Friday, March 6, 2009

Deception at Core of Obama Plans

(Compiler's note: This man is "spot on" in this must read article.)

By
Charles Krauthammer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Egyptian cleric: The Jews "are enemies not because they occupied Palestine. They would have been enemies even if they did not occupy a thing."

(Compiler's note: An interesting must read item.)

from Jihad Watch

They keep telling us that it isn't about "stolen land," and that land concessions and even the creation of a Palestinian state will not end the conflict. And we keep refusing to believe it.

"Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Hussein Ya’qoub: The Jews Are the Enemies of Muslims Regardless of the Occupation of Palestine," from MEMRI TV, January 17 (just posted), with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Egyptian cleric Muhammad Hussein Ya’qoub, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on January 17, 2009.

Muhammad Hussein Ya’qoub: If the Jews left Palestine to us, would we start loving them? Of course not. We will never love them. Absolutely not. The Jews are infidels – not because I say so, and not because they are killing Muslims, but because Allah said: The Jews say that Uzair is the son of Allah, and the Christians say that Christ is the son of Allah. These are the words from their mouths. They imitate the sayings of the disbelievers before. May Allah fight them. How deluded they are.” It is Allah who said that they are infidels.

That's Qur'an 9:30.

Your belief regarding the Jews should be, first, that they are infidels, and second, that they are enemies. They are enemies not because they occupied Palestine. They would have been enemies even if they did not occupy a thing. Allah said: “You shall find the strongest men in enmity to the disbelievers [sic] to be the Jews and the polytheists.”

Qur'an 5:82.

Third, you must believe that the Jews will never stop fighting and killing us. They [fight] not for the sake of land and security, as they claim, but for the sake of their religion: “And they will not cease fighting you until they turn you back you’re your religion, if they can.”

Qur'an 2:217.

This is it. We must believe that our fighting with the Jews is eternal, and it will not end until the final battle – and this is the fourth point. You must believe that we will fight, defeat, and annihilate them, until not a single Jew remains on the face of the Earth.

It is not me who says so. The Prophet said: “Judgment Day will not come until you fight the Jews and kill them. The Jews will hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and tree will call: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him – except for the Gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews.” I have heard that they are planting many of these trees now. [...]

That Hadith can be found at Sahih Muslim 6985.

As for you Jews – the curse of Allah upon you. The curse of Allah upon you, whose ancestors were apes and pigs.

That's Qur'an 2:62-65; 5:59-60; and 7:166.

You Jews have sown hatred in our hearts, and we have bequeathed it to our children and grandchildren. You will not survive as long as a single one of us remains.

[...]

Oh Jews, may the curse of Allah be upon you. Oh Jews... Oh Allah, bring Your wrath, punishment, and torment down upon them. Allah, we pray that you transform them again, and make the Muslims rejoice again in seeing them as apes and pigs. You pigs of the earth! You pigs of the earth! You kill the Muslims with that cold pig [blood] of yours.

And now the learned analysts will turn to one another and repeat once again that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with theology, nothing to do with Islam.

Companies Seek H-1B Foreign Worker Primarily Because of Age Discrimination

By Norm Matloff

Ever since 1992, when I started writing about H-1B, I've been stressing that not only is H-1B centrally about cheap tech labor, cheap tech labor is in turn centrally about age. Younger workers are cheaper than older ones, both in wages and health insurance costs. Of course, in addition, the younger H-1Bs are even cheaper than the younger Americans. Result: An employer may hire a 24-year-old H-1B instead of a 24-year-old American, and usually will hire that 24-year-old H-1B instead of a 35-year-old American.

651,000 jobs cut in FEB -- Reid, Pelosi, Obama & Chamber of Commerce insist on importing more foreign workers

(Compiler's note: Must read.)

By Roy Beck

Another month has passed. Another half-million (or more) jobs have been lost. And our federal leaders continue to do nothing about auto-pilot programs that are flooding our country with foreign workers.

Nothing has changed since last year when 138,000 new foreign workers were added to the U.S. each month on average.

Here are the latest government facts that can't seem to soften the hardened hearts of our leaders . . . .

  • The official unemployment rate has soared to 8.1% (highest since 1983)
  • U.S. employers cut 651,000 jobs in February
  • That is on top of 655,000 jobs lost in January and 681,000 jobs cut in December.
  • 4.4 million -- Total jobs eliminated since the recession began in December of 2007.

The number of Americans reeling from the bad job market is staggering:

  • 12.5 million Americans are actively looking for a job and cannot find even part-time employment.
  • Another 8.6 million Americans want a full-time job and have been forced to work part-time.

American workers in nearly every part of the economy were under seige in February:

  • Construction companies cut 104,000 jobs.
  • Factories cut 168,000.
  • Retailers cut nearly 40,000.
  • Professional and business services cut 180,000, with 78,000 jobs lost at temporary-help agencies.
  • Financial companies cut 44,000 jobs.
  • Leisure and hospitality firms chopped 33,000 positions.

BUT FEDERAL LEADERS SAY MORE FOREIGN WORKERS NEEDED

Following the lead of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Pres. Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid and House Speaker Pelosi refuse to respond to the plight of unemployed American workers and consider a suspension of most immigration and foreign worker programs.

We at NumbersUSA have said since November that the national jobs disaster requires an immediate suspension of all immigration and temporary foreign work programs except for spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, a controlled number of emergency refugees and a few thousand truly extraordinary skilled workers for whom no American substitute is available.

With no sign of federal leaders tightening the flow, another approximately 280,000 foreign workers have been allowed to enter U.S. job markets since the first of this year alone.

