What Exactly To Do ABout Blatant Media Bias - A Battle Plan

 

Ace has a very apt  cri d'couer over at his place after witnessing how the Obama Media treated Hillary Clinton's abysmal performance yesterday..essentially covering for her and the Obama Administration in an example of what Ace calls, appropriately, 'the full and seamless fusion of media power with government power' :

The media used to hide it a bit, in their actions; they would temper their scorn of conservatism, throw them a bone now and again just to prove they were capable of such a thing.
No longer. The media no longer hides it in their actions. They are fully fused with the Obama Administration and DNC. The only way in which they do hide it is by simply lying when confronted about it: They'll issue a snide denial, then go about doing precisely what it is they were accused of doing.

This is dangerous and unhealthy. I keep banging this drum but honestly, some patriotic billionaires do have to band together to purchase or build a media outlet. The outlet would be founded upon a simple premise: that it is dangerous and ultimately fatal for democracy for media power to fuse with government power, that the adversarial press is vital.

Fox alone isn't enough. For one thing, any venture needs competition; Fox doesn't really have competition, not for the audience it's targeting.

For another thing, frankly, look: Fox is often pitched too low to do any good with any but the already-alarmed. (Which I consider to be possibly a function of a lack of competition.)
The media considers its adversarial function to consist of serving as adversaries to critics of Obama and the Democrats; thus Terry Moran shaming himself by rushing out to ask what right a Senator has to question the Secretary of State on matters of foreign policy.

They do not consider themselves required to exert any adversarial pressure on governmental power itself (at least not so long as it is held by socialist Democrats; why sure, they'll rough up John Boehner!).

This is dark, and dangerous, and will lead to horrors. It always has lead to horrors before.

Anyone who has actually followed the uncritical treatment President Obama has received from the majority of the media would have to agree, if they have even a semblance of objectivity and intellectual honesty.

As Ace puts it, merely pointing it out and talking to ourselves is inadequate. The Left is quite content to have us relegated to a ghetto of FOX, blogs and talk radio. We need a battle plan.

And happily, beyond the creation of another media outlet, (a good idea, but one that will take time) it's not beyond our powers.Here's how:

1) With the exception of NPR and Pacifica, Left wing outlets funded by your tax dollars, Television is a commercial enterprise. As such, it exists to make a profit. It's not enough merely not to watch yourself, but to send a message that bias affects the bottom line.

An organization and a website that actively monitors whom advertises on these biased news programs and provides contact information and drives a committed response for both the networks and affiliates, and even more importantly, the advertisers themselves is a must, and not just for the news sites but for the entire program line.

If Ford or McDonalds or Sears or Toyota gets a raft of continuous e-mails saying that you will no longer buy their products because of the content they're supporting, it resonates, especially if it's combined with a drop in viewership. And they will make their dissatisfaction known to the suits who control the networks.Writing to the networks themselves is a joke, because they largely share the political sympathies of their on-the-air talent but when the advertisers start whining, it gets heard.And acted on.Because the networks have stockholders who primarily care about their investment.

Some outlets, like MSNBC have made a conscious business decision to become Left wing minarets. Fine, but they also need to be made to understand there's a cost involved.So we target their advertisers to send that message.

As I can testify personally, this sort of thing works in most cases unless the advertiser themselves are ideologically driven.

There needs to be a commitment and activity among conservatives or simply those who care about liberty and a real free press to unite and make this happen. I'm more than willing to devote some time and effort...anyone else?

2)Activism begins at home. For instance, how many of you enjoy the products of a company called Ben and Jerry's , run by Leftist loons Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield? Where do you think their money goes? How many of you drink Peet's coffee, headquartered in Berkeley?

Imagine what would happen if Ben and Jerry's corporate owners, Dutch-Anglo Unilever received thousands of e-mails with the message that the sender was no longer buying Ben and Jerry's products because of their politics? Imagine what might occur if Vons, Ralph's or other supermarket chains got the same e-mails and saw a drop in sales because of it?

The Left already does this with groups like Buy Blue.We should too. But it takes organization.

3)Profiling works. It's important to out so-called conservative media when they also use the money they get from advertisers courting conservative listeners to support Left wing outlets.

Here's an example. In Los Angles, Clear Channel owns both KFI (Rush Limbaugh's outlet)and KTLK, which features the likes of Stephanie Miller and Ed Schultz. If you're an advertiser and you buy time from KFI, they also put your ads on KTLK to help support Schultz and Miller 'as an extra'. And whether or not you like the idea, your advertising dollars go to keep them alive.

This situation is not unique to Los Angeles, or to radio. If Clear Channel wants to fund Lefties, fine, but they should be made aware that there's a cost. Imagine what would happen if their advertisers got a string of e-mails protesting the fact that their ads were supporting Miller and Schultz and threatening not to patronize the goods and services they have on offer until it stopped? Would it stop? You betcha.

This works well in reverse too. Imagine what might occur if the advertisers of your typical Lefty newspaper like the Philly Enquirer were informed that until conservative voices appeared in these publications and their news content became more balanced, the goods and services on offer would not be patronized? Would the paper add conservative columnists and perhaps even stop merely redacting the crap they get from the AP? Some wouldn't. But some would.

4) Cut off access to the public trough. None of the above work on NPR or Pacifica, because unlike most media they survive, vampire-like, on our taxes.

Congress controls the nation's purse strings. And the Republicans have a majority in the House. Is there any reason it's still being funded, besides the fact that the GOP is too gutless to refuse to do it because we haven't made it an issue?

These are only a few basic steps that would make a major difference provided they were organized properly, received a commitment from enough dedicated people and were part of a sustained effort.

Well? Is your liberty worth a little time and effort?

It won't happen over night, but to paraphrase that old shrink's joke, look how long it took to get thing's screwed up.

Major Explosion In Key Iranian Nuclear Site

There are a number of rumors floating around about a major explosion that took place Monday in the Iranian nuclear facility of Fordow,destroying key parts of the installation and trapping 240 personnel underground.

The only publication to go public with this is World Net Daily, who is something of a suspect source but who claims that the information was supplied to them by Iranian defector Reza Kahlili, who has his own contacts in Iran and has been right about some of these things before.

None of my sources have conformed this yet independently, and as you might imagine, the Iranian press isn't saying anything.

Fordow is a major Iranian center, largely underground and used by Iran to enrich uranium for their illegal nuclear weapons program with 2,700 P3 centrifuges busily at work.A 'work accident' there would be a huge setback to Iran's nuclear weapons program.

I've sent out a number of messages to some of my notorious Little Birdies, and will have more on this for you if they have anything interesting to say.

LATMA's Latest - Cutting Edge Israeli Satire!

By the way, The Green Leaf party satirized here is a real party in Israel...who like to party, if you take my meaning.

