ARE THESE SOME OTHER TYPICAL WHITE PEOPLE?

ARE THESE SOME OF THE TYPICAL WHITE PEOPLE BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA KNOWS SO MUCH ABOUT?

YOU KNOW, THE ONES WHO JUST CAN'T HELP BUT BE RACISTS?



















JUST ASKING.

BECAUSE, YOU KNOW... THEY'RE ALL WHITE - AREN'T THEY!?

LIKE OBAMA'S GRANDMOTHER.

TYPICAL WHITE PEOPLE.

ALL.

MUST LISTEN TO ANALYSIS OF OBAMA

Want to hear what Obama is really all about, then listen to this.

BOOKIES' ODDS ON THE NEXT POTUS

SPORTSBOOK:

Hillary Clinton - 4-1

John McCain - 7-5

Barack Obama - 2-3

BOOKMAKER.COM:

Hillary Clinton - 5/1

John McCain - 5/4

Barack Obama - 11/10

HOW OBAMA CAN REASSURE AMERICANS

Someone suggested he could convert to Judaism.

Maybe he can get Pope Benedict to convert him to CHRISTIANITY! Heh.

But maybe all he has to do is name his cousin Dick Cheney as Veep.

Anything short of either/or... and he's toast.

WILL RUSH RAISE MONEY FOR HILLARY?

NYTIMES:

Obama, a senator from Illinois, and Clinton, a senator from New York, both had record fundraising totals in February. Obama raised some $55 million and Clinton $35 million.

Both have out-raised John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for the November election to determine who will succeed President George W. Bush in the White House.

But Clinton has significantly less money available than her Democratic rival because of higher debt and funds raised that can only be used if she becomes their party's nominee.

Clinton had some $10.9 million in cash left at the end of February compared with $31.6 million for Obama, according to an analysis by the Washington-based Campaign Finance Institute of the candidates' filings with the Federal Election Commission late this week.

Clinton had significantly higher debts -- she owed $8.7 million, not including the $5 million she herself lent to her campaign. Obama had about $625,000 in debt to be paid.

Subtracting the debt from her cash in hand leaves the former first lady with only $2.2 million for the upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, which will be crucial to her candidacy as she tries to close the gap with Obama, who has accumulated more of the pledged delegates who determine the eventual Democratic nominee.

IF SHE DOESN'T CLOBBER OBAMA IN PA, THEN IT'S ALLOVER FOR HER.

• RUSH CALLED FOR VOTERS IN TEXAS TO VOTE FOR HILLARY.
• WILL HE DO THE SAME AND MORE IN PENNSYLVANIA?
• HE'LL HAVE TO: TO DEFEAT OBAMA SHE NEEDS MORE THAN WRIGHT; SHE NEEDS DOREMI.

LISTEN TO TOM WOLFE

HERE - INTERVIEWED BY THE NYT BOOK REVIEW EDITOR SAM TANNENHAUS.

WOLFE IS A GOOD MAN AND A GREAT OBSERVER AND A GREAT WRITER.

SHOULDN'T THAT BE "US SHOULDN'T PRESSURE ISRAEL TO COMPROMISE ITS SECURITY"?

In his visit to Israel, US vice president Dick Cheney has said:

(IsraelNN.com) The U.S. will “never pressure Israel to take risks regarding its security,” American Vice President Dick Cheney said in a joint news conference with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Saturday evening.

But isn't that what they did almost 3 years ago, when Condoleeza Rice nastily ordered the government to leave Gaza? I'm sorry to say, but Cheney's making his statements much too late.

Pope to Baptize Prominent Muslim

DRUDGE/AP: Pope to Baptize Prominent Muslim

Pope Benedict XVI celebrates a Mass for the unveiling and adoration of the Cross Italy's most prominent Muslim commentator is converting to Catholicism by being baptized by the pope at an Easter vigil, the Vatican announced Saturday.

Magdi Allam is the deputy editor of the Corriere della Sera newspaper and writes often on Muslim and Arab affairs. Born in Egypt, he has described himself as a non-practicing Muslim. He has long spoken out against extremism and in favor of tolerance.

HAPPY EASTER OSAMA!

*******UPDATE: IT'S A DONE DEAL! SEE PHOTO!

WHAT DID OBAMA BELIEVE IN WHEN NOBODY WAS LOOKING? THE PALESTINIANS

IN 1998 - WHEN NOBODY WAS LOOKING, OBAMA SUPPORTED EDWARD SAID AND THE PALESTINIANS.

HE SAT AT THE RIGHT ARM OF EDDIE AT AN EVENT TO RAISE MONEY FOR PRO-PALESTINIANS AT WHICH SAID GAVE THE KEYNOTE ADDRESS.

[CLICK PHOTO FOR LINK TO POSTING ABOUT B. HUSSEIN OBAMA AND EDDIE SAYEED.]


WHAT OBAMA SAYS NOW - WHILE RUNNING FOR POTUS - CANNOT BE TRUSTED AS MUCH AS THIS PHOTO.

OBAMA HAS A HISTORY OF SUPPORTING THE ARABS AND BEING ANTI-ISRAEL.

AND HE HAS ADMITTED - EVEN BRAGGED - ABOUT HIS ABILITY TO FOOL WHITE PEOPLE.

As he wrote in his memoir, Dreams of My Father, Obama discovered a technique for allaying the suspicions of the white people with whom he came into contact:

It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved - such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time. (Pages 94-95).

ALL OBAMA CAN SAY NOW IS: "WHO ARE YOU GONNA BELIEVE, OBAMESSIAH OR YOUR LYING EYES?"

VOTE ACCORDINGLY.

FAITH IN OBAMA; FAITH OF OBAMA

"Change we can believe in."
A slogan which is all about FAITH.

Because there's absolutely NOTHING in Obama's CV which indicates he has or can create change.

ZERO.

He's a machine politician from the Chicago Machine - who changed B NOTHING in Springfield. And nothing in the US Senate.



ZERO.

But he wants you to accept him as THE GREAT AND POWERFUL AGENT OF CHANGE as an article of FAITH.

Er, um... what about his FAITH!?


He was converted in and has worshiped in and was married in and had his children baptized in a BLACK LIBERATION THEOLOGY church, led by a racist hate-monger and anti-American.


IS THAT THE FAITH OF SOMEONE YOU WOULD PUT YOUR FAITH IN!?


Think about it.


VOTE ACCORDINGLY.

SIX CONNECTIONS BETWEEN OBAMA AND THE ENEMY

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...

Obama is a clear and present danger to the USA and the Free World.

VOTE ACCORDINGLY.

Obama and Race as a Topic of "Convenience"

Tom McGuire has gone yard today. Read it all, it is really, really good. (h/t Instapundit)

McGuire has a point: Race either is or is not an important issue to discuss; you can't have it both ways . Obama (and his lackeys in big media outlets like MSNBC and CNN) suddenly talk of the importance of putting a "conversation" about race on the nation's front burner; but only after the Marxist Messiah's 20-year collaboration with an African Nationalist Marxist bigot have been outed by the non-cooperative ABC and Fox News.

