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Baca backs down on bid for parolees

July 16, 2011

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

July 15, 2011

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has backed down in his bid for the department to take on sole supervision of state parolees, an official confirmed Thursday evening, opting instead for a hybrid plan that would leave his deputies out of rehabilitation casework.

Baca’s initial proposal was an unprecedented attempt to handle the thousands of parolees being passed from the state to the local level in lieu of the county’s probation officers, who already do that sort of work.

No law enforcement agency in the nation handles parole or probation supervision, a task decidedly more oriented toward social work, officials say.

Critics said Baca’s plan presented potential conflicts of interest because the same deputies who were arresting and jailing criminals would have also been serving as caseworkers after the inmates were released.

Assistant Sheriff Cecil Rhambo said Baca decided to allow the county’s Probation Department to handle reentry and case management, while deputies and possibly LAPD officers do traditional suppression work and compliance checks.

“I don’t know that it was a back-down,” Rhambo said. “Listening to all the nuts and bolts as to what it takes to manage this, as people were throwing out the labor-intensity of it all, [Baca] thought what might work better is a hybrid version.”

That type of plan would still have to be presented by a committee of county officials and approved by the Board of Supervisors.

Rhambo said the department would still be conducting education programs within county jails and offering some offenders rehabilitation programs in lieu of traditional incarceration.

Winning sole responsibility of the state parolees being passed down by year’s end would have allowed Baca to eventually add about 300 new employees during a time when hiring has stopped.

Reached on Thursday night, Baca said the funding breakdown under a hybrid plan was unresolved. He maintained “law enforcement has to be a part of this . . . there’s a role for everybody.”

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

World – latimes.com

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U.S. formally recognizes rebel group as Libya?s government

July 16, 2011

Reporting from Washington and Benghazi, Libya?

The Obama administration formally recognized a rebel group as Libya’s government, giving the forces struggling to overthrow Moammar Kadafi’s regime for the last five months a dramatic diplomatic boost and potentially access to billions of dollars in badly needed cash.

Setting aside fears that Islamic radicals may emerge among the insurgents, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Friday in Istanbul, Turkey, that the United States would join more than 30 other nations in extending diplomatic recognition to the Transitional National Council, which is based in Benghazi and controls eastern Libya.

Kadafi’s 4-decade-old regime, which controls much of western Libya, “no longer” has legitimacy to govern the country, Clinton said. As a result, she added, Washington will deal with the council as the legal government “until an interim authority is in place.”

Clinton acknowledged to reporters that administration deliberations have been lengthy, but she insisted the time had been necessary.

“We really acted in warp time in diplomatic terms, but we took our time to make sure ? based on the best possible assessments,” she said.

Habib Ben Ali, media liaison for the rebel council, called the announcement “a terrific development for us ? a real political victory.” U.S. diplomatic recognition is “the icing on the cake,” he added.

In a radio broadcast, Kadafi poured scorn on the decision, and insisted he is not giving up power or leaving the country.

“I don’t care which countries recognize the rebels’ transitional council,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “Tell NATO and other countries to pick up the white flag and ask our forgiveness.”

North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes, backed by U.S. intelligence and other support, have been bombing Kadafi’s military forces and other ground targets since March 19 under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians. But the poorly trained and lightly armed rebels appear stalled on several fronts, and have yet to dislodge Kadafi’s regime.

The move comes at a time when Western and Arab governments are increasingly eager to wind down the war. Pressure is building in several European countries for an end to a conflict that was originally expected to last fewer than 90 days.

In one sign of the eagerness to end the war, Turkish officials said at the Istanbul meeting that they, like the French and some other governments, were prepared to consider the possibility of an internal exile for Kadafi, rather than his departure from the country.

The chief effect of recognition may be financial. The rebels have been pleading with Washington and other governments for months to release frozen Libyan assets, including $ 34 billion held in U.S. banks, and that now appears increasingly likely.

At the Istanbul meeting, France said it was taking steps to unfreeze $ 250 million, while Italy said it was moving to unfreeze $ 100 million. U.S. officials said it would take time to release the Libyan money because of legal restrictions, but the task is easier if the council is the recognized government.

The rebels have said they need $ 3.5 billion this year to prosecute the war and administer the cities and towns they control.

While Kadafi’s forces also appear to be running out of cash and fuel, the rebel council said this week that it was essentially broke after a $ 500-million line of credit in Europe was cut off. With Libya’s oil industry shut down by fighting, the rebels must import virtually all gasoline and other fuel for the war effort and government services.

The rebels also hope to draw cash from a temporary trust fund set up by the 32-member contact group for Libya, which was meeting in Istanbul and includes the Arab League and the U.N. That money has been held up by countries that donated it, but are seeking assurances that the council intends to set up an inclusive and democratic government.

The move Friday also has a symbolic component. It may give the rebels added legitimacy among ordinary Libyans, including those in Kadafi-controlled areas of the country’s west. Supporters hope it will help convince Kadafi’s forces that his regime cannot survive much longer.

The Obama administration has been deeply divided on extending diplomatic recognition to the rebels since the armed uprising broke out in eastern Libya in February.

The rebellion spread quickly, but then regime forces moved to regain territory and Kadafi threatened to massacre his opponents. Despite the NATO air campaign, the conflict has appeared stalemated for months, with the country effectively cut in half.

World – latimes.com

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The ?Arab Spring? becomes the ?Arab Mobilization?

July 16, 2011

Paul Keys

The nations outside North Africa and the Middle East refer to the troubles there since January as the “Arab Spring,” perhaps trying to link it romantically to the uprising in Poland. However, the Middle East TV networks refer to it as the “Arab Awakening.” Why the polemic choice of labels? This week an Arab TV network explained when they called it the “Arabs awakening to jihad.” This is internal jihad as the Moslem Brotherhood take over nation after nation to put together their caliphate while the West dreams springtime fantasies.

Last night the new word on al-Jazeera, our State Department’s favorite news source which is the mouthpiece for the Moslem Brotherhood, was “mobilization” as in a “call to arms” or a “gathering of troops.” It was used in reference to the mobs gathering in Tunisia and Syria but not Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Jordan or Bahrain. Who is the leader of these forces being mobilized? The Moslem Brotherhood. n covering the demonstrations in Jordan they gave full credit to the Moslem Brotherhood and their affiliated Islamic Action Group. You could tell al-Jazz was inciting like mad–mobilizing though they did not use the word there yet.

Not only is al-Jazz mobilizing troops for Tunisia and Syria but so is the USA ambassador and al-Jazz gave him a lot of time tonight. It is like he is cheer-leading the troops that al-Jazz is mobilizing for the Moslem Brotherhood. This fellow, Robert Ford, was appointed without Congressional approval. He is “a professional diplomat.” Well, this professional diplomat has opened a Facebook page to encourage the rebellion and a video that had been on the Washington Post website of him in Hama with the French ambassador has been “closed due to its removal.” Understand: I do not think that Bashir Assad is a “good” guy and would be comfortable with them all killing one another off, but I am not comfortable with my country siding with the Moslem Brotherhood in nation after nation. . .Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria. Will the Obama-Clinton State Department support the Moslem Brotherhood as it tries to overthrow the king in Jordan?

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/the_arab_spring_becomes_the_arab_mobilization.html at July 16, 2011 – 08:28:06 AM CDT

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U.S. Recognizes Rebels in Libya

July 16, 2011

[This is totally silent on the information in the DEBKA Report.oth true. I googled and could not find corroberation of the Debka Report...yet. Perhaps they are both right in various ways.]

By SEBNEM ARSU and STEVEN ERLANGER, NYT

ISTANBUL ? The United States formally recognized the rebel leadership in Libya as the country?s legitimate government on Friday. The move, made at an international gathering here to discuss the five-month-old conflict in Libya, ratcheted up the diplomatic pressure on Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi amid a continuing NATO-led bombing campaign to push him from power.

At the meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Colonel Qaddafi?s government no longer had any legitimacy, and that the United States would join more than 30 countries in extending diplomatic recognition to the main opposition group, known as the Transitional National Council.

?We will help the T.N.C. sustain its commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of Libya, and we will look to it to remain steadfast in its commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms,? Mrs. Clinton said.

In an audio speech carried on Libyan television, Colonel Qaddafi appeared as determined as ever to fight on, and dismissed the recognition of the rebel government by the leading powers.

?Trample on those recognitions, trample on them under your feet,? he told thousands of supporters in the coastal city of Zlitan, who had gathered for a rally broadcast on state tv, Reuters reported. ?They are worthless,? he said.

In the early stages of the war, Western nations were reluctant to extend recognition to the rebels, not knowing who they were and worrying about their possible ties to Al Qaeda and other militant groups. Over the months, though, those fears have been assuaged, and most nations are lined up behind the transitional government.

The step allows the United States and other countries to turn over to the rebel group some of the Libyan financial assets that have been frozen in foreign banks, to help underwrite its efforts to oust Colonel Qaddafi and to administer the part of the country that the rebels control.

?We have a lot of frozen funds around the world, and now it would be up the country to release a certain percent under certain conditions,? said Mahmoud Shammam, a rebel spokesman. ?We assured them in many ways that we are heading towards a democratic state and with the support of allies, friends we would make that happen.?

Italy?s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said that Italy would unfreeze some $ 140 million of Libyan assets and give them to the rebels, with more than $ 500 million to follow.

Other nations, like France and the United States, will now find it easier to hand over frozen Libyan assets to the rebels. The United States has more than $ 30 billion in frozen Qaddafi-government assets.

The Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said that Turkey saw ?merit in the suggestion for the release of $ 3 billion from the frozen assets of Libya under U.N. supervision.? He suggested opening lines of credit to the rebels to meet their ?urgent need for cash? before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Turkey, he said, had already started a $ 200-million credit line.

Mr. Davutoglu told reporters Thursday night that Colonel Qaddafi culd remain in Libya if an agreement is reached, according to the Turkish Daily News.

In the rebel held city of Zintan, on the high plateau of the mountains in Libya?s west, where local men have pushed the Qaddafi militatry back on several fronts, a group of elderly men sat in the shade beside the main mosque.

They were buoyed by the news from Istanbul, which all of them had heard.

?The recognition of America has opened a door for us from Africa to the world,? said one of them, Mohammed el-Judaya.

Whatever the geopolitics, however, the men made clear they had ongoing practical concerns. Much of the mountainous food is short of food, fuel and water, phone service is mostly cut off and the Qaddafi forces are not far away. The war goes, with life stalled and hardships ahead.

?We have no money for Ramadan,? said Muftah Benghazi. ?This is difficult for us.?

Even with a growing list of international allies, the rebels have made only halting progress in wresting control of the country from Colonel Qaddafi?s forces. On Wednesday, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, told Reuters that NATO was intensifying its military campaign in Libya.

Yet, with a ?no-boots-on-the-ground policy? in Libya, the Western nations have found it hard to dislodge Colonel Qaddafi from power, as his forces have dug in around the capital, Tripoli, and other strategic cities where he retains at least some support among the civilian population.

NATO has been frustrated by the rebels? inability to organize themselves into a force strong enough to topple the government, even with thousands of airstrikes on the Qaddafi strongholds. Several countries, including Britain and France, have sent arms, ammunition and other military supplies to the rebels inan effort to build up their war-fighting capacity.
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Syrian troops kill 27 as protests intensify in Damascus area

July 16, 2011

BEIRUT ? Syrian security forces killed 27 anti-government protesters in several towns and cities after prayers Friday, mostly in Damascus, amid indications that opposition to President Bashar al-Assad is hardening in the capital.

According to the Local Coordination Committees, a group that organizes and monitors protests, 22 people were killed in neighborhoods and suburbs of Damascus, the highest daily toll there since the nationwide uprising began four months ago. Activists said the protests in the capital were also the largest yet, pointing to what they say is a rising tide of anti-Assad sentiment in the heart of his government?s power base.

Video

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians mounted the largest protests Friday since the uprising began, pouring into areas where the government crackdown has been most intense. Authorities fired on the crowds, killing at least 17 people, activists said. (July 15)

The violent response shows that the authorities ?are 100 percent worried about Damascus,? said Rami Abdelrahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, who estimated that 50,000 people took to the streets in and around the city.

Figures could not be independently confirmed because the government has restricted journalists? access to Syria. But the reported size of the demonstrations remains small compared with those that have toppled rulers elsewhere.

The deadliest crackdown came in the suburb of Qaboun, where 14 demonstrators died after security forces fired on a what activists described as a demonstration of 25,000 people. Video posted on YouTube showed thousands marching through the streets chanting anti-government slogans and holding banners proclaiming ?Out Bashar? and ?Game Over Bashar? in English.

Qaboun has emerged as an opposition stronghold in recent weeks, and dissidents had been hoping to hold a conference there Saturday to draw up a strategy for ousting Assad in coordination with a parallel gathering of exiled opposition leaders in Istanbul. But after the killings Friday, organizers called off the Damascus gathering because of safety concerns.

Another video showed the biggest demonstration yet to be held in the central Damascus neighborhood of Midan, where authorities have repeatedly tried and failed to quell protests by blanketing the area with security forces.

Two eyewitnesses put the size of the crowd at several thousand and said scattered demonstrations continued for several hours despite efforts by the security forces to disperse protesters with batons and tear gas.

Elsewhere, far bigger demonstrations passed off without incident, in an indication that the government may be losing its grip in some parts of the country.

In the eastern border towns of Deir al-Zour and Bokamal, security forces made no attempt to prevent tens of thousands of people from taking to the streets. Large demonstrations also proceeded unhindered in the heart of the central city of Hama, which has effectively been taken over by government opponents since security forces withdrew to the city?s outskirts more than a month ago.

The scale of the protests in Damascus was perceived as significant because, until now, the capital has been considered a stronghold of government support. ?Damascus has proved that it is changing,? said Wissam Tarif of the human rights group Insan.

Some activists say the protesters have been encouraged by signs that the international community is toughening its stance against Assad, following comments this week in which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Assad had ?lost legitimacy.?

Abdelrahman also attributed the growing numbers attending protests in the capital to the end of the university year last week, which has freed thousands of students for the summer.

Opposition leaders had been hoping to boost momentum for the effort to oust Assad at Saturday?s dual-city conference, which aspired to unite traditional dissidents with the largely spontaneous and youthful protest movement that has sprung up on the streets of Syria.

With activists concluding that it is now too dangerous for them to meet in Damascus, however, the effort to forge a cohesive opposition movement remains in doubt.

World: World News, International News, Foreign Reporting – The Washington Post

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India: No Leads on Mumbai Attacks

July 16, 2011

As the city of Mumbai continues to recover from the damage suffered during yesterday?s attack, the Indian government is struggling to simultaneously defend itself from criticism over allowing such a major attack.

To that end, officials insist that they intend to bring those responsible for the attacks to justice, even though they have no idea who that might be. Indeed, they have absolutely no leads whatsoever on the attacks.

Despite having no advance warning of the attacks (apart from some previous reports about something happening in Mumbai) officials say that the lack of intelligence did not amount to an intelligence failure.

The attacks have been seen by many as an attempt to disrupt the peace talks between India and Pakistan, which restarted only last month. The major 2008 Mumbai attacks ended all talks for nearly two years and left India threatening war.

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Rebekah Brooks resigns from Murdoch?s News International

July 16, 2011

LONDON ? Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the News of the World tabloid, resigned Friday as head of the British newspaper division of Rupert Murdoch?s media empire, saying she had become a focal point of the scandal in a way that was jeopardizing the company.