A Must Read: David Mamet on Gun Control

 

Award winning playwright, producer and author David Mamet has an excellent article at the Daily Beast  on gun control and tyranny that simply is superb. The Fools of Chelm, by the way, are an old part of Jewish folklore popularized by Isaac Bashevis  Singer, about a town where a group of people lived in perfect amity and content until they started listening to the elites, the so-called Council of Sages. Here's a slice of Mamet's piece:

Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death.

For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia. The agency is called “The State,” and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read “The State will take from each according to his ability: the State will give to each according to his needs.” “Needs and abilities” are, of course, subjective. So the operative statement may be reduced to “the State shall take, the State shall give.”

All of us have had dealings with the State, and have found, to our chagrin, or, indeed, terror, that we were not dealing with well-meaning public servants or even with ideologues but with overworked, harried bureaucrats. These, as all bureaucrats, obtain and hold their jobs by complying with directions and suppressing the desire to employ initiative, compassion, or indeed, common sense. They are paid to follow orders.

Rule by bureaucrats and functionaries is an example of the first part of the Marxist equation: that the Government shall determine the individual’s abilities.

As rules by the Government are one-size-fits-all, any governmental determination of an individual’s abilities must be based on a bureaucratic assessment of the lowest possible denominator. The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.

President Obama, in his reelection campaign, referred frequently to the “needs” of himself and his opponent, alleging that each has more money than he “needs.”

But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining “needs”? And note that the president did not say “I have more money than I need,” but “You and I have more than we need.” Who elected him to speak for another citizen?

It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs. One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. “One-size-fits-all,” and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is “slavery.”

The Founding Fathers, far from being ideologues, were not even politicians. They were an assortment of businessmen, writers, teachers, planters; men, in short, who knew something of the world, which is to say, of Human Nature. Their struggle to draft a set of rules acceptable to each other was based on the assumption that we human beings, in the mass, are no damned good—that we are biddable, easily confused, and that we may easily be motivated by a Politician, which is to say, a huckster, mounting a soapbox and inflaming our passions.

Read the rest here. Kol tov, David Mamet!

Soccer Dad's MidEast Media Sampler 1/25/13

Today's sampler and analysis of Mideast media content from my pal Soccer Dad:

 1) False friend Cohen


In Israel's True Friends, Roger Cohen wrote argued that Israel's "'true friends' ... are in facts true friends only of the Israeli right:"

... propels Israel into repetitive miniwars of dubious strategic value.

(Apparently he needed some editing as the verb "propels" doesn't seem to match its antecedent.)


According to a recent paper, Operation Pillar of Defense: Objectives and Implications:

From a military standpoint, Operation Pillar of Defense was different from Operation Cast Lead in several significant ways. Since 2008, Hamas and other Gaza factions have expanded their rocket arsenals to include longer-range rockets. In 2008, Israeli intelligence estimated that all factions in Gaza possessed around five thousand rockets; by the outbreak of Pillar of Defense they were estimated to have ten to twelve thousand, including, for the first time, rockets that could reach Tel Aviv. Indeed, those rockets were used during the recent conflict, albeit in a symbolic fashion. Israel, however, did not sit idly by between these two operations, and the cardinal development of this conflict was the amazingly successful performance of the Israeli-manufactured Iron Dome rocket-defense system. The deterrence achieved by Operation Cast Lead afforded Israel some time, and Israel used this time to develop Iron Dome with its remarkable 85-percent success rate achieved during Operation Pillar of Defense, providing both security and a sense of security to the Israeli population. That, moreover, was one of the major reasons Israel did not ultimately feel it had to launch a ground operation into Gaza. In the absence of Iron Dome, the pressure in Israel – in response to casualties and damage – may well have pushed the government into such an operation, as occurred during Cast Lead.

Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense weren't propelled by an false friends of Israel. They were in response to growing terrorist threats.


Elder of Ziyon notes:

It has been over two months since the last rocket was launched from Gaza into Israel.
...
As far as I can tell, there has never been a two-month period without rockets into Israel since the first Qassam was shot into Israel in February 2002.

"Strategically dubious?"


Given the obvious falsity of his claim, Cohen loses any credibility to designate others to be friends of Israel or claim to be one himself.


2) The Hillary watchdogs


The Washington Post has a bewildering editorial, Hillary Clinton’s clarity on threats in North Africa. Why is it bewildering?

The outgoing secretary’s statements were particularly striking when compared with President Obama’s inaugural address Monday, which promised to end “a decade of war” in favor of nation-building at home, and with the White House’s current approach to Mali. France sent troops there this month to prevent jihadists linked to al-Qaeda who are entrenched in Mali’s northern deserts from taking over the rest of the country.

But as the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, Mr. Obama and his advisers have taken a skeptical view of the need for U.S. involvement. French requests for air refueling and surveillance help are still on ice two weeks after being made; the administration grudgingly agreed to transport some French troops to the country but only after trying to stick Paris with the bill. The Journal reported that while the Pentagon has wanted to target the leaders of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which was involved in the Benghazi attack as well as last week’s assault on a gas field in Algeria, White House policymakers argue that the group doesn’t pose a direct threat to the United States.

For one thing, while the Post's editors clearly prefer Secretary Clinton's views to those of the White House, there's nothing more here than an implicit criticism of the President.


But there's a question here. If Secretary Clinton is at such odds with the President's foreign policy why did she serve the whole first term? This isn't some minor disagreement, but one about the fundamental direction of the country's foreign policy. Even if she's a loyal soldier, how could she have possibly represented the administration if she holds view so different from President Obama?


The editorial continues:

Ms. Clinton evidently doesn’t agree. “People say to me all the time, well, AQIM hasn’t attacked the United States,” she said. “Well, before 9/11, 2001, we hadn’t been attacked on our homeland since, I guess, the War of 1812 and Pearl Harbor. So you can’t say, well, because they haven’t done something they are not going to do it.”

The outgoing secretary’s point about U.S. leadership — and the results of its absence — doesn’t apply just to Mali. It is equally true of Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other “unstable environments.” If Mr. Obama continues to eschew an active U.S. role in those places, or to retreat from one, there will be, as Ms. Clinton said, “consequences.”

There's some wisdom in these words, but is this what she truly believes? Talking tough is not the same thing as acting in accordance with those words. This brings us to the other puzzling aspect of the editorial. The editorial omits any mention of the Secretary's "What difference does it make?" (Not that she took that approach when the subject was Iraq during the Bush administration.) After explaining what difference the cause of the attack made, Barry Rubin observes:  

The Obama Administration wants to bury this analysis because it calls attention to the threat of revolutionary Islamism and, in the last case, to the negative aspects of its own Libya policy. Whether or not that initiative of overthrowing Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi was a good idea the fact remains that such a policy has costs. Whether or not unilateral actions and the use of force is a good idea or not in any specific case, standing aside and doing nothing while Americans were killed will also have its costs. Whether or not America has made mistakes in its past policies, apologies and concessions will only persuade the Islamists and a large sector of the local population that the United States is weak, can be defeated, and therefore attacks should be escalated.

