the refurbished Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 that was originally voted down and then enacted. TARP was supposed to be run by the newly created Office of Financial Security in the Treasury. The $700 billion "stimulus" was split into two parts. Under the first part, $250 billion of TARP money (with the President having the prerogative to add an additional $100 billion) was supposed to fund a mortgage-backed securities purchase program to offset the loses investment companies suffered when the subprime mortgage industry collapsed.