?At News International we pride ourselves on setting the news agenda for the right reasons,? Brooks, one of Britain?s most influential journalists, said in an internal memo released by the company. ?Today we are leading the news for the wrong ones. The reputation of the company we love so much, as well as the press freedoms we value so highly, are all at risk.?

Rising to the post of chief executive of News Corp.?s British operation, Brooks has long been one of Murdoch?s favorites, a woman with trademark flaming red hair whom he once described as like a ?daughter.?

She headed News of the World from 2000 to 2003, a time when the paper allegedly routinely used illegal phone hacks to gather insider tidbits from both celebrities and ordinary citizens, going as far as to interfere in a police investigation of a young girl who was kidnapped and killed in 2002.

Brooks is set to appear before members of Parliament on Tuesday ? along with Murdoch and his son James Murdoch ? for questioning about her knowledge of the case.

In previous testimony in 2003, she had admitted that News of the World journalists paid bribes to police to obtain information. But Brooks has denied knowledge of widespread phone hacking at the 168-year-old News of the World, which Murdoch closed last week to try to stem the crisis.

Prime Minister David Cameron, a personal friend of Brooks?s, and British opposition leader Ed Miliband had both called for her resignation, saying she should take responsibility at the very least for the poor handling of the scandal, in which Scotland Yard officials have called News Corp. officials uncooperative.

Brooks reportedly tried to tender her resignation last week, but Murdoch refused it. But amid reports that the Murdoch family is furious over the handling of the scandal, the company said Friday that the resignation has now been accepted, .

Tom Mockridge, who previously headed News Corp.?s Sky Italia operation, will replace Brooks, the company said.

Brooks, known in London media circles as a fierce competitor who was both courted and feared by politicians and celebrities, conceded in her resignation statement that she has become a lightning rod for the company.

?I have believed that the right and responsible action has been to lead us through the heat of the crisis,? she said. ?However my desire to remain on the bridge has made me a focal point of the debate.?

Cameron welcomed her resignation, saying through a spokesman that ?it was the right thing to do.? Miliband also hailed the news but added that News Corp. still has explaining to do. Several pundits said that James Murdoch, who oversaw News Corp.?s British operation, in particular needed to state more clearly what he knew, and when.

In an interview late Thursday with the Wall Street Journal, a News Corp. publication, Murdoch strongly defended his son?s handling of the crisis, saying he had managed the situation ?as fast as he could? and that the scandal would not affect his position at the company.

World: World News, International News, Foreign Reporting – The Washington Post

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Israel Ha Yom On Glenn Beck

July 16, 2011

OK, OK, Brian of London is probably stretching things with another Glenn Beck post but I also want to point you toward Israel Hayom which I?m becoming quite fond of as a new source of high quality Israeli news in English. It is refreshingly free of left leanings which is a pleasant surprise.

I?m really hoping I can attend his event on 8/24 (or even 24/8 if you can get your dates the right way round). He hasn?t announced arrangements for tickets in Israel yet but here?s hoping!

Here is a link to a long interview they conducted with Glenn Beck:

Israel Hayom?s Question: I was raised in Israel and taught to trust the American president almost like the Israeli prime minister. Is that still true?

?Even if Bush were still president today, I would give you a similar answer: look, I?m coming from a place in Poland where the king once granted the Jews a place to live. He said to them, here you will be protected. And they were protected ? until one day he died, and then they weren?t so safe anymore.

Don?t trust anyone except yourselves. Israel needs to demand from the world the right to defend itself. Don?t trust us or anyone else to protect you, because at some point, tomorrow or a thousand years from now, you will be let down, because everyone else has different interests than yours.?

And that is why we can?t be Dhimmis and live under Muslim rule ever again. Read the whole thing if you?re interested.

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Strange?s Last Night?s Top Ten Late-Night TV Jokes July 14 2011

July 16, 2011

STRANGE’S LAST NIGHT’S TOP TEN LATE-NIGHT TV JOKES July 14 2011

July Strangies: Stewart 2, Leno 1, Ferguson 1

By Strange de Jim
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Thursday, July 14
(O’Brien, Handler & Kimmel in reruns)

11. David Letterman guest Tim Harmston: Friends say if I don’t have children, who’s going to take care of me when I get really old. And I say, the super-hot Swedish nurse I hire with the money I save by not having children. “But she’s not going to love you the way your own child will.” I go, “I know. That’s why it’s so expensive.”

10. Jay Leno: Catherine Becker, the Pecker Wrecker, cut off her husband’s penis and ran it through the garbage disposal. You thought your wife put you through the grinder. Today the guy updated his Facebook status to “separated.”

9. Jimmy Fallon: Ohio Congressman Bill Johnson said his Twitter account was hacked yesterday after an image of a naked man was posted on his page. When the Lord taketh a Weiner he giveth a Johnson.

8. David Letterman: In France, today is Bastille Day, the day Paul Revere rode through Paris warning the French.

7. David Letterman: This is the last Harry Potter movie. Next it becomes a disastrous Broadway musical. This movie has poltergeists, sorcerers, elves … No, wait, those are the Republican Presidential candidates.

6. Jimmy Fallon: Spain’s running of the bulls is not nearly as scary as the U.S. event, the running of Sarah Palin.

5. David Letterman: We’re starting to repay our debt to China. Last week we sent back Yao Ming. And what about his brother Wyo Ming.

4. Jon Stewart: Correspondent John Oliver on the last space shuttle: What could be more appropriate than for me to go to Florida to watch something die?

3. David Letterman: New York has legalized gay marriage, and if you brought a gift for Paul and myself, just leave it in the lobby. Utah will never approve gay marriage, but they do allow a man to marry a woman with a slight mustache.

2. Jay Leno: Jim Norton at ESPY Awards: This is Brian Wilson of the San Francisco Giants. They call him The Beard, which is also what people call my girlfriend.

1. Jon Stewart: If Social Security checks don’t go out on August 3 it’ll just be old people, and they’d just blow it on medicine and hips.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain, 2010

Page 357 – No schemes that I could contrive seemed likely to deceive. They did not even deceive ME, and when a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

364 – The gospel left behind by Jay Gould is doing giant work in our days. Its message is “Get money. Get it quickly. Get it in abundance Get it in prodigious abundance. Get it dishonestly if you can, honestly if you must.”

365 – John D. Rockefeller is quite evidently a sincere man. Satan, twaddling sentimental sillinesses to a Sunday school, could be no burlesque upon John D. Rockefeller and his performances in his Cleveland Sunday school. When John D. is employed in that way he strikes the utmost limit of grotesqueness. He can’t be burlesqued — he is himself a burlesque. I know Mr. Rockefeller pretty well, and I am convinced that he is a sincere man.

See Related: STRANGE’S LAST NIGHT’S TOP TEN LATE-NIGHT TV JOKES ARCHIVE

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Interpreting and Analyzing Project Gunrunner

July 16, 2011

Media Matters excoriates those who traffic in confusion over Project Gunrunner.

This is starting to get pathetic.

Right-wing media outlets keep dishing out new “evidence” for why senior Justice Department leaders must have known about Fast and Furious, a failed operation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). All they keep proving is that those officials knew about Project Gunrunner, the high-profile effort begun under President Bush of which Fast and Furious was one small part.

They’ve already used this conflation to baselessly claim that the stimulus included funds for Fast and Furious (the funds were earmarked for Project Gunrunner and were not distributed to the ATF office that handled Fast and Furious) and that a 2009 Holder speech proves that he was aware of the program (the speech references only Gunrunner and was given before Fast and Furious was initiated).

In their latest effort, these outlets are pointing to a two-minute clip of a speech that then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden gave on March 29, 2009. In the speech, Ogden said:

DOJ’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is increasing its efforts by adding 37 new employees in three new offices, using $ 10 million in Recovery Act funds and redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest border in the next 45 days to fortify its Project Gunrunner, which is aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.

ATF is doubling its presence in Mexico itself, from five to nine personnel working with the Mexicans, specifically to facilitate gun-tracing activity, which targets the illegal weapons and their sources in the United States.

Let’s go over this again: Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious are not the same thing, and Fast and Furious wasn’t reportedly begun until six months after Ogden gave this speech.

Nonetheless, in an editorial comparing Fast and Furious to Watergate, Investor’s Business Daily claims that the Ogden video “may rival the tape that turned a ‘third-rate burglary’ into a presidential resignation.” IBD also claims that both the Ogden clip and Holder’s speech show the speaker “taking credit” for both Project Gunrunner and Fast and Furious. They provide text from both speeches in which the speaker references the former and not the latter, because they are lying (and embarrassingly bad at it).

Meanwhile, Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com cites this clip to claim that Ogden left DOJ in late 2009 because he “wanted to reduce his chances of becoming the ‘fall guy’ for the Obama Administration after news of this doomed-from-the-start gun-running operation became public.”

Analysis & Commentary

David Codrea and Bob Owens have both had this in their sights. David does legitimate reporting as well as analysis and commentary, while I mostly focus on analysis and commentary. So at times I speculate or infer, usually based on a string of evidence or reports (some published, some maybe not). But regardless of however much we might like the reporting at Big Government, or Salem News, when they link up video or cite documents demonstrating that so-and-so was aware of Project Gunrunner, and flatly assert that he or she is admitting complicity in the smuggling of weapons to the cartels, it is both sloppy and not necessarily correct (note that I said not necessarily, and I’ll return to this later). It isn’t necessarily correct, not yet, and not exactly.

We know that Project Gunrunner began in Texas in 2005, and was designed primarily during the Bush administration to include the training of the Mexican authorities in the use of eTrace to track weapons. It involved a handful of ATF field agents, but until late in the Bush administration it wasn’t heavily resourced or funded. The Merida Initiative changed that. There were a number of problems with this initiative, but at the moment, I’m just relaying the facts.

The stimulus of 2009 sent more money in the direction of Project Gunrunner. When the Obama administration took office, there was increased attention on Project Gunrunner, and most astute readers are aware of Operation Fast and Furious which focused on the Southern border and which was run primarily out of the Phoenix office of the ATF. Fewer people are aware that there was a similar companion operation (called Operation Castaway) in which weapons were released to MS-13 in Honduras, run primarily out of the Tampa office of the ATF.

More recently, there is e-mail evidence indicating that the ATF was searching for anecdotal support for a demand letter on long gun sales in July of 2010. And only a few days ago David Codrea published a letter he received concerning the illegality of the trafficking of weapons, a point I have made (albeit not as clearly) before.

?[it] isn?t okay for the ATF to violate the National Firearms Act or the Arms Export Control Act if I must live within its stipulations.?

There is indeed illegality involved for knowledgeable individuals (the executive branch of the government cannot willingly violate laws legitimately enacted by Congress any more than can I). So there is a lot at stake to protect information and identities. It will be some time before everything is uncovered in this scandal.

But if there is sloppiness in some conservative commentary concerning the conflation of Project Gunrunner and Fast and Furious (or Castaway), and even if Media Matters got this one at least partially right, there is another perspective.

There is a lot of dissimilarity between Project Gunrunner during the Bush and Obama administrations. Project Gunrunner was small during the Bush years, and doesn’t appear to have included any illegal trafficking of weapons. The Obama administration oversaw a significant expansion of the program, with strategic studies, Office of Inspector General recommendations for more expansion, the training of corrupt Mexican police, involvement of the FBI and DEA, etc.

We know all of these things based on irrefutable evidence. We can assess, or speculate, that there is cohesion of intent and knowledge of the operations up the chain of command within the administration. In other words, we can speculate that weapons trafficking was a subset of Project Gunrunner, as it morphed during the Obama administration into something much larger and organized than it was in the Bush years. Another way of saying it is that equating Project Gunrunner during the Bush and Obama years is inaccurate. Same words, different meaning.

We can speculate that since Mr. Obama is a statist, or Fabian Socialist in his thinking, his slip concerning bitterly clinging to guns and religion wasn’t really a slip. It was a glimpse into his soul, the very core of his being. I tend towards this interpretation, and thus I have no problem surmising that the chain of evidence plus what I know about Mr. Obama and his administration points towards complicity and prior knowledge within his administration. Mr. Obama is no friend to firearms.

But it’s important that this be stated as surmising at the moment. There is much investigative work to be done, and hunting for evidence from amongst this administration will be like pulling teeth. Finding the truth will be hard. Commentators are best advised to do better research before conflating phrases and terms, and get busy researching and digging. Personally, I believe that Project Gunrunner isn’t the same thing it once was. As I said before, same words, different meaning. But I’m unwilling at the moment to flatly assert much more than what I have said thus far.

The Captain’s Journal

Benjamin Netanyahu Bernard Makuza Bharrat Jagdeo Bhumibol Adulyadej Bingu wa Mutharika

Why The Palestinians Do Not Want Fayyad

July 16, 2011

Khaled Abu Toameh ? July 15, 2011

In Palestinian society, it is much more important if one graduates from an Israeli prison than from a university in Texas. This is the reason that the two Palestinian governments, both Hamas and Fatah, are dominated by graduates of Israeli prisons who hold senior positions.

The Hamas-Fatah reconciliation agreement was recently put on hold when the two sides have failed to reach agreement on who would head a new Palestinian unity government.

Hamas remains strongly opposed to the nomination of current Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, holding him responsible for the Palestinian Authority’s security crackdown on Hamas supporters in the West Bank. Many Palestinians are also opposed to Fayyad because, they say, he was never part of the “revolution.” They see him as an “outsider” who was imposed on President Abbas by the Americans and Europeans.

Fayyad’s main problem, however, is that he did not participate in any violent attacks on Israel. Nor did he send his sons to take part in the intifada against Israel.

The longer the time one serves in an Israeli prison, the higher his or her rank is in the Palestinian security forces. This has been true ever since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. And this is how people like Mohammed Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub became commanders of the Palestinians’ Preventative Security Force.

In the West Bank, most of the senior officials running the ministries have either spent time in Israeli prisons or taken an active part in anti-Israel violence.

Because of this policy, many educated Palestinians who have never been to an Israeli prison are forced to search for jobs in the US, Europe and the Arab world.

There is no shortage of well-educated Palestinians who could contribute enormously to the establishment of proper institutions and good government. Yet they have almost no role in the “uniform culture,” where many Palestinians continue to admire those who were part of the “revolution” more than university graduates and former World Bank officials such as Fayyad.

Yasser Arafat won great admiration largely because of his military fatigues, not because he studied at an Egyptian university in Cairo.

Fayyad would have become popular had he joined the armed wing of Fatah or Hamas and spent a few years in an Israeli prison.

If Fayyad or Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, the respected president of Al-Quds University, were to run in an election against anyone who spent time in an Israeli prison, they would most likely be defeated. Fayyad experienced this trend in 2006, when his Third Way list, which contested the parliamentary election, won only two seats.

Doc’s Talk

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Crucial M4 SSD in 2011 MacBook Pro ? TechTalk By Brian

July 16, 2011

New feature: Brian of London?s Tech Talk!

Every now and then my inner geek is given full rein and I have a burning urge to blog some tech.

I?ve just finished upgrading my MacBook Pro with a new Crucial M4 256gb SSD. I tried to do the same operation a couple of months ago when this particular drive had just come out but the surgery was unsuccessful with the patient reporting frequent episodes of 20 second freezes and other stuttering problems. That was all with version 0001 of the firmware for the drive.

A month or two later and firmware 0002 has been released and this time I can report a healthy MacBook Pro running faster and smoother than ever before.