Aside from the irrelevance of motive, the other point Clinton made was to emphasize that the most important thing was to punish those responsible. While that sounds impressive, virtually nothing has been done to achieve that goal. In general, of course, the problem is identifying and finding the terrorists, especially if they are located in a country which provides a safe haven to terrorists. The United States never effectively punished, for example, those who attacked the Marine barracks in Beirut in the 1980s.

It would appear that Secretary Clinton's tough talking was just words. Possibly she's trying to maintain her viability as a candidate in 2016. But the Washington Post took her empty words as promises of action. (Similarly, I heard Bob Schieffer previewing Face the Nation on the radio this morning, saying "She acquitted herself well.") Our tough watchdog media has apparently decided that boosting Hillary Clinton is its primary duty at this time.

The Council Has Spoken!! This Week's Watcher's Council Results

 

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

Before we get started, let me remind you that there's now a seat available on the Watcher's Council up for grabs.

We're currently looking at candidates, so if you're interested, think you qualify or want to find out more about what's involved in being part of the longest established blogging group of its kind, simply leave a comment with site URL and your e-mail address (which won't be published) on any article over at Joshuapundit.

These don't come up all that often and when they do they usually fill up quickly, so don't snooze.

There's a great deal of discussion going on among self-identified conservatives and Republicans about how to rebrand the party, gets its message out and change what appears to be its image
 

This week's winner, Bookworm Room's  To win the future, conservatives need to give voters a positive image of a can-do America and a can-do Republican Party lays out her blueprint for that process in her usual witty and erudite style. Here's a slice:

For the past four years, conservatives have been fighting a relentlessly rearguard, defensive action.  For those same four years, conservatives have lost every rearguard, defensive action that they’ve fought.  Or if they haven’t actually lost, the best that they’ve managed is a stalemate that stalls Progressivism, but doesn’t advance conservative values.  Even the stunning 2010 “shellacking” proved ineffective, as shellackings really only work if you take over Congress entirely, rather than just getting half of it.

Conservative also don’t seem to be faring too well in the culture wars.  To use abortion as just one example, in the 2012 election, conservatives lost the chance to take over Congress when Progressives successfully demonized two Republican Senate candidates who are pro-Life.  More than that, it seems as if, contrary to past trends showing that Americans are inclined to a pro-Life view, a recent poll gave a definitive victory to American support for abortion.

Ironically, right up until the 2012 election, many conservatives (myself included) thought that these tactics would work. We believed that a jobless recovery (a stock market that benefited from Obama’s crony capitalism, even as more and more people became unemployed), creeping inflation, flabby home sales, depreciating savings, rising medical costs, and all the other signs of a sick economy, would turn voters against Obama.

We also thought that proofs of corruption (Fast and Furious), incompetency (Benghazi), and crony capitalism (Solyndra), would turn voters against Obama.  They didn’t.

Sure we knew that Romney, although a good and intellectually brilliant man, was only a decent candidate, but we thought that, given all of Obama’s failures and dishonesty, Romney’s charisma deficit wouldn’t be a problem.  And had Romney been a Democrat, it really wouldn’t have been a problem.  He was a Republican, though, which meant that sterling character and brilliant economic chops were inadequate to fend off the extraordinarily vicious character assassination that the White House and the media launched against him.

We conservatives hadn’t counted on Americans buying such disgusting canards or ignoring ugly facts, but they did. Between the media running interference, general disinterest from voters more fascinated by Honey Boo Boo and Jersey Shores than by politics, and Americans’ probable fear of voting a black man out of the White House, conservatives got to watch Obama win again.

In the wake of Obama’s victory, conservatives in the media and in the blogosphere have responded by amping up their previous tactics.  Considering that Obama won’t be running again in 2016, spending all of our political capital and emotional energy attacking him doesn’t seem like a good use of resources.  Be that as it may, conservatives are Obama is still Target No. 1.  There certainly is a lot to get fired up about, most notably the way in which Obama seized upon Sandy Hook as an excuse to seize guns.  Nothing will come of it, of course, since there are too many Democrats who like guns too, but Obama has successfully framed the issue to be one of life- and child-loving Democrats squaring off against gun-crazed, child-murdering Republicans.

Rather than running about like headless chickens who are still trying to peck the President to death with details, we might do better focusing on very specific weaknesses and not letting those weaknesses vanish from the public eye.  To me, the most obvious are (a) the economy and (b) his handling of Benghazi.


In our non-Council category, the winner with a very different kind of article was Caroline Glick with Bye Bye London submitted by Joshuapundit. She recently participated in a debate in London about Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines and relates what happened there. Do read it.It's an eye opener.

And forgive me if I not-so-humbly add I saw this coming some time ago, and if anything it's even more relevant than it was 7 years ago. Europe will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.

OK, here are this week’s full results. Only Gay Patriot was unable to vote this week, but was not subject to the mandatory 2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners

• *First place with 3  votes! Bookworm Room –To win the future, conservatives need to give voters a positive image of a can-do America and a can-do Republican Party


• Second place with 2  votes – The Right Planet- The Left's War on the Bill of Rights


• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – The Noisy Room-There’s No Truth In The News And No News In The Truth


• Third place *t* with 1 1/3  votes – The Political Commentator - The hit and run President!


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Simply Jews- What Jonathan Freedland doesn’t get


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD-Saudi Royal Stability


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Rhymes With Right-What This Chinese Dissident Has To Say About America's Second Amendment


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Gay Patriot – What President Obama Should (But Likely Won’'t) Say Today


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Razor –How Colin Powell is a Racist


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Joshuapundit –Obama's 2nd Inaugural - Darkness at Noon


• Fifth place with 1/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi – A Wild Cristina Kirchner

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! – Caroline Glick-Bye Bye London  submitted by Joshuapundit


• Second place  with 2  votes – Buckhorn Road –The Militia Is... submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey


• Third place *t* with  1 2/3 votes – Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion – Veteran stands up for 2nd Amendment at Chicago anti-gun forum submitted by VA Right!


• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes -Gregory Mann/Africa Is A Country-France in Mali: The End of the Fairytale   submitted by The Razor


• Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes  Sultan Knish -The Authenticity of Fake  submitted by The Mellow Jihadi


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes - Mark Steyn –Fake dead girlfriends and fake debt limits submitted by The Noisy Room


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Policymic –Mali War: French Are Hypocrites For Rushing In With Military Aid submitted by Simply Jews


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Robert Tracinski/Real Clear Politics –Barack Obama is Boring   submitted by Bookworm Room


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Tom Ricks/Best Defense – The Obama administration’s inexplicable mishandling of Marine Gen. James Mattis submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Victor Davis Hanson –Hagel, Brennan, and the Obama View of the Middle East   submitted by The Watcher


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -The Strategist –Google in North Korea: Pyongyang kowtow or smart diplomacy?   submitted by The Political Commentator

See you next week! Don't forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week's Watcher's Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day and with short takes and weigh in...don't you dare miss it. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.....'cause we're cool like that!