But now--just as suddenly--race isn't that important anymore; the Obama campaign has decided that enough is enough on the Reverend Wright, and it is time to talk about "more important" things. Meanwhile CNN and the mindless sheep who watch it (if you don't believe me just read the comments here) gladly follow suit.

So: last week race was a vitally important discussion we must undertake, now that we have a "uniter" (that is, if you happen to be a Socialist...). But this week we are now told that this "important conversation" (an adoring Chris Matthews called it most important speech since 'I Have a Dream'...) is suddenly so....yesterday's news.

Sorry Barack, it doesn't quite work that way. Pandora's Box has been opened.

If all Americans of all races are ever to be truly "united", a much greater truth still needs to become ubiquitous--a truth that the Hispanic community, the Anglo community, the Asian community, the Jewish community, and some middle/upper-class Blacks (who have risen above the bigotry of their "community") understand all too well: Until we as a country get to the point--officially and otherwise--where the only considerations for advancement are one's character, one's intellect, one's work ethic, one's initiative, and one's achievements, we will never have a color-blind society.

Any community that continues to underscore its historic victimization--and whose "leaders" falsely stoke the fires of hatred for demographic "outsiders" in order to assign blame for the plight of their people--is a community that is on a perpetual downward spiral.

Victimization and blame are the same mantras which despots have used for millennia to enslave others (e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez...). These monsters all knew that for others to give you power, there must be an external "enemy" to assign all blame for the shortcomings of the situation. It this sense hate has also been a "uniting" force; just ask the Jews of that 1930's "Socialist utopia", Europe (if you can find any still living)... or the hundreds of millions of victims of China's "Cultural Revolution"... or the present-day populations of Cuba and Venezuela. Or...ask the victims of the KKK. These historical "wrongs" similar in this sense: there had to have been a "bad guy" to blame in the beginning, else they never could have happened.

The "leaders" of Afro-centric nationalism--as that movement exists in American inner cities today--use the very same MO to achieve their own influence and power; they seek to point fingers at "whitey" for all the troubles of black community (real or otherwise), while neglecting to stress the very things which would empower its citizens and enable them to rise above the culture of victimization: self-reliance, work ethic, capital formation, entrepreneurship, initiative, character etc. In order for men like the Reverand Wright (or Farrakhan, or Sharpton, or Jackson) to have any influence whatsoever, there must first exist a belief in the mythology of victimhood. It's in their job description.

The truth hurts: until the African-American community gets past projecting hate for past sins onto others and begins instead to take responsibility for its own success/failure, the vicious cycle will continue.

Now we find ourselves in a Presidential election, and we are told we must ignore Obama's embrace of one of the most outspoken adherents of this form of reverse bigotry--which is a textbook example of why he is exactly the wrong person to bring forward any coherent conversation about race. It's no wonder his campaign now wants to "move on".

The phenomenon of white guilt over past injustices is part and parcel of the same never ending cycle of victimization and hopelessness. I was not alive during slavery and the Civil War--I had nothing whatsoever to do with it. I am competing in the marketplace of ideas and commerce just like every other American citizen. I was only a child during the sixties and had nothing to do with the Civil Rights movement either. Hell, I am glad it happened, finally. So what good does it do anyone to blame me for their problems? To do so is not only factually inaccurate, and it takes the focus off of an individual's taking responsibility for their own life. Yet for whatever reason, big media continues to perpetuate the myth that I am responsible for all the ills of the world, simply because I was fortunate enough to have been born Anglo in the United States of America.

Here is the paradox that addicted-to-victimhood African-Americans need to be clear about: millions of people have risked their lives to come here and worked their asses off, because their experience in other countries instructed them as to what an enormous gift and tremendous opportunity America offers. This is just an undeniable truth.

The Vietnamese refugees who came here in the 70's and 80's are a perfect example of this phenomenon. You have people who came here with absolutely nothing and did not even know the language, who now after 20-30 years have built hugely successful businesses and are sending their kids to elite colleges. Leaving the illegal immigration issue aside for the moment, Hispanics are also disproving the notion of "vicitm as destiny". We all know about the millions who have come here over the last 50 years, with no possessions, the desire to work, not a dime in their pocket, no education, and not even speaking the language. Yet a great majority of these have found work and now a great many are thriving here.

So here is a question for the leaders of "the black community": if the same politicians you trust are correct in saying that Hispanics are "doing the jobs that others won't do" (that is a big "if", but let's stipulate...), then my question to your leaders is: why? Cannot the impoverished individuals in your community also take the same opportunities to make something of themselves? And why instead are you preaching that it is my role to subsidize a general unwillingness to go to such lengths?

So much for "the jobs others won't do".

It is not that success for African-Americans is not possible here--it is more possible here than anywhere on Earth. It is rather that the "community" seems to have become so fixated on blaming others for past sins and its present plight, that it fails to see the forest of opportunity for the trees of race-baited hate. And it is Afro-centric preachers like Wright--and the politicians who pander to them--who continue to stoke these fires of victimization, white hatred, "affirmative" (reverse-discriminative) action and hopelessness, as hypocrites in the media and the Democrat party continue to turn a blind eye to the truth. They continue to call initiative and self-reliance a "myth", even as millions who came to America with absolutely nothing have proven them wrong, over and over again.

The condition of the African-American community thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, despite the occasional voices of hope offered by people like Bill Cosby, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, LaShawn Barber, Clarence Thomas, etc. These voices--rational though they may be--are drowned out by the culture of victimhood promoted by race "opportunists" like Sharpton, Jackson, and Wright. Even left-leaning analysts like Juan Williams can see the tragedy in this, and are speaking out about it.

We can pray that the madness will one day come to an end; but it won't so long as millions are praying to the likes of the Reverend Wright, or pandering to the altar of "false prophets" like Jackson and Sharpton--or Olberman and Matthews. It is a colossal tragedy--for America and for African-Americans. Our country does need to have a conversation on race, and we do need to get beyond the chains of the past--but we do not need more of the conversation that Barack Obama wants to have. When Obama embraces this culture of victimhood and panders to the power brokers in "the community" it is highly instructive: at the heart, Obama is little more than a mediocre Senator with a silver tongue and a neo-Marxist world view. But the false prophets of white guilt in big media still can't bring themselves to say that this "Emperor" is not wearing clothes.

PROOF THAT OBAMA IS WRONG ABOUT IRAQ WAR

Barack Hussein Obama Junior has made his opposition to the Iraq War the foundation of his candidacy - arguing that it shows he has good if not great judgment.

There's a small problem with this: HE IS WRONG ABOUT THE WAR.

The war was good right justified and necessary.

Here's proof - the sworn testimony of Chief Inspector David Kay:

Transcript: David Kay at Senate hearing

Former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay testified Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee about efforts to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Following is a transcript of Kay's opening remarks before committee members began questioning him.

KAY: As you know and we discussed, I do not have a written statement. This hearing came about very quickly. I do have a few preliminary comments, but I suspect you're more interested in asking questions, and I'll be happy to respond to those questions to the best of my ability.