Swapping drives on a Mac is pretty easy: first I put the new drive in an external case (Firewire is always best with Macs) and used SuperDuper to copy from my internal drive to the external one. After that it?s a quick job to undo 10 screws and take off the bottom of the computer. Two more screws hold the drive down and then 4 little lugs are screwed into the old drive and need to be moved to the new one. My friends over at iFixit have the best online instructions for doing this.

The final step of the surgery is done in post-op recovery. It?s giving a pukka disk icon to the new drive. I consider this step to be essential!

The easiest way I?ve found to do this is to use a little piece of freeware called ?Set Icon?. I?ve attached suitable png images of both the Crucial M4 and C300 drives: download these, use Set Icon and you?ll have great looking icons on your desktop.

Let me know in the comments how you feel about non-Israel tech blogging appearing here from time to time (boy am I opening myself up with that statement!)

Filed Under: Tech

Tags: Crucial ? mac ? ssd ? technology

Israellycool

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CO2 Tax Australia ? Taxing credulity

July 15, 2011

By Andrew Bolt

Henry Ergas notes that Julia Gillard has costed her carbon dioxide tax on a complete fantasy:

The one thing you need to know about Treasury?s modelling of the carbon tax is this: it assumes that by 2016, the US and all the other developed economies that do not have carbon taxes or emissions trading systems in place will have them up and running.

This implies that in next year?s US presidential election, likely to be fought at a time of high unemployment, the winning candidate will campaign on the basis of introducing a carbon tax that will go from zero to $ 30 a tonne in a matter of months. And that tax will then not only get through Congress but in record time.

Moreover, that feat accomplished, by 2021 China will sign up too, and with 14 per cent of the world?s population and barely 20 per cent of world income, will agree to shoulder 34 to 35 per cent of the costs of global mitigation. As part of that deal, China?s leadership will accept a fall in national living standards, relative to business as usual, of between 5 and 10 per cent, while per capita incomes in the far wealthier US and European Union decline by a fraction of that amount. And with China on board, the rest of the world will join the party.

These assumptions are central to Treasury?s analysis, not least because they ensure that by the time Australia moves to an ETS, there is a fully functioning world market for emissions permits. That world market makes it possible for permits bought overseas to contribute two-thirds of the mitigation we achieve during the period to 2020. In contrast, were the market as it is today, with more than 80 per cent of permit trading occurring within the EU, Australian demand for permits would significantly drive up prices, increasing Treasury?s estimated abatement costs.

UPDATE

Just another of those unforseen effects that make the carbon dioxide tax even more lunatic:

COMMUTERS could be hit with public transport fare increases of up to $ 150 a year when the carbon tax kicks in, confidential state government figures show.

,,, the NSW Treasury estimated that the potential fare rises for all modes of public transport in NSW alone – due to increased electricity costs for trains and fuel costs for buses and ferries – could be expected at an average 3.4 per cent….

(Premier Barry) O?Farrell said yesterday it was ?crazy? that public transport would be hit by the tax when petrol for cars would be exempt: ?This will create more pollution and defeat the whole purpose of a carbon tax.

There?s a purpose?

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt?s columns appear in Melbourne?s Herald Sun, Sydney?s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide?s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10?s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt?s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

PA Pundits – International

Mark Rutte Abbas El Fassi Abdelaziz Bouteflika Abdelkader Taleb Oumar Abdoulaye Wade

Behind Battle Over Debt, A War Over Government

July 15, 2011

New York Times:

WASHINGTON ? The endgame in the fight to increase the nation?s debt limit has only begun, but intense exchanges this week between the two parties have made it clear that this is not so much a negotiation over dollars and cents as a broader clash between the two parties over the size and role of government.

What makes a bipartisan ?grand bargain? so elusive is less the budget numbers, on which compromise could be in reach, than each side?s principles, which do not lend themselves to splitting the difference. President Obama wants deficit reduction, including tax increases for wealthier Americans and corporations. Congressional Republicans, prodded by a cadre of junior lawmakers, want a vastly smaller government constrained by lower taxes. The two are not the same thing.

Mr. Obama will make his case on Friday in a White House news conference, his third in just two weeks.

However this showdown is settled, it seems increasingly likely to define not only the legislative record of this Congress, divided between a Republican-controlled House and a Democratic-controlled Senate, but also the 2012 elections and Mr. Obama?s prospects for a second term.

The two sides met for less than two hours at the White House on Thursday, even as attention appeared to shift away from the prospect of a bipartisan budget agreement to the likelihood of a backup plan to raise the debt ceiling before the Aug. 2 deadline.

Having discussed spending cuts in past White House meetings, the negotiators considered the administration?s proposals for raising taxes, which Republicans have vowed to oppose. Mr. Obama previously had said they would meet again on Friday to decide whether they could reach a deficit-reduction deal; if not, they would spend the weekend negotiating a way to raise the $ 14.3 trillion debt limit, and defer the bigger budget-cutting clash.

Instead, at the end of Thursday?s session, he told the lawmakers to try to work something out and be ready for his summons to a weekend meeting.

Underlying the budget drama between the White House and Congressional Republicans is another compelling drama among Republicans, which exposes an ideological and generational gap. On one side are older, more senior conservatives like the two top leaders, Speaker John A. Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, who remember the budget fights and Republican setbacks of the 1990s and want some deal.

On the other are the proudly uncompromising junior lawmakers, many of them Tea Party sympathizers, whose ranks were so inflated by Republican gains in the midterm elections. Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, has emerged as their standard bearer, debating Mr. Obama in the White House sessions and then boasting of it afterward.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of the older generation, reflected the divide in an interview Thursday on Bloomberg TV.

?I think Eric Cantor is carrying out the mandate of last November, which was to stop mortgaging our children?s futures, while the president keeps talking about spending more money,? he said.

Mr. McCain then endorsed, as Mr. Cantor and most House Republicans do not, Mr. McConnell?s proposal to empower Mr. Obama to raise the debt limit through the 2012 elections in three stages, without prior approval of deep spending cuts.

Mr. McCain, mindful of the Republican defeat in a 1995 budget showdown with President Bill Clinton, said the McConnell proposal would absolve Republicans of blame for a default. ?But, it is the last option after we have explored everything else, and, frankly, I hope my colleagues have not forgotten what happened in 1995,? he said.

Republicans say the collisions between Mr. Cantor and Mr. Boehner are indicative of Mr. Cantor?s efforts to stay ahead of potential rivals for the speakership someday in keeping the allegiance of rank-and-file House Republicans.

Mr. Cantor helped torpedo behind-the-scenes discussions between Mr. Boehner and Mr. Obama. But now Mr. Obama, who earlier this year urged Congress to increase the debt limit without a companion measure for long-term budget cuts, has emerged to press for greater deficit reduction than Republicans are.

That is because he demands a ?balanced package? of both spending cuts and tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, while Republicans reject any new tax revenues.

Republicans have shown that their higher priority is not lower deficits, as it was for the party through most of the last century, but a smaller government. House Republicans in the spring passed a plan that would not balance the budget for three decades despite deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid ? largely because it also deeply cut taxes, adding debt.

For Republicans, ?reducing the deficit implies tax increases, or the possibility of tax increases, and that?s not something they want to do under any circumstances because it doesn?t suit their political needs,? said Stan Collender, a longtime federal budget analyst and a partner at Qorvis Communications.

The party?s dynamic in the debt talks reflects the culmination of a 30-year evolution in Republican thinking, dating to the start of President Ronald Reagan?s administration. The change is from emphasizing balanced budgets ? or at least lower deficits ? to what tax-cutting conservatives have called ?starve the beast,? that is, cut taxes and force government to shrink.

The starve-the-beast philosophy is even more problematic now because the population is aging as baby boomers retire even as medical costs keep rising ? a combination that is driving the projections of an unsustainably growing federal debt.

While the new-generation Republicans venerate Mr. Reagan, those who were in Congress when he was president say he would not understand their refusal to compromise on a package of the size Mr. Obama proposes.

?He had a rule: If you can agree on 80 percent, take it,? said Alan K. Simpson, who was the second-ranking Senate Republican leader back then. ?He raised taxes 11 times in eight years,? Mr. Simpson added. ?He did it to make the country run.?

Almost lost in the tax debate with Republicans is how much Mr. Obama has conceded to them this year on spending cuts, including for those entitlement programs Democrats favor.

?He believes that we have now in front of us the potential to do something big ? the holy grail,? the White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

Pat Dollard

Jalal Talabani James Michel Jaume Bartumeu Jean Claude Juncker Jean Max Bellerive

COP: Are the Rich Undertaxed? A reasonable question to ask!

July 15, 2011

Michael G. Franc

July 14, 2011

The Democrats? class-warfare rhetoric is too rich for most Americans.

Rarely has class-warfare rhetoric been so overwrought.

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) ?explained? the GOP?s motive in withdrawing from stalled debt-ceiling negotiations this way:

Why? To protect oil companies. To protect the owners of yachts and corporate jets. To protect corporations that ship jobs overseas. To protect millionaires and billionaires from paying their fair share.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) fleshed out this explanation with a few specifics:

When our Republican colleagues talk about defending against tax hikes, they are talking about . . . protecting the top 400 income earners in the country who, on average, pay [18.2 percent in] Federal taxes. . . . These are people who made on average more than a quarter-billion . . . in one year. And God bless them. What a wonderful thing it is to make more than a quarter-billion dollars in one year. But they pay taxes at a lower rate than a truck driver in Rhode Island does on average; the guy who wakes up every morning and gets into his clothes and puts on his boots and gets in the truck and goes out there and works all day, pays the same tax rate as the person earning over a quarter-billion dollars.

Putting it all in sober perspective, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) observed: ?This is America. This isn?t pre-revolutionary France, where the king had everything.?

That?s right. Off with their heads!

To highlight the GOP?s intransigence, Reid offered a non-binding resolution. Dubbed the ?Sense of the Senate on Shared Sacrifice,? it calls on ?those earning $ 1,000,000 or more per year [to] make a more meaningful contribution to the deficit reduction effort.?

The Hill nailed the real reason Senator Reid interrupted all serious Senate business to debate this meaningless rhetorical exercise in class warfare. ?The vote,? the newspaper reported, ?will likely be used by Democrats as a way to show Republican resistance to new tax hikes.?

Republicans opposed to tax hikes? Now there?s a breaking news story!

But this is a debate worth having. Let?s review the data.

Our tax code already ranks among the most ?progressive? in the industrialized world. While it?s true that the ?rich? have been earning a steadily increasing share of all income over the last three decades, they have shouldered a disproportionate share of the overall tax burden. Today the wealthiest 1 percent of American households earn 20 percent of all income ? more than twice the share they earned in 1980 and no doubt a class-warfare crime of the first magnitude. But they pay 38 percent of all income taxes, up from the 19 percent they paid in 1980. This, despite Congress?s halving top marginal tax rates since the Carter years.

The lower marginal tax rates that have prevailed since Reagan?s time have resulted in a lower tax burden on not only rich, but also middle- and lower-income Americans. Back in 1981, the bottom half of wage earners paid 7.45 percent of all taxes; today, their share is barely a third of that (2.7 percent).

None of this, of course, comports with the liberal class-warfare narrative.

Liberals take solace from polls that show large majorities of Americans favor increased taxes on ?millionaires and billionaires.? An April New York Times/CBS News poll, for example, found that 72 percent of Americans thought households earning over $ 250,000 a year should pay more taxes to lower the budget deficit.

But consider the context in which Americans hear questions like this. What, exactly, do they think the ?rich? pay in taxes today? How many Americans appreciate the truly progressive nature of our current tax system? And, more important, do Americans believe there should be some sort of cap or limit on how much we send to Uncle Sam? If so, what might that limit be?

First, polling suggests that Americans see the rich as surrounded by legions of the best tax lawyers and accountants money can buy, who use arcane loopholes in the tax code to shelter their income from the taxes the rest of us must pay. Accordingly, they assume the rich pay little or no taxes. For example, one poll found that only 24 percent of Americans believe the rich pay ?the highest percentage of their income in total federal taxes.? Over half see middle-income earners as bearing the heaviest load. In reality, the IRS reports that the wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers, who account for fully 70 percent of all income-tax receipts, send Uncle Sam an average of 18.7 percent of their income. The next wealthiest 40 percent face an average tax rate of barely 8 percent. Finally, the average tax rate paid by the bottom half of Americans stands at a mere 2.6 percent.

So it is not surprising that, in the abstract, Americans feel that wealthy individuals can belly up to the bar and shoulder a heavier tax burden, all for the common good. That?s not asking too much, is it?

Doc’s Talk

Filip Vujanovic Fradique de Menezes Francois Bozize Francois Fillon Frank Bainimarama

Interpreting and Analyzing Project Gunrunner

July 15, 2011

Media Matters excoriates those who traffic in confusion over Project Gunrunner.

This is starting to get pathetic.

Right-wing media outlets keep dishing out new “evidence” for why senior Justice Department leaders must have known about Fast and Furious, a failed operation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). All they keep proving is that those officials knew about Project Gunrunner, the high-profile effort begun under President Bush of which Fast and Furious was one small part.

They’ve already used this conflation to baselessly claim that the stimulus included funds for Fast and Furious (the funds were earmarked for Project Gunrunner and were not distributed to the ATF office that handled Fast and Furious) and that a 2009 Holder speech proves that he was aware of the program (the speech references only Gunrunner and was given before Fast and Furious was initiated).

In their latest effort, these outlets are pointing to a two-minute clip of a speech that then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden gave on March 29, 2009. In the speech, Ogden said:

DOJ’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is increasing its efforts by adding 37 new employees in three new offices, using $ 10 million in Recovery Act funds and redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest border in the next 45 days to fortify its Project Gunrunner, which is aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.

ATF is doubling its presence in Mexico itself, from five to nine personnel working with the Mexicans, specifically to facilitate gun-tracing activity, which targets the illegal weapons and their sources in the United States.

Let’s go over this again: Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious are not the same thing, and Fast and Furious wasn’t reportedly begun until six months after Ogden gave this speech.

Nonetheless, in an editorial comparing Fast and Furious to Watergate, Investor’s Business Daily claims that the Ogden video “may rival the tape that turned a ‘third-rate burglary’ into a presidential resignation.” IBD also claims that both the Ogden clip and Holder’s speech show the speaker “taking credit” for both Project Gunrunner and Fast and Furious. They provide text from both speeches in which the speaker references the former and not the latter, because they are lying (and embarrassingly bad at it).

Meanwhile, Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com cites this clip to claim that Ogden left DOJ in late 2009 because he “wanted to reduce his chances of becoming the ‘fall guy’ for the Obama Administration after news of this doomed-from-the-start gun-running operation became public.”

Analysis & Commentary

?[it] isn?t okay for the ATF to violate the National Firearms Act or the Arms Export Control Act if I must live within its stipulations.?

The Captain’s Journal

Almazbek Atambayev Alpha Conde Alvaro Colom Amadou Toumani Toure Andrea Zafferani

Guns Gone Wild ? ATF?s Good Intentions Gone Bad

July 15, 2011

By Mark Alexander

Obama’s Solution: New Gun Control Measures

“The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone. … The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition.” –James Madison

Obama's ATF Political Folly

In January of this year, Federal Judge John Roll, a Republican nominated by President George H.W. Bush, was among six citizens murdered by a psychopath in Tucson. Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was among 14 wounded in that attack.