Kerry Starts His Confirmation Process

Senator John Kerry started his confirmation process today speaking before the Senate. He pledged as Secretary of State to 'implement President Obama's vision for the world' . Rather odd to me to see the word 'honorable' next to the name of a man whose chief accomplishments involve arguably committing de facto treason against hi sown country during war time, lying to Congress in the Winter Soldiers hearings, marrying rich women, and shilling for the likes of Syria's Basher Assad. But I guess that only proves the truth of Sir John Harrington's famous couplet on the matter.

"President Obama and everyone here knows that American foreign policy is not defined by drones and deployments alone," Kerry said.

"American foreign policy is also defined by food security and energy security, humanitarian assistance, the fight against disease and the push for development, as much as it is by any single counter terrorism initiative," he added.

Translation? Like President Obama and the other two national security nominees Chuck Hagel and John Brennan, Kerry really, really likes Islamists and figures we can bribe them to leave us alone by throwing lots of foreign aid and military goodies at them while creating 'daylight' between America and Israel, to use President Obama's words.

Like the president and his two co-nominees, he also isn't overly concerned about a nuclear Iran..after all, they just need peace, love and understanding.

There's no doubt in my mind he'll be confirmed. So will Hagel and Brennan.

And th emess they leave will remain to be cleaned up later.

Senator Feinstein Introduces Her New Gun Ban Bill

 

Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced her new gun ban bill today.

She and her fellow Democrats refer to this as an 'assault weapons' ban, which translates into pretty much anything that has scary cosmetics they disapprove or. Or as Senator Feinstein tweeted in words that would make anyone with actual combat experience laugh out loud, "weapons of war that do not belong on our streets."

There's a detailed list of over 150 weapons she wants banned, and most of them aren't even close to what could be called a military weapon or even an assault rifle, as the list includes pistols and shotguns as well:



According to the bill, the sale, transfer, importation and manufacture of any of these guns would be prohibited.

Although there's a provision grandfathering any of these weapons already owned, the transfer ban would prevent anyone willing or bequeathing them to anyone else. The idea, of course, is to eliminate these guns entirely over time so that no one but the bodyguards of the elites has them.

The bill also calls for a 'national registry' of anyone owning firearms, the better to confiscate them later. Because I guarantee you, this is only a first step. You see, Senator Feinstein likes the idea of turning all of our cities into replicas of Chicago, where gun violence is endemic.Because she and her fellow elites have all thr protection they require, usually at taxpayer expense.

This bill shows the typical contempt the Left has for our Constitution, particularly those whom hold office and have sworn an oath to protect it.

If they don't like the Second Amendment, there's a constitutional remedy to change it by the amendment process. But the Left never plays by those rules,because they'd lose. Instead, they'll try shoving legislation through by any means necessary, and if that doesn't work they'll get some Lefty hack wearing a judicial robe they've managed to appoint to the Bench to impose what they want.

What remains to be seen is if the majority of Americans are going to sit by passively while their liberty is taken away.

We'll see, indeed.

Watergate-era Judiciary chief of staff: Hillary Clinton fired for lies, unethical behavior

In view of Secretary Clinton's performance during testimony on the  Benghazi debacle  yesterday, it's well worth reviewing her performance when she worked on the Watergate Investigation. Dan Calabrese at the Canada Free Press has thoughtfully rerun an article of Mrs. Clinton's behavior that he originally wrote back in 2008 after she lied about being under sniper fire in Bosnia. Here's a slice:

As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.

The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigatio

Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.

The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.

The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.

“As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.

The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?

“Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.

The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.

Zeifman says that if Hillary, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.

Of course, Nixon’s resignation rendered the entire issue moot, ending Hillary’s career on the Judiciary Committee staff in a most undistinguished manner. Zeifman says he was urged by top committee members to keep a diary of everything that was happening. He did so, and still has the diary if anyone wants to check the veracity of his story. Certainly, he could not have known in 1974 that diary entries about a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham would be of interest to anyone 34 years later.

But they show that the pattern of lies, deceit, fabrications and unethical behavior was established long ago – long before the Bosnia lie, and indeed, even before cattle futures, Travelgate and Whitewater – for the woman who is still asking us to make her president of the United States.

Read the whole thing here.

Fascinating Video: Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid OnThe Haredim

This is probably mostly of interest to the Tribe, but is extremely valuable for anyone else who wants to understand Israel.

The big surprise in the Israeli elections was the success of TV Newscaster Yair Lapid's new party, Yesh Atid ('There is a Future'), which won 19 mandates and is almost certain to be part of PM Benyamin Netanyahu's new governing coalition.

Lapid already did one thing that impressed me when Israel's parties on the Left wanted him to agree to  block Netanyahu even if he wasn't going to join them to form a government.He refused outright, and publicly, saying that those tactics wouldn't be good for Israel. OK, a bit self-serving since he was probably planning to go into the government anyway, but the fact that he said it publicly meant something, as did the fact that he did it quickly and didn't milk it for a few days.

Yesh Atid is primarily a  secular, centrist party whose big issues were economic relief for Israel's middle class, along with universal conscription and a curtailment of draft exemptions for the Haredim.

The above 2012 lecture by Lapid was given at the Haredi branch of the college at Kiryat Ono, one of several institutions created to allow the Haredi to pursue academic degrees while observing their religious requirements.I agree with a large part of what he had to say here, but more importantly, it gives a real insight into what Lapid's views are and how he thinks.

This is looking more and more like a good match for  Netanyahu and and the makings of a strong and positive Center Right coalition, especially if Netanyahu  brings Naftali Bennett and Bayit Yehudi into it, and perhaps even United Torah Judaism and their 7 mandates, provided the inevitable horsetrading aspect works out.

(h/t and todah, Carl)

Coverup: Hillary Melts Down On Benghazi Under Congressional Questioning

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave her long awaited testimony today on the Benghazi debacle before two separate congressional committees, and it was quite a spectacle, one that will undoubtedly surface in campaign commercials should Mrs. Clinton decide to run for president in 2016.

While Mrs. Clinton is a serial prevaricator with a great deal of practice, she lacks the polish and the amorality of her husband or the demeanor and expertise of her current boss. And it was a difficult position, frankly.

The State Department's own inquiry found itself at fault, although they limited any characterization of blame to a few lower level sacrificial lambs and avoided tackling a number of the more difficult questions what happened in Benghazi raised.