I would like to open by saying that the talent, dedication and bravery of the staff of the [Iraq Survey Group] that was my privilege to direct is unparalleled and the country owes a great debt of gratitude to the men and women who have served over there and continue to serve doing that.

A great deal has been accomplished by the team, and I do think ... it important that it goes on and it is allowed to reach its full conclusion. In fact, I really believe it ought to be better resourced and totally focused on WMD; that that is important to do it.

But I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future.

Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here.

Sen. [Edward] Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction.

I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war -- certainly, the French president, [Jacques] Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq's possession of WMD.

The Germans certainly -- the intelligence service believed that there were WMD.

It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing. [ABOUT SADDAM'S POSSESSION OF WMD STOCKPILES.]

We're also in a period in which we've had intelligence surprises in the proliferation area that go the other way.

The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location.

The Libyan program recently discovered was far more extensive than was assessed prior to that.

There's a long record here of being wrong.

There's a good reason for it.

There are probably multiple reasons.

Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don't have free and open societies.

In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441.

Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had.

We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

• UNSCR #1441 was Saddam's last chance, and he failed to adhere to its terms.

• Saddam was in material breech of UNSCR #1141 and the preceding and relevant UNSCR's which functioned as the armistice for the Gulf War.

• By violating the armistice, Saddam caused a state of war to recur.

• As such, the Iraq War was not preemptive based on lies or distortions, but a resumption of a war because the armistice was violated.

EVEN HANS BLIX AGREED:

Jan. 27, 2003 – After 60 days of inspections by U.N. officials, Iraq appears not to be cooperating with Security Council Resolution 1441.

"Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace," chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix told Security Council members this morning.

Therefore, the entire foundation of Obama's campaign is seen to be wrong: Obama was WRONG to oppose the war.

In addition, the Iraqis are better off. Don't take my word for it; listen to the Iraqis:

A recent ABC News poll of Iraqis find that they, unlike some Democrats, do not think of Saddam's rule as the good old days.

70% Say things are “Good” today in Iraq
56% Say their lives are better NOW than before the war
71% Say their lives will be better one year from now
72% Say schools are better today
56% Say household basics are better today
53% Say crime protection is better today
39% Support the presence of Coalition Forces in Iraq
51% Oppose presence of Coalition Forces but only:

15% Say the U.S. should leave now

10% Say the U.S. should leave in 6+ months

8% Say the U.S. should leave in a few months
78% Reject attacks on Coalition Forces
99% Reject attacks on Iraqi Police
79% of all Iraqis support a united, centralized government...
70% Trust Iraqi’s Religious Leaders, followed by the Iraqi Police and the Iraqi Army.

OBAMA: WRONG ON IRAQ AND WRONG FOR AMERICA AND WRONG FOR THE FREE WORLD.

WHICH TROPICAL PARADISE IS OBAMA GOING TO FOR EASTER, HAWAII (WHERE HIS ONLY LIVING ANCESTOR LIVES) OR THE US VIRGIN ISLANDS?

GATEWAY:

Barack Obama is taking his family to the beach for Easter.

The Obama family is expected to go on a tropical vacation to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Maybe Obama will make it home some other time.

He hasn't been back to see his ailing 85 year-old grandmother in over a year now. His maternal grandmother in Hawaii is the only living ancestor of the United States Senator and Democratic Party presidential candidate.

She's been too ill to travel. His grandmother suffers from severe osteoporosis that keeps her from traveling from Hawaii. But, she does come up in his campaign speeches once in a while.

Barack mentioned her when he was campaigning in his grandfather's home town in Kansas.

And, he mentioned her this week, of course.

He threw her under the bus because she once said she was afraid of black bum at a bus stop who was harassing her.

He said her remarks were just like those of his "G-damning" pastor.

Barack Obama won't be visiting his ailing grandmother this Easter.

UNBEFREAKINLIEVABLE!

What kind of man is Barack Obama, Jr.?

A very bad man.

Video: 20 minutes with "black liberation theologist" James Cone

GATEWAY:

Wright has said that a basis for Trinity's philosophies is the work of James Cone, who founded the modern black liberation theology movement out of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Particularly influential was Cone's seminal 1969 book, "Black Theology & Black Power."

Cone wrote that the United States was a white racist nation and the white church was the Antichrist for having supported slavery and segregation.

Today, Cone, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, stands by that view, but also makes clear that he doesn't believe that whites individually are the Antichrist.

In an interview, Cone said that when he was asked which church most embodied his message, "I would point to that church (Trinity) first."

• CONE IS A BIZARRELY MISINFORMED HATE-FILLED RACIST - AS IS WRIGHT - AND OBAMA.
• (CONE'S INTERLOCUTOR SEEMS TO ME TO BE A POSTMODERN LEFTIST WHO IS ENAMORED OF THE IGNORANT RACISM CONE SPEWS FORTH.)
• CONE: "IF YOU ARE PART OF THE DOMINANT PART OF THIS SOCIETY, THEN YOU ARE BEING VIOLENT" - TO BLACKS.
• THIS IS THE LOGIC OF HAMAS - HOW THEY JUSTIFY KILLING ISRAELI CHILDREN.
• ALSO: CONE CALLS CLARENCE THOMAS WHITE.
• SHEESH.

GLEN BECK:

TURKEY'S CONSTITUTIONAL SECULARISTS AND POLITICAL ISLAMICISTS PREPARE FOR MAJOR LEGAL BATTLE - AND PERHAPS A NATIONAL CRISIS

THIS IS OUR THIRD POST ON THE UPCOMING CRISIS IN TURKEY...

Bloomberg: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the nation won't accept the closure of his Justice and Development Party, elected in a landslide in July.

Attempts by prosecutors to shut down Justice and ban Erdogan from politics for undermining secularism ```can't be reconciled with the law or the conscience of the nation,'' Erdogan told regional chiefs of the party at a meeting in Ankara today.

``Extra-political interventions cannot determine the political order,'' Erdogan said. ``Only the nation determines the political order.''

Turkey's top prosecutor on March 14 applied to the Constitutional Court to close Justice and ban politicians including Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul. The prosecutor's indictment says that Justice has breached Turkey's constitutional commitment to secularism in measures such as the removal of the ban on Islamic-style headscarves at universities.

The Constitutional Court is due to decide within a week whether to hear the case, and a verdict is likely to take about six months if it does so, judges say.

THE NYTIMES - WHICH NORMALLY APPROVES OF JUDICIAL INTERFERENCE IN LEGISLATIVE MATTERS HERE IN THE USA - DEFENDS THE ISLAMICIST/ANTI-USA PARTY AND ATTACKS THE SECULARISTS:

What apparently provoked the latest legal action was the government’s decision this year to allow observant Muslim women to wear head scarves at Turkish universities. If the Constitutional Court accepts the lawsuit and Parliament leaves the law unchanged, Turkish politics face turmoil for the next year or more. Needed reforms to strengthen the economy and meet the entrance requirements for the European Union would languish.

Laws like this are an embarrassment and a danger to Turkey’s modern, democratic society, which has outgrown them. The Justice and Development Party should use its parliamentary majority to repeal them, and those secular party representatives who truly believe in democracy should support the effort.

