The Top Seven Techniques Liberals Use to Lie About Conservatives

cross posted from Right Wing News
John Hawkins
Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Liberals spend much of their time trying to hide what they believe from the public while conservatives are perpetually frustrated by the fact that the American people don't seem to understand what we really believe. Both problems spring from a single source: liberals lie incessantly. That's not to say that there aren't conservative liars or truthful liberals; there are, but for liberals, lying is the rule, not the exception.

There are two reasons why liberals lie much more than conservatives. First off, this is a center-right country and liberal beliefs are much more unpopular than conservative ones. If liberals told the truth about what they believe and want to do, the Democratic Party would practically be wiped out in much of the country.

Additionally, conservatives tend to think liberals are merely stupid or emotional, while liberals tend to view conservatives as evil -- and liberals use that belief to justify lying about conservatives. After all, if you lie about someone who's evil to keep them from doing bad things, couldn't that be considered virtuous? You may disagree with that, but liberal politicians, bloggers, and journalists live by that rule. Any lie told about a conservative, even one that liberals know isn't true, will be uncritically repeated ad nauseum by the Left until the point it becomes politically disadvantageous to do so.

So, in order to help fight the lies of the Left, here's a guide to the most prevalent techniques that liberals use to mislead people about conservatives. If you're listening to liberals talk about conservatives, you're virtually guaranteed to hear at least one of these techniques used.

1) Question The Motivations: When liberals are losing an argument, they love to shift the discussion not to the facts at hand, but to the motivation of the person on the other side. That's because it's almost impossible to prove what someone's motive may be for a particular action.

Thus, liberals can claim that Charles Pickering, a man who went toe-to-toe with the Mississippi Ku Klux Klan in the sixties, is actually a racist or that George Bush invaded Iraq to try to steal its oil.

From the liberal perspective, the more shameless the lies, the better because the target of the scandalous accusation and his defenders will often waste inordinate amounts of time and energy fighting ridiculous, unfounded allegations that a certain percentage of uninformed Americans will simply assume are true without evidence.

2) The Anonymous Smear: Want to launch an attack at a conservative, but don't have a credible source handy? No problem. Just take a vicious critic or an unreliable source and make them "anonymous."

CBS did it with Bill Burkett, who provided them with the fake "Bush was AWOL" documents during the 2004 campaign. Had they revealed who he was, the story would have been treated as not credible from day one.

If even that proves too troublesome, some members of the media (I strongly suspect Seymour Hersh is guilty of this) just make things up and attribute them to non-existent sources. Since their sources are anonymous, unless they make the mistake of including verifiable details like the New Republic's Scott Beauchamp, it's almost impossible to prove they're lying.

3) The Teary Eyed Spokesman: One of the Left's favorite tactics of late is to pick pathetic figures we're supposed to feel sorry for as spokesmen. That way, if you try to respond to the lies of someone like Cindy Sheehan, you're accused of picking on the mother of a dead soldier. If you try to respond to the lies of Max Cleland, you're accused of picking on a crippled vet. At this point, I'm surprised they haven't found a gaunt, stuttering orphan to serve as Obama's Press Secretary. Worst-case scenario, he couldn't do much worse than Robert Gibbs.

4) Rewriting History: The American public has a short memory and liberals count on that to get away with many of their most egregious lies. For example, that's the factor liberals count on when they try to pretend that George Bush lied about WMDs to get us into Iraq. Lies of that sort usually seem to work until someone points out that Democrats, including our current Secretary of State, were saying things like this before the war,

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." -- Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002

5) Everybody Knows: When liberals want to avoid a losing argument, they sometimes just refuse to have the argument at all and assure everyone that the matter has already been decided. Why, there's no need for Al Gore to even debate global warming with people who could easily blow holes the size of the Grand Canyon in his arguments because he insists that there's a non-existent "scientific consensus."

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? As long as the Kerry campaign ignored them, most of the mainstream media did, too, but then the line of attack was immediately that the Swifties had already been "discredited." Who discredited them? How did it happen? What made them less credible than Kerry, particularly since they made him change his story more than once? Whenever you hear liberals in some form or fashion insisting that the argument with conservatives on a particular issue is already over, it's a good indication that they believe they'll really get their clocks cleaned in a straight up debate.

6) The Ransom Note Method: One of the Left's favorite tricks is to take something a conservative says completely out-of-context and to attack that comment, even if it's obvious that they're twisting the meaning of what was said. This is how the Left can accuse John McCain of wanting to fight for 100 years in Iraq or say Rush Limbaugh wants Barack Obama to fail even if it hurts the country.

This one is especially insidious because some conservatives foolishly blame other conservatives for having their words taken out of context. However, the reality is that if someone is determined to distort what you say, he can always find something to twist around. The people who deserve blame in that situation are not the people whose words were misrepresented; it's the liars who have chosen to misrepresent what they said.

7) The Straw Man: If you can't find a sin conservatives have committed to attack, then invent one. This is one of the most used arrows in the quiver of liberals who claim the Right wants to create a theocracy, kick senior citizens off of Social Security, or reward the rich at the expense of the middle class.

The Left uses this tactic against specific politicians as well. Remember during the 2004 campaign when the Left kept promising to fight a draft that Bush didn't propose and didn't support? How about all the attacks on Saxby Chambliss because he supposedly questioned the patriotism of crippled war vet Max Cleland? Except, of course, Saxby Chambliss never questioned Cleland's patriotism.

Unlike liberals, conservatives believe most Americans share our values and so, if you want to know what we think, all you have to do is ask us and we will tell you.

Angie Harmon, Beautiful and Brains!!

Angie Harmon: I'm Not Racist Because I Disagree With Obama

Angie Harmon is not afraid to come out and say she doesn’t like how President Obama is handling the job — but she’s sick of having to defend herself from being deemed a racist.

"Here's my problem with this, I'm just going to come out and say it. If I have anything to say against Obama it's not because I'm a racist, it's because I don't like what he's doing as President and anybody should be able to feel that way, but what I find now is that if you say anything against him you're called a racist," Harmon told Tarts at Thursday’s Los Angeles launch of the new eyelash-growing formula, Latisse. "But it has nothing to do with it, I don’t care what color he is. I’m just not crazy about what he's doing and I heard all about this, and he’s gonna do that and change and change, so okay … I'm still dressing for a recession over here buddy and we've got unemployment at an all-time high and that was his number one thing and that's the thing I really don't appreciate. If I'm going to disagree with my President, that doesn't make me a racist. If I was to disagree with W, that doesn't make me racist. It has nothing to do with it, it is ridiculous."

Speaking of dislikes, the starlet has also had enough of the double-standards in the media.

"I do think McCain would have done a better job, only because I think he has more experience. I also think if W or John McCain or Reagan would have gone and done a talk show, the backlash would have been so huge and in his face, and ‘What is our president doing? How unclassy!’ But Obama does it and no one says anything," Harmon said.

And in spite of the scornful opinions most of her Tinseltown counterparts have shared on Gov. Sarah Palin, Harmon remains a true fan.

"I admire any kind of woman like her. My whole motto is to know what I stand for and know what I don't stand for and have the courage to live my life accordingly and she does exactly that. The fact that this woman has made the decisions she's made and literally lived her life according to that and takes heat for it is absolutely disgusting to me," she added. "People cannot look at this woman. I really think they're afraid of her and her morals, ethics and values and the fact that she hangs on them. Is she the most experienced person in the world? But she was running to be the Vice President, so we then put the most inexperienced person as the President. That didn't make any sense to me."

However Harmon is definitely in the Hollywood minority when it comes to her criticism of Obama as other lasses at the Latisse party were quick to advocate their unequivocal support.

"The sort of criticism over the last couple of weeks is a bit unfounded, he's been in office for barely any time and I think he inherited a lot on his plate and he's doing a pretty remarkable job," quipped Mandy Moore. "I think it's cool that he went on Leno and I watched the "60 minutes" interview as well last week. The guy is just so articulate and he is so well versed in something that is so new to him and I think he has a good team around him. It sounds cliché, but he makes me feel proud to be an American."

Authors note: No on can deny that Obama carries a certain amount of articulation which in my opinion should be a required leadership trait, however a president cannot stand on that alone.

What Obama really lacks is a character of strength.

Perhaps it is the fault of the past, the world I grew up in, but personally Obama does not show me any display of confidence in his true ability through strong character. In fact his ability to smooth talk leaves me with a great sense of distrust, which is presently beginning to reveal itself in his actions.

What Obama has developed to his maximum potential is to survive and I think he has been working on this his whole life. For that reason it comes naturally without conscience it is at it maximum height of parroting.He is excellant when using it on women and weak men.

Of course it is understandable why he appeals to a younger generation. To them he is a great speaker but that is because they have never heard a great speaker, like Churchill, Kennedy, Reagan, Buckley, Roosevelt, and the like.

I remember personally meeting with former Speaker of the House Democrat John McCormick when he came to pay respects to my late uncle who was his aid. The mere presence of the man in the room, left one in awe. I imagine to some people they would get that feeling being in the room with Obama, but I wouldn't. Better men than he have I met many times over.

The reason people are so infatuated with him is that he has played the "star struck" to the max. We have now fully arrived as a society wherein television creates great men. Its no longer important that they lack substance, as long as they can project an image in sixty minutes and become a hero by the end of the show.

Right now people are at that stage of the new series beginning for the year, but somehow I think that by the end of the season they will be left without the ending they were waiting for and lose all interest in summer reruns or season two.