Predictably, Barack Hussein Obama and his Leftist cadres in the Democrat Party were quick to convert the Tucson tragedy into political fodder to formulate a new round of “common sense” gun control legislation. Indeed, Obama claimed the Tucson assault should “at least be the beginning of a new discussion on how we can keep America safe for all our people.” He went on, “I believe that if common sense prevails, we can get beyond wedge issues and stale political debates to find a sensible, intelligent way [to confiscate guns].”

But Obama’s nefarious plan to undermine the Second Amendment was well underway many, many months prior to the Tucson murders — and well below the radar. In fact, anti-gun activist Sarah Brady said that Obama told her, “I just want you to know that we are working on [gun control]. … We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”

Why would Obama want to be so clandestine with his anti-2A agenda?

In recent decades, Democrats have suffered serious electoral and judicial setbacks when trying to enact gun control measures. Given the lack of broad support for such measures, Obama is silently advancing the Socialist agenda to disarm Americans and, ultimately, neutralize our ability to defend Essential Liberty.

In March of this year, I detailed insider accounts regarding Project Gunrunner, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation begun in 2005, which originally had the objective of tracking weapons transfers between the U.S. and Mexico in order to expose Mexican drug cartels.

However, in early 2009, the Obama administration determined that the original purpose of Gunrunner could be altered in order to provide a new mandate for implementing their gun control rationale: Stopping the flow of “assault weapons” into Mexico. To facilitate that agenda, Attorney General Eric Holder authorized operation “Fast and Furious,” that set into motion an ATF plan to encourage and enable “straw purchase” firearm sales to arms traffickers, and allow the guns to make their way into the hands of violent Mexican drug cartel assassins.

Holder determined that he could manufacture a case that guns purchased in the U.S. were responsible for all the violence in Mexico. Then Obama could use that “evidence” to make the argument that, in order to stem the violence, more stringent gun control measures were necessary, starting incrementally with restricting gun sales in Border States. As Demo Rep. Carolyn McCarthy put it, “[Obama] is with me on [gun control], and it’s just going to be when that opportunity comes forward that we’re going to be able to go forward.”

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry

The “opportunity” was moving forward unabated until one of the ATF’s Fast and Furious guns was used last December to murder U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and other guns were used in the February ambush of Immigration and Customs Agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila by Los Zetas Cartel soldiers in Mexico. Agent Zapata was killed in that assault.

I should note here that in all accounts from my sources within ATF, clearly the agents involved at the tactical level of Gunrunner and F&F were under the impression that these operations were legitimate efforts to identify transit lines between the U.S. and members of Los Zetas and other Mexican drug cartels.

However, at the strategic (high-level management) levels of the ATF in Arizona and Texas, it was well understood that Holder had a scheme to use this operation to jumpstart Obama’s gun control scheme. (In a March 2010 ATF memo, agents reported that the managers in charge of Fast and Furious were “jovial, if not giddy” over news that ATF guns were associated with murders in Mexico.)

There is new evidence that Holder even used “stimulus debt” to launch “Operation Castaway” in Florida — putting guns into the hands of the world’s most brutal transnational gang, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) — to generate additional “supporting evidence” for Obama’s gun control mandate.

Recall if you will, Democrat outrage when Oliver North, working for the Reagan administration, ran a clandestine operation selling arms to Middle East bad guys so they could kill other bad guys over there, and then used some of the sales proceeds to fund the good guys in Central America fighting against Marxists south of our border. No such Democrat angst is evident this time.

Obama and Holder are moving forward with their subterfuge with no concern about rebuke. Moreover, they are doing so as if agents Terry and Zapata were still walking the line.

Last Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney announced, “The president directed the attorney general to form working groups with key stakeholders to identify common-sense measures that would improve Americans’ safety and security while fully respecting Second Amendment rights. That process is well underway at the Department of Justice with stakeholders on all sides working through these complex issues. And we expect to have some more specific announcements in the near future.”

Well underway, indeed. Lost amid the din of all the extra-constitutional federal tax-n-spend debates this week, Obama spared Democrat congressional action on gun control by unilaterally circumventing the Second Amendment via an Executive Order. You guessed it — he decreed new restrictions on gun sales in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Holder’s Deputy Attorney General, James Cole, claimed that Obama’s EO would help the ATF disrupt illegal weapons trafficking networks between the U.S. and Mexico.

Meanwhile, there’s a growing list of serious crimes committed in the U.S. with ATF guns that were thought to be in Mexico.

Parents of Agent Jaime Zapata

As Obama ramps up additional gun control measures, I would remind him that the first shots of the American Revolution were fired in response to the government’s attempt to disarm American colonists, specifically to capture and destroy arms and supplies stored by the Massachusetts militia in the town of Concord.

As reflected in James Madison’s words regarding the “ultimate authority” for defending liberty, our Founders fully understood that to secure Liberty, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

As Madison’s Supreme Court appointee, Justice Joseph Story, wrote in his 1833 “Commentaries on the Constitution,” “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”

The Second Amendment was and remains “The Palladium of Liberties.”

Those who are foolishly willing to compromise Essential Liberty to pursue Obama’s illusion of safety, in the timeless judgment of Benjamin Franklin, “deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

*****

(Please pray for our Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families — especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)

Read more informative articles at The Patriot Post

PA Pundits – International

Mari Kiviniemi Mark Rutte Abbas El Fassi Abdelaziz Bouteflika Abdelkader Taleb Oumar

Interpreting and Analyzing Project Gunrunner

July 15, 2011

Media Matters excoriates those who traffic in confusion over Project Gunrunner.

This is starting to get pathetic.

Right-wing media outlets keep dishing out new “evidence” for why senior Justice Department leaders must have known about Fast and Furious, a failed operation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). All they keep proving is that those officials knew about Project Gunrunner, the high-profile effort begun under President Bush of which Fast and Furious was one small part.

They’ve already used this conflation to baselessly claim that the stimulus included funds for Fast and Furious (the funds were earmarked for Project Gunrunner and were not distributed to the ATF office that handled Fast and Furious) and that a 2009 Holder speech proves that he was aware of the program (the speech references only Gunrunner and was given before Fast and Furious was initiated).

In their latest effort, these outlets are pointing to a two-minute clip of a speech that then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden gave on March 29, 2009. In the speech, Ogden said:

DOJ’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is increasing its efforts by adding 37 new employees in three new offices, using $ 10 million in Recovery Act funds and redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest border in the next 45 days to fortify its Project Gunrunner, which is aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.

ATF is doubling its presence in Mexico itself, from five to nine personnel working with the Mexicans, specifically to facilitate gun-tracing activity, which targets the illegal weapons and their sources in the United States.

Let’s go over this again: Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious are not the same thing, and Fast and Furious wasn’t reportedly begun until six months after Ogden gave this speech.

Nonetheless, in an editorial comparing Fast and Furious to Watergate, Investor’s Business Daily claims that the Ogden video “may rival the tape that turned a ‘third-rate burglary’ into a presidential resignation.” IBD also claims that both the Ogden clip and Holder’s speech show the speaker “taking credit” for both Project Gunrunner and Fast and Furious. They provide text from both speeches in which the speaker references the former and not the latter, because they are lying (and embarrassingly bad at it).

Meanwhile, Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com cites this clip to claim that Ogden left DOJ in late 2009 because he “wanted to reduce his chances of becoming the ‘fall guy’ for the Obama Administration after news of this doomed-from-the-start gun-running operation became public.”

Analysis & Commentary

?[it] isn?t okay for the ATF to violate the National Firearms Act or the Arms Export Control Act if I must live within its stipulations.?

The Captain’s Journal

Emomalii Rahmon Emperor Akihito Epeli Nailatikau Ernest Bai Koroma Eternal Kim Il sung

Cabinet renews Salameh?s mandate, appoints new Army Chief of Staff

July 15, 2011

The cabinet convened at Baabda Presidential Palace for the first time after securing the parliament?s vote of confidence, National News Agency reported on Thursday.

The session was chaired by President Michel Suleiman, the report also said, adding that there are 73 items on the cabinet?s agenda.

Suleiman and Prime Minister Najib Mikati met before the session convened, the report added.

The cabinet renewed the mandate of Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh and appointed Maj. Gen. Walid Salman as the new Army Chief of Staff replacing Maj. Gen. Shawqi al-Masri who has retired

Dr. Antoine Shoqair was also appointed as the director general of the Presidency of the Republic.

The cabinet reportedly postponed the appointment of a new chief for the General Directorate of General Security.

?The appointment of army intelligence chief Abbas Ibrahim as the new head of General Security has not been included in the cabinet?s agenda Thursday,? reported Al-Hayat earlier on Thursday.

The necessary conditions to discuss the appointment have not been provided amid reports that Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rai is keen on restoring this position to the Maronite sect.

According to Nahar up until 1998, the position of General Security chief had long been assumed by a Christian figure, but former President Emile Lahoud, appointed a Shiite to the position .

Ministerial sources told the al Hayat that Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun has also echoed the position of the Patriarch but avoided bringing up this issue in order to avert a dispute with Hezboullah and AMAL Movement, which both support the appointment of Ibrahim, a Shiite, to the post.

Al-Hayat reported that Aoun settled the matter by proposing the appointment of a Christian as deputy General Security chief.

Lebanese Forces bloc MP George Adwan said on Thursday that the General Security chief must be ?agreed upon by all parties? and close to President Michel Suleiman.

Adwan also told MTV that the General Security chief is responsible for the borders and for controlling who enters and who leaves the country, adding that the latter is also responsible for the foreigners present in Lebanon.

Ya Libnan

Emmanuel Nadingar Emomalii Rahmon Emperor Akihito Epeli Nailatikau Ernest Bai Koroma

What Happened to the $2.6 Trillion Social Security Trust Fund? Areasonable question to ask!

July 15, 2011

Merrill Matthews

Here?s how President Barack Obama answered CBS?s Scott Pelley?s question about whether he could guarantee that Social Security checks would go out on August 3, the day after the government is supposed to reach its debt limit: ?I cannot guarantee that those checks [he included veterans and the disabled, in addition to Social Security] go out on August 3rd if we haven?t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.?

And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner echoed the president on CBS?s Face the Nation Sunday implying that if a budget deal isn?t reached by August 2, seniors might not get their Social Security checks.

Well, either Obama and Geithner are lying to us now, or they and all defenders of the Social Security status quo have been lying to us for decades. It must be one or the other. Here?s why: Social Security has a trust fund, and that trust fund is supposed to have $ 2.6 trillion in it, according to the Social Security trustees. If there are real assets in the trust fund, then Social Security can mail the checks, regardless of what Congress does about the debt limit.

President Obama?s budget director, Jack Lew, explained all this last February in USA Today:

?Social Security benefits are entirely self-financing. They are paid for with payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers throughout their careers. These taxes are placed in a trust fund dedicated to paying benefits owed to current and future beneficiaries. ? Even though Social Security began collecting less in taxes than it paid in benefits in 2010, the trust fund will continue to accrue interest and grow until 2025, and will have adequate resources to pay full benefits for the next 26 years.?

Notice that Lew said nothing about raising the debt ceiling, which was already looming, and it shouldn?t matter anyway because Social Security is ?entirely self-financing? and off budget. What could be clearer?

Unconvinced, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote a subsequent column questioning Lew?s assertions. ?This [Lew?s] claim is a breathtaking fraud. The pretense is that a flush trust fund will pay retirees for the next 26 years. Lovely, except for one thing: The Social Security trust fund is a fiction. ? In other words, the Social Security trust fund contains?nothing.?

Social Security status-quo defenders have assured us for the past 25 years that Social Security is fully funded?for the next 25 years, or 2036. So if there are real assets in the Social Security Trust Fund?$ 2.6 trillion allegedly?then how could failure to reach a debt-ceiling agreement possibly threaten seniors? Social Security checks?

The answer is that the federal government has borrowed all of that trust fund money and spent it, exactly as Krauthammer asserted. And the only way the trust fund can get some cash to pay Social Security benefits is if the federal government draws it from general revenues or borrows the money?which, of course, it can?t do because of the debt ceiling.

Thus, the answer to my initial question is that the president is telling the truth now in the sense that he is conceding there?s no money in the trust fund to pay benefits; but he and other Social Security status-quo defenders have been deceiving the public for decades.

And here?s the real irony: Anytime someone has proposed personal Social Security retirement accounts as a way to ensure that people have real assets in their own account without bankrupting the government or future generations, defenders of the status quo would pounce, calling such a reform, in Al Gore?s words, a ?risky scheme.? They have vociferously claimed that those trust fund assets are real and that only by having the government manage and control the accounts would seniors be guaranteed to get their retirement checks.

Well, we have the status quo and seniors may not get their checks. Had we shifted to a system of pre-funded, personal Social Security retirement accounts years ago, this wouldn?t even be an issue?because retirees would have their own money in their own accounts.

Yes, the accounts likely would have declined when the stock market went down, though not if the reform were structured like three Texas counties did 30 years ago (see here). But in case you haven?t noticed, Social Security revenues also declined during the economic downturn?because fewer people were working?so that the government is paying out more in benefits than it is taking in, and hence needing additional federal revenues, a fact admitted by Lew.

If the budget crisis has done nothing else, it has exposed the decades-long lie about the solvency of the Social Security trust fund. The trust fund may be backed by the ?full faith and credit of the federal government,? as defenders constantly remind us, but if it had real assets the president wouldn?t be talking about seniors missing their checks.

Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. http://twitter.com/MerrillMatthews

Doc’s Talk

Albert Camille Vital Alexander Lukashenko Ali Abdullah Saleh Ali Bongo Ondimba Ali Mohammed Mujur

Hezb-allah states it will only disarm when Israel is forced to do so.

July 15, 2011

(Lebanon) The party of god (Hezb-allah) in Lebanon which by hook and crook (And a lot of violent posturing) has managed to secure itself into the Lebanese parliament. Have in response to the UN Indictment of being behind the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005. Declared to the world that the only way they are going to disarm is if and when the UN security council manages to demilitarize Israel. In otherwords in typical Middle-Eastern bravado they are playing the victim-card while giving the UN the finger.

In other news Hezb-allah acting like the Islamic group they are, indicated that they will not allow Israel to steal Lebanese hydrocarbons from under Lebanese ground. (Well in this case the ground belongs to Israel until Lebanon submitted a new boundary map to the UN last year)

What is it with Muslims having to steal what doesn’t belong to them Be it Kosovo,Kashmir, or even Kuwait. Once somebody has something they want, then muslims play the victimcard in which to try and get their way.

Eye On The World

Alassane Ouattara Albert Camille Vital Alexander Lukashenko Ali Abdullah Saleh Ali Bongo Ondimba

Soueid: March 14 not interested in dialogue for the sake of dialogue

July 15, 2011

March 14 General Secretariat Coordinator Fares Soueid said on Wednesday that ?March 14 is not interested in national dialogue just for the sake of dialogue and will not participate in the same old form of dialogue headed by President Michel Suleiman , because they tend to be a waste of time .

?If Hezbollah submits a genuine proposal on how they plan to make weapons exclusive to the state, March 14 will discuss the possibility of returning to the national dialogue,? National News Agency quoted him as saying.

Soueid also said that ?March 14 can resort to demonstrations if need be,? adding that the alliance would ?take all necessary steps if the state does not commit to its international obligations.?

?We will not be afraid, we will not relent and we will take to the streets because we will respect laws and democratic principles.?

According to Soueid, the contents of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon?s (STL) indictment into the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri will be revealed in its entirety in August.

He added that ?March 14 does not favor dragging the Lebanese people into diplomatic and political problems.?