• THE NYITMES IS VERY SELECTIVE ABOUT WHEN THEY CHOOSE TO SUPPORT JUDICIAL ACTIVISM OVER LEGISLATIVE ACTIVISM. ON GAY MARRIAGE THEY SUPPORT JUDICIAL ACTIVISM, FOR EXAMPLE.
  

• THEIR DECISION REALLY SEEMS TO COME DOWN TO THIS: THE NYTIMES WILL ALWAYS DEFEND ANY GROUP OR PRACTICE WHICH ADVANCES AN ANTI-WESTERN AND ANTI-TRADITIONALIST AGENDA.

• THE LEFT'S VIEW ON THE "LIVING CONSTITUTION" IS ALSO HYPOCRITICAL: IT'S ALIVE/MUTABLE VIA INTERPRETATION WHEN IT COMES TO THINGS THEY DON'T LIKE ABOUT IT (LIKE THE 2ND AMENDMENT), BUT WHEN IT COMES TO WHAT THEY DO LIKE - FOR EXAMPLE "ROE V WADE", THEN THE CURRENT INTERPRETATION WRITTEN IN STONE.)

• AND IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THE ANTI-WESTERN ATTACK IS HERE OR IN TURKEY: IF YOU OPPOSE THE WEST, THEN THE NYTIMES SUPPORTS YOU.

I'd like to see Erdogan's party banned.

One of the BIG errors the Bush Administration made the last six years was allowing Hamas on the ballot.

Blair didn't make this mistake with the IRA: he demanded they disarm FIRST.

You cannot be for democracy and and anti-democracy.

Islamicists - who want "sharia incorporated" in secular law, or want de-secularization to accommodate/appease their fundamentalist practices - are the ENEMIES OF DEMOCRACY.

They should be treated as such.

PAKISTAN'S NEW COALITION PROMISES TO NEGOTIATE WITH THE JIHADOTERRORISTS

APPEASEMENT.

AS IF THAT EVER WORKED.

NYTIMES/AFP:

Faced with a sharp escalation of suicide bombings in urban areas, the leaders of Pakistan’s new coalition government say they will negotiate with the militants believed to be orchestrating the attacks, and will use military force only as a last resort.

That talk has alarmed American officials, who fear it reflects a softening stance toward the militants just as President Pervez Musharraf has given the Bush administration a freer hand to strike at militants using pilotless Predator drones.

Many Pakistanis, however, are convinced that the surge in suicide bombings — 17 in the first 10 weeks of 2008 — is retaliation for three Predator strikes since the beginning of the year. The spike in attacks, combined with the crushing defeat of Mr. Musharraf’s party in February parliamentary elections, has brought demands for change in his American-backed policies.

Speaking in separate interviews, the leaders of Pakistan’s new government coalition — Asif Ali Zardari of the Pakistan Peoples Party and Nawaz Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N — tried to strike a more independent stance from Washington and repackage the conflict in a more palatable way for Pakistanis.

They said they were determined to set a different course from that of President Musharraf, who has received generous military financial help of more than $10 billion from Washington for his support.

“We are dealing with our own people,” said Mr. Sharif, who was twice prime minister in the 1990s. “We will deal with them very sensibly. And when you have a problem in your own family, you don’t kill your own family. You sit and talk. After all, Britain also got the solution of the problem of Ireland. So what’s the harm in conducting negotiations?”

WHAT'S THE HARM OF CONDUCTING NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE TALIBAN AND AL QAEDA!?!?

• THESE TWO GUYS - SHARIF AND ZARDARI -ARE CORRUPT FELLOW-TRAVELERS OF THE ENEMY.
• THEY'RE IN IT FOR THE MONEY, AND WOULD "BUY" SOME "PEACE."
• THEY'LL GET AS MUCH PEACE AS CHAMBERLAIN GOT.

PERU'S PRESIDENT ACCUSES CHAVEZ OF FUNDING "MILITANT" INSURRECTION

CALIFORNIAN/AP: Peru says Chavez backs domestic revolt

Hugo Chavez has been accused of using Venezuela's oil riches to meddle in Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

Now, Peru's president says the Venezuelan leader may be doing it here by funding militants and anti-poverty centers that preach populist revolution.

In recent weeks, Peruvian police have arrested nine people the government alleges are militants bankrolled by Venezuela. ...

Venezuela and allies Bolivia and Ecuador "want to destabilize Peru so that our country adheres to their type of thinking, so that Peru fails," said the government's lead anti-terrorism prosecutor, Julio Galindo.

• CHAVEZ IS A THREAT TO THE REGION, AND THAT MAKES HIM A THREAT TO US.
• WILL NO ONE RID US OF THIS TROUBLESOME MAN?

Free speech... even for Marines

We read:

"A U.S. Marine Corps reservist won't be charged for ignoring police requests and wading into a protest to rescue an American Flag. Ray Adam Modisette, 20, said he was reacting to a war protester who was stuffing an American flag down her pants.

Modisette of Shawnee was arrested Friday afternoon on a complaint of interfering with official police process. Modisette was leaving Tinker Air Force Base in his car Friday when he saw the protester with the flag. He said he turned around and headed for the crowd to get the flag. He was handcuffed after ignoring several requests by officers to move away from the small group of demonstrators from Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan.

If desecrating Old Glory is protected speech, then so is rescuing it.

Source

Promoting irresponsibility

Hardly a day goes by during this housing crisis that the media does not report on families in foreclosure proceedings, or in arrears in repayment on mortgages that had close to zero down payment requirements and low "teaser" interest rates. The many excuses offered by some home owners for their plight, and also eagerly by the authors of these human interest stories, is that the borrowers did not understand that these introductory interest rates might rise a lot after a few years, or that they would have negative equity in their homes if housing prices stopped rising and began to fall. An obvious alternative explanation for their behavior is that they gambled that the good times would continue indefinitely.

This type of response to failed decisions is not unique to the present housing crisis, but is part of a strong trend toward shifting responsibility to others. Women who sign a pre-nuptial agreement specifying the amount of their husband's pre-marital wealth that would be theirs in the event of divorce often try to have the agreements overthrown in divorce litigation. They claim that they did not understand what the agreements meant, or that their husbands took advantage of them in other ways to get them to sign the agreements. Usually they signed simply because that was the only way they could marry the men they very much wanted to marry, perhaps in part because the men were wealthy.

Many criminals who confess to or are convicted of serious crimes try to have the courts excuse or mitigate their behavior. They allege that they had uncaring or abusive parents, or that fathers, relatives, stepfathers, or other adults molested them as children. Abusive treatment is awful, but still the vast majority of children abused do become law-abiding and responsible adults. That is a major fact that courts should pay attention to.

Successful attempts to shift the responsibility for bad decisions toward others and to society more generally create a "moral hazard" in behavior. If individuals are not held accountable for decisions and actions that harm themselves or others, they have less incentive to act responsibly in the first place since they will escape some or all of the bad consequences of their actions.