Revenge of the Bond Market Vigilantes

Will market forces check Obama's out-of-control deficits?
by Gary Andres


Tuesday night President Obama appeared undeterred by the consequences of debt and long-term deficits in his budget, arguing his fiscal "investments" are inseparable from the economic recovery. In coming months, however, messages from the bond market and foreign investors may change his tune. Consider a bit of history.

In January 1993, President Bill Clinton and his economic team also faced some sobering news. New budget estimates revealed a federal deficit swelling to dangerous levels, threatening prospects of a much-needed sustained recovery. The economy faced stiff headwinds, drying up tax revenues and blowing holes in the hopes to reduce red ink.

A powerful group of Clinton's economic aides argued that navigating these tricky shoals required a substantive agenda shift. The president listened and pivoted. At the urging of advisors Robert Rubin, Lloyd Bentsen and Larry Summers--and to the consternation of his political team, fresh off a November 1992 victory--Clinton shelved a middle class tax cut and several spending initiatives promised during the campaign. Instead he embraced a deficit reduction plan--signaling to Wall Street and the Federal Reserve his commitment to fiscal discipline.

Curbing the deficit was not the new president's first preference, but he had few options. The fiscal hawks argued the success of his presidency depended on the gestures the White House sent with its initial budget document. Insider accounts detail Clinton's frustration with the budgetary and economic realities. Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg writes about Clinton's irritation in his memoir Dispatches from the War Room. In one of his first meetings with his economic team the president remarked, "You mean the success of the program and my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of f---ing bond traders?"

Despite his aggravation, Clinton relented. He changed some of his campaign plans to fit the new economic conditions, mollifying the bond market enough to avoid increased long-term interest rates.

Today President Obama faces an even more dismal fiscal outlook. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate of the White House budget released last Friday projects deficits and debt that could bankrupt the country. House Republican Leader John Boehner said on Tuesday night that if you add all debt accumulated in our country by 43 Presidents in 220 years of our history through 2008, President Obama's budget will double that over the next six years. "I just think that this may be the most irresponsible piece of legislation I've seen in my legislative career," Boehner concluded.

Americans instinctively understand the coming debt tsunami, and would likely be forgiving if the president used these circumstances to throttle back his ambitions. When given a choice, they consistently pick economic growth over policy reform. For example, a recent Rasmussen poll finds a plurality of voters (49 percent) want the president to delay health care reform until the economy improves. Only 42 percent say he should move ahead now. Gallup reports Americans are similarly reticent on environmental policy: "For the first time in Gallup's 25-year history of asking Americans about the trade-off between environmental protection and economic growth, a majority of Americans say economic growth should be given the priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent."

Obama's attitude is somewhere between disingenuous and recklessly undeterred. He repeatedly argues his budget plan cuts the 2010 deficit in half by the end of his first term. It may. But the projected 2012 deficit is still higher than any in recent history, and the numbers balloon to unsustainable levels in the out years (2013-2019).

The White House also insists we must spend more to realize future economic growth and savings. "If we don't tackle [issues like health care, education and the environment]," the President argued at his press conference on Tuesday night, "we won't grow."

But the president's budget and the pile of debt it produces has already caused Senate Democrats to propose some major adjustments. And more are on the way as Congress crafts its version of the budget this week and next.

Back in the 1980s, Wall Street economist Ed Yardeni used to say the "bond market vigilantes" would not allow federal debt to get out of control. He argued market forces would drive up interest rates if the deficit and borrowing continued unchecked, leading the political class in Washington to respond accordingly. Bill Clinton listened; Barack Obama may have to do the same.

And while the vigilantes have been somewhat discredited--and may be busy burying their bonuses in the Hamptons--they can still pack a wallop when it comes to interest rates as they gauge the impact of unrestrained government borrowing and debt.

Obama's bloated budget is also bursting with irony. It's odd, for example, that at a time when the private economy is "deleveraging," the government is piling on new debt. But in what may be the biggest irony of all, the same bond traders whose compensation Mr. Obama wants to rein in could end up forcing him to curb his own spending enthusiasm.

Biden to Zapatero: Hey, thanks for all that help in Iraq

cross posted from Hot Air ;Ed Morrissey

Barcepundit catches Joe Biden in Spain doing … well, what Joe Biden does best. Joe Biden remembered to thank Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero for all the help he gave us in Iraq, except that the only thing Zapatero gave us in Iraq was the finger:

MAN, BIDEN IS A GAFFE WITH LEGS: during his meeting with Spain’s primer minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in Chile yesterday, Biden thanked Zapatero for his effort… in Iraq (link in Spanish, haven’t found this detail in any English-language media).

As everybody knows, the first decision Zapatero made after his unexpected win in 2004, right after the Madrid train terrorist attacks, was to abruptly and unilaterally pull out from Iraq. So either Biden made a gaffe, or he was thanking Zapatero for angering Bush…

No, I think Biden would have been blunt enough to just say, “Thanks for ticking off George Bush.” It should be noted that the Spanish Finger to the US didn’t just include pulling out of Iraq, but also refusing to train Iraqi security forces.

Originally, Zapatero explained his abrupt retreat by objecting to a lack of UN mandate for the mission. When the UN finally did give the US a mandate for rebuilding Iraq, Zapatero refused to return to the coalition. In doing so, he earned the (unfortunately) undying gratitude of … Moqtada al-Sadr. So I guess Biden and Sadr share that feeling of gratitide. In the end, of course, the fast retreat Zapatero conducted did nothing to remove the former al-Andalusia from al-Qaeda’s sights. Just six months after announcing their withdrawal, AQ tried bombing their High Court.

Regarding Iraq, Biden should have said, “Thanks for nothing.” But then again, no one but Barack Obama really thought Biden was a foreign-policy expert, anyway.

Economist: Obama’s not who we thought he was

cross posted March 28, 2009 by Ed Morrissey


The fact that Barack Obama won endorsements from most daily newspapers comes as no surprise to American readers, as they mostly go with Democrats regardless of the specific candidates. Some of us got surprised when publications like The Economist chose to back Obama, however, considering their normally sober analysis of economics and the radicalism and inexperience Obama brought to the campaign. Now, The Economist has had a Road to Damascus moment just two months after their candidate took office (via QandO):

His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped. Many of his strongest supporters—liberal columnists, prominent donors, Democratic Party stalwarts—have started to question him. As for those not so beholden, polls show that independent voters again prefer Republicans to Democrats, a startling reversal of fortune in just a few weeks. Mr Obama’s once-celestial approval ratings are about where George Bush’s were at this stage in his awful presidency. Despite his resounding electoral victory, his solid majorities in both chambers of Congress and the obvious goodwill of the bulk of the electorate, Mr Obama has seemed curiously feeble.

Why “curiously”? After all, Obama had next to no executive experience before running for the presidency. His only executive experience came at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama spent over $160 million and had no effect on education. He has never been responsible for a public budget, public appointments, or economic policy. And they find his poor performance “curious”? Would The Economist have hired Obama to run their magazine based on his resumé and then found his incompetence “curious”?

The magazine then scolds Obama for not doing the basics:

His stimulus package, though huge, was subcontracted to Congress, which did a mediocre job: too much of the money will arrive too late to be of help in the current crisis. His budget, though in some ways more honest than his predecessor’s, is wildly optimistic. And he has taken too long to produce his plan for dealing with the trillions of dollars of toxic assets which fester on banks’ balance-sheets.

How is it “more honest” than Bush? Deficits actually went down during Bush’s second term, at least until 2008. Obama says he’s all about reducing the deficit, but even by his own OMB predictions, the Obama budgets never return even to the 2008 level in the next 12 years. By the CBO’s account, both of which rely on “wildly optimistic” growth during the period, Obama won’t even come close. Now that Social Security surpluses have vanished far more quickly than anyone except George Bush predicted, they’ll get higher than either prediction.

The failure to staff the Treasury is a shocking illustration of administrative drift. There are 23 slots at the department that need confirmation by the Senate, and only two have been filled. This is not the Senate’s fault. Mr Obama has made a series of bad picks of people who have chosen or been forced to withdraw; and it was only this week that he announced his candidates for two of the department’s four most senior posts. Filling such jobs is always a tortuous business in America, but Mr Obama has made it harder by insisting on a level of scrutiny far beyond anything previously attempted. Getting the Treasury team in place ought to have been his first priority.

As I reported weeks ago, the Obama administration has done almost nothing to staff what should be the highest-priority positions in an economic crisis. That’s simply executive incompetence, and it can’t all be blamed on Obama’s level of scrutiny. The man at the top of Treasury committed tax evasion, and he’s still around. Obama issued a waiver a day for his anti-lobbyist policy in the first two weeks of his administration. If there are literally no candidates of any qualification who have paid their taxes properly, maybe that’s an indication that we should simplify our tax codes rather than make them even more complicated and punitive, as Obama has proposed.

Mr Obama has mishandled his relations with both sides in Congress. Though he campaigned as a centrist and promised an era of post-partisan government, that’s not how he has behaved. His stimulus bill attracted only three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House. … Republicans must take their share of the blame for the breakdown. But if Mr Obama had done a better job of selling his package, and had worked harder at making sure that Republicans were included in drafting it, they would have found it more difficult to oppose his plans.