One of the high points of today's festivities came when Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI)raised the every valid point of asking why the Administration continued to push the talking points of a protest based on an obscure video when they clearly knew it was a lie, and Mrs. Clinton angrily shouted back "What difference does it make?":



Ah, but it does make a difference, Madame Secretary.It makes a difference because the Obama Administration made a political decision to cover this up in the middle of an election by coming up with a narrative they knew at the time was absolutely false. It matters because it appears to have been deliberately done so as not to tarnish President Obama's supposed foreign policy credentials and contradict his chest thumping about how al-Qaeda was finished and on the run.

It matters because it wasn't, as you phrase it, 'some guys out for a walk some night who decided they'd go kill some Americans' but a highly organized, preplanned attack by al-Qaeda affiliates who were around and in a position to kill Americans only because of President Obama's ill-advised intervention in Libya. And it matters because they only were able to obtain the arms and heavy weapons for that kind of attack because President Obama's Libyan adventure enabled them to loot Moamar Khaddaffi's arms stocks.

And it matters because now, today, those same arms are being used to kill Americans in Algeria by al-Qaeda in the Maghreb and to attempt to take over Mali and impose sharia there.

Other parts of Secretary Clinton's admissions were equally troubling.

Mrs. Clinton, for example, claims she did not select nor was she even consulted by the president on the choice of UN Ambassador Susan Rice as the Obama Administration spokesperson to hit the Sunday news show and mouth the self-serving falsehood lie that the attack in Benghazi was a protest against a You Tube video.

Well and good, but if Mrs. Clinton wasn't in on what amounts to a conspiracy to deceive the American public, why did Secretary Clinton push those exact same talking points at every opportunity? Why did she appear in videos apologizing for the video that were shown in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world?



In view of the fact that she, White House Spokesperson Jay Carney, Ambassador Rice, Vice president Biden and even the president all pushed the exact same narrative in the media in what appears to be a co-ordinated fashion, let's just say I have my doubts and leave it at that.

Mrs.Clinton also claimed that she never read any of the numerous cables sent by the CIA, Ambassador Stevens and others about the dangerous situation in Benghazi and the need to increase security there. In fact, on her watch just the opposite happened with security being actually decreased.

If in fact she's telling the truth and as a sitting Secretary of State she never read those cables, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was exactly right in saying to her, "Had I been president at the time and I found that you did not read the cables ... I would have relieved you of your post. I think it's inexcusable."



What was more disappointing was that the congressional committees Secretary Clinton testified before today did not get into a number of unanswered questions about what occurred that night in Benghazi and its aftermath.

Given that there had been a number of attacks in Benghazi recently, and that even the International Red Cross and the British Embassy had pulled their people out of what they saw as an unsafe location, what was a U.S. Ambassador doing there, especially after he had communicated his belief to the White House that he was on an al-Qaeda hit list and especially on the anniversary of 9/11?

Why exactly were repeated requests for enhanced security for the consulate in Benghazi denied? Secretary Clinton would have us believe it was because those awful Republicans in the House denied funding, and said as much today. But if this is true, why not simply pull our personnel out of a location we were supposedly unable to afford to secure properly? And if funding was the problem, as Senator Rand Paul mentioned above, how was money found to present the entire staff of the Vienna Embassy a fleet of Chevy Volts and a state of the art charging station a few months prior to the Benghazi attack?

It's now known that  the president  and his circle were formally informed by the local CIA Head of Station  within 24 hours that this was not a spontaneous 'protest' but a well planned attack by  al-Qaeda affiliates. Who made the decision to proceed with the false narrative for nine days? And if in fact that wasn't President Obama, why didn't he contradict it once he found out about it?

The attack took place over 7 hours, with the White House watching the action live via a drone circling overhead as well as being in direct contact with both the consulate and the CIA annex nearby.We had ample security assets well within range that could have intervened on the ground to save the lives of our people, yet repeated requests for orders to go in were denied.Who made that decision?

And I would have particularly liked to have seen CBS' Sharyl Atkinson, one of only a handful of reporters actually covering this story get a chance to receive a few answers from Secretary Clinton on these questions.

What happened today was a political sideshow, and so far it's been largely successful because the majority of the press has abrogated any semblance of ethics or integrity in favor of what amounts to a love affair with this president and his agenda.

But sometimes justice takes time and this is still not over yet, by any means. The truth will out eventually and the ghosts of four dead Americans as well as others yet to come aren't going to allow it to disappear.

Watcher's Council Nominations - Inaugural Edition

 

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

This week's contest is dedicated to Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu, for his recent  election victory.

Council News:



First off, a bouquet of flowers  to our pal Paula. Get well soon, M'Dear!

Second, it's transition time.  Our Esteemed Council Member Sara from The Independent Sentinel is unfortunately leaving The Watcher's Council to concentrate on other endeavors.

We've all greatly enjoyed having her with us, and no doubt you'll see her from time to time as a non-Council nominee, an honorable mention or weighing in on our weekly forum on Monday mornings.

But yes, that also means that there's now a seat available on the Watcher's Council up for grabs!

If you're interested,  think  you qualify or want to find out more about what's involved in being part of the longest established  blogging group of its kind, simply leave a comment with site URL and  your e-mail address (which won't be published) on any article over at Joshuapundit.

These don't come up all that often and when they do they usually fill up quickly, so don't snooze.

This week, Ask Marion, The Pirate's Cove, and Maggie's Notebook took advantage of my generous offer of link whorage and earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address ( which won't be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then  return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it co0mes out Wednesday morning.

It's a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members. while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that?

So, let's see what we have this week....

Council Submissions

• The Noisy Room – There’s No Truth In The News And No News In The Truth
• Simply Jews – What Jonathan Freedland doesn’t get
• Joshuapundit-Obama's 2nd Inaugural - Darkness at Noon
• The Political Commentator – The hit and run President!
• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Saudi Royal Stability
• The Colossus of Rhodey – Want a lower tax rate? You're a "whiner"
• Bookworm Room – To win the future, conservatives need to give voters a positive image of a can-do America and a can-do Republican Party
  
• VA Right! - Is Bill Bolling Planning to Torpedo Republicans with Indy Run for Governor?
• The Razor – How Colin Powell is a Racist
• Gay Patriot – What President Obama Should (But Likely Won’'t) Say Today
• The Mellow Jihadi – A Wild Cristina Kirchner
• The Right Planet – The Left's War on the Bill of Rights
• The Glittering Eye -Financial Report
• Rhymes With Right – What This Chinese Dissident Has To Say About America's Second Amendment

Honorable Mentions

• The Pirate's Cove - Warmist Worries About Coral Which Apparently Thrives In Cold Water
• Maggie's Notebook - Did Memphis Police, the Mafia and YIKES! the U.S. Army Conspire in the Assassination of MLK?
• Ask Marion - The Communist Takeover Of America – 45 Declared Goals