Source

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your summary of Obama news and commentary at OBAMA WATCH

SARKOZY STEPS UP TO THE PLATE: ORDERS 1000 MORE TROOPS TO AFHGANISTAN

• GOOD FOR HIM.
• HE PUTS NATO TO SHAME,
• AND THE DEMOCRATS WHO CLAIM BUSH HAS RUINED OUR RELATIONS IN EUROPE.

AL QAEDA RECRUITING WIDOWS

AKI: Al-Qaeda 'enlisting widows as suicide bombers'

Al-Qaeda has decided to enlist widows to carry out suicide bombings in Iraq, according to a study by the Voices of Iraq news agency.

During the last three months, six suicide attacks were carried out by women. A total 10 women have carried out suicide attacks in Iraq since April 2003 , according to statistics from the United States army.

As recently as Wednesday, a woman blew herself up in volatile Diyala province, killing five people. On Monday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up among a group of civilians in the holy Shia city of Karbala, killing 47 people and wounding 75 others.

Police investigators established that the women were both middle-aged and recently widowed.

The majority of of female suicide bombers come from Anbar and Diyala provinces, the report said.

"Al-Qaeda is active in those two provinces, and military operations that kill this organisation's elements are also active there," the report cited sociologist Fari al-Obedi as saying.

"The majority of female bombers' motivations are getting revenge for a deceased husband or family member, or due to religious extremism," he said.

WHAT SHALL WE MAKE OF THIS?

• HOW COURAGEOUS OF AL QAEDA!
• WHAT WARRIORS!
• HOW PROUD THEIR ALLAH MUST BE!

MESSAGE TO ISLAMOTHUGS: BWAHAHAHA! YOU FREAKIN' SICK COWARDLY PSYCHOPATHS.

MOST MISERABLE WEATHER FOR EASTER IN UK

TELEGRAPH:

Weather and travel chaos cause Easter misery

Britain is enduring its most miserable Easter for 25 years as Arctic winds sweep in, bringing snow, hail and sleet.

CHRONICLE LIVE/UK:

Snow set to cause travel chaos

Roads will see a period of "relative calm" as the Easter weekend kicks off but there are warnings snow could cause disruption in some areas.

The RAC said traffic will now ease after a peak at the start of the Easter getaway on Good Friday.

There was a high risk of snow in eastern England this morning and showers of rain, sleet and snow are expected across England and Wales, with more snow in northern and central Scotland on Easter Monday.

• THERE IS NO AGW.
• SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL AL GORE TO STFU.

Iraqis prefer present to past

A recent ABC News poll of Iraqis find that they, unlike some Democrats, do not think of Saddam's rule as the good old days.

70% Say things are “Good” today in Iraq
56% Say their lives are better NOW than before the war
71% Say their lives will be better one year from now
72% Say schools are better today
56% Say household basics are better today
53% Say crime protection is better today
39% Support the presence of Coalition Forces in Iraq
51% Oppose presence of Coalition Forces but only:

15% Say the U.S. should leave now

10% Say the U.S. should leave in 6+ months

8% Say the U.S. should leave in a few months
78% Reject attacks on Coalition Forces
99% Reject attacks on Iraqi Police
79% of all Iraqis support a united, centralized government...
70% Trust Iraqi’s Religious Leaders, followed by the Iraqi Police and the Iraqi Army.

By the way: jobs, real estate prices, overall commerce and average wages are increasing.

Shhhh. No one tell Harry ("Land Deal") Reid.

Hat tip: Larwyn

MORE PROOF OBAMA IS A LIAR AND A PHONY AND AN ANTISEMITE

LGF:

Joel Pollak at Guide to the Perplexed points out an article posted at Electronic Intifada March 4, 2008: ei: How Barack Obama learned to love Israel.

Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.”

He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, “Keep up the good work!”

• OBAMA IS LYING WHEN HE SAYS HE SUPPORTS ISRAEL. IT'S AN ACT HE PUTS ON JUST TO GET ELECTED. HIS SOOTH-TALKING, SWEET-SMILING, NICE-GUY ACT IS JUST AN POLISHED ACT - JUST LIKE HE SAID IN HIS MEMOIRS:
  

As he wrote in his memoir, Dreams of My Father, Obama discovered a technique for allaying the suspicions of the white people with whom he came into contact:

It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved - such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time. (Pages 94-95).

• HE'S NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

• THE PROSPECT OF AN OBAMA PRESIDENCY IS A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO THE REPUBLIC.

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA JUNIOR IS A LIAR AND HYPOCRITE AND A PHONY AND A RACIST AND AN ANTI-SEMITE AND A LEFTIST

1. LIAR - At first Obama claimed he never to have heard any of these kinds of comments when he was in church, then he said he did. More lies HERE, TOO.
   
2. PHONY - Obama wrote in his book how he learned to become a black with a smile on his face - in order to fool white people.
   
3. HYPOCRITE - Obama called for Imus to be fired and said he'd fire anyone on his staff who made comment like that about any ethnic group - BUT - he accepted his pastor's comments for the last 20 years - JUST UP UNTIL HIS CANDIDACY BECAME SUCCESSFUL.
4. RACIST - Obama's Church is anti-White; he refers to his own grandmother (the White Christian one) as a "typical white person. Obama's church says white churches are satanic.
   
5. ANTI-SEMITE - Obama's church supports Hamas.
6. AND HE'S A BIG LEFTIST/SOCIALIST ... in his "race speech" he said the cure to racism is socialism:

   Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU ADD THIS ALL TOGETHER?

AN ANTI-WHITE, ANTI-AMERICAN, ANTISEMITIC, LYING, HYPOCRITICAL, RACIST LEFT-WINGER.

A PERFECT LEADER FOR TODAY'S DEMOCRAT PARTY.

CHRIS MATTHEWS AND EJ DIONNE AGREE.

OBAMA'S CHURCH: JESUS WAS A NEGRO, AND WHITE CHRISTIANS ARE REALLY SATANISTS

STACLU:

Update: Even more radical! His chruch published the HAMAS terrorist manifesto! Talk about a far-left/socialist church! Perfect for most libtards.

Oh brother! I’m sure something absurd and controversial can be dug up from the church that Obama can’t denounce on a daily basis. Now, since the passport breach happened to all three candidates, Obama really can’t use it for a distraction without looking ridiculous.

McClatchy:

Jesus is black. Merging Marxism with Christian Gospel may show the way to a better tomorrow. The white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation.

Those are some of the more provocative doctrines that animate the theology at the core of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama’s church.

THE OBAMA CANDIDACY IS A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO THE USA.

ACLU comes out in favor of the SECOND amendment!

But only as part of their campaign to defend illegal immigration:

"A federal judge has stopped enforcement of a Kentucky law barring non-citizens from carrying concealed deadly weapons. U.S. District Judge Thomas Russell said the law is written too broadly and violates the rights of attorney Alexander M. Say, a British national who has lived in Kentucky for 15 years. ...

The [ACLU] sued the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department and Kentucky State Police on behalf of Say. The ACLU challenged the citizenship requirement, saying Kentucky lawmakers should not have passed the law. ... Say argued that no federal law requires U.S. citizenship for people to be licensed to purchase, carry, transport or carry a concealed deadly weapon, and neither should state law."