What share? Obama outsourced the stimulus to Pelosi, who locked Republicans out. The Economist even noted that earlier in this article! Obama abdicated leadership on the stimulus plan and endorsed Pelosi’s “we won” policy — in fact, explicitly repeating it to Republicans whom he courted. The Economist hits Democrats next, however:

If Mr Obama cannot work with the Republicans, he needs to be certain that he controls his own party. Unfortunately, he seems unable to. Put bluntly, the Democrats are messing him around. They are pushing pro-trade-union legislation (notably a measure to get rid of secret ballots) even though he doesn’t want them to do so; they have been roughing up the bankers even though it makes his task of fixing the economy much harder; they have stuffed his stimulus package and his appropriations bill with pork, even though this damages him and his party in the eyes of the electorate. Worst of all, he is letting them get away with it.

They’re doing all of this despite Obama? Hell, no. Obama himself talked about “shaking with outrage” over the bonuses and openly encouraged the “clawback” movement on Capitol Hill until saner heads prevailed. The Economist must also have missed Obama’s promise to Big Labor during the campaign (which got The Economist’s endorsement, remember) to make Card Check one of his top priorities once he got elected. He co-sponsored it in the Senate in 2007. In fact, in January, Obama told the Washington Post of his continuing support for it. Does The Economist believe in research any longer?

If Obama is not who The Economist thought he was, then the fault lies with The Economist and not Obama. The scales may be falling from their eyes now, but if they had done their jobs a few months ago, it wouldn’t be necessary at all.

I love smart young men like this guy, He out cools Obamas cool

Drug Smuggling : The Worst Has Yet to Come

Central America: An Emerging Role in the Drug Trade
March 26, 2009

By Stephen Meiners

As part of STRATFOR’s coverage of the security situation in Mexico, we have observed some significant developments in the drug trade in the Western Hemisphere over the past year. While the United States remains the top destination for South American-produced cocaine, and Mexico continues to serve as the primary transshipment route, the path between Mexico and South America is clearly changing.

These changes have been most pronounced in Central America, where Mexican drug-trafficking organizations have begun to rely increasingly on land-based smuggling routes as several countries in the region have stepped up monitoring and interdiction of airborne and maritime shipments transiting from South America to Mexico.

The results of these changes have been extraordinary. According to a December 2008 report from the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center, less than 1 percent of the estimated 600 to 700 tons of cocaine that departed South America for the United States in 2007 transited Central America. The rest, for the most part, passed through the Caribbean Sea or Pacific Ocean en route to Mexico. Since then, land-based shipment of cocaine through Central America appears to have ballooned. Earlier this month, U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala Stephen McFarland estimated in an interview with a Guatemalan newspaper that cocaine now passes through that country at a rate of approximately 300 to 400 tons per year.

Notwithstanding the difficulty associated with estimating drug flows, it is clear that Central America has evolved into a significant transshipment route for drugs, and that the changes have taken place rapidly. These developments warrant a closer look at the mechanics of the drug trade in the region, the actors involved, and the implications for Central American governments — for whom drug-trafficking organizations represent a much more daunting threat than they do for Mexico.
Some Background

While the drug trade in the Western Hemisphere is multifaceted, it fundamentally revolves around the trafficking of South American-produced cocaine to the United States, the world’s largest market for the drug. Drug shipment routes between Peru and Colombia — where the vast majority of cocaine is cultivated and produced — and the United States historically have been flexible, evolving in response to interdiction efforts or changing markets. For example, Colombian drug traffickers used to control the bulk of the cocaine trade by managing shipping routes along the Caribbean smuggling corridor directly to the United States. By the 1990s, however, as the United States and other countries began to focus surveillance and interdiction efforts along this corridor, the flow of U.S.-bound drugs was forced into Mexico, which remains the main transshipment route for the overwhelming majority of cocaine entering the United States.

A similar situation has been occurring over the last two years in Central America. From the 1990s until as recently as 2007, traffickers in Mexico received multiton shipments of cocaine from South America. There was ample evidence of this, including occasional discoveries of bulk cocaine on everything from small propeller aircraft and Gulfstream jets to self-propelled semisubmersible vessels, fishing trawlers and cargo ships. These smuggling platforms had sufficient range and capacity to bypass Central America and ship bulk drugs directly to Mexico.

By early 2008, however, a series of developments in several Central American countries suggested that drug-trafficking organizations — Mexican cartels in particular — were increasingly trying to establish new land-based smuggling routes through Central America for cocaine shipments from South America to Mexico and eventual delivery to the United States. While small quantities of drugs had certainly transited the region in the past, the routes used presented an assortment of risks. A combination of poorly maintained highways, frequent border crossings, volatile security conditions and unpredictable local criminal organizations apparently presented such great logistical challenges that traffickers opted to send the majority of their shipments through well-established maritime and airborne platforms.

In response to this relatively unchecked international smuggling, several countries in the region began taking steps to increase the monitoring and interdiction of such shipments. The Colombian government, for one, stepped up monitoring of aircraft operating in its airspace. The Mexican government installed updated radar systems and reduced the number of airports authorized to receive flights originating in Central and South America. The Colombian government estimates that the aerial trafficking of cocaine from Colombia has decreased by as much as 90 percent since 2003.

Maritime trafficking also appears to have suffered over the past few years, most likely due to greater cooperation and information-sharing between Mexico and the United States. The United States has an immense capability to collect maritime technical intelligence, and an increasing degree of awareness regarding drug trafficking at sea. Two examples of this progress include the Mexican navy’s July 2008 capture — acting on intelligence provided by the United States — of a self-propelled semisubmersible vessel loaded with more than five tons of cocaine, and the U.S. Coast Guard’s February 2009 interdiction of a Mexico-flagged fishing boat loaded with some seven tons of cocaine about 700 miles off Mexico’s Pacific coast. Presumably as a result of successes such as these, the Mexican navy reported in 2008 that maritime trafficking had decreased by an estimated 60 percent over the last two years.

While it is impossible to independently corroborate the Mexican and Colombian governments’ estimates on the degree to which air- and seaborne drug trafficking has decreased over the last few years, developments in Central America over the past year certainly support their assessments. In particular, STRATFOR has observed that in order to make up for losses in maritime and aerial trafficking, land-based smuggling routes are increasingly being used — not by Colombian cocaine producers or even Central American drug gangs, but by the now much more powerful Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
Mechanics of Central American Drug Trafficking

It is important to clarify that what we are defining as land-based trafficking is not limited to overland smuggling. The methods associated with land-based trafficking can be divided into three categories: overland smuggling, littoral maritime trafficking and short-range aerial trafficking.


The most straightforward of these is simple overland smuggling. As a series of investigations in Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua demonstrated last year, overland smuggling operations use a wide variety of approaches. In one case, authorities pieced together a portion of a route being used by Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel in which small quantities of drugs entered Costa Rica from Panama via the international point of entry on the Pan-American Highway. The cocaine was often held for several days in a storage facility before being loaded onto another vehicle to be driven across the country on major highways. Upon approaching the Nicaraguan border, however, the traffickers opted to avoid the official port of entry and instead transferred the shipments into Nicaragua on foot or on horseback along a remote part of the border. Once across, the shipments were taken to the shores of the large inland Lake Nicaragua, where they were transferred onto boats to be taken north, at which point they would be loaded onto vehicles to be driven toward the Honduran border. In one case in Nicaragua, authorities uncovered another Sinaloa-linked route that passed through Managua and is believed to have followed the Pan-American Highway through Honduras and into El Salvador.

The second method associated with land-based trafficking involves littoral maritime operations. Whereas long-range maritime trafficking involves large cargo ships and self-propelled semisubmersible vessels capable of delivering multiton shipments of drugs from South America to Mexico without having to refuel, littoral trafficking tends to involve so-called “go-fast boats” that are used to carry smaller quantities of drugs at higher speeds over shorter distances. This method is useful to traffickers who might want to avoid, for whatever reason, a certain stretch of highway or perhaps even an entire country. According to Nicaraguan military officials, several go-fast boats are suspected of operating off the country’s coasts and of sailing outside Nicaraguan territorial waters in order to avoid authorities. While it is possible to make the entire trip from South America to Mexico using only this method — and making frequent refueling stops — it is believed that littoral trafficking is often combined with an overland network.

The third method associated with land-based drug smuggling involves short-range aerial operations. In these cases, clandestine planes make stops in Central America before either transferring their cargo to a land vehicle or making another short flight toward Mexico. Over the past year, several small planes loaded with drugs or cash have crashed or been seized in Honduras, Mexico and other countries in the region. In addition, authorities in Guatemala have uncovered several clandestine airstrips allegedly managed by the Mexican drug-trafficking organization Los Zetas. These examples suggest that even as overall aerial trafficking appears to have decreased dramatically, the practice continues in Central America. Indeed, there is little reason to expect that it would not continue, considering that many countries in the region lack the resources to adequately monitor their airspace.

While each of these three methods involves a different approach to drug smuggling, the methods share two important similarities. For one, the vehicles involved — be they speedboats, small aircraft or private vehicles — have limited cargo capacities, which means land-based trafficking generally involves cocaine shipments in quantities no greater than a few hundred pounds. While smaller quantities in more frequent shipments mean more handling, they also mean that less product is lost if a shipment is seized. More importantly, each of these land-based methods requires that a drug-trafficking organization maintain a presence inside Central America.
Actors Involved

There are a variety of drug-trafficking organizations operating inside Central America. In addition to some of the notorious local gangs — such as Calle 18 and MS-13 — there is also a healthy presence of foreign criminal organizations. Colombian drug traffickers, for example, historically have been no strangers to the region. However, as STRATFOR has observed over the past year, it is the more powerful Mexico-based drug-trafficking organizations that appear to be overwhelmingly responsible for the recent upticks in land-based narcotics smuggling in Central America.