During a live interview with MTV on Tuesday former PM Saad Hariri who is currently in Paris due to security reasons told the station that even if Hezbollah chief holds 300 press conferences , he will not be able to change the course of the Special tribunal for Lebanon.

He added : “We won the 2009 parliamentary elections although the use of arms changed the results of elections afterward.”

Ya Libnan

Gilbert Houngbo Giorgio Napolitano Giovanni Lajolo Girma Wolde Giorgis Gjorge Ivanov

Today?s Climate Hypocrite: Richard Branson

July 15, 2011

The Internet is an evil thing: it allows us to look up things like this from December 31, 2009

…But at least one business leader, the British billionaire and founder of the Virgin Group Richard Branson, says he has heard the alarm from scientists and environmentalists about climate change, and believes that the world must not waste time shifting away from oil and other fossil fuels.

“There are some of us who believe that the problem of warming is as bad as the First and Second World Wars combined,” Branson told TIME in a recent interview at the climate summit in Copenhagen. “It’s that serious, and you know the key is carbon, [but] there’s no war room coordinating the attack on carbon.”

So, Branson has taken it upon himself ? unsurprisingly ? to lead the charge against carbon. In 2010, he will officially launch the Carbon War Room, a corporate think tank of sorts, designed to incubate and spread the best ways to cut carbon in corporate sectors ranging from aviation to shipping to construction…..

Then there is this from today

I know I shouldn?t, but I still like to party on Friday nights. I live half the year on Necker, a tiny island in the Caribbean and it?s always full of people in party mode. Everyone comes up to the big house and we?ll be dancing until the early hours to the island?s band, the Front Line. By day the band members lug bags at the airport and at night they play great reggae. I?m not the best dancer so will probably make a fool out of myself by getting up onto a table, and if my children Holly, 30, and Sam, 26, are around there will inevitably be tequila shots.

That sure seems like quite a bit of CO2 that you’re putting out, Richard: how do all those people get to and from the island?

My favourite things…..Travelling to new and exciting countries

And how, exactly, are you getting there? Oh, you buy carbon offsets, do you? So, you aren’t actually living the climate change believer lifestyle, you’re just “bribing” your way out of it. OK.

Pirate’s Cove

Fradique de Menezes Francois Bozize Francois Fillon Frank Bainimarama Frederick Ballantyne

Today?s Climate Hypocrite: Richard Branson

July 15, 2011

The Internet is an evil thing: it allows us to look up things like this from December 31, 2009

…But at least one business leader, the British billionaire and founder of the Virgin Group Richard Branson, says he has heard the alarm from scientists and environmentalists about climate change, and believes that the world must not waste time shifting away from oil and other fossil fuels.

“There are some of us who believe that the problem of warming is as bad as the First and Second World Wars combined,” Branson told TIME in a recent interview at the climate summit in Copenhagen. “It’s that serious, and you know the key is carbon, [but] there’s no war room coordinating the attack on carbon.”

So, Branson has taken it upon himself ? unsurprisingly ? to lead the charge against carbon. In 2010, he will officially launch the Carbon War Room, a corporate think tank of sorts, designed to incubate and spread the best ways to cut carbon in corporate sectors ranging from aviation to shipping to construction…..

Then there is this from today

I know I shouldn?t, but I still like to party on Friday nights. I live half the year on Necker, a tiny island in the Caribbean and it?s always full of people in party mode. Everyone comes up to the big house and we?ll be dancing until the early hours to the island?s band, the Front Line. By day the band members lug bags at the airport and at night they play great reggae. I?m not the best dancer so will probably make a fool out of myself by getting up onto a table, and if my children Holly, 30, and Sam, 26, are around there will inevitably be tequila shots.

That sure seems like quite a bit of CO2 that you’re putting out, Richard: how do all those people get to and from the island?

My favourite things…..Travelling to new and exciting countries

Pirate’s Cove

Jose Eduardo dos Santos Jose Maria Neves Jose Mujica Jose Ramos Horta Jose Socrates

Israel can no longer claim to be region?s democracy ? YNetNews Op-Ed

July 14, 2011

boycott-july-13-2
Right wing parliment members visit the temple mount with heavy police escort
Activestills Photo By Yotam Ronen

By Nechama Duek
Op-Ed
YNetNews.com

The Boycott Law?s approval by the Knesset turned Israel and us, its citizens, into members in a club I would not want to be a member of. The boycotters club. In other words, the new law calls for boycotting the boycotters.

This law wishes to silence people, stifle a different kind of thinking, and force people to do things that contradict their conscience, beliefs and democratic right.

Supporters of the new law repress the deep dispute within Israeli society regarding the future of settlements in the territories. No law will be changing the fact that most of the public is willing to accept an agreement that would remove the settlements in exchange for peace.

It is precisely the State of Israel, which is being boycotted from every direction, that must think twice before utilizing the same despicable means – and through legislation no less. It is precisely the State of Israel?s citizens – who are being boycotted in Arab states, whose goods are subjected to scrutiny to ensure they were produced in the ?right place,? and whose athletes are being kept out of some global competitions because of their citizenship ? who need to be especially sensitive.

The moment this law was passed by the Knesset, we can no longer slam anyone else for boycotting us. Because a boycott is a boycott is a boycott. Israel would no longer be able to claim that it is the region?s only democracy. This law turned Israel into a dark place.

Who cares about the world?

We are dealing with an undemocratic law; an immoral law. From now on, artists and citizens would be sacred to say that they do no purchase goods produced in the territories, even though this is their democratic right, because the new law will expose them to a lawsuit for damages.

My friends, we?ve gone completely mad. The new law represses freedom of expression and freedom of protest. Indeed, the law prompted a very harsh legal opinion by the Knesset?s legal advisor, attorney Eyal Yinon, who asserted: ?The bill pertains to the core of the right for freedom of political expression in a democratic state?it has one component (civil injustice) that is afflicted by a substantial constitutional flaw.?

See Related: Boycott Law Archive

San Francisco Sentinel

Georgi Parvanov Gilbert Ake Gilbert Houngbo Giorgio Napolitano Giovanni Lajolo

The Incredibly Significant Missing Element in Egypt?s Revolution

July 14, 2011

Barry Rubin

As I always say, the most important stories about the Middle East?that really explain the region?are right there on the surface but are nonetheless neglected. Here?s one: there has not been a single, not a single, demonstration in Egypt against political Islamism.

Think about it. There is a powerful Muslim Brotherhood, openly seeking state power and Egypt?s fundamental transformation into an Islamist state. Then there are the Salafists?a new label applied to even more radical Islamist groups?that were in the past simply called by the name of the individual organization. There used to be two major ones. Why the use of ?Salafist? now? Because there are too many to count. nd yet, despite this threat, not only to Egypt as a whole but daily life, there has been no organization of a demonstration, or a public campaign, or a Facebook campaign against the factor likely to produce a new dictatorship. True, the Christian Copts are defending their own rights, but that isn?t the same thing. Indeed, events only further underline that Muslims won?t speak out in any numbers against Islamism. Individual Muslims may courageously defend Christian rights publicly, but they are few and scattered.

Why is it that there is no anti-Islamist movement in Egypt? There are three reasons:

1. Fear and intimidation.

2. The eagerness of even liberal, moderate reformers to ally with the Brotherhood. Egypt is the only country in the Arab world (there are some exceptions, like the Syrian Brotherhood?s membership in the opposition coalition, but they are far more limited) where the reformers saw no problem to viewing the Brotherhood as allies against the existing regime. The April 6 Youth Movement, the ?Facebook kids,? were closely cooperating with the Brotherhood. Muhammad ElBaradei was willing to be their poodle until the two sides quarreled. The Wafd Party is in partnership with the Brotherhood as are many other elements.

3. The belief that the Brotherhood will protect people from the Salafists. Talk about wishful thinking! Of course, there is an element of truth here. The Brotherhood might reduce the level of violence but that?s only because it believes that victory can be achieved without it and they are also willling to Islamize the country more slowly. Still, I?ll bet that Brotherhood members aren?t going to put up their fists to defend Christians, secularists, or women who don?t toe the line from Salafist attack.

What is happening is that some spray paint a picture of a cross and crescent labelled ?almaniya? (secularism) which Islamists overspray with the slogan ?Islamiya.? (Islamic country). But we have no idea, of course, how many of the spraypainters are Muslims.

In contrast, Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq, Tunisia, Syria, and (non-Arab) Turkey and Iran there are powerful anti-Islamist sentiments in the oppositions.

Let?s compare Egypt with Tunisia, the Arabic-speaking country where European intellectual-cultural influence and moderate Islam has been proportionately most powerful. A Tunis movie theatre showed the daring anti-Islamist film ?No God, No Master? by the Tunisian-French director Nadia El-Fani.

Even in relatively moderate, relatively secularist Tunis, Islamists attacked the theatre and the audience members. To understand the implications of having such ?norms? in a society, consider how viable democracy would be if a mob in Texas or New York rioted at a movie theatre, wrecked it, and beat up audience members watching a film that they didn?t like. Afterward, nobody was arrested and the group responsible not only faced relatively little criticism but was likely to win lots of votes in the next election.

Remember that the probem in the Muslim-majority world isn?t only the strength of the Islamists but the weakness of the organized opposition to them.

At least, in Tunisia, one thousand people demonstrated against religious violence and radical Islamism, carrying banners that said ?Free Tunisia, extremism out? and ?Religious freedom, freedom of thought.?

The elections in Egypt set for September will be followed by those in Tunisia scheduled for October. The Ennahda Party, which is radical Islamist, is expected to do well though not to win. But we will see if Tunisia is going to have an October revolution or could emerge as a (temporarily? stable?) democratic state.

Doc’s Talk

Ernest Bai Koroma Eternal Kim Il sung Evo Morales Faure Gnassingbe Faustin Archange Touadera

Tensions escalate as stakes grow higher in fiscal clash ? Obama walks out of meeting

July 14, 2011

debt-2
President Obama with, from left, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker John A. Boehner,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Dick Durbin

By Carl Hulse
The New York Times

WASHINGTON ? The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, warned on Wednesday of a ?huge financial calamity? if President Obama and the Republicans cannot agree on a budget deal that allows the federal debt ceiling to be increased. Moody?s, the ratings agency, threatened a credit downgrade, citing a ?rising possibility? that no deal would be reached before the government?s borrowing authority hits its limit on Aug. 2.

And the latest bipartisan negotiating session on Wednesday evening ended in heightened tension, if not outright discord. Republicans said Mr. Obama had abruptly walked out in an agitated state; Democrats described the president as having summed up with an impassioned case for action before bringing the meeting to a close and leaving.

Across Washington, officials were weighed down with a sense that they were hurtling toward a crisis. Grim-faced lawmakers spent the day shuttling from meeting to meeting in search of a way out of the fix.

The stakes are high, for the economy, the financial markets and both parties. But the pressure was particularly intense on Republican leaders, who only weeks ago seemed to be on the offensive and in a strong position to extract major concessions from Mr. Obama and the Democrats.

For months, the Republican leaders have emphatically pledged that there will be no increase in the federal debt ceiling absent huge cuts in government spending and fundamental changes in popular social programs, all without the whiff of a tax increase.

Now, with negotiations stalled and a potential default by the United States government just over the horizon, they are being held to those promises by their own rank-and-file, leaving them in a bind that is defying easy resolution and putting them at risk of being blamed if things end badly.

Behind closed doors and by phone, they groped for a solution and struggled to assert some kind of control over the situation as rank-and-file Republican members, especially in the House, grew more confrontational.

Panic had not yet set in, but the worry and tension were evident as seasoned lawmakers of both parties whose experience told them that Congress always finds a white-knuckle way to avert disaster wondered if this was going to be the time when it did not.

?Our problem is, we made a big deal about this for three months,? said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

?How many Republicans have been on TV saying, ?I am not going to raise the debt limit,? ? said Mr. Graham, including himself in the mix of those who did so. ?We have no one to blame but ourselves.?

Potential last-minute options were being gamed out around Capitol Hill. Senate Republicans were pushing their counterparts in the House to deliver some legislation, which could take the form of a balanced budget plan due on the House floor next week. A bipartisan group that had been working on a major deficit-cutting plan in the Senate was trying again to produce a proposal.

And Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader and procedural maestro, was pushing his plan that would allow a debt limit increase to clear Congress without Republican fingerprints ? and without the guaranteed cuts many in his party are demanding. He would establish an elaborate process where Congress would vote to disapprove instead of approve a debt limit request, allowing the president to raise the debt ceiling via a successful veto of the disapproval if it came to that.

Despite resistance from conservatives and the initial unease many lawmakers expressed at such a slippery approach, the McConnell gambit was gaining credence as the best escape hatch. Senate Democrats went virtually silent on the idea for fear of jinxing it. While the White House said it was not the preferable option, it was viewed inside the West Wing as a real option nonetheless, even if it would transfer to Mr. Obama and his party all the political responsibility for a debt limit increase.

Some of Mr. McConnell?s colleagues were coming around to it as the reality of a possible default began to sink in.

?I strongly support Senator McConnell?s efforts to avoid a default on our nation?s debt, and the last-case emergency proposal he outlined yesterday to ensure that Republicans aren?t unduly blamed for failure to raise the debt ceiling,? said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

But with House Republicans showing little to no appetite for Mr. McConnell?s plan, top lawmakers in both parties were looking for ways to sweeten the deal, perhaps by adding required spending cuts or somehow forcing consideration of a deficit-reduction package. Mr. McConnell portrayed his proposal as a last-stand way to spare Republicans from being blamed for a default if no alternative plan could be approved.

Recounting how the 1995 government shutdown helped President Bill Clinton win re-election the following year, Mr. McConnell said any impasse that drove down the nation?s credit rating and led to government checks being delayed could have the same result for Mr. Obama.

?He will say Republicans are making the economy worse,? Mr. McConnell said in an interview with the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. ?It is an argument that he could have a good chance of winning, and all of the sudden we have co-ownership of the economy. That is a very bad position going into the election.?

After the meeting at the White House, Republicans and Democrats offered differing versions of what by all accounts was a tense session.

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said he raised the idea of taking what savings could be achieved now ? roughly $ 1.4 trillion ? and then having additional votes to raise the debt limit again before the elections in November 2012, with Republicans ultimately seeking a total of at least $ 2.4 trillion in cuts with no tax increases.

At this, Mr. Cantor said, the president ?got very agitated, seemingly.? Mr. Cantor quoted the president as saying: ?Eric, don?t call my bluff. I?m going to the American people with this.?

Then, Mr. Cantor said, ?He shoved back and said, ?I?ll see you tomorrow? and walked out.?

?I was a little taken aback,? Mr. Cantor added.

Democrats said that Mr. Obama?s departure was not abrupt, but that he had forcefully made a case that Republicans had been unwilling to compromise. ?Enough?s enough,? one Democrat familiar with the talks quoted Mr. Obama as saying.

Democrats said Mr. Obama had set a deadline of Friday for the two sides to determine whether they could reach a broad budget deal. If not, he said, they will turn to finding an accord over how to raise the debt limit without agreement on taxes and spending.

Jackie Calmes, Robert Pear and Binyamin Appelbaum contributed reporting.

San Francisco Sentinel

Andrea Zafferani Andrius Kubilius Andrus Ansip Andry Rajoelina Anerood Jugnauth

Ibn Warraq: The Judeo-Christian Origins of Islam (Part 3)

July 14, 2011

by Ibn Warraq
Part 2
Part 1 here; part 2 here.