Source

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your summary of Obama news and commentary at OBAMA WATCH

"Change" a red herring: Unlimited government is the problem

Excerpt:

Democrats in general, I would submit, confuse change with improvement. They fail to weigh the costs and benefits of change, to consider its unintended consequences, or to worry about what we need to conserve and how we might go about doing that faithfully. They ask Americans to embrace change for its own sake, in the faith that history is governed by a law of progress, which guarantees that change is almost always an improvement. The ability to bring about historical change, then, becomes the highest mark of the liberal leader. Thus Hillary Clinton quickly joined Obama on the change bandwagon. Her initial claim of "experience" sounded in retrospect a bit too boring-indeed, almost Republican in its plainness. So "Ready on Day One" signs morphed into "Ready for Change."

As for John McCain, he doesn't really have a slogan, unless we count "Mac is Back." McCain differentiated himself from Romney by saying that he is a leader rather than a manager. A leader, McCain argued, appeals to patriotism rather than self-interest. Certainly McCain's leading characteristic is his personal honor, which-unlike many republican men of honor-he talks about a lot and in public. He fits the traditional category of a war hero-turned-politician, but with one important difference. Usually war heroes are victorious generals, whereas McCain is famous as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, a war that ended in defeat. This fact helps to explain the somewhat prickly and self-referential quality to his sense of honor. He despises self-interest and likes to say so frequently in public, whether it's the self-interest involved in campaign contributions (which he wants to regulate), attitudes towards illegal immigration (he imputes to its critics the most selfish motives), or even something like waterboarding (a kind of selfish act, motivated by an urgent sense of national interest). McCain stands against all considerations of low self-interest-or maybe any self-interest-in favor of doing the honorable thing, which sometimes turns out to mean simply doing the thing that John McCain wants to do.

Utterly missing in this election season is a serious focus on limited or constitutional government. The Democrats, generally speaking, want more government, not less, so their neglect of the issue is to be expected. But the Republican dereliction is more troubling. It represents a falling away from the standards of Ronald Reagan's conservatism-a decline already reflected in the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush. After 9/11, many prominent conservatives-e.g., George Will, David Brooks, Fred Barnes -pronounced that small government conservatism is dead. That awful reminder of the dangerous world we live in, and of the need to defend ourselves, somehow meant that big government conservatism, as they called it, was now the only game in town. Conservatives would need to make their peace with this idea, they argued, in order to win future elections....

From a certain point of view-let's call it, for shorthand purposes, the libertarian point of view, or the view associated this year with Ron Paul-every dollar that government spends comes at the cost of freedom. The premise of this view is that government and freedom are opposites-that all government is oppression. By this way of thinking, limited government is simply limited oppression, differing in magnitude but not in kind from tyranny. Interestingly, this notion does not come originally from any libertarian thinker or friend of freedom. It comes from Machiavelli, the great analyst of open and hidden power, of force and fraud. From Machiavelli's point of view, there's no difference between just and unjust government, which are the same phenomenon called by different names. All government, whether considered to be just or unjust, is oppression. Just government is the kind we happen to agree with and profit from, and unjust is the opposite kind.

Against this view stand the American Founders and the greatest statesmen, who have always sharply distinguished between just and unjust-or between free and tyrannical-forms of government. What is the Declaration of Independence but a great meditation on the difference between the absolute despotism contemplated by King George III and the freedom that the Americans hoped to enjoy under their own form of self-government? The Declaration does not proclaim that just government is merely less oppressive than unjust government-as if the American republic and, say, Nazi Germany were separated only by degrees of tyranny. Our ancestors thought that republican governments like ours were good because, grounded in human nature and operating by law and consent, they affirmed human liberty.

Much more here

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your summary of Obama news and commentary at OBAMA WATCH

OBAMA: RACIST; HYPOCRITE; LIAR; COWARD - UNFIT FOR ANY OFFICE

VIA HH.

POLL FINDS 85% OF ARABS UNDER PA JURISDICTION SUPPORT TERRORISM

You know something is wrong when you see that a majority of that population supports terrorism:

(IsraelNN.com) Two recent polls find a vast majority of Arabs supporting terror attacks and a growing Israeli majority opposed to further withdrawals.

A recent Palestinian Authority poll shows that 84 percent of PA Arabs approve of the massacre at Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem, where eight students were gunned down and ten wounded.

The poll, carried out by Ramallah-based pollster Khalil Shikaki, interviewed 1,270 PA Arabs. 64 percent support the rocket attacks on Israeli cities and towns such as Sderot and Ashkelon launched from Hamas-controlled Gaza. Those who oppose the attacks don’t necessarily do so on moral grounds, but rather strategic considerations.

If so, then they don't deserve to have their own state, do they?

R. Emmet Tyrrell (via P. David Hornik) sums up what's come from how Israel performed "disengagement" since 2005.

ASPIRING JIHADOTERRORISTS BUSTED IN SOUTHERN FRANCE

CANADIAN PRESS:

Police say five suspected radical Islamists are being held for questioning in southern France.

The police and judicial officials say the five had allegedly trained for combat in hopes of joining the Iraqi insurgency. Seven other men went on trial in Paris on Wednesday, suspected of involvement in an al-Qaida-linked recruitment network, also aimed at Iraq.

A threatening new message from Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has raised concerns that the organization is plotting attacks in Europe.

The message, released Wednesday, accuses Pope Benedict of helping in a "new Crusade" against Islam.

It also warns of a "severe" reaction to European publication of cartoons seen by Muslims as insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

In the latest French arrests, seven people were taken into custody Tuesday in the southern cities of Toulouse, Montpellier and Carcassonne, police and judicial officials said on condition of anonymity.

Two of those picked up were released Wednesday; the others were still being held.

VIA ISLAM IN EUROPE - WHO HAS MORE.

WEATHER FORECAST: COLDEST AND SNOWIEST EASTER ON RECORD ON GREAT BRITAIN

INDEPENDENT: Freezing Easter ahead as wind and snow sweep in

Heavy snow showers and freezing winds sweeping across Britain will usher in one of the coldest Easters on record.

• SOMEONE TELL AL GORE TO STFU.
• AND TELL MCCAIN TO WITHDRAW THE MCCAIN-LIEBERMAN CARBON-TAX PLAN.
• BECAUSE: AGW - BS.

WOMEN IN LABOUR TURNED AWAY BY NHS

UK GUARDIAN:

Women in labour turned away by maternity units

Women in labour are being refused entry to overstretched maternity units and told to give birth elsewhere, NHS hospitals admitted yesterday in response to an application under the Freedom of Information Act. They disclosed that maternity wards in almost 10% of trusts closed their doors to new admissions on at least 10 days last year. One trust in North Yorkshire closed 39 times between October and January because it did not have enough staff to provide a safe service.

SOMEONE TELL MICHAEL MOORE - AND HILLARY AND OBAMA: THE NHS PROVES THAT TAXPAYER-FUNDED UNIVERSAL CARE DOESN'T WORK VERY WELL.

SAUDIS RE-EDUCATING CLERICS

THIS IS A GOOD SIGN. VIA HOT AIR.