Based on reports of arrests and drug seizures in the region over the past year, it is clear that no single Mexican cartel maintains a monopoly on land-based drug trafficking in Central America. Los Zetas, for example, are extremely active in several parts of Guatemala, where they engage in overland and short-range aerial trafficking. The Sinaloa cartel, which STRATFOR believes is the most capable Mexican trafficker of cocaine, has been detected operating a fairly extensive overland smuggling route from Panama to El Salvador. Some intelligence gaps remain regarding, for example, the precise route Sinaloa follows from El Salvador to Mexico or the route Los Zetas use between South America and Guatemala. It is certainly possible that these two Mexican cartels do not rely exclusively on any single route or method in the region. But the logistical challenges associated with establishing even one route across Central America make it likely that existing routes are maintained even after they have been detected — and are defended if necessary.

The operators of the Mexican cartel-managed routes also do not match a single profile. At times, Mexican cartel members themselves have been found to be operating in Central America. More common is the involvement of locals in various phases of smuggling operations. Nicaraguan and Salvadoran nationals, for example, have been arrested in northwestern Nicaragua for operating a Sinaloa-linked overland and littoral route into El Salvador. Authorities in Costa Rica have arrested Costa Rican nationals for their involvement in overland routes through that country. In that case, a related investigation in Panama led to the arrest of several Mexican nationals who reportedly had recently arrived in the area to more closely monitor the operation of their route.

One exception is Guatemala, where Mexican drug traffickers appear to operate much more extensively than in any other Central American country; this may be due, at least in part, to the relationship between Los Zetas and the Guatemalan Kaibiles. Beyond the apparently more-established Zeta smuggling operations there, several recent drug seizures — including an enormous 1,800-acre poppy plantation attributed to the Sinaloa cartel — make it clear that other Mexican drug-trafficking organizations are currently active inside Guatemala. Sinaloa was first suspected of increasing its presence in Guatemala in early 2008, when rumors surfaced that the cartel was attempting to recruit local criminal organizations to support its own drug-trafficking operations there. The ongoing Zeta-Sinaloa rivalry at that time triggered a series of deadly firefights in Guatemala, prompting fears that the bloody turf battles that had led to record levels of organized crime-related violence inside Mexico would extend into Central America.
Security Implications in Central America

Despite these concerns and the growing presence of Mexican traffickers in the region, there apparently have been no significant spikes in drug-related violence in Central America outside of Guatemala. Several factors may explain this relative lack of violence.

First, most governments in Central America have yet to launch large-scale counternarcotics campaigns. The seizures and arrests that have been reported so far have generally been the result of regular police work, as opposed to broad changes in policies or a significant commitment of resources to address the problem. More significantly, though, the quantities of drugs seized probably amount to just a drop in the bucket compared to the quantity of drugs that moves through the region on a regular basis. Because seizures have remained low, Mexican drug traffickers have yet to launch any significant reprisal attacks against government officials in any country outside Guatemala. In that country, even the president has received death threats and had his office bugged, allegedly by drug traffickers.

The second factor, which is related to the first, is that drug traffickers operating in Central America likely rely more heavily on bribes than on intimidation to secure the transit of drug shipments. This assessment follows from the region’s reputation for official corruption (especially in countries like Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama and Guatemala) and the economic disadvantage that many of these countries face compared to the Mexican cartels. For example, the gross domestic product of Honduras is $12 billion, while the estimated share of the drug trade controlled by the Mexican cartels is estimated to be $20 billion.

Finally, Mexican cartels currently have their hands full at home. Although Central America has undeniably become more strategically important for the flow of drugs from South America, the cartels in Mexico have simultaneously been engaged in a two-front war at home against the Mexican government and against rival criminal organizations. As long as this war continues at its present level, Mexican drug traffickers may be reluctant to divert significant resources too far from their home turf, which remains crucial in delivering drug shipments to the United States.
Looking Ahead

That said, there is no guarantee that Central America will continue to escape the wrath of Mexican drug traffickers. On the contrary, there is reason for concern that the region will increasingly become a battleground in the Mexican cartel war.

For one thing, the Merida Initiative, a U.S. anti-drug aid program that will put some $300 million into Mexico and about $100 million into Central America over the next year, could be perceived as a meaningful threat to drug-trafficking operations. If Central American governments choose to step up counternarcotics operations, either at the request of the United States or in order to qualify for more Merida money, they risk disrupting existing smuggling operations to the extent that cartels begin to retaliate.

Also, even though Mexican cartels may be reluctant to divert major resources from the more important war at home, it is important to recognize that a large-scale reassignment of cartel operatives or resources from Mexico to Central America might not be necessary to have a significant impact on the security situation in any given Central American country. Given the rampant corruption and relatively poor protective security programs in place for political leaders in the region, very few cartel operatives or resources would actually be needed if a Mexican drug-trafficking organization chose to, for example, conduct an assassination campaign against high-ranking government officials.

Governments are not the only potential threat to drug traffickers in Central America. The increases in land-based drug trafficking in the region could trigger intensified competition over trafficking routes. Such turf battles could occur either among the Mexican cartels or between the Mexicans and local criminal organizations, which might try to muscle their way into the lucrative smuggling routes or attempt to grab a larger percentage of the profits.

If the example of Mexico is any guide, the drug-related violence that could be unleashed in Central America would easily overwhelm the capabilities of the region’s governments. Last year, STRATFOR considered the possibility of Mexico becoming a failed state. But Mexico is a far stronger and richer country than its fragile southern neighbors, who simply do not have the resources to deal with the cartels on their own.

This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com

Ha Ha Ha very funny!

Use Your Children to Annoy Liberals
cross posted from Eratosthenes
Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Intellectual Conservative:

This father had given his sons some truly cool-looking toy guns from his youth, and one day he and his family ventured down to the community pool bearing these arms. When all the liberals’ non-sex stereotyped, wearing-a-feminine-straightjacket sons saw these symbols of authentic boyhood, their eyes got wide; exclamations such as “wow” could be heard. This also has the very positive effect of confirming in deprived liberal children’s minds that their parents really are dorks. Oh, and you don’t have to worry about further alienating them from their (probably divorced, perhaps same-sex) parents/guardians. Unless liberal children can be reformed, they will push the old folks into a nursing home first chance they get no matter what you do.

I also should mention that you needn’t fear liberals’ self-righteous, didactic proclamations. Should they choose to say something to you, it only provides you the opportunity to put the icing on the cake. If, for instance, they say, “I’m really surprised you give your son toy guns to play with” just respond, “Well, let’s be realistic. He’s still a bit too young to have a real one.”

Obama's Sights on Second Amendment

Cross posted American Thinker
March 27, 2009

By Jan LaRue
While campaigning for the U.S. Senate and then the presidency, Barack Obama said he believed in the individual right to bear arms. Those aware of his record and rhetoric reckoned he was referring to his wife's penchant for sleeveless attire, not the Second Amendment.

During his 2004 run for the Senate, Obama said

"I think that the Second Amendment means something. I think that if the government were to confiscate everybody's guns unilaterally that I think that would be subject to constitutional challenge."


No kidding.

He didn't say it would be unconstitutional, just "subject to constitutional challenge." Nor did he express any opposition.

During the presidential campaign, a case challenging Washington D.C.'s draconian gun laws was pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. The laws banned all handgun registrations, prohibited handguns already registered from being carried from room to room in the home without a license, and required all firearms in the home, including rifles and shotguns, to be unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.

In June, the Court released its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, holding that the laws violate the individual right to keep and bear arms unconnected to service in a militia as secured by the Fourth Amendment. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, emphasized that the individual right to bear arms pre-exists, and is independent of, the Constitution:

Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it "shall not be infringed." As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), "[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed . . . ."

Obama admitted in a Feb. 11, 2008, interview that he supported the handgun ban, and that it was "constitutional." On June 26, he said he agreed with the Court's decision, but added that the right to bear arms is subject to "reasonable regulations." He never "explained" how an absolute ban on handguns is "reasonable," or how he can agree with the ruling, which said it was unreasonable. Obama's inconsistencies are numerous, as John R. Lott Jr has noted.

Obama continued to duck and cover by talking about getting illegal guns off the streets, background checks for children and the mentally ill, and attacking the NRA.

Since his election, finding mention of the Second Amendment on the White House Web site takes about as long as getting to the front of the line at a gun store. What is on the site could be engraved on a .22 shell casing.

WH: The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms. [Emphasis added.]


It's far from the high caliber opinion of the Court or those of the Founders who fought for and secured the right:

* "Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." James Madison, The Federalist 46

* "Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" Patrick Henry

* "That the Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe on the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent "the people" of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." Samuel Adams

* "A free people ought ... to be armed." George Washington

* "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." Thomas Jefferson

* "If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state." Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 28


Despite the Heller ruling and his professed regard for the Amendment, Obama will push legislation to make possession and purchase of guns and ammunition as burdensome as the constitutionally comatose congressional majority will enact.

We should heed the warning of James Madison, "Father of the Constitution":

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

Jan LaRue is Senior Legal Analyst with the American Civil Rights Union; former Chief Counsel at Concerned for Women; former Legal Studies Director at Family Research Council; and former Senior Counsel for the National Law Center for Children and Families.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/obamas_sights_on_second_amendm.html at March 27, 2009 - 08:26:17 AM EDT

Yep There Sure Is Evidence That His Policy Changes Are Restoring Confidence.