Non-Council Submissions

• Mark Steyn –Fake dead girlfriends and fake debt limits submitted by The Noisy Room
• Policymic – Mali War: French Are Hypocrites For Rushing In With Military Aid submitted by Simply Jews
• Caroline Glick – Bye Bye London submitted by Joshuapundit
• The Strategist -Google in North Korea: Pyongyang kowtow or smart diplomacy? submitted by The Political Commentator
• Tom Ricks/Best Defense – The Obama administration’s inexplicable mishandling of Marine Gen. James Mattis submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Buckhorn Road – The Militia Is... submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Robert Tracinski/Real Clear Politics -Barack Obama is Boring submitted by Bookworm Room
• Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion – Veteran stands up for 2nd Amendment at Chicago anti-gun forum submitted by VA Right!
• Gregory Mann/Africa Is A Country –France in Mali: The End of the Fairytale submitted by The Razor
• Jennifer Rubin/Right Turn -Really, that’s it, Mr. President? submitted by Gay Patriot
• Sultan Knish –The Authenticity of Fake submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
• The Blacksphere – Read, Weep, Print and Keep! submitted by The Right Planet
• Ralph Peters – The Perfect Squirm submitted by The Watcher
• Victor Davis Hanson – Hagel, Brennan, and the Obama View of the Middle East submitted by The Watcher

Enjoy! And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!

Reid Threatens GOP Senators "Filibuster Deal In 36 Hours Or Face Nuclear Option"

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has threatened Republican Senators that if they don't agree to a deal on severely curtailing filibusters, he will activate what's known as the Nuclear Option - changing the Senate's rules by a simple majority vote:

Reid’s trump card in negotiations with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is the threat he will change Senate rules with a simple majority vote, a tactic known as the nuclear option. This maneuver would allow Reid to change the Senate rules with a simple majority vote, something that has never been done, according to parliamentary experts.

Critics call it the nuclear option but proponents, such as Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) say it is more accurate to describe it as the “Constitutional option” because the Constitution empowers each chamber to set its own rules.

Reid predicted the Democratic caucus would support him in reforming the Senate’s filibuster rule unilaterally.

You may remember that term Nuclear Option...when the GOP controlled the Senate during the Bush Administration in 2005 and faced obstruction from Democrats on confirming judges, former Senate Majority leader Bill Frist thought about using this, but was talked out of it by the Gang of Fourteen,a bi-partisan group of senators that pledged not to use the Nuclear option and change the rules, but to compromise and not filibuster except 'under extraordinary circumstances'.

The leader of that group? Senator John McCain, flanked by Republicans Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, Lindsay Graham, Lincoln Chaffey, Mike DeWine, and John Warner.

The rationale given by McCain then was -wait for it - that someday they would be in the minority and would want their rights similarly respected!

Harry Reid,the Minority leader at that time welcomed the compromise and touted it publicly as a true example of bipartisan cooperation.

As we can see now, behind everyone's back he and his pals were laughing uproariously at the Republican members of the Gang of 14's naïveté and stupidity in trusting him and his fellow Democrats to make that same quid pro quo once they got their hands on power.

I hope every one of the three Republican on the list above still in the Senate realizes how badly they were played and what idiots they were to trust Harry Reid and his minions. And I hope they appreciate how it has led to the marginalization of themselves and every other Republican senator, as the Democrats now pass whatever rules they want to govern the Senate:

The Surprising Israeli Elections

Votes are still being counted, but as the elections in Israel move to a close, there have been some surprising results.

The Likud-Yirael Beiteinu unity list is predicted to win 31 mandates, the highest total of any party but still well below the 42 seats they started out with.

One of the biggest shockers was Yesh Atid ('There is a Future'), TV personality Yair Lapid's party, which is predicted to win 18-19 mandates. Yesh Atid is a centrist party whose main message was essentially economic dissatisfaction, emphasis on social issues and the insistence that all Israeli Jews serve in the military, with no more exemptions for the haridim.

Bayit Yahudi('Jewish Home') ended up with 12 seats, an excellent showing compared to where they were but not as high as the previous polls showed them getting. Apparently Netanyahu's negative campaigning had an effect.

Shas, the Orthodox religious party mainly focusing on Sephardi Jews, those originally from the Middle East and Southern Europe ended up with 11 mandates, while United Torah Judaism, a religious party on the right ended up with 6.

On the Left, Labor ended up with 17 seats, while the EU-funded far Left Meretz and Tzipi Livni's Hatenua appear to have ended up with 6-7 each, depended on who's counting.

The Arab parties ( Hadash, Balad and Ram) look to end up with 10 mandates.

Now comes the fun part.

While Netanyahu will still almost certainly get nod from President Peres to form the new government with himself as Prime Minister, he's going to have to put together a coalition in order to govern.This involves compromise, horse trading of ministries and perks and moderating positions on issues that surfaced during the campaign.

My personal guess would be that he taps Yair Lapid and Yesh Atid for starters. It would give the new government credibility in the social welfare department, and Lapid and Netanyahu have a number of areas of agreement when it comes to economic issues. Also, Yesh Atid pretty much has no real foreign policy positions, and it's not their focus. That would bring Netanyahu to 49-50 seats, 11 or 12 shy of the 61 he needs.

After that, there are a number of ways Netanyahu can go.If he does pick Lapid, he probably is going to have trouble getting Shas to serve in the new government with Yesh Atid. By the same token, Shas' spiritual leader insultingly referred to Jewish Home and Naftali Bennet as 'goyim' because they favor allowing civil marriage in Israel, so any government that included Shas would have to smooth those bumps over, and it's not going to be easy.

If we assume Shas is out of the picture, then Netanyahu can either choose to bring Labor in for a unity government (66-67 seats) or he can try to bring in United Torah Judaism and Jewish Home ( 66-67 seats when combined with Yesh Atid's 18-19 seats)for a center right coalition.

The idea of pairing Labor with Likud, Yirael Beiteinu and Yesh Atid is asking for trouble, just as it was in the 18th Knesset when Labor revolted against Ehud Barack and left the government.If I were Netanyahu, I wouldn't even consider it.

Of course, another real possibility would be a combination of Labor, Yesh Atid, Meretz and Livni's Hatenua, which would amount to 49-50 seats. To govern, they would have to bring in Shas or Jewish Home, both of which are a highly unlikely fit.And they would have to fight it out amongst themselves as to which Indian was going to be chief, even less likely!

So, why did Likud/ Yisrael Beiteinu lose so much ground? A lot of it was sheer timing. An election in September would have gotten them a much better showing.

Another factor was the combined list, which meant that a number of Israeli politicians in both Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu with no hope of getting into the Knesset this year because of their low placement on the list simply didn't go all out to work the streets this election.

And finally, Netanyahu's attacks on Bayit Yahudi and Naftali Bennett backfired badly. Most of their vote cam from Likud, and the every attack fed uncertainty on the Right about Netanyahu's bonifides.

So the next step is seeing whom Netanyahu and Likud pair up with.

By the way, as a side note, remember the remarks pro-Obama columnist Jeffrey Goldberg quoted President Obama as making, saying that 'Israel doesn't know it's own best interest.'?