Turning to Surah XIX., Maryam, 16-35, we find there the following narrative of the birth of Christ:

And in the Book do thou.mention Mary, when she retired from her family to an Eastern place. Then apart from them she assumed a veil. Then We sent unto her Our Spirit; accordingly he showed himself to her as a well-formed human being. She said, ?Verily I take refuge in the Merciful One from thee, if thou art God-fearing.? He said, ?Truly I am a messenger of thy Lord that I should give to thee a pure man-child.? She said, ?Whence shall I have a man-child, since no human being hath touched me, and I am not rebellious.’ He said, ?Thus hath thy Lord said, It is easy for Me, and let Us make Him a sign unto men and a mercy from us, and it is a thing decided.? Accordingly she conceived Him: then she retired with him to a distant place. Then labour-pains brought her to the trunk of the palm-tree. She said, ?O would that I had died ere this and had become forgotten, forgotten!? Thereupon he called aloud to her from beneath her: ?Grieve thou not; thy lord hath made a brook beneath thee. And do thou shake towards thyself the trunk of the palm-tree: it shall let fall upon thee freshly-gathered dates. Eat therefore and drink and brighten thy eye; then, if thou seest any human being, then say, Verily I have vowed unto my Lord a fast, therefore I shall surely not speak to any man today.? Accordingly she brought Him to her people, carrying Him. They said, ?O Mary, truly thou hast done a vile thing. O sister of Aaron, thy father was not a man of wickedness, and thy mother was not rebellious.? Then she made a sign unto Him. They said, ?How shall we speak to one who is a child in the cradle?? He said, ?Verily I am God’s servant: He hath brought Me the Book and hath made Me a Prophet. And He hath made Me blessed wherever I am, and hath prescribed for Me prayer and alms, as long as I live, and to be well-behaved to My mother, and He hath not made Me violent, wretched. And peace upon Me the day I was born, and the day I shall die, and the day I shall be raised up alive.? That is Jesus, Son of Mary; a statement of the truth, concerning which they doubt.”

As Tisdall says, ?We can trace every single matter here mentioned to some apocryphal source, as will be evident from the passages which we now proceed to adduce?.

Tisdall then quotes the Protevangelium of James the Less [the Younger] in reference to Mary’s birth, without explaining what this text is: its authorship, date and original language, and so on. In fact, answers to these questions are exactly what is most significant and important. The Protoevangelium was accepted very early into liturgical collective manuscripts, and for that reason has survived in a large number of manuscripts and many versions. Comparatively recent discovery of a papyrus, now known as Papyrus Bodmer 5, dated to the 4th century, has helped scholar E. de Strycker to establish what is now the best edition in Greek, in which language there exist 140 manuscripts. But there are also four manuscripts o the Protoevangelium in Syriac which probably originated in the 5th century. Then there are versions in Georgian, Latin, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Slavonic languages, and in Arabic from the 10th century. The Protoevangelium circulated in the eastern area of the Church. Professor Wilhelm Schneemelcher of Bonn University describes the Protoevangelium?s contents, ?Although it reaches the birth of Jesus and recounts it, it is really much more an account of the miraculous birth of Mary, the daughter of wealthy Joachim and his wife Anne, her upbringing in the Temple and her virginity, which is not impaired by the widower Joseph, to whom she is entrusted by lot, and by the birth of Jesus. Chapters 22-24 recount the murder of Zacharias, who is identified with the father of the Baptist?.

It purports to be the testimony of James, the brother of Jesus. In reality the book was probably not written before 150 C.E., though some chapters were possibly added later.

Doc’s Talk

Lars Lokke Rasmussen Laura Chinchilla Laurent Gbagbo Lawrence Gonzi Lee Hsien Loong

BORUCH DAYAN EMMES: Brutal Murder Of 9-Year-Old Leiby Kletzky A?H

July 14, 2011

5:20AM EST (Wednesday): With an indescribable amount of pain, and a heavy heart, YWN regrets to inform you of the brutal murder of 9-year-old Leiby Kletzky A?H. Although the details are still unfolding, Misaskim is working closely with the NYPD and NYC Medical Examiner to ensure that the proper Kavod is given to the Niftar, who was brutally murdered.

So many organizations and community activists worked together in harmony the past few days, including Hatzolah, Shomrim, Misaskim, Chaveirim, and others. Thousands upon thousands of volunteers gave of their time, and walked the streets in the sweltering heat for hours on end, to try and find Leiby A?H. The tremendous amount of unity among Yidden, and the massive Kiddush Hashem performed in the past few days should be a Zechus for the Niftar.

A public thanks must be given to the NYPD, who for the past two days worked tirelessly on the case. They brought in every resource that the department has available, and showed incredible personal involvement. Most notably was the constant presence of Brooklyn South Chief Joseph Fox, who was seen on the streets of Boro Park for the past 48 hours.

Early Wednesday, authorities arrested three people at the Kensington home at 466 East Second Street. FBI and police had to kick the door in. A gold car was found nearby, similar to one seen in a surveillance video police uncovered during their hunt for the boy.

A man who is seen walking near the boy in the video is one of those in custody, chief police spokesman Paul J. Browne said.

Police have not given a motive for the crime.

?There is no indication at this time that the victim was known to the suspect previously,? Browne said in a statement released Wednesday morning.

?Before establishing his identity, detectives had observed the suspect in a video recorded at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, where he was seen entering a dentist?s office on 18th Avenue in Brooklyn,? Browne said. ?Detectives located one of the dentists, who worked there at his home in New Jersey late last night, and established that the suspect had been in the dentist?s office on Monday to pay a bill.?

Police said that, with the assistance of a receptionist and another dentist associated with the practice, detectives tracked down records, found the name and address of the suspect, then went to his home ? where he was arrested.

Boruch Dayan Emmes?

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Yeshiva World News

Jaume Bartumeu Jean Claude Juncker Jean Max Bellerive Jens Stoltenberg Jhala Nath Khanal

Obama, Social Security, and Republicans

July 14, 2011

If you read the news, you know that Obama has offered to accept cuts in Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republicans agreeing to raise taxes on people with incomes greater than $ 250,000.

People think of Social Security as being the backbone of the Democratic Party, but as I?ve written before, that?s traditional liberal thinking. Today, liberals are more concerned with racial and sexual equality, fighting against the Christian influence, and cutting carbon emissions. Obama also knows that senior citizens are predominately white and they very strongly supported Republicans in the 2010 elections. Cutting Social Security would be punishment for white people who voted against him.

What makes less sense is why Republicans are so adamant about keeping taxes low for the wealthiest Americans. As I keep pointing out, those with incomes greater than $ 250K supported Obama in 2008 and they still support him. Why do Republicans care so much about people who voted against them?

If Republicans were serious about cutting government spending, they would grab this deal. It?s a lot easier to find the political will in the future to lower taxes than it will be to cut Social Security. They can lower taxes again as soon as Obama is voted out of office, but the opportunity to cut entitlement spending is extraordinary and shouldn?t be passed up.

Half Sigma

Adolphe Muzito Ahmed Ouyahia Ahmed Shafik Aires Ali Alan Garcia

Egypt fires 600 top police officers in purge

July 14, 2011

CAIRO ? Egypt?s government sacked nearly 700 top police officers Wednesday, state television reported, the start of a promised cleansing of a force blamed for chronic abuses during the rule of Hosni Mubarak.

The move meets a key demand of protesters encamped in Cairo?s Tahrir Square who are frustrated by the slow pace of change since an 18-day uprising forced the long-entrenched president from office in February.

In another overture to protesters, Egypt?s state news agency reported that parliamentary elections, which had been slated for September, would be postponed by a month or two. That decision is likely to be welcomed by the burgeoning political parties that emerged from the uprising who worried that an early vote would make it difficult for them to compete with established groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

Protesters have called for the Interior Ministry to be restructured and purged of officers and Mubarak loyalists involved in the killing of nearly 900 protesters during the uprising. So far, just one person ? a noncommissioned police officer who was sentenced to death in absentia ? has been convicted for the killing of protesters.

The Mubarak-era interior minister, Habib al-Adli, has yet to stand trial for his alleged role in the deaths of protesters, but he has been convicted on fraud charges. Mubarak and his two sons, Gamal and Alaa, are scheduled to go on trial in August on graft charges and allegations linking them to the killing of protesters.

Mansour el-Eissawy, the current interior minister, fired 669 officers ? 505 major generals, 82 brigadier generals and 82 colonels ? on Wednesday, state television reported, just a fraction of the estimated 33,000 police officers who report to the Interior Ministry. Of those fired, at least 27 face charges related to killing protesters, state television reported.

Human right groups have criticized Egypt?s interim leadership, a council of top military leaders, for the slow pace of trials of police officers and for allowing officers who are under investigation to stay on the job.

One of the main gripes of many Egyptians is that while police and Mubarak-era officials still have not been tried for the killings, more than 7,000 people have been convicted on charges such as stealing and breaking curfew in hasty military tribunals.

The police and election announcements came as authorities scrambled to mollify protesters, some of whom are calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf.

Egypt?s military leadership effectively announced the postponement on Tuesday, when it said that preparations for the vote would start Sept. 30.

Many protesters welcomed the dismissal of the police officers, but wanted to see a wider purge, and demanded that those fired would not continue being paid.

?We need to make sure the right people are going out of service,? said Lilian Wagdy, an activist and blogger camped out in Tahrir Square.

Wagdy and many others argue that, despite Mubarak?s ouster, the backbone of his government is still in place through state media, the judiciary and the security apparatuses.

?We?re staying put until we see real concessions,? Wagdy said. ?We want the remnants of the old regime to fall and to start building a new state.?

An Egyptian human rights group says it has found evidence of police officers intimidating families of slain protesters and injured people to force them to drop their complaints. The group, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, has called for the immediate suspension of police officers under investigation for the killing of protesters, and on Wednesday, Eissawy also announced that 54 lower-ranking officers under investigation had been reassigned so they do not interact with the public.

World: World News, International News, Foreign Reporting – The Washington Post

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner Dalia Grybauskaite Dame Louise Lake Tack Dame Pearlette Louisy Daniel Ortega

One last shot

July 14, 2011

Owen Hargreaves isn’t likely to wrestle the mantle of workout video potentate from Jane Fonda, but then again, he’s not selling packaged units.

He’s selling himself.

A viral For Sale sign has been hung on the tendinitis-tortured Calgaryborn midfielder since his contract was allowed to run out by Manchester United at the beginning of this month.

A series of videos posted on YouTube show Hargreaves working out in the gym and on the field, attempting to at least in part allay the very understandable fitness fears of any prospective buyers. To convince people he isn’t damaged goods.

This is a man who has roughly 11 minutes of aggregate playing time on the books over the past two seasons. So these unorthodox web auditions are a bold, last-ditch appeal to salvage an improbable, once-meteoric career that has been sadly blighted by knee injuries.

And while the top view numbers -355,000 -won’t begin to challenge the latest cute-pet-does-goofy-trick video in widespread popularity, at least a few of the right people are tuning in.

“I saw his videos,” Championship side Leicester manager Sven-Goran Eriksson told the Daily Mirror.

Eriksson, of course, championed Hargreaves during his term as England boss, and the unblinking faith he put in the young, energetic holding midfielder remains one of the few positive remnants of the Swede’s failed Three Lions reign.

“If he wants to come here, I will open the door and stand for him in the door,” Eriksson continued. “He’s been very unlucky in recent years but if he’s close to what he was, he is a fantastic football player. I haven’t spoken to him for a while. Maybe I should.

“It’s difficult to know what he wants to do when he’s been away for a long time.”

The BBC is also reporting that West Bromwich Albion boss Roy Hodgson is keen on taking Hargreaves back into England’s top flight, the Premiership, but on a pay-for-play basis. The Baggies, apparently, may hook up with his representatives in the U.S. as soon as this week.

Meanwhile, there have been murmurs of interest from Major League Soccer sides Toronto FC and the Vancouver Whitecaps, which, to be honest, seem more whimsical speculation than anything.

It has certainly been a long, hard, cruel drop since the Canadian kid transformed himself into the teeth of the England national team’s midfield; since his big money transfer from Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich to sport’s most global brand, Man. U; since being serenaded by besotted United fans with his own slightly bawdy tribute ditty, to the tune of the Four Seasons hit Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You:

“Oh, Owen Hargreaves,

“U are the love of my life.

“Oh, Owen Hargreaves,

“I’d let you shag my wife.

“Oh, Owen Hargreaves,

“I want curly hair toooooooo .”

That was then. This is now.

Until the fitness videos were posted a couple of weeks back, the last sight we’d had of Hargreaves was hobbling dejectedly off the Old Trafford pitch on a desolate Nov. 7, clutching his left hamstring.

He had lasted a scant six minutes against Wolves on a premature return after a 22month injury layoff, pulling up lame after a cross into the box.

The significance of the still image of a shattered Hargreaves that day was unmissable:

Back to the camera. Entering a blackened tunnel, outlined in Manchester United colours and logo. A teammate in the front of the frame, slightly out of focus, standing, watching him depart . as if that would be the last anyone would see of Hargreaves.

When United decided not to renew, showing they had no faith he could recover enough to play again, it seemed nothing less than a confirmation of that November fear.

But Hargreaves has not gone through the litany of pain and doubt and rehab to simply quietly fade into the blackness.

So if teams wouldn’t come to him, he’d go to them.

Of course, the videos have spawned a few parodies. One, in South Park animation style, ends the training set with a cartoon Hargreaves imploring: “Give me a contract. Please.”

Which isn’t, in fact, all that far from the truth.

Working out in a gym on video, of course, is a far different reality than actually being thrust into the hurly-burly of the pitch, taking knocks, twisting knees, reaching for a lastditch tackle.

But perhaps these videos will be enough to convince someone -Roy Hodgson, Eriksson, whoever -that a player who once seemed destined for a long, illustrious career is worth a gamble.

All Hargreaves wants is a last chance. A bit of luck. Goodness knows, on that count he’s due.

On YouTube, whether shifting a run on the treadmill or digging in hard to dart to and fro between orange pylons, you watch him pushing each training drill to the max, as if his very career depends on them.

Which, in essence, it does.

Content Query

Alassane Ouattara Albert Camille Vital Alexander Lukashenko Ali Abdullah Saleh Ali Bongo Ondimba

President Hamid Karzai attends funeral for his half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, in Kandahar

July 14, 2011

KARZ, Afghanistan–President Hamid Karzai?s helicopter touched down at the family cemetery in a plume of dust Wednesday morning after the rest of the mourners had assembled, arriving by foot and in fleets of armored cars.

Under the white dome of the open-air mausoleum, the president stood for a moment and looked into the open grave that had been cut from a marble floor. The body of Ahmed Wali Karzai–his slain half-brother, the most influential power broker in southern Afghanistan–lay beneath a white sheet.

The president bowed his head, and appeared to be crying. The crowd surged in all around. Frantic bodyguards shouted and pushed against the mourners in vain.

?Go away, go away–you?ll bring him more sin,? one person shouted. Men in turbans wailed their misery. Cabinet ministers and army generals craned for a view. The president did not make a sound.

Above, U.S. military helicopters circled the cemetery and black smoke rose from the towering kiln nearby, where the poor residents of this village on the outskirts of Kandahar fire their bricks.

Afghan and American soldiers manned checkpoints for miles around to prevent the Taliban–which claimed responsibility for killing Ahmed Karzai–from taking aim at the ceremony.

Elsewhere in Kandahar province, officials said, the governor of Helmand province and a local intelligence chief were the targets of a remote-controlled bomb attack as they journeyed to the funeral. Both men escaped without injury, but two soldiers were hurt in the blast.