Obama, who has vowed to repair America's image overseas after eight years under George W. Bush, said there were indications his policy changes were "restoring confidence" internationally in U.S. global leadership.

Obamas second press conference March 24, 2009:" We are coordinating very effectively with the Mexican Government and President Calderon who has taken on an extraordinarily difficult task of dealing with these (the) drug cartels that have gotten completely out of hand."

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - An "insatiable" appetite in the United States for illegal drugs is to blame for much of the violence ripping through Mexico, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday
WASHINGTON (AP) - North Korea is loading a Taepodong rocket on its east coast launch pad in anticipation of the launch of a communications satellite early next month, U.S. officials say. U.S. counterproliferation and intelligence officials have confirmed Japanese news reports of the expected launch between April 4 and 8.
(AP) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday called President Obama "ignorant," saying he has a lot to learn about Latin America.

US President Barack Obama's offer to talk to Iran shows that America's policy of "domination" has failed, the government spokesman said on Saturday.

"This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed," Gholam Hossein Elham was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is Iran's highest spiritual, military and political authority, told supporters in his hometown of Mashhad that "changes in words" would not be enough to convince Iran that the Obama administration was sincere in its outlook.

WASHINGTON — President Obama intends to adopt a tougher line toward Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, as part of a new American approach to Afghanistan that will put more emphasis on waging war than on development, senior administration officials said Tuesday.
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban on Tuesday turned down as illogical U.S. President Barack Obama's bid to reach out to moderate elements of the insurgents, saying the exit of foreign troops was the only solution for ending the war.

NICARAGUA; Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy group that specializes in Latin America, says he is suspicious of Mr. Ortega's democratic claims.
"Ortega's intolerance of any dissent is among the most extreme and troubling in the hemisphere," Mr. Shifter said by e-mail.
"He may be calculating that most other governments are so consumed by their national problems, especially as economic conditions worsen, that they will not pay much attention to violations of political rights in Nicaragua," Mr. Shifter said.

MOSCOW (SR) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned the Obama administration against adopting further socialism, saying Russian history clearly proves it is a recipe for failure.
"Any fourth grade history student knows socialism has failed in every country, at every time in history," said Putin. "President Obama and his fellow Democrats are either idiots or deliberately trying to destroy their own economy.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Hamas said Thursday that President Barack Obama's position toward the Palestinians does not represent change and will lead to the same mistakes as his predecessor, shortly after the new leader made his first public comments on the Gaza crisis since his inauguration.
TelAviv: March 10.2009; Obama about to betray Israel, says former intel official
A former top US intelligence official warns that the Obama Administration is about to break America's long ties of friendship with Israel, and maybe even take steps toward the dissolution of the Jewish state.

LONDON (Reuters) - Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards "get their kicks in" before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees.

Despite Obama's EO, "conditions at Guantanamo have not improved" and continue in violation of the law. Since it opened in 2002, CCR enlisted over 500 pro bono lawyers to represent hundreds of detainees. This report is based on "direct accounts from (them) and their attorneys," as recently as January and February 2009. The results are deeply disturbing.

Current Guantanamo Conditions

In a word, they're unchanged, outrageous, and illegal. Inmates struggle for their sanity and say conditions are like living in a tomb. The Pentagon and Obama administration deny it and describe isolation as greater "privacy" and "single-occupancy cells." Conditions, however, "speak for themselves."

Solitary Confinement

-- inmates spend 20 or more hours daily "confined to small steel and concrete cells (with) virtually no human contact or mental stimulation;"

-- they eat alone;

-- discipline violations result in loss of "privileges" like toothpaste, a toothbrush, soap and blankets that can be denied for any reason or none at all;

-- Camp 6 has no windows facing outside, and Camp 5 "has only a thin opaque window slit in each cell;

-- toilets are just holes;

-- faucets are provided but no wash basins;

-- Camp 5 lights burn 24 hours a day;

-- "recreation" consists of two - four daily hours in an outdoor cell; in Camp 6, it's in a pen surrounded by high mesh wire-topped concrete walls blocking out most sunlight; in Camp 5, it's in a "cage-like pen;" attempts to use "recreation" for exercise result in immediate removal to their cells, at times forcefully; some "recreation" is scheduled late at night, and if declined, inmates stay isolated for days;

-- the penalty for any infraction is 24-hour isolation;

-- except for "the gloved hands of guards," practically no human contact is allowed; and

-- current conditions under Obama are no different than earlier and in some respects are worse.

Sensory Deprivation and Environmental Manipulation

Sensory over and under-stimulation is used as follows:

-- cell temperatures are too cold causing discomfort, health problems, and mental stress;

-- discipline is imposed on any inmate trying to block a/c vents;

-- one inmate described the combination of cold and 24-hour lights as "indirect torture."

Sleep Deprivation

Besides round-the-clock lights, guards routinely kick cell doors and awaken prisoners as late as 2AM for "recreation." In addition, bed sheets are called a privilege to be denied as a disciplinary measure.

Physical Attacks by an "Immediate Reaction Force (IRF)"

Inmates "live in constant fear of physical violence," and anything or nothing may trigger it. Attacks are frequent, violent and spontaneous. One example was as follows after a minor provocation. Guards accused an inmate of attacking them. He did not. They left him in a "recreation" cage as punishment. He fell asleep on the floor, then was awakened by an IRF team in the dark. They shackled and beat him, blocked his nose and mouth to create an asphyxiation effect, hit him repeatedly in the ribs and head, and caused serious injuries. Back in his cell, a guard urinated on his head.

the president told reporters, his own "persistence" eventually will result in a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel.

By touting only U.S. presidential "persistence" as the magic wand to bring Israelis and Palestinians together, Obama demonstrated an abysmal ignorance of how a still fragile but promising peace was achieved in Northern Ireland.

China on Thursday slammed a Pentagon report on its growing military might, saying criticism of China's lack of transparency betrayed Washington's "Cold War" mindset and risked damaging ties.


Championing environmental concerns ahead of economic and national security interests, politicians -- largely Democratic -- have advanced legislation that discourages new development, particularly in offshore areas and for unconventional sources, thereby increasing our dependency on foreign oil. Environmental groups have been allowed to sabotage government-issued leases for exploration. For example, in 2007, Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) added Section 526 to the Energy Independence and Security Act, a clause that banned the use of oil shale and other fossil fuel sources.

Barack Obama promised his Kenyan family members and villagers that he would assist their school but has failed to honour his pledge.

( tCNSNews.com) - European Union President Mirek Topolanek told the European parliament Wednesday that Obama's economic policies were harmful to the U.S. economy and the global economy.


WHATS HE SMOKIN?

WMD Terror Strike on Major City ‘More Realistic’

Newsmax Report:
Tuesday, March 2009

By: David A. Patten

Terrorists attacking a major city with nuclear or biological weapons is “more realistic” than ever, British officials warned Tuesday as they lifted the secrecy from six years of counter-terrorism efforts.

Called “Contest,” the U.K. anti-terror strategy contends that new technologies and lawless nations boost the odds of a WMD attack leading to massive death and destruction.

Titled “Pursue, Protect, Prevent, Prepare: The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering International Terrorism,” the 176-page report presents an updated British strategy for combating terrorism.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith describes Contest as “one of the most comprehensive and wide-ranging approaches to tackling terrorism anywhere in the world.”

Dr. Marvin Cetron, the futurist and founder of Forecasting International, a firm that advises U.S. counter-terrorism agencies, tells Newsmax that British authorities have every reason to be concerned.

“The terrorists are getting better qualified, more technically trained people as we’ve seen in Britain,” Cetron says. “And they’re trying to get the capability. They’re still working on getting nuclear fissionable material. That’s a low probability, but it is a high-impact event.”

Since 2001, the report reveals, British authorities have thwarted over a dozen terrorist attacks. One measure of officials’ concern: U.K authorities have trained and equipped over 7,000 police officers to respond to WMD incidents. They have also built facilities for mass decontaminations, should a WMD attack occur.

"Contemporary terrorist organizations aspire to use chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons," the report states. "Changing technology and the theft and smuggling of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) materials make this aspiration more realistic than it may have been in the recent past."

A letter from Prime Minister Gordon Brown accompanying the Contest report states: “This new form of terrorism is different in scale and nature from the terrorist threats we have had to deal with in recent decades. It is intent on inflicting mass casualties without warning, motivated by a violent extremist ideology, and exploits modern travel and communications to spread through a loose and dangerous global network.”

One question counter-terror experts will no doubt be asking: Why after six years is the British government lifting the veil of secrecy over its counter-terrorism strategy and assessments?

Smith said the government seeks to “provide the people of the UK and our partners overseas with as full and as open an account as possible of why and how we are tackling this threat.”

The new report lists four main terror threats facing the U.K., all of them linked to al Qaida:

# The current al-Qaida organization.

# Al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist organizations.

# “Self-starting” terror groups, or individuals, seeking to emulate an al-Qaida style attack.

# Groups unaffiliated with al-Qaida, that, broadly speaking, have a similar agenda.

According to the report, al-Qaida is under such intense pressure around the globe that is unlikely to survive in its current form, and will likely splinter into many smaller groups. But like a hydra that sprouts two heads for each one killed, U.K. counterintelligence predicts the evolution of many smaller organizations -- sharing a similar ideology and working toward goals similar to al-Qaida’s -- may actually prove more dangerous to civilization.