Not only that, but the leaders have continued to try to protect as many U.S. jobs as possible for illegal aliens. Sen. Reid until today has refused to even allow a vote on a 5-year extension of a VOLUNTARY E-Verify program that allows businesses to make sure jobs go to legal workers.

And in the nation's top newspapers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, ivory tower editorial writers are continuing to argue that we need more foreign workers in order to turn our economy around!

I wish they and our political leaders could have a chance to say that while looking in the eyes of the 12.5 million officially unemployed Americans.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA

CRC Open-Source Intelligence Briefs

(Compiler's note: A must read)

Maj. W. Thomas Smith Jr., Director of the Counterterrorism Research Center

SCHENECTADY, NEW YORK: Sixty-year-old Steven C. Raucci has been charged with terrorism. According to the Times Union:
“Authorities allege that on or about Nov. 30, 2006, Raucci placed a quarter stick of dynamite on the windshield of a 2004 Jeep Cherokee parked at a private home in Clifton Park with a burned cigarette attached to the fuse planning for it to explode, according to the criminal complaint.
The court document alleges he did so ‘with the intent to influence a policy of the unit of government, the Schenectady City School District by intimidation or coercion.’ Raucci is already facing felonies for bombings or attempted bombings in Rotterdam, Schodack, and Clifton Park.”
DENVER, COLORADO TO SUDAN: Black September terrorist Khalid Al-Jawary has been released from prison.
According to the AP: “[Al-Jawary] convicted of placing three powerful car bombs in New York City in 1973 has been sent to Sudan after completing his sentence and being deported by the U.S. government.”
Al-Jawary, who was captured in 1991 and convicted in 1993, was flown out of Denver, Thursday, and arrived in Khartoum, Tuesday. According to the report, “A hardened terrorist, he never cracked in prison and refused to give up information.” Yet he only served “about half of his 30-year sentence.”
THE NETHERLANDS: Hizballah operatives may have recently photographed “the area where the headquarters of the international tribunal is located in The Hague,” according to a February 28th Naharnet report:
“‘Deduce the political conclusions you want,’ [France's Le Monde] quoted the court's registrar, Robin Vincent, as saying.

“Vincent noted that Dutch security services registered three such incidents.”

Le Monde also quoted a Lebanese source who said Hizballah had “rejected a request” by the international tribunal's chief prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, to “interrogate eight ‘Hizballah personalities.’”

According to Naharnet: A Hizballah source has denied the report, adding“such a request” is “in the author's imagination.”
Typical Hizballah response.
Then according to a follow-up report on March 3rd, Bellemare purportedly met with Hizballah “before traveling to the Hague for the start of the court's operations.”

The Lebanese Arabic-language newspaper As Safir “quoted sources from the UN commission investigating ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination as saying that last week's meeting was ‘fruitful and very positive,’”praising the terrorist group’s “cooperation.”

As Safir added the sources described reports that Dutch intelligence services had arrested several Hizballah members who took photographs of the headquarters of the international tribunal” as “untrue.”

Our own sources tell us, As Safir is “an Arab nationalist daily, anti-West, and in recent years they have received financial support from Iran.'"
IRAN: Speaking of Iran, Christopher Holton at Shariah Finance Watch is reporting more on companies tied to Iran’s Bank Melli.
SOUTH AMERICA: The RAND Institute has issued a release stating the so-called “tri-border area of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay” has emerged as “the most important financing center for Islamic terrorism outside of the Middle East, channeling $20 million annually to Hizballah. At least one transfer of $3.5 million was made to Hizballah by known DVD pirate Assad Ahmad Barakat, who received a thank-you note from the Hiz­ballah leader. Barakat was labeled a ‘specially designated global ter­rorist’ by the U.S. government in 2004.”
LEBANON: Shariah Finance Watch also is reporting: “A private research firm [Info-Prod Research] has issued a report indicating that Hizballah has received an infusion of $1 Billion in cash in recent months, with $600 million coming from Iran and the rest coming from other sources, among which Qatar was mentioned prominently, donating $300 million to Hizballah. The final $100 million was reported to have come from Muslim ‘tycoons.’
“Most ominously, the report indicated that all of the major Jihadist groups–HAMAS, Hizballah and Al Qaeda–have stepped up their fundraising efforts as Muslim investors have withdrawn from Western financial markets due to the financial crisis.”

North Korea warns South's airliners during drills

SEOUL, March 5 (Reuters) - North Korea warned on Thursday it might shoot down South Korean commercial airliners flying near its territory during annual U.S.-South Korean military drills next week, ratcheting up threats against it capitalist neighbour.

"Security cannot be guaranteed for South Korean civil airplanes flying through the territorial air of our side and its vicinity ... above the East Sea of Korea (Sea of Japan) in particular, while the military exercises are under way," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a statement from a government official as saying. .....

Execute Rush Limbaugh for treason?

from WorldNetDaily

Radio

talker Stephanie Miller, outraged that Rush Limbaugh wants Barack Obama's policies to fail, has called for the nation's top talk host to be charged with treason and executed.

She made the call, not on her rather obscure radio program but on CNN's "Larry King Live" show Tuesday.

King seemed unfazed by the suggestion, neither following it up with a challenge or a question.

"To me that seems treasonous," Miller said. "If I could say something tonight that gets me that kind of attention, like maybe Rush Limbaugh should be executed for treason. How about that?"....

Bill Seeks to Let FDIC Borrow up to $500 Billion

WASHINGTON -- Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd is moving to allow the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to temporarily borrow as much as $500 billion from the Treasury Department.

The Connecticut Democrat's effort -- which comes in response to urging from FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner -- would give the FDIC access to more money to rebuild its fund that insures consumers' deposits, which have been hard hit by a string of bank failures. ....