Well U.S. officials in Israel are now conceding that not only did President Obama make those remarks and that it was done with the deliberate intention of hurting Netanyahu at the polls, but that it backfired badly.

I can verify that last bit. Israelis across the spectrum were outraged

How Gun Control Worked In Australia

I guarantee you, if President Obama and the Democrats have their way, the stats will be even worse here.And remember Australia has a a very different culture than America, and it is also an island...so it's much harder for criminals there to obtain illegal firearms than it is here in America.

Give up your guns America, and give up your freedom. It really is that simple.

Obama's 2nd Inaugural - Darkness at Noon

 

The most willfully divisive president in American history gave his second inaugural address today. Rather than seek to unify the nation, his call today was to divide it even further.

It was literally one of the most amazing - and in its own way, disgraceful - speeches in American political history, and all the more astonishing in that it called for trashing a number of our bedrock constitutional freedoms just a short time  after President Obama swore an oath to preserve and protect them.

What President Obama just told the country, essentially, is what he told Russian President Medvedev to tell Vladimir Putin, that he was facing his last election and once he was elected, he would be able to be more 'flexible.'

Now that he's re-elected, he apparently feels that he's no longer accountable to anyone any more, and doesn't have to bother to fake anything like moderation, or being the president of all the people. He told us today in no uncertain terms that we will see government from the far Left.

His voice at a near shout throughout, President Obama beat the class warfare drum hard, and pledged to enforce his agenda to fundamentally change America in his image while repeating 'we the people ' throughout. Reading between the lines, it's obvious what that agenda is...a redistribution of wealth to the more 'deserving', climate change taxes, gay marriage, amnesty for illegal aliens, eventual massive gun confiscation, and an astonishing loss of personal liberty to Big Government for the Greater Good:

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.

For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

This is classic ObamaSpeak. First the president set up a paragraph's worth of cover by citing what seems to be a classic American principle, and then he told us what he really thinks, that collective action (or a convenient Executive Order when that won't suffice) is necessary to destroy individual liberty to meet 'new challenges'. And revealingly, he then goes on to compare individual liberty and individualism to using outdated militias and muskets to fight wars in the twentieth century. That is how President Obama sees the world,  regardless of the fact our Constitution was built on a reverence for individual liberty and for the next four years, he's going to do his best to create his vion of America whether we like it or not.  And the president is letting us know  that no diverse opinions or views will be tolerated.

Progressives have been touting this kind of genial fascism for years.They see no forced collective action in free markets or free men which is why they always attack them. The problem, as they see it,  is  always the individual, the Kulak, the selfish Plutocrat standing in the way of the will of the People, as envisioned by their beneficent Masters.

Chairman Mao, among others said almost exactly this before ordering the Great Leap Forward.

We are definitely going to get the kind of government we deserve..and then some. The mask is off.

Forum: What is your Opinion Of The State Of Race Relations In America Today?

Every week on Monday morning , the Council and invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day. This week's question: What is your Opinion Of The State Of Race Relations In America Today?


The Noisy Room: Until Obama became president, I would have said that race relations were a non-issue, at least in most venues. Since Obama has come into office, that has changed, however. Eric Holder and others have deliberately stoked the fires of racial conflict, welcoming the influence of the Black Panthers and the Muslim Brotherhood, with their hatred towards a variety of ethnicities and religious preferences. By using the race card to shield Obama from any criticism, the Left, including the media, have made race an issue once again, setting back progress in race relations at least 20 years, by selectively choosing not to enforce law based on race, including not only crimes by blacks, but also "immigration law," predicating their actions and lack of action solely on racial fairness. In fact, to enhance the conflict, Obama is masterfully utilizing class warfare.

A scarred and healed wound has now been ripped open in our society, leaving a schism that is being manipulated for political gain. Most of America is not falling for this ploy. The Left would love a race war pitting races and religions against one another in this country. But as much as that tactic is pushed, the majority of America is still Christian and abhors such conflict. For most of us, race does not even enter the thought process... competency, ethics and morality does. And that is where the Marxists lose - Americans cherish their individual freedoms and feel a sense of family towards other American patriots, whether they be white, black, brown, red, yellow or purple. That will not stop the left utilizing massive propaganda to separate races and to push class warfare as a race issue though. After all, they adhere to Saul Alinksy's Rules for Radicals and they need conflict to create a revolution and chaos, furthering the collapse of society and the reformation of a government closer to their heart's desire (see: Fabian Socialists).


The Razor:Pardon the pun but race relations is a grey area. Over the past forty years that I’ve been aware of the issue, I’d have to say that the plain old bigotry is on the wane, but it hasn’t been replaced by racial harmony. Instead we have a situation where the Democratic party has demagogued the issue under the first African-American president, turning it into a weapon liberally used against anyone who opposes the party or its policies.

Anyone who questions the logic of affirmative action is charged as a racist. Anyone who wonders whether African-Americans are best served by the low expectations and government dependency fostered by liberal government policies is racist. Those of us who support school vouchers, which allow African-American kids to attend better schools and receive better educations, have been criticized as racist. Americans who oppose the Obama administration are racist. In fact it’s impossible for anyone who disagrees with the institutional Left and the Obama administration to avoid being dismissed as racists.

With the word bandied about so much in our public discourse, it is difficult to objectively determine where our nation stands on racism. I’m reminded of an incident a dozen years ago when I opposed a local rabbi at a town hall and was shouted down by the predominantly Jewish audience as being an anti-Semite and skinhead (rather amusing given my views on Israel are more in line with Israeli hardliners than the leftist American Jews). I spoke to my old roommate after the meeting who is a Jew and he told me that there was enough real anti-Semitism in this country Jews didn’t need to make more up. The same is probably true with white-black racism.

There’s no doubt it’s still around. I work with Indians and hear how they are often bullied and mistreated at grocery stores and gas stations. My old stomping grounds in Philadelphia suffers from racism by African-Americans against African immigrants from Ghana, Somalia, Liberia and other African nations – something that doesn’t fit the classic definition of racism caused by skin color. But is it better than it was a generation ago? I hope so, but given the state of public discourse, it is impossible to determine.

 JoshuaPundit: I think it's important to differentiate between institutional and de jure racism and simple human prejudice. In terms of the first, I think relationships between the races are probably as good as they can get in a free society. Not only is there substantial enforcement of  a number laws prohibiting it, but it has become socially unacceptable when directed at anyone except, in a number of circles today, against whites and  Jews..particularly if they happen to be male.

Unfortunately, as for the second category, while we eliminated de jure prejudice we adopted a number of government policies than enhance and entrench it. The simple fact is that as a society, we  drifted away from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's. famously expressed ideal starting in the 1960's when the Kerner Report on civil unrest was accepted as gospel and fixes like the War on Poverty, raced based affirmative action, ethnically jerrymandered congressional districts, hiring quotas and minority set asides  became common and were taken to absurd extremes  by various politicians with the idea of creating voting blocs based on groupthink, ethnic resentment and feelings of entitlement.