The report attributes the growing danger in part to development of technologies that enable small cells of violent fundamentalists to communicate and plan.

Cetron agrees that al-Qaida is breaking into smaller parts, and concurs that in some ways this actually complicates matters.

“Al-Qaida is finding out they can do better with small groups, people who are raised in the country itself, not people who are coming from Islamic lands.” Such “home-grown” terrorists are better able to fit in, and can move freely among the local population, Cetron says.

Another worrisome concern, the Contest report states, is that terrorists could steal the materials they need to fashion a weapon of mass destruction.

The findings of the Contest report reinforce the conclusions of “Securing the Bomb 2008,” a report released in November by the U.S.-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (Nti.org).

That report predicted the Obama administration would “face a world in which the danger that terrorists could get and use a nuclear bomb remains very real.”

Among that report’s chilling findings: “If a technically sophisticated terrorist group could get the needed nuclear materials, it might well be able to make at least a crude nuclear bomb -- capable of turning the heart of a modern city into smoldering ruins. The horror of a terrorist nuclear attack, should it ever occur, would transform America and the world -- and not for the better.”

The NTI report added that some overseas stockpiles of bomb-grade material remain “dangerously insecure.”

Also highlighting the very real danger of terrorists using WMD was the July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate stating that al-Qaida “will continue to try to acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material in attacks, and would not hesitate to use them if it develops what it deems is sufficient capability.”

The British report cites several factors it says contribute to an unprecedented level of danger from a WMD terrorist attack:

# Unresolved regional disputes in Afghanistan, Palestine, Bosnia, Chechnya, Lebanon, and Kashmir.

# Extremists associated with al-Qaida who tout violence as the “religious duty” of all Muslims.

# Radicalization, or the recruitment of disaffected citizens who join terrorist groups to carry out attacks.

# The phenomenon of failed states, which is expected to continue indefinitely.

# The evolution of technologies “which facilitate terrorist propaganda, communications, and terrorist organizations.” Innovations by terrorists quickly spread around the globe.

As an example of how terrorists are learning from other terrorists, the Contest report cites the evolution of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which were employed with brutal effect against American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report states IED technology “evolved rapidly in a series of conflicts over the past 15 years,” adding, “Al-Qaida, its affiliates, and groups inspired by al-Qaida have demonstrated intent to experiment with novel explosives to maximize their capabilities and, in some cases, to deliberately circumvent protective security measures.”

An advanced understanding of explosives is considered one key element in building a sophisticated “dirty bomb” or other nuclear device.

Cetron tells Newsmax the United Kingdom is No. 1 on al-Qaida’s list of targets. “It is the prime target. France is next, Europe in general is third, and the United States is fourth on that list.”

The reason England is more vulnerable: “They have more people who are trained and angry,” Cetron says.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Gordon Gekko is a Democrat

by Ann Coulter
03/25/2009


How did Republicans get saddled with Wall Street? Obama just got the biggest campaign haul from Wall Street in world history, and Republicans still can't shake the public perception that they are tied at the hip to Wall Street bankers who hate them.

It's as if National Rifle Association members conspired with Republicans to bankrupt the country and everyone blamed the Democrats for being shills of the NRA.

Maybe if the financial capital of the nation were located in Salt Lake City, rather than Manhattan, the financial community would support Republicans. But Wall Street is a street located in New York City.


No one in the top echelons of the financial industry who has a weekend place in the Hamptons is a Republican.

No, there is one. Teddy Forstmann. He has to throw his own parties and fly guests in. Otherwise, if they want to go to any half-decent parties, bankers must be Democrats. At their income bracket, multimillionaires will trade a little extra tax money for good cocktail parties.

Even the "Republicans" on Wall Street don't care about national defense or social issues. They just want to trade with China and hire illegal aliens.

Last September, The New York Times reported that individuals associated with the securities and investment industry had given $9.9 million to the Obama campaign, $7.4 million to the Hillary Clinton campaign and only $6.9 million to the McCain campaign. Either they're all Democrats or some commodity named "hope" was going through the roof last year.

Employees of Lehman Bros. alone gave Obama $370,000, compared to about $117,000 to McCain. (No wonder Bush let them go under.)

According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records by the Center for Responsive Politics, the top three corporate employers of donors to Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel were Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan. Six other financial giants were in the top 30 donors to the White House Dream Team: UBS AG, Lehman Bros., Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse Group.

Since 1998, the financial sector has given a total of $37.6 million to Obama, compared to $32.1 million to McCain. But Obama ran for his first national office only in 2004. So McCain got less from the financial industry in a decade that included two runs for president than Obama did in four years.

As we've seen in recent weeks, Wall Street gets what it pays for. Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd included language in the stimulus bill allowing executives of the bailed-out banks to collect million-dollar bonuses.

And yet the Democrats' endless favors for their Wall Street friends never sticks to them because everyone treats Democrats' shilling for their own contributors as if it's a Nixon-goes-to-China moment.

On the March 23 edition of MSNBC's "Hardball," The Nation's David Corn said: "Remember -- What was it? A year or two back when there was talk about taxing hedge fund managers at the rate that the rest of us pay? Who intervened in that? Chuck Schumer."

But Corn then quickly added that this "got a lot of Democrats really mad. Here was a Democrat, you know, getting in the way of a populist issue at a time when the economy was already heading in the wrong direction."

Which Democrats got "really mad"? Chris Dodd? George Soros? Warren Buffett? Jon Corzine? Tim Geithner? Roger Altman? Bob Rubin? Jamie Dimon? Lloyd Blankfein?

Corn's formulation was wonderfully subtle: Admit that a Democrat preserved a sweetheart deal for hedge fund managers -- but then claim that his fellow Democrats were furious with him.

People are more likely to believe something if they think they came to it themselves. Hearing a liberal muse on TV that it was an aberration for Chuck Schumer to intervene to protect hedge fund managers -- risking the wrath of other Democrats -- the average person thinks: So Democrats must be the party of the people. I always thought George Soros was a Democrat, but he must be a Republican.

Democrats take care of the financial industry -- and the financial industry takes care of Democrats. After honing his financial skills as the bagman for Bill Clinton's White House, Rahm Emanuel was hired by the investment bank Wasserstein Perella, where he worked for 2 1/2 years.

For that, Emanuel was paid more than $18 million. (Maybe Rahm Emanuel was the Democrat livid at Schumer for preserving a sweet tax deal for hedge fund managers!)

Democrats have a beautiful system: They're showered with Wall Street money, but they also get to pillory Republicans for being the party of "Wall Street." The bankers don't care if Democrats attack them. They still get their bailout money.

Handling Of 'State Secrets' At Issue

Like Predecessor, New Justice Dept. Claiming Privilege

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 25, 2009; A01

Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of forsaking campaign rhetoric and adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak some of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs of the Bush White House.

The first signs have come just weeks into the new administration, in a case filed by an Oregon charity suspected of funding terrorism. President Obama's Justice Department not only sought to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that it implicated "state secrets," but also escalated the standoff -- proposing that government lawyers might take classified documents from the court's custody to keep the charity's representatives from reviewing them.

The suit by the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation has proceeded further than any other in challenging the use of warrantless wiretaps, threatening to expose the inner workings of that program. It is the second time the new Justice Department has followed its predecessors in claiming the state-secrets privilege, which would allow the government to exclude evidence in a civil case on grounds that it jeopardizes national security.

Attorneys for al-Haramain are seeking monetary damages from officials at the White House, the National Security Agency, the Treasury Department and the FBI, saying that the government's alleged illegal eavesdropping of the charity's board members and attorneys five years ago violated the charity's rights of due process and freedom of speech. Representatives of the charity, whose U.S. operations have gone out of business, say that its purpose was philanthropic and that authorities have no evidence that it funded terrorism.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker in San Francisco has resisted Justice Department attempts to claim the state-secrets privilege, making it one of the only cases to survive such a government challenge. Over the past eight years, authorities successfully invoked that argument dozens of times to prevent civil liberties groups from winning access to highly classified materials on a range of topics, including secret overseas prisons for terrorism suspects and warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

In his campaign plan to "change Washington," Obama criticized the Bush administration, saying that it had "ignored public disclosure rules" and that it too often invoked the state-secrets privilege, according to his Web site.

Now, Obama's claim of state secrets has prompted criticism.

"There has to be other ways to protect secret information without having to block accountability," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine. He said that "state secrets" has become a sort of "talismanic phrase" uttered by government officials who want to dispose of inconvenient or troubling challenges to their authority.

Legal scholars say there are legitimate reasons for the state-secrets privilege, pointing out that it may be necessary to keep from disclosing government sources and methods of intelligence gathering. And Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller countered the criticism, saying that "in just two months, the Justice Department has already moved on a number of fronts to ensure Americans have access to information about their government's actions, and with respect to state secrets, the attorney general has ordered a review of pending cases to ensure the privilege is only invoked when absolutely necessary."

In the al-Haramain case, Obama has not only maintained the Bush administration approach, but the dispute has intensified, with the Justice Department warning that if the judge does not change his mind, authorities could spirit away the top-secret documents.

"Any way you look at it, it's pretty remarkable," said Jon B. Eisenberg, an attorney for al-Haramain. "This is an executive branch threat to exercise control over a judicial branch function."