At the cemetery, President Karzai stepped down into the hole and knelt over his brother?s body; it is customary here to see the face of close relatives before they are buried. A web of men closed over the president, interlocking limbs in a hot press of bodies sweating through their clothes.

After a few seconds, Hamid Karzai climbed out of the grave, walking past the burial site of his father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, whose murder in 1999 galvanized his own political ambitions. The president slipped into a waiting car and departed. The grave diggers went back to work.

?It?s tough on us,? said Mahmood Karzai, another of the president?s brothers, who lingered by the grave. ?We?re not doing too well. It?s a big loss. It?s a big loss for us.?

Ahmed Wali Karzai was shot to death on Tuesday inside his home by Sardar Mohammad, a former guard at Karzai?s house who later commanded police officers in the villages around Karz, the ancestral home of the Karzai family.

Mohammad, who was shot by Karzai?s guards after the slaying, lived in Zakir, a village just down the road from the small tree-shaded family plot where Karzai?s funeral took place.

U.S. and Afghan officials say it is possible the Taliban may have influenced Mohammad?s decision to kill Karzai. But they also note that Karzai, who wielded enormous power in southern Afghanistan, had many political enemies.

Karzai, who in recent months had strengthened his on-again, off-again partnership with the United States, was the latest in a string of local Afghan leaders who have been assassinated.

?I don?t know why we?re losing these kinds of people one by one,? said Anwar Hamidi, the brother of Kandahar?s mayor, and an official in Karzai?s palace. ?We are worried.?

Gen. Abdul Razziq, Kandahar?s young police chief and a rising power in southern Afghanistan, was among the last to leave the cemetery.

?I hope his brothers will fill the gap and follow his footsteps and keep the tribes together,? Razziq said.

The grave diggers laid shrouds over the body and, on top of that, four concrete slabs. They piled dirt high above the grave and pushed in two saplings when they were done.

?Just leave, just leave this place,? an old man said to those who remained. ?This is our way.?

Special correspondents Javed Hamdard in Karz and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul contributed to this report.

World: World News, International News, Foreign Reporting – The Washington Post

Jens Stoltenberg Jhala Nath Khanal Jigme Thinley Joan Enric Vives Sicilia Johanna Siguroardottir

Robert Scheer: The GOP?s Sick Priorities

July 14, 2011

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The Blog

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?I?m a Christian Too; Welcome to Israel?

July 14, 2011

Ramblings of a Levantine Expat

From the outset, at El-Al?s JFK security counter Israel had already begun shattering stereotypes. My ?cross-examination? took roughly five minutes?even though I was told to expect a grueling five-hour interrogation (my first time flying El-Al.)

The airline?s security agents were tough as nails; deliberate, methodical, invasive even, but supremely courteous. They wanted to know why I was going to Israel, what was the purpose of my previous visits, the names of the conferences I had attended in previous years?at Beer Sheva and Tel Aviv?the names of some of my colleagues in Israel, my area of specialty, and the courses I teach at Boston College. It was all seemingly anodyne, and a legitimate line of questioning?albeit not the kind one would ordinarily expect when boarding a flight to Paris or Amsterdam. But I was not heading to either Paris or Amsterdam, and I came prepared for Israel?s tough(er) border-crossing politics.

I spent my childhood in the Middle East, in war-torn Lebanon to be exact. I know the predatory nature of my neighborhood. I also know how vigilant one must be to remain alive; ?if you?re not a wolf you shall be mauled and devoured by wolves? goes a popular Arab proverb. But in the end I was cleared for check-in and boarding, in under five-minutes, and my security agents were apologetic for having kept me a tad longer than the Jewish colleagues accompanying me on this trip. In fact, I was ?harassed??to use the term of my Jewish companions?far less than Israeli citizens, and I didn?t even feel as if I was being harassed. Israel has won this public relations battle as far as I am concerned. But the icing on the cake came during boarding, when one of the security agents who had been scrutinizing me and my passport earlier at the El-Al counter declined to see the boarding pass and passport I had handed him. He waved me through with a friendly tap on the shoulder, quipping ?I know who you are Franck, have a nice flight.?

The arrival in Israel was equally contrary to convention. Although I cannot say that on my previous trips I was ?detained? or ?harassed,” it took me exactly a half-hour of?overall friendly?Q&As with the shin bet before being given the entry stamp. This time around I was not singled out for questioning. It was only me and the ?menacing? immigration officer in-the-booth. She greeted me with a broad smile and a friendly Shalom, and spoke to me in Hebrew?to which I replied with the little Hebrew I could handle. But the minute she opened my passport and?I assume saw ?Beirut? on the ?place of birth? line?her complexion changed, her brows curled up, and the skin of her face stiffened. And although she had tried to keep her composure and her friendly disposition, it was clear that this was now serious business, and firmness was the name of the game. She asked all the routine questions: ?why are you here?? ?what?s the name of the conference you are attending?? ?what courses do you teach??, etc? Then came the serious part:

–?Where are you from?? she inquired.
–?Andover, Massachusetts, USA,? came my answer.
–?Where were you born??
–?Beirut Lebanon!?
–?How long ago was your last visit to Lebanon??
–?About ten years ago.?

Then, after grilling me on my father?s and grandfather?s names, she dropped her bombshell; the question she was itching to ask:

–?So, what are you; Muslim or Druze?? she queried.
–?Neither,? I said, ?I?m a Maronite from Mount-Lebanon!?

Her face lit up, she looked me in the eye, smiled, stamped my passport, and blurted out ?I?m a Christian too; welcome to Israel!?

Israpundit

Jose Eduardo dos Santos Jose Maria Neves Jose Mujica Jose Ramos Horta Jose Socrates

Belief In Man Made Global Warming Continues To Plummet

July 14, 2011

The Cult Of Gore continues it’s slow decline into the trash heap of other fads

Three-quarters of Americans say natural disasters are on the increase, but fewer than ever believe the climate is heating up, a new poll finds.

Seventy-six percent say hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes are becoming more frequent, and 31 percent say much more. Only 2 percent perceive a decline and 23 percent no change.

We’re actually gone over a 1,000 days since the last landfalling hurricane hit the USA, the longest time period since the Civil War.

Only 44 percent say they “believe the theory” that carbon dioxide emissions are warming the Earth, down from 51 percent in 2009 and 71 percent in 2007, but most movement has been into the “not sure” column.

The online poll of 2,163 adults was conducted June 13 through 20. Harris does not give margin-of-error figures.

I’m sure the Warmist will take comfort that Belief dipped just 7%, rather than the previous 20%. So, their next move is to go out and show that they do believe by practicing what they preach. Oh, who are we kidding: we all know that they will ramp up the awareness campaigns, continue the personal insults, agitate for government regulations, but, do little to nothing themselves to reduce their own “carbon footprints.”

Pirate’s Cove

Hashim Thaci Heinz Fischer Hifikepunye Pohamba Hosni Mubarak Hu Jintao

California counties talk of cutting ties to state

July 13, 2011

cutting-ties
Riverside County supervisors discussed a secession proposal by Jeff Stone, shown on screen,
during a meeting on Tuesday
Photo By Monica Almeida

By Jennifer Medina
The New York Times

RIVERSIDE, Calif. ? Natives here have long called this area the Inland Empire, a grand title for a stretch of cities about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Now, a few political leaders are hoping this empire will lead a movement to break off from the State of California.

Frustrated by a state government he calls ?completely dysfunctional? and ?totally unresponsive,? a conservative Republican county supervisor is pushing a proposal for roughly a dozen counties in the eastern and southern parts of the nation?s third-largest state ? conspicuously not including the heavily Democratic city of Los Angeles ? to form a new state to be called South California.

cutting-ties-2
The proposed state of South
California stretches inland

?We have businesses leaving all the time, and we?re just driving down a cliff to become a third-world economy,? said the supervisor, Jeff Stone, who once ran for the Legislature. ?Anyone you ask has a horror story. At some point we have to decide enough is enough and deal with it in a radically new way.?

He added: ?I am tired of California being the laughingstock of late-night jokes. We must change course immediately or create a new state.?

Mr. Stone?s list of complaints is long ? too much money spent on state prisons, too much power for public unions, too many regulations and not enough of a crackdown on illegal immigration. It seems clear that he has struck a nerve in some quarters; he said that his office has been inundated with thousands of e-mails, letters and phone calls supporting his call for secession.

?I?m 59 and have lived here all my life,? one man from Anaheim wrote. ?I?m about to leave the state, but if we could break from the liberal counties I?d stay. God bless you and let me know if I can help.?

While several other county supervisors initially dismissed the notion of seceding, on Tuesday the board unanimously approved Mr. Stone?s proposal to plan a conference for California municipal leaders to discuss ways to fix state government or consider secession ? although they said they would make sure that no county money or personnel were used to plan such an event.

In many respects, the rest of the state can feel worlds apart from the scenes of sandy beaches and lush wine groves that California is known for. And while the rest of the country thinks about the northern-southern divide of the state, for years the largest differences have been between the coastal and inland areas.

Outside the biggest cities, the landscape is dotted with orange groves instead of palm trees and deserts instead of coastlines, an environment that is generally more rural than urban. The population tends to be poorer and more socially and politically conservative ? Republicans outnumber Democrats in all but three of the counties in Mr. Stone?s proposed new state, which includes San Diego.

Calling for secession in difficult economic times is not a new idea ? more than 200 such proposals to break up California have been floated since the state was formed in 1850. In 1992, several northern counties held an advisory vote on secession, but it ultimately went nowhere.

The closest any campaign came to success was in 1941, when several counties in Northern California and southern Oregon campaigned to form the state of Jefferson. At the time, the counties said they did not have enough roads and created a ?Proclamation of Independence? for the 49th state ? Alaska and Hawaii had not yet joined the union.

But just as the movement was gaining traction, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and residents put aside their dreams for a new state to work on the war effort.

Calls to break from the rest the state are not unique to California. Parts of Texas, Florida and Idaho have all tried to divide from their home state in the last several decades. Although the details differ, the story line is basically the same ? one part of the state believes it is getting short shrift from the capital.

?The politics of victimhood are very powerful,? said Shaun Bowler, a political science professor at the University of California, Riverside. Mr. Stone?s effort taps into an angry undercurrent among many conservatives in the eastern part of the state. ?People have been mad for a long time. They seem to have a sense that if they keep shouting louder that they are right that they will convince the rest of the state that they are right.?

Under Mr. Stone?s proposal the state would have only a part-time Legislature, with lawmakers earning $ 600 a month. And there would be no term limits. One crucial element of California?s budget structure (and an article of faith among Republicans) would remain: a strict limit on property taxes.

Mr. Stone said he was particularly angered when the state?s budget diverted roughly $ 14 million from several newly incorporated cities in Riverside County. Jurupa Valley, for example, lost $ 6.4 million from its anticipated budget just a day before it was officially incorporated.

During the hourlong discussion of the proposal on Tuesday, the debate brought into clear focus the divide between Republicans and Democrats. Several speakers said they were angered by comments from Gov. Jerry Brown?s spokesman, who suggested that anyone who wanted to live with ?very conservative right-wing laws? could simply move to neighboring Arizona.

(The spokesman, Gil Duran, did not back down Tuesday, saying that the idea of secession was a ?pure joke that doesn?t merit serious attention.? He pointed out that the area Mr. Stone wants to peel off collects more money from the state than it generates. He added, ?It?s an escapist fantasy of someone more interested in a political stunt than focusing on his job.?)

Bob Buster, the chairman of the Board of Supervisors, initially called Mr. Stone?s idea a ?crazy distraction.? But he acknowledged that there was much to be unhappy about.

?There is a chronic unhappiness we have with the state that we cannot shake,? said Mr. Buster, who is not a registered member of either party. ?We?re already balkanized in this state. The problem is governance itself, but we need to work to fix the problems, not spend time talking about just taking our marbles and leaving.?

San Francisco Sentinel

Faure Gnassingbe Faustin Archange Touadera Felipe Calderon Fernando Lugo Filip Vujanovic

Gunrunner Comment of the Day

July 13, 2011

Comment of the day:

The Obama administration, charged with and sworn under oath to the task of enforcing the laws of this country, used a federal agency for the purpose of allowing the laws to be violated, so as to effect changes in the laws they don’t like.

And if they don’t get the law changed, they’ll just unilaterally change it themselves through agency regulation?

[ ... ]

This is the gravest dereliction of sworn duty I have witnessed in my lifetime. Almost directly, it led to the death of an agent under their control.

And it deserves at least 20 years with no parole in Leavenworth prison.

And it has expanded to the Tampa ATF Office, which is currently engaged in a coverup.

The Captain’s Journal

Marcus Stephen Mari Kiviniemi Mark Rutte Abbas El Fassi Abdelaziz Bouteflika

LATEST DEVELOPMENT: Leiby Kletzky Spotted On Multiple CCTV Cameras [UPDATED WITH IMAGE 5:53PM]

July 13, 2011

5:05PM EST (Tuesday): [UPDATES IN EXTENDED ARTICLE] Highly credible sources tell YWN that 9-year-old Leiby Kletzky has been spotted on CCTV footage walking on 44th Street in the area of 14th Avenue, after 5:00PM on Monday evening. We are also being told that there may be additional footage with Leiby in it. NYPD Detectives are in possession of the footage.

Based on this latest development, Shomrim Coordinators have decided to leave the Mobile Command Center at the current location of 15th Avenue and 57th Street.

Additionally, there are many false rumors going around. They are nothing more than that: False rumors.

YWN was the first to report this incident Monday night, and we will continue to bring you the most accurate information possible.

Hundreds and hundreds of volunteers are arriving from the Catskills, Lakewood, Monsey and other areas to assist in the search.

UPDATE 5:30PM EST: The additional footage mentioned earlier, shows Leiby walking on 44th Street near 17th Avenue, heading towards Dahill Road.

UPDATE 5:35PM EST: BoroParkScoop.com is reporting that the NYS Alert website has issued a ?missing child alert?.

(Dov Gordon ? YWN)

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Yeshiva World News

Alan Garcia Alassane Ouattara Albert Camille Vital Alexander Lukashenko Ali Abdullah Saleh

SYRIA: Government official slams Clinton?s criticism of Assad, ?flagrant? Western interference

July 13, 2011

An unnamed government source sharply denounced Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s condemnation of Syrian President Bashar Assad, calling it “provocative” evidence of the West’s “flagrant” intervention in local affairs, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

“We believe that any relationship between states should be built on the principle of noninterference and we hold the United States to this condition, hoping that they will not act in a way that is offensive to the Syrians,” added the official source.

Syria dialogue According to the source, the purpose of Clinton?s statement was to aggravate the already dire situation, an aim that coincides neither with Syrian interests nor with the wellbeing of the Syrian people as a whole.

Clinton’s criticism of Assad came after an attack by pro-regime protestors on the American and French embassies Monday afternoon.

“He has lost legitimacy. He has failed to deliver on the promises he’s made,” Clinton told reporters in Washington. “He is not indispensible. We have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power,” she said.

The Syrian source responded that the Syrian president’s legitimacy did not extend from the United States but from the Syrian people themselves who “show their daily support of the regime and the reform initiatives.”

Meanwhile, in Damascus, Syrian intelligence officers came down on anti-regime protestors on the heels of the state-sponsored dialogue?s final session, reported one activist, Omar Idilby, on Tuesday.

The country’s main network of activists, the Local Coordination Committee, boycotted the regime-backed, three-day round of negotiations held to discuss future reforms.