GOVERNOR PATERSON MUST RESIGN!

GATEWAY:

Oops... NY Governor Billed Hotel Trysts As "Constituent Services"

NY Governor Paterson may have used campaign funds for his hookups.
This was Paterson's first week in his new job.

Last week the previous Democratic Governor stepped down after being caught in a prostitution ring.

The New York Daily News reported:

Gov. Paterson admitted Wednesday he may have improperly billed his campaign for at least one hotel tryst with a girlfriend.

The hotel tryst was apparently listed as "constituent services."

A Daily News review found that in a handful of other campaign expenditures, Paterson may have used campaign funds to cover personal expenses and misstated their purpose in public disclosure forms.

• I BLOGGED ON THIS POSSIBILITY/LIKELIHOOD MONDAY.

• I SUSPECTED PATERSON USED GOVERNMENT FUNDS BECAUSE, WHEN HE LEAKED THE STORY HIMSELF, HE INCLUDED THE FACT THAT HIS AIDES OFTEN USED THE SAME MOTEL WHEN ON GOVERNMENT BUSINESS ON THE CITY.

• THIS SEEMED LIKE HE WAS LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR A COVER STORY, TO ME.

• SEEMS HE WAS.

• WHAT HE DID WAS ILLEGAL.
• AND A VIOLATION OF THE PUBLIC TRUST.
• HE MUST RESIGN.

OBAMA'S SPIRITUAL MENTOR IS A RACIST BIGOT WHO SUPPORTS HAMAS

JAWA:

Hamas Terror Manifesto Published By Obama's Church

WND

"Compares charter calling for murder of Jews to Declaration of Independence"

JERUSALEM

Sen. Barack Obama's Chicago church reprinted a manifesto by Hamas that defended terrorism as legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group's official charter – which calls for the murder of Jews – to America's Declaration of Independence.

The Hamas piece was published on the "Pastor's Page" of the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter reserved for Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American, anti-Israel remarks landed Obama in hot water, prompting the presidential candidate to deliver a major race speech earlier this week.[...]

In his July 22, 2007, church bulletin, Wright reprinted an article by Mousa Abu Marzook, identified in the newsletter as a "deputy of the political bureau of Hamas." A photo image of the newsletter was captured and posted today by the business blog BizzyBlog. The Hamas piece was first published by the Los Angeles Times, garnering the newspaper much criticism.

According to senior Israeli security officials, Marzook, who resides in Syria alongside Hamas chieftain Khaled Meshaal, is considered the "brains" behind Hamas, designing much of the terror group's policies and ideology.

UN BE-EFFI'-LIEVABLE! NOT ONLY IS WRIGHT A RACIST BIGOT, HE SUPPORTS JIHADOTERROR.

• WE ALREADY KNOW OBAMA IS PREJUDICED AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE - EVEN HIS OWN GRANDMOTHER - HIS CHRISTIAN ONE - WHOM HE CALLED "A TYPICAL WHITE PERSON".
• (CAN YOU IMAGINE THE MSM FIRESTORM IF HILLARY HAD CALLED BIDEN A TYPICAL IRISH-PERSON OR RICHARDSON A TYPICAL MEXICAN!?!?)

• OBAMA MUST HAVE KNOWN THAT WRIGHT SUPPORTED HAMAS - AND SINCE HE DIDN'T RESIGN FROM THE CHURCH, IT MEANS HE IMPLICITLY SUPPORTED IT.

• FOR SUPPORTING HAMAS, OBAMA SHOULD DROP OUT OF THE RACE, AND RESIGN FROM THE SENATE.

Prosecutorial Misconduct in the Enron Case...and the Scourge of Sarbanes-Oxley

It is now looking as if the prosecutors in the Enron case may have been engaging in gross prosecutorial misconduct--which could conceivably free Fastow and Skilling from their "obligation" to society. This is in itself sad, but the real travesty in the Enron case was the overreaction to it by our own government.

It is safe to say that the downfall of Enron has caused the pendulum to swing way too far in the direction of over-regulation of US businesses. Sarbanes-Oxley has exacted such an enormous cost on public corporations in the US, that now many large privately held companies (not subject to SOX) are choosing to go public offshore. This is one of the factors behind the alarming rate at which London and Hong Kong are slowly but surely chipping away at New York's claim as the World's financial capital. And it is a much larger factor in sending American jobs overseas than are anti-protectionist free trade agreements.

What we have here is a lesson in Economics 101: anytime government tries to interfere with free markets--even with the best of intentions--the law of unintended consequences almost always makes the ramifications of that regulation far worse for the economy than the conditions which brought it about. In the case of Sarbanes-Oxley, the only real beneficiaries are those who want more central control of our economy (i.e. more government and regulation) and their patrons in the Public Employee Unions.

99.99% of the time, stockholders and Boards of Directors enable business to be a much more efficient self-policing and self-correcting mechanism than government regulation ever could hope to approach; certainly any business is more efficient at correcting its own inefficiencies than are big government bureaucracies--have you ever tried working with the IRS when they have gotten their information wrong?

In the free marketplace, if the shareholders of a public company are not pleased with its performance, they can sell their stock, which lowers the value of the company (and its executives' compensation); and it also puts pressure on its Board to make changes in management if necessary, etc.

Similarly if the independent Accounting firm chosen to audit a public company finds irregularities in that company's books, pressure is exerted to correct the problem internally, because the shareholders get to see the financial statements--and if they are displeased, they can again sell stock, lose confidence, etc.. Audits also serve to show executives where money is being spent efficiently...and inefficiently.

Sarbanes-Oxley was created in a vain attempt to "protect the public" from 0.01% of cases (and that may be overestimating the number) where you might have collusion between the offending company and its auditors. It reality, the purpose of SOX was to show the public and investors that it was "safe" to invest in US companies again. But the unintended consequence is that the burden imposed by this law has in reality made it less safe for such investors, because now US companies have to devote more of its resources and assets towards a process that is more cumbersome and less flexible to the changes of the marketplace. As a result, investment in US companies suffers, and the ripple effects spread from there. Lower stock prices. Lower profits. More layoffs. More relocation of jobs overseas. And so the vicious cycle continues.

It needn't have happened, especially when one fully understands how rare an Enron really is. Yes, greed and corruption do exist and always will, but even before Sarbaanes-Oxley there were checks and balances to root out such behavior. At Enron the good of the company became a secondary concern to their own lavish lifestyles for several high-placed executives; but even the Enron executives could not have gotten away with their fraud were it not for the corrupt and shoddy auditing (and later shredding of the evidence) by the Arthur Andersen auditors assigned to police the company's books. So you actually had collusion between a giant Natural Gas company and representatives of a giant, highly esteemed accounting firm. Very, very rare. And: the resulting lawsuit by the shareholders of Enron against Andersen put that "Big Five" company--which had been in business for over a hundred years--out of business.