A society does not eradicate racial prejudice by institutionalizing it and directing it against a different target as what amounts to someone's idea of payback or reparations. That merely enhances bigotry not only in the preferred groups but in the new, targeted group as well..

Instead, to bowdlerize  that wonderful line from the film  'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' , we will truly make progress when we understand that apples and oranges are different, but we're all fruit and need to be treated with the same respect and dignity without reference to what tree we come from. 

The Glittering Eye:  Any reasonable consideration of the state of race relations in the United States should take stock of how far we've come and how much farther we need to go.

When I was a kid and young adult, legal segregation was the norm in many place. White and blacks or "Coloreds" as they were called had separate restrooms, drinking fountains, and building entrances.Accommodations were such that traveling was impossible or, at the least, very difficult for blacks.

A variety of pretexts denied their right to vote and there were very few black elected officeholders, even in areas in which a majority of the potential voters were black. None of those things is true now. We've come a long way.

As far as we've come there's still quite a bit farther to go. The overall homicide rate among blacks is six times what it is among whites. That's almost entirely due to the homicide rate among urban blacks--the homicide among rural blacks is roughly the same as among whites.

The unemployment rate among young blacks is a staggering 21%, compared to an overall youth unemployment rate of 12%. Median income for white household is around $50,000. Median income for black households is around $32,000. 30% of whites are college graduates; only 20% of blacks are college graduates. The on time high school graduation rate for whites is 78%; the rate for blacks is 57%.

I wouldn't claim that all of these problems are due to racism. That there is a racial component can hardly be denied.

Some might point to the Secretary of State under George W. Bush (the son of Jamaican immigrants) or, on the occasion of his second inauguration to the presidency, the current president (the son of a Kenyan, raised by whites) as an indication that race no longer plays a factor in American life. Perhaps it doesn't.

Maybe it's culture but there's certainly something. There are millions of Afro-Americans (as the sociologist Charles Moskas referred to black Americans who were descended from the American slaves freed in 1865) who are still in severely reduced circumstances.

Bookworm Room: One word answer: bad.

This is not an accident. President Obama and the Dems have very carefully stoked racial tensions to create a series of crises off of which they can legislate. This is a good, if immoral, short-term strategy, but it has the seeds of long-term disaster within it, because they won't be able to contain or control the animus they're overseeing.

  Well, there you have it.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it.
And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

Bloodbath In Algeria With Hostage Rescue Attempt...War On Jihad Spreads To Maghreb

The latest battleground in the War on Jihad is North Africa and the Maghreb,the northern Muslim rim of Africa. The 'mainly Taureg area' notation refers to the indigenous desert Taureg tribes, who've been fighting some of the surrounding governments for years and are now being used as jihadi shock troops by Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM).

This is a vast area almost the size of Western Europe.

The ill-advised western intervention to overthrow Moamar Khaddaffi is spawning a number of unpleasant consequences as al-Qaeda and other salifists relocate back to the Arab world to take advantage of the new empowerment of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab Spring.

The site of the latest atrocity was Algeria's In Amenas natural gas facility near the Libyan border, which was targeted by AQIM in response to France sending in troops to the North African country of Mali to war against a threatened takeover of another AQIM affiliated group, Ansar al Dine which already controlled the Northern part of the country. Ansar al Dine had launched an offensive against Bamako, the capitol which came seriously close to succeeding and probably would have without theF rench intervention.

Both Ansar al Dine and the perpetrators of the attack on the In Amenas natural gas facility were well supplied with arms that came out of former Libyan dictator Moamar Khaddaffi's arsenals.

Since Khaddaffi's overthrow and subsequent assassination, the security situation in Libya has visibly worsened.

The military has essentially dissolved and weapons from Khaddaffi's armed forces have flooded the markets in the region. A stable and sustainable government has yet to take hold and a lot of the power still rests with competing groups, a number of whom are affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Many of the AQIM affiliates have made a business out of kidnapping westerners working at oil facilities in the region.

The attack on In Menas was carried out by The Signed-In-Blood Battalion, an offshoot of AQIM. The group is led by a one-eyed veteran of Algeria's civil war, named Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

The group attacked the facility at dawn on Wednesday, overwhelming the and taking a number of foreigners hostage. According to one BP worker there, they were told by the attackers "'You have nothing to do with this. You are Algerians and Muslims. We only want the foreigners.'"

Most of the plant's 700 workers either eluded capture of managed to hide from the jihadis, but a number of non-Muslim hostages were taken, and many had explosives wired to them.

The jihadi's demands were that France pull its troops out of Mali and that the U.S. free two terrorist icons.

Sheik Abdul Ramen, AKA 'The Blind Sheik' who played a major role in planning the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and is serving a life sentence is high on every Islamist's wish list. No less than Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood Presixdent Mohammed Morsi vowed to free the Sheik in his inaugural speech.

The jihadis also demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist who was convicted in 2010 of attempting to kill U.S. FBI agents and military officers after she was detained by police while trying to enter Afghanistan back in 2008.

When the FBI agents began asking her a few questions, she reportedly snatched an untended M-16 ( don't ask me whose error in judgement that was) and started shooting at them while yelling, "Death to Americans!"

Instead of wasting any time on things like negotiations, the Algerian military simply cowboyed things and attacked the site, something a number of experts criticized them for. Reportedly, they did not inform any of the countries whose nationals were believed to be hostages before undertaking the raid.

All of the hostages were killed, as well as 32 jihadis. So far, they've found the bodies of 23 hostages, and the death toll is almost certain to rise and the plan is secured.

This is something like standard procedure for hostage situations in Algeria, of which there have been far too many since the civil war. The Algerian security forces normally assume that any hostages are dead meat anyway, and therefore, everybody dies. The fact that those hostages are non-Muslim ferenghi makes a decision like that even easier.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar has promised that there will be more attacks until their demands are met and given the state of things in the Maghreb and in Mali,we can probably expect more of these.

The ironic thing in all this is that while Moamar Khaddaffi was in charge in Libya, he was actually helping us take out elements of AQIM, because he saw them as a threat to his rule. Perhaps the Obama Administration should have thought twice before jumping into Libya and helping the people whom ousted him. They're increasingly turning out to be a change for the worse.

As for Mali, don't be surprised to see U.S. involvement there eventually. According to State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, we already have 'military trainers' there to train African troops as they deploy in Mali, as well as drones and that wonderfully loose term 'logistical support.'

The last time we did this in tandem with the French over half a century ago, our military trainers in South Vietnam (known then as 'advisers') ended up taking a vastly increased role beyond anything we anticipated, we ended up paying all of the costs of France's intervention and then taking over for them in the end.

Stay tuned.