Walker's ruling, which could come at any time, is unlikely to end the disagreement and, if challenged, could bring the matter before the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time in a generation.

Last month, a bipartisan Senate group, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and ranking Republican Arlen Specter (Pa.), introduced legislation that would require judges to look at the classified evidence when the government makes the state-secrets claim, rather than rely only on its account of the sensitivity of the materials.

Leahy noted that the state-secrets privilege effectively bars people who have experienced serious privacy violations or even torture from seeking justice in court. He expressed particular alarm over the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen who said he was kidnapped and held for months in a CIA-run prison where he was tortured. A federal judge dismissed Masri's suit after the CIA director said it would harm national security.

Said Leahy: "For the aggrieved parties, it means that the courthouse doors are closed -- forever -- regardless of the severity of their injury."

Six weeks ago, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. disappointed civil libertarians by invoking the state-secrets claim in a case against a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of transporting five terrorism suspects to countries where they were tortured.

Three Bush administration lawyers said they were not surprised that the new team had revived at least some of their arguments. Once in office, the lawyers said, White House officials -- regardless of political affiliation -- tend to support assertions of executive power to keep from tying their hands in future disputes.

"If you want to protect state secrets, you've got to have a pretty broad doctrine," said Stewart Baker, a former top lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security and the NSA.

The al-Haramain case began in early 2004 when the FBI quietly executed search warrants at the charity's headquarters in Ashland, Ore. The Treasury Department froze al-Haramain's assets the next day and ultimately concluded that the charity was a terrorist front.

Later, government officials mistakenly sent the charity's attorneys a classified phone surveillance log -- buried in a stack of documents -- suggesting that al-Haramain board members and some of its attorneys had been wiretapped. Soon after the materials were sent, FBI agents raced to collect the sensitive pages.

In 2006, lawyers and charity officials sued the government, pointing to the secret pages as evidence that their phone and e-mail communication had been monitored without court warrants.

Walker, the San Francisco-based judge, found that anecdotal evidence of the eavesdropping program was sufficient and allowed the al-Haramain case to proceed.

In the waning days of the Bush administration, the judge ordered the government to grant security clearances to al-Haramain lawyers, which it did. But Obama's Justice Department lawyers and NSA officials continue to resist the orders to draft a plan for how the case could move forward.

In a Feb. 27 filing, Justice lawyers said the judge lacks authority "to order the government to grant counsel access to classified information when the executive branch has denied them such access."

Both sides await Walker's next step.

"At this point," said Eisenberg, the al-Haramain attorney, "I don't feel like I need to do anything. The outrage speaks for itself."

Insurance industry speaks out publically

"Representatives from the insurance industry drew a line in the sand Tuesday on the Obama administration's proposed health care plan, after months of meetings and saying all the right things about finding common ground on reform," The Hill reports. "The two trade associations that represent health insurance companies declared in no uncertain terms their opposition to creating a new, government-run health benefits program, in a letter delivered to the top Democratic and Republican senators on the Finance and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committees Tuesday."

Included in the letter was the Insurance industry's two largest insurer's offer not to charge higher rates for those individuals with pre-existing conditions and the already ill.This offer clearly shows the signs of worry among insurer's that they fear competing with universal and low rate government insurance now being considered by the Obama administration, even though the government plan would not remain low in costs over years, the industry feels such competition could render them unable to compete.

Creator of Freddie Mac’s Home Possible goes to FHA

cross posted from Hot Air
posted at 10:01 am on March 24, 2009 by Ed Morrissey


Yesterday, the Obama administration announced the appointment of David Stevens to run the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The appointment got little attention from the media, but his Senate confirmation hearing might prove more interesting. Stevens will have to explain his work for Freddie Mac in the years when the mortgage giant fueled a lending frenzy, mostly through Stevens’ own work on a program called Home Possible.

First, the announcement:

David Stevens, president and chief operating officer of real estate brokerage Long & Foster Cos., is President Barack Obama’s choice to head the Federal Housing Administration, according to people familiar with the selection.

Stevens, a former Freddie Mac mortgage executive, would replace Federal Housing Commissioner Brian D. Montgomery, who was appointed by President George W. Bush. The people familiar with Stevens’s selection declined to comment because the Obama administration has yet to make an announcement.

The FHA, a mortgage-insurance division of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department created in 1934, is regaining a larger role in the housing market as private insurers and lenders scale back, raise fees and tighten eligibility criteria. The agency said in a February report that applications tripled to 2.3 million in 2008, from 2007. FHA-insured loans represented 31 percent of new mortgages in the fourth quarter, the highest on record, according to newsletter Inside Mortgage Finance.

Stevens’ experience at Freddie Mac should prove instructive. The Home Possible program that Stevens launched practically gives a blueprint for the housing-bubble collapse and the government’s role in it:

“We created Home Possible Mortgages so more lenders can say ‘Yes’ to more borrowers,” said David Stevens, senior vice president of single family sourcing at Freddie Mac. “Home Possible is what our lenders tell us they need to compete in today’s market: a flexible, easy-to-use mortgage uniting Loan Prospector’s ease and efficiency with exceptionally low-downpayments and flexible credit. Perhaps no other mortgage product launched in recent memory will enable our lenders to reach and help as many additional borrowers as Home Possible.”

The new Home Possible Mortgage combines borrower education and early delinquency counseling, zero and three percent downpayment mortgage products and flexible credit requirements so low-and moderate-income borrowers anywhere in the country can get an affordable, low-cost conforming conventional mortgage for a single family property with as little as $500 of the downpayment or closing costs coming from their own funds. …

Home Possible and Home Possible Neighborhood Solution Mortgages are available through Freddie Mac’s national network of more than 2,000 lenders and 10,000 mortgage brokers using Loan Prospector®, Freddie Mac’s automated underwriting service, such as ABN Amro, U.S. Bank and National City Bank. …

Both Home Possible and Home Possible Neighborhood Solution Mortgages are available as 15-, 20- and 30-year fixed rate mortgages or as 7/1 or 10/1 adjustable rate mortgages for one-unit properties.

No-down mortgages and “flexible credit” helped create the spike in demand that drove the home-construction business over a cliff and hyperinflated housing values. The people who participated in these terms are the borrowers now most at risk for foreclosure because of unrealistic ARMs and dashed hopes of refinancing leveraged on non-existent equity growth. Home Possible and similar offerings from Fannie Mae allowed lenders to sell bad paper back to Freddie and Fannie with no risk to themselves, while Fannie and Freddie instead shuffled the risk to investors in its mortgage-backed securities.

Now Barack Obama wants David Stevens to do to FHA what he did with Freddie Mac. Instead of screeching about AIG bonuses, we should make sure that the people who blew up the economy in the first place do not return to positions where they can do it again. (h/t: HA reader Morgen)

Buzz up!

Obama’s Poll Numbers are Lower Than Bush’s Were After 50 Days

Notice the date how did I miss this!!!!!
2009 March 13
by Mr Pink Eyes

One of the things that I have noticed, and this article goes into it, is the way that the media reports on certain polls that come out about the president. For example, when leading economists give the president a failing grade on his economic efforts and it is reported on the media always seems to mention that this is in contrast to the people’s high approval rating of the president. See here. I have seen this several times as I scour the internet, but is it true that the presidents ratings are very high?

Yes he still enjoys an average 60% approval rating, with Rasmussen having him at 56%, but it has fallen drastically in the seven short weeks that he has been president. His approval rating after 50 days in office is about average historically and it is actually below President Bush’s approval rating after 50 days. This is significant considering the manner in which President Bush came into office after one of the closest elections in American history. (See the election of 1800 for an interesting and close presidential election.) The fact that Obama’s approval rating is lower after 50 days than the approval rating that Bush had shows me that people are not sold on Obama.

I am not saying that his approval rating is not high, it is, but it is not as historically high as the media is portraying it. It isn’t even has high as the last president’s was during the same time period. Yet the media cannot report a negative poll without reminding Obama’s loyal subjects that the president’s overall approval rating is high. The media is doing their best to keep Obama propped up but the truth is that his numbers are coming down. The media may not like it and the media is doing their best to slow down the falling numbers but the truth is that Obama’s approval rating is falling.

A Victory For Gun Owners, Thanks to Montana Democrats.

cross posted at Blackwater Tactical

At about five-thirty yesterday evening, the lengthy feature that was to have gone in today's editions of both the Outdoor and Shooting Wires was rendered unnecessary. Normally, that's not a reason for celebration. But this was no ordinary occurrence.

After having spoken with Larry Haynie of Georgia Arms regarding the Department of Defense decision to require all once-fired military brass be shredded rather than sold for repurposing to consumers and domestic agencies, it seemed the set-piece battle over gun ownership was underway.

This morning, there is no discomfort whatsoever to report that the Department of Defense has been introduced to the idea that unilateral decisions of this magnitude don't come without consequences.

The voice of reason came from the United States Senators from Montana.

More accurately, the voices of reason came from the Democratic senators from Montana.

Known for pushing ethics reform, Senator Jon Tester apparently isn't afraid to push for gun owners, too.

Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) a hand on the purse strings gets everyone's attention - even at the DOD
At approximately 4:15 p.m. Eastern yesterday afternoon, Senators Tester and Baucus of Montana faxed a cosigned letter to the Department of Defense asking DOD to reverse their new policy requiring "mutilation" of fired military cartridge brass.