Had Arthur Andersen been "straight up" and diligent in inspecting Enron's books from the beginning--which all auditors are required to do--then the Enron executives' malfeasance and excesses would have been flagged by the auditors, and as a result changes would have been made internally to correct the excesses long before the real lasting damage to the shareholders and employees was done. And while this may have meant fewer "heads on a plate" for the business-hating media to vilify, it also would have cost the public far less money than did the collapse of Enron, the collapse of Andersen, a long, drawn-out legal struggle on the public's dime (which now appears to have been bungled as well..), the resulting loss of confidence in US markets, and the onset of the recession in the last quarter of the Clinton Presidency.

Sure, had the books been audited properly, Enron might have had to cut back, as many companies do, and shareholders would undoubtedly lost some of the value of their stock; but it needn't have been "all or nothing". If it were not for the collusion of the auditors, this would have been a much softer landing for all.

Instead, a huge accounting firm with a very strong reputation--which had been in place for over 100 years (full disclosure: and where I used to work as a Consultant...)--went out of business, costing tens of thousands of jobs. If that is not a "self-policing" mechanism--and a dire warning to all other Accounting firms to play it straight--then what is? Why do you need government bureaucrats and huge business overhead imposed on Americans trying to compete with the rest of the world, when the downside and ultimate cost of such collusion has now become so starkly clear to all other major auditing firms?

Instead, to protect the 0.01% of companies where such collusion "might" be going on, Government regulations are now costing US business hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars; a cost that reverberates throughout an already fragile US economy.

If all this weren't enough, now it appears that the Enron prosecutors also ran roughshod over the law in building their case. It is probable here that--much like Mike Nifong--prosecutorial egos raised their own individual interests "above" the law--and their resulting excesses may end up setting free the very criminals who participated in the fraud, not to mention to deal yet another blow to the public's "confidence" in its government.

Another factor which cannot be understated is that the United States has the second highest corporate tax rate in the WORLD. Therefore, all those companies which would like nothing better to provide more Americans jobs are having their profits obscenely confiscated by a bureaucracy-mad Federal government. And yet the unions--whose artificially high wages are part of the reason jobs go offshore--blame open trade for their own plight.

Ask any left-leaning person this question: "do you get more satisfaction if a poor or middle-class person gets wealthy, or for a wealthy man to fall on hard times?" I would argue that most Leftists, given the choice between allowing more people and companies to retain more of their own income (and for small businessmen like myself, the two are synonymous), would prefer instead to sock it to "the rich" to grow an already mammoth Government--thus effectively removing all of that wealth that would otherwise be available to our economy and/or investment. Only--now that "progressive" rates have all but eliminated the poor from paying any taxes--it is the middle class that gets hit hardest when rates go up on the so-called "rich". Class warfare not only is dishonest, it is also extremely harmful to American jobs and competitiveness.

And so now, with Sarbanes-Oxley, we have the costs of an enormous, inefficient internal and external bureaucracy which public companies in the US now must incur, which make US businesses' flexibility in doing business in a dynamic worldwide economy much more difficult than, say their competitors overseas in places like China.

Even some Socialist-lite governments like the UK have less onerous restrictions on their business than does the United States. Why else would companies and investors be taking their business to London instead of New York?

When one looks at the big picture, Sarbanes-Oxley was a huge overreaction to Enron. Our businesses need fewer--not more--regulations in order to compete with the Chinas and Indias of the world. Placing enormous artificial burdens on US business like the SOX Act (and our obscenely high corporate tax rates), and then asking those businesses to compete with Global companies who do not have these onerous regulatory burdens to contend with is to add a 100 lb. backpack to a talented athlete about to compete for Olympic gold in the 100 meter dash--it severely hampers what otherwise might be a competitive advantage. In the case of SOX, it is the metaphorical equivalent of slowly destroying a lush forest to save one large tree. And it is especially this: a textbook case of why Big Government is not the solution--it is almost inevitably the problem.

The two-faced one

What is reported below is typically psychopathic. Psychopaths can only keep up their "nice guy" act for so long. If he really were a nice guy he would not suddenly turn antisocial and abrupt

Early morning trainers and exercisers at the Greenville, Miss., YMCA on Mississippi primary day last Tuesday got a taste of Sen. Barack Obama's reclusiveness, which the traveling press corps has learned to accept.

After speaking at Tougaloo College on Monday night, Obama went to the "Y" at 6:30 a.m. for a workout. He greeted nobody and did not respond when people there called out to him. That aloofness has been the pattern in the Democratic presidential candidate's behavior toward reporters who cover him.

After finishing his workout, Obama returned to his gregarious campaign mode with a visit to black-owned Buck's restaurant in Greenville before leaving the state. He won Mississippi comfortably against Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Source

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your summary of Obama news and commentary at OBAMA WATCH

Anti war activism causing casualties in Iraq

Researchers at Harvard say that public debates about the rights and wrongs of the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable "emboldenment effect" on insurgents there, and periods when there is a lot of media coverage about the issue are followed by small rises in the number of attacks.

The researchers, a political scientist and a health economist, studied data about insurgent attacks and U.S. media coverage up to November 2007, tracking what they called "anti-resolve statements," either by U.S. politicians or in the form of reports about American public opinion on the issue.

The study, published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, uses quantitative analysis, a statistical tool employed by economists, to empirically test for the first time the widely held nostrum that public criticism of U.S. policy in Iraq encourages insurgents there.

"We find that in periods immediately after a spike in anti-resolve statements, the level of insurgent attacks increases," the study says. In Iraqi provinces that were broadly comparable in social and economic terms, attacks increased between 7 percent and 10 percent.

The study also found that attacks increased more in parts of Iraq where there is greater access to international news media, which its authors say increases the credibility of their findings.

Source

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your summary of Obama news and commentary at OBAMA WATCH

A SINGLE ISSUE CAMPAIGN BASED ON RACE WON'T MAKE IT

The racial demographics of the United States, according to the Wikipedia, are as follows:

The U.S. population's racial distribution in 2006 was as follows:^[12]

• White alone (including people of Middle Eastern background): 73.9% or 221.3 million
• Black or African American alone: 12.4% or 37.1 million
• Asian alone: 4.4% or 13.1 million
• American Indian or Alaska Native alone: 0.8% or 2.4 million
• Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander alone: 0.14% or 0.43 million
• Some other race alone: 6.3% or 19.0 million
• Two or more races: 2.0% or 6.1 million^[13]

Blacks are 12.4% of the population. They are concentrated in the South, and in some major media markets in the North, where black issues have garnered a tremendous share of media and political attention over the past 50 years.

But the race issue that is specifically and particularly concerning to 12.4% is not going to decide a national election.

Barack [middle name redacted] Obama chose to devote the most important speech of his political career to a defense of angry, bitter, race-baiting, hate-mongering special pleading for the special needs and special rights of 12.4% of the population.

The novelty of his particular and appealing manner is wearing off.

As he wrote in his memoir, Dreams of My Father, Obama discovered a technique for allaying the suspicions of the white people with whom he came into contact:

It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved - such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time. (Pages 94-95).

Well, he's been playing that trick. And it has been working.

But now that he's revealed that he has just been playing the courteous, well-mannered "Good Cop" to Jeremiah Wright's profane, threatening "Bad Cop" in another variation on the race-baiting scamming of the professional special-interest manipulators, the charm is wearing thin.