The negotiations, which Assad termed “consultative meetings,” began on Sunday and ended with a statement listing vague points of consensus among participants without outlining a tangible framework for advancement.

Points mentioned included “recommending that all those who were detained during the recent incidents and who have not been proven guilty by the judicial authorities be released” and ”turning attention to the young Syrian generation and listening to their voice and requirements.

Opposition figures had foreseen the futility of the national dialogue.

“Nothing is going to change because no one has the power to change. The president has all the prerogatives. He is the ruler, the judge. He is God,” said Omar Hamwe, a member of the LCC, from Hama on Sunday, the first day of the national dialogue.

– Roula Hajjar in Beirut

Photo: Participants discuss goals for reform in the regime-backed national dialogue session in Damascus. Credit: Syrian Arab News Agency

Babylon & Beyond

Ali Mohammed Mujur Almazbek Atambayev Alpha Conde Alvaro Colom Amadou Toumani Toure

?The Stand?: Schwarzenegger To Start First New Film, A Drug Cartel Actioner, In September

July 13, 2011

Schwarzenegger will be starring as Sheriff Owens, a man who has resigned himself to a life of fighting what little crime takes place in sleepy border town Sommerton Junction after leaving his LAPD post following a bungled operation that left him wracked with failure and defeat after his partner was crippled. After a spectacular escape from an FBI prisoner convoy, the most notorious, wanted drug kingpin in the hemisphere is hurtling toward the border at 200 mph in a specially outfitted car with a hostage and a fierce army of gang members. He is headed, it turns out, straight for Summerton Junction, where the whole of U.S. law enforcement will have their last opportunity to make a stand and intercept him before he slips across the border forever. At first reluctant to become involved, and then counted out because of the perceived ineptitude of his small town force, Owens ultimately accepts responsibility for one of the most daring face offs in cinema history.

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Pat Dollard

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Anti-Defamation League opposes Israel boycott law

July 13, 2011

ADL president visiting in Israel says while the league opposes boycott of Israel, law allows government to ‘legally stifle calls to action’,
is disservice to Israel’s democratic nature

By Shlomo Shamir
Haaretz

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) expressed serious concern over the recently passed boycott law on Tuesday, calling it an unnecessary impingement of Israelis? basic democratic right to freedom of speech.

The league?s President, Abraham H. Foxman, who is currently in Israel, issued a statement Tuesday saying that while the ADL ?has a long history of vigorous opposition to any and all boycotts of Israel?, the recently passed law runs counter to the league?s belief in the importance of democratic ideals.

anti-defamation-leage

Foxman went on to commend Israel for its ?vibrant democracy?, adding that the six-hour-long debate in Knesset Monday before the bill was passed was testimony to this. However, he said, the boycott law is a disservice to Israel?s democratic nature, allowing the government to ?legally stifle calls to action ? however abhorrent and detrimental they might be?.

He then called on the Supreme Court to take up a review of the law ?and resolve the concerns it raises?.

According to the recently passed law, a person or an organization calling for the boycott of Israel, including the settlements, can be sued by the boycott’s targets without having to prove that they sustained damage.

The court will then decide how much compensation is to be paid. The second part of the law says a person or a company that declare a boycott of Israel or the settlements will not be able to bid in government tenders.

See Related: Israeli groups condemn boycott law

See Related: Israel?s boycott law: The quiet sound of going Fascist

See Related: Israel passes law banning calls for boycott

San Francisco Sentinel

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Funny Military Image Slideshow + More

July 13, 2011

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Funny Military Image Slideshow

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Fail

Revisionist History

Submitted

Motivation

And now for a cartoon

PA Pundits – International

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Hackers steal 90,000 email addresses in cyber attack on US military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton

July 13, 2011

An arm of the online collective Anonymous said it had broken into the computer systems of Booz Allen Hamilton and then posted the details on the internet.

They apparently were only able to get encrypted versions of the email passwords, around 53,000 of which carried the military ?.mil? domains.

Email addresses are valuable to hackers because the owners can be sent spoof emails designed to entice them to click on a link to download malicious software.

Anup Ghosh, founder of the Invincea security company, said: ?Usually five to 20 per cent of recipients will click if it’s a well-crafted email,”

The hackers also wiped out four gigabytes of Booz Allen source code in an attack they called ?Military Meltdown Monday.?

World news

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Chicagoans Overwhelmingly Vote to Ban Palin, Beck & Coulter Books at Book Fair- With Video

July 13, 2011

RebelPundit:

In June we attended the Printer?s Row Literature Festival in Chicago. City blocks were closed off for tents and booths full of all types of literature. We presented a board with a selection of well known book covers and asked visitors of the event if they could choose to ban any of the books on the board, which if any, they would in fact ban. They were allowed to choose any three of the eleven choices.

The authors of the books we offered to ban were Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Andrew Breitbart, Ayn Rand, Michael Savage, Bill Clinton, Michael Moore, Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler and Barack Obama. While there were in fact less than two handfuls of individuals who did tell us they don?t think any books should be banned, unfortunately there were a shocking amount of guests at this book fair who were quite open to the idea, and in fact lined up quite excited for the opportunity to voice their opinion.

Participants overwhelming chose Sarah Palin who received 53 votes putting her at 36% overall, Glenn Beck at 23% and Ann Coulter at 22%. All of the other choices received a very minimal amount of votes, with the next most popular to ban being Adolf Hitler at 0.5%. Ironically, Michael Savage, who has been banned from entering Britain over things he often says, did not receive one vote to have his words banned in Chicago.

UPDATE: Because you asked. Nine people explicitly stated to us they thought banning books was wrong, including two individuals who voted on the board but later approached us to say, (paraphrasing) ?I think I made a mistake, and wanted to take my votes back if I could, because after further reflection, I think banning any book is wrong.? This accounts for 0.6% of the votes cast. We have provided percentages based on the number of votes cast, not the amount of people participating, due to the fact that some people did not use all three of the votes they were allowed. For those of you incapable of comprehending, for the record; this was not a scientific study.

Pat Dollard » Politics

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Panetta Spins

July 13, 2011

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was in Iraq yesterday. He said two things that are interesting. First, he connected the unrest in Iraq to al-Qaeda, claiming that there are 1,000 terrorists in the country. He told a gathering of soldiers “The reason you guys are here is because of 9/11. The US got attacked and 3,000 human beings got killed because of Al-Qaeda. “We’ve been fighting as a result of that.” The comment has either been seen as a gaffe or as the implausible but generally expected citation of al-Qaeda to tie in the continued Iraqi presence of American soldiers to the terrors of 9/11, a common ploy used by politicians when they have no other argument to make. Subject, verb, 9/11.

His second comment was that Iran is behind the weapons being used to kill American soldiers in Iraq. He said that the weapons had been provided to Shi?ite militias that are opposed to the US presence in the country. He was obviously referring to militias controlled by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. He said that the United States would act unilaterally to defend its soldiers and would also be taking other unspecified steps to counter the Iranian involvement.

The comment on al-Qaeda’s presence might or might not be based on solid evidence, though one has to doubt whether the United States has much good intelligence on any insurgent groups in Iraq. One might also note that there was no al-Qaeda infrastructure in Iraq when the United States invaded in 2003. The subsequent occupation by as many as 160,000 US troops and the widespread reports of abuses like Abu Ghraib actually served as a magnet to bring al-Qaeda in. Does Panetta really regard al-Qaeda in Iraq as a threat to the United States? It is not clear, but it would appear the Administration would like to have us think so.

The issue of Iranian support for Shi?a militias is more serious in that it can be considered to be a casus belli, i.e. ?they are killing our troops.? It also ties into a recent comment by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen and a reported statement by senior State Department official in Iraq Thomas Nides. Nides admitted that there was no actual proof that Iran was involved, only ?classified intelligence.? In other words, “I can’t tell you but I think it’s true.”

I have been following this issue ever since it was first surfaced in 2005, when it was claimed that Iranian supplied improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were being used in Iraq, and, later, in Afghanistan. The evidence for the Iranian involvement has always been on the thin side, particularly as it was subsequently discovered that many of the weapons were being manufactured in a former bicycle factory in Iraq. They are definitely low tech and the need for Iranian involvement was always somewhat suspect.

Iran is perpetually the government’s favorite target for abuse and it will likely only get worse as the presidential election approaches. It is interesting how the White House sees Iran as a problem because the United States has hundreds of thousands of troops in the neighborhood. Take away the troops, who are dying while accomplishing absolutely nothing, and Bingo! Iran ceases to be a problem.

The American Conservative

Islam Karimov Ismail Haniyeh Ismail Omar Guelleh Ivan Gasparovic Iveta Radicova

Video: The Amazing Race In Israel

July 13, 2011

“He single-handedly does the best job of knocking down Israel haters online that I’ve ever seen” – Israelplug

“The father of Israeli blogging” – Carl in Jerusalem

“..expertly analyzes international media reactions to the news in Israel” – Maya Norton, Global Voices

“Snarky humor, funny photo comparisons, and frustrations with the geopolitical neighborhood all clash for a lovely symphony of madness.” – Laurence Simon

“..wise and passionate..” – Political Vindication Radio

“He can turn a very serious and possibly depressing piece of news and make it entertainment. That is talent, and that is why I love to read his blog.” – Culture For All

“..the notorious Israellycool.com, which gently skips between right-wing rants against Islam, posts about science fiction and – what else? – blogs about the Eurovision song contest.” – Tim Jonze, The Guardian

“..the liar & moral pygmy who writes Israellycool & makes feeble attempts to ridicule my views” – Dick Silverstein

Israellycool

Borut Pahor Boyko Borisov Bronislaw Komorowski Bruce Golding Carlos Gomes Junior

Small Businesses Aren?t Hiring, New Chamber Survey Says

July 13, 2011

Man, if only we could build some high speed rail, tackle patent reform, and do away with tax cuts for private jets, everything would be OK

The U.S. labor market could stay sluggish for a while, with small-business executives reluctant to hire amid the murky economic outlook.

Almost two-thirds?64%?of small-business executives surveyed said they weren’t expecting to add to their payrolls in the next year and another 12% planned to cut jobs, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report to be released Monday. Just 19% said they would expand their work forces. (snip)

More than half of the small-business executives in the June 27-30 survey cited economic uncertainty as the main reason for holding back on hiring. About a third blamed lack of sales, while just 7% pointed to problems getting credit. (snip)

Many of the executives surveyed were gloomy about the economy’s prospects. About 41% see the business climate getting worse over the next two years, compared with 29% who expect the climate to improve.

But, hey, by all means, let’s raise the income tax on small business owners. That should help them hire, right? Perhaps a few more regulations and burdensome fees (such as with ObamaCare). And some more demagoguery for the people who help the economy go.

Pirate’s Cove

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Tell Me It?s Not a Depression

July 12, 2011

Warning Signs

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Obama calls on GOP to negotiate long-term debt deal

July 12, 2011

WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama on Monday rejected the possibility of a stop-gap deal to lower the U.S. government’s debt, challenging Republicans to “pull off the Band-Aid” and negotiate a politically painful, long-term agreement to reduce America’s borrowing.

Seeking to get high-stakes debt talks back on track after a weekend impasse, Obama said he remains intent on “doing the biggest deal possible” but warned negotiations are doomed if Republicans refuse to any increase in U.S. tax revenues.

“If not now, when?” Obama said at a White House news conference.

“I’ve been hearing from my Republican friends for quite some time that it is a moral imperative for us to tackle our debt and our deficits in a serious way . . . And so, what I’ve said to them is, ‘Let’s go.’ “

Obama’s decision to ramp up pressure on GOP leaders came after Republican House Speaker John Boehner abandoned negotiations seeking a “grand bargain” to cut $ 4 trillion from the U.S. debt over the next decade.

Boehner, faced with internal opposition from conservative Tea Party members of the Republican congressional caucus, told Obama the GOP would not vote for a deal that saw any increase in tax revenues.

Instead, Republicans are now pushing for a less ambitious agreement to slash $ 2 trillion in debt, almost entirely by cutting spending.

But with the U.S. heading into another election cycle in early 2012, Obama said there would never be a better opportunity to make the tough decisions needed to place the U.S. back on a sustainable budget track.

The U.S. is facing an Aug. 2 deadline to pass legislation to raise the nation’s statutory $ 14.3 trillion debt ceiling, with Republicans demanding a plan to cut debt be struck in exchange for their support. Without a deal, the U.S. would exhaust its borrowing capacity and begin to default on its debt.

Republican leaders, for their part, accuse the White House of using the threat of debt default as a straw man to push through job-killing tax hikes.

According to Boehner, Republicans are prepared to vote in favour of raising the debt ceiling in exchange for a debt-reduction deal that includes mandatory cuts on future spending.

Under that scenario, “the administration gets its debt limit increase and the American people get their spending cuts,” Boehner said.

“Our disagreement is over the idea of raising taxes on the very people we are asking to create jobs for the American people.”

Obama, in a bit of presidential brinkmanship, flatly ruled out a temporary agreement to raise the debt ceiling for a short period of time, then negotiate a longer term deal later.

“I will not sign a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day extension. That is just not an acceptable approach,” Obama said.

“If we think it’s hard now, imagine how these (congressional) guys are going to be thinking six months from now in the middle of election season when they’re all up (for re-election),” he said. “It’s not going to get easier; it’s going to get harder. So we might as well do it now, pull off the Band-Aid, eat our peas.”

Obama’s comments came in advance of a Monday afternoon meeting with congressional leaders from both parties designed to find areas of compromise.

The U.S. president is said to have asked Republicans and Democrats to return to the bargaining table with elements of a deal that could win majority support in their respective caucuses.

The $ 4 trillion debt reduction deal Obama is seeking is said to include $ 800 million of tax revenue increases, none beginning until 2013.

While Obama can’t control votes in Congress, he can command the bully pulpit ? and he used it Monday to cast Democrats as the party of compromise and Republicans as the party of no.

Even as Republicans dig in on the issue of raising tax revenues, the president said he was prepared to risk support among Democratic voters by making changes to key social programs for the elderly, including Medicare and Social Security.

“If each side takes a maximalist position, if each side wants 100 per cent of what its ideological predispositions are, then we can’t get anything done.”

Obama repeatedly praised Boehner, the Republican leader with whom he has recently developed a close working relationship.

Boehner had been advocating a sweeping debt reduction deal that would include an overhaul of the complicated U.S. tax code. But he has backed away from the possibility of raising tax rates on wealthier Americans in the face of staunch opposition from within the GOP House and Senate caucus.

South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, a leader of the Tea Party faction within the Republican Party, said Obama is fear mongering about the possibility of a debt default.

If the debt ceiling is not raised, the U.S. could still repay its loans if it made dramatic cuts in spending, DeMint said.

“We would like to get this deal done,” DeMint said in a televised interview. “We will give the president an increase in the debt limit, but only if the Democrats help us send to the states an opportunity to ratify a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.”

Complicating the situation further for Republican negotiators are several GOP presidential candidates ? including former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann ? who are opposed to raising the U.S. debt ceiling at all.

“This is part of the problem with a political process where folks are rewarded for saying irresponsible things to win elections or obtain short-term political gain,” Obama said.

Republicans have noted that Obama, as a U.S. senator, once voted against raising the U.S. debt ceiling himself.

Despite the obstacles to a deal, Obama said he refused to consider the possibility of a U.S. debt default.

“We are going to get this done by August 2nd,” he said.

salberts(at)postmedia.com

Vancouver Sun – News / World

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