At approximately 5:30 p.m. Eastern our sources tell us, Senator Tester's office received a fax back from the Defense Department saying the brass destruction policy IS reversed.

Already, websites that coordinate the sale of DOD surplus are beginning to remove the "Mutilation" requirement from their listings. This only hours after they began adding the mutilation stipulation.

In short, it seems a fax from the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and another Senator had considerable powers of persuasion.

That translates to a win for the law-abiding gun owners of the United States.

It is only appropriate that we recognize the party affiliation of both these men, because their willingness to go to bat for the ammunition industry demonstrates that, despite all the indications to the contrary, Washington is not irrevocably divided down party lines.

When it comes to firearms and Second Amendment rights, it seems party affiliations can still be disregarded.

That is reassuring.

Today, firearms owners owe these two gentlemen a vote of thanks.

They didn't wait for an opinion poll, they acted.

Still, this is still no time to relax when it comes to firearms.

DOD has seen the light, but Attorney General Holder and the Justice Department seem determined to try and convince America the problems with Mexican drug smuggling and the related violence is due to the ease with which American arms are being purchased here and smuggled into Mexico.

Fortunately, not everyone is sitting still for that argument.

Last week, Chris Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action warned a House subcommittee not to make American gun owners "scapegoats" for the Mexican crisis.

"According to some," Cox said in a prepared statement, "the violence in Mexico is not the fault of the Mexican drug cartels or their American customers, nor is it the fault of decades of Mexican government corruption. In their views, the fault lies with American gun owners."

That, Cox continued, "is an outrageous assertion."

But that assertion continues.

And last week, three Democratic lawmakers were quick to notify Attorney General Holder of their "vigorous opposition" to any new gun restrictions the Obama administration might be considering.

The three lawmakers were Alaska Senator Mark Begich and - you guessed it - Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester.

Despite some ugly times that will likely lie ahead, it seems it's not too-late to hope for some non-partisan common sense to be injected into Congress.

OK, maybe that's optimistic, but we'll take this win - and all the support we can muster.

Thank you, Senators Tester and Baucus, for your unhesitating support.

Oh yeah - the following note is up on the Georgia Arms website:

"Dear Loyal Customers,

Thanks to your voice, DOD has rescinded the order to mutilate all spent cases as of 4:30 pm on 3/17/09. We appreciate the time and effort that you expended, together we all made a difference. We will be posting the email we received from DOD as well as any additional information within the next 12-16 hours. Thanks so much and lets get to work!!!"

NEW YORKERS, DON'T JA JUST LOVE UM?

Silence is Not Golden--Where is Obamas Foreign Policy on N. Korea?

The leader of one of the the most repressive societies known to man has announced that he will be sending a missile into space with a communications satellite on board.

It is suspected that this is not the case at all but rather an intercontinental missile capable of reaching our own North American continent into the state of Alaska.

Our allies S. Korea and Japan have stated that this would be cause for them to shoot the missile down if it crosses over their air space.

Where is Obama on this issue????? Why hasn't President Obama voiced his disapproval publicly of this action by N. Korea? I have heard Clinton's statement, and Admiral Keatings but where is Obamas ??

Does he have no foreign policy on this matter?

N. Korea says it will be visiting the United States to inform them of their intentions on March 24. Will they be invited to the White House to hear the Presidents direct comment? As N. Korea has done it is customary diplomacy to voice your intentions publicly so you may set stage for private talks.

Where is Washington's response on this issue. Is the White House prepared for these talks? Have they laid any ground work? Where is the transparency? What are OUR intentions? What is the President's stand?

Here once again we see a vivid lack of leadership displayed by a vivid lack of response,on an issue that should be grabbed by the neck and strangled before it
is allowed to blurt out any sort of verbal reinforcement to build its courage.

Instead I get the feeling that Obama is waiting to comment later, rather than before as is in keeping with his usual character flaw. This is in order to be able to use the blame game and continue to misdirect culpability rather than accept a shred of responsibility for commitment.


As Joe Biden predicted "This new President will be challenged". He has been, he is being, and he will continue to be.

I am certainly glad Biden told the truth with that statement and did not say, "Our new LEADER will be challenged" otherwise Obama might have to call somebody and ask who Biden was referring to.

Admission that net neutrality is about gaining political advantage for the Left

Tom Giovanetti
In a blog post on the Huffington Post, we have an admission that net neutrality and limits on media ownership are really about the political Left trying to lock in a political advantage.

I would think articles like this would be very damaging to those who are trying to argue for net netrality for reasons related to "the nature of networks" or "the nature of the Internet." No, it turns out this is really what it's about.

I'll be surprised if this blog entry isn't pulled down, so I'm going to quote it in its entirety. I'll try to highlight the really juicy parts for you.

Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer and other right-wing mouthpieces are trying to frame future debates while they reinvent the George W. Bush years. Their eerie falsehoods, half-truths, revisions, and lies are given added weight because they sit atop a bed of chatter and static, often called the "echo chamber," of Fox News and right-wing talk radio. Everything that comes out of Cheney's mouth (or Rove's or Fleischer's) is carefully calculated and designed to cast doubt about the current president while whitewashing the disasters of the previous one. Their dire warnings about how President Barack Obama is not "keeping us safe" from terrorists, and their repeated claim that Bush "kept us safe," starkly reveal their propaganda goals. Cheney's take on 9-11, Hurricane Katrina, and the budget deficits of the Bush years should send shivers up any rational observer's spine.

In 2004, Cheney said the same thing about John Kerry: a vote for Kerry meant a vote for a heightened chance of terrorist attack and more dead Americans. Disgusting. It is even more sickening since Cheney is the one with the blood of 4,500 Americans and 200,000 Iraqi civilians on his hands. He's in no position to lecture us on how to prevent American deaths. Yet there is CNN's John King or NBC's David Gregory or ABC's George Stephanopoulos sitting across a table nodding and giving these monsters a platform to shamelessly propagandize the American people.

Cheney, Rove, and Fleischer (the same people who lied us into going to war in Iraq) appear on our television screens with two principal aims: 1). To lay down a base of rhetorical fire, through repetition, that might frame the larger political debate as the Obama Administration moves forward and unexpected events challenge the Democratic leadership; and 2). To re-write the legacy of the George W. Bush years.

Back in the 1980s, the Republican Party had the upper hand with the first computerized donor lists, "soft money" (a Reagan campaign creation), and "direct mail" operations (where Karl Rove got his start), while the left and the progressives were still relying largely on 19th century techniques such as distributing leaflets and organizing demonstrations. During the Clinton years it looked like the GOP might control the Internet when the Drudge Report dominated the 24-hour news cycle and right-wing websites had astounding "synergies" with talk radio, cable news, and whatever party line the Newt Gingrich Congress was pushing. One of the greatest achievements of Barack Obama's presidential campaign was its domination of Internet communications, which fused Netroots connectivity with Grassroots political organizing. The Huffington Post and other progressive news and information sites, along with MoveOn.org and other Internet organizing networks, played a key role in this dramatic shift in communications technology away from the Right and toward progressive social change.

We need to lock in this advantage.

Here comes the juicy part.



A chunk of the Obama Administration's stimulus money is aimed at laying down Internet connections in areas that are underserved. This expansion and upgrading of the nation's Internet cable system should make it possible for millions of people to by-pass the filter of giant media corporations and access alternative information that undermines the Cheney-Rove-Fleischer revisionist narrative of the George W. Bush legacy. We have a very rare opportunity right now to lock in a progressive advantage in Internet communications, information sharing, and Netroots mobilizing.

With Democratic majorities in Congress and a liberal Democratic administration we can blunt the political influence of media conglomerates and the Right. That is why the Republicans and their corporate media sponsors want to destroy Net Neutrality. They know from their experience with talk radio and the creation of Fox News that corporate absorption of the Internet and ending net neutrality would be a propaganda coup.

The Obama Administration's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a revivified Anti-Trust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice could pursue all sorts of reforms that would open up the nation's political discourse. A few minor changes in the rules and regulations governing the public airwaves and corporate media consolidation could transform the political economy of the media sector. Such reforms would make it more difficult for networks to shove people like Cheney, Rove, and Fleischer down our throats because enhanced competition would mean that rivals might be broadcasting more attractive fare. Breaking up Rupert Murdoch's empire (starting with revoking the waiver that allows him to own the New York Post), and busting up Clear Channel's monopoly of radio would be a good place to start. Congress, working with the Obama Administration, could then revisit the odious Telecommunications Act of 1996 and remove or rework its worst provisions. Look at what the media monopolies did during the Bush years. The Bush Administration never could have lied us into going to war in Iraq if it were not for the duplicity of the corporate media.

Without some fundamental changes to our media environment the Cheneys and Roves and Fleischers (or their trained cadres) will be back in power. These calculating neo-cons want to claw their way back into power because they believe they're entitled to hold power. Forever. I thought I had seen the last of unelected hacks like Richard Perle and Elliot Abrams after their disgraceful exits from the Reagan Administration but they came roaring back as soon as W. was in power. They don't need any new ideas because the "ideas" they promulgate serve power. We need as many non-elite, outside the Beltway voices as possible. We don't need to hear more aristocratic propaganda about the benefits of unfettered capitalism; we don't need to hear more authoritarian scare tactics that justify torture, false imprisonment, and war; we don't need to hear more Kulturkampf designed to divide working people through exploiting wedge issues and to control women's bodies and lay claim to the flag, the military, mom and apple pie. It's time to take steps to open up our media system.