BREAKING NEWS: Stand With the Prophet … or the WEST?

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The United West is conducting an unofficial survey at the Muslim Brotherhood sponsored “Stand with the Prophet Against Terror and Hate” conference in Garland, Texas.

This survey includes distributing a flyer that compares the Islamic State’s Quranic mandate to kill those who depict Mohammed in any drawings against Western Civilization’s acceptance and tolerance for even that which offends. We are asking the question – Which do you choose?

Stay tuned for regular updates throughout today and on Monday’s show, Enemies of the State, January 19, 2015, at 4:00 p.m, Eastern Standard Time on www.TheUnitedWest.org.

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Why Stick with Marriage?

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My latest column on National Review is a response to two recent books by major family scholars Andrew Cherlin, and Isabel Sawhill–both of whom suggest we should give up on promoting marriage per se and promote stable committed relationships: I explain why that is not a practical suggestion:

“In Generation Unbound, the Brookings Institution’s Isabel Sawhill regretfully says she no longer believes reviving marriage is possible for the less-educated two-thirds of America. The old marriage norm should be replaced with a new social script: It is wrong to have children that are unplanned. “The old norm was ‘don’t have a child outside of marriage.’ The new norm should be ‘don’t have a child before you want one and are ready to parent.’” How would a young adult know whether he or she is “ready”? Like Cherlin, Sawhill retreats to the idea of “commitment”: “For most people it means completing their education, having a steady job, and having a committed partner.”

Here’s my problem with this nice-sounding new script: I think the majority of young people who have children outside marriage are already doing that, to the best of their limited youthful abilities.

Sixty percent of births to unwed mothers, as Sawhill notes, are to cohabiting women. Most of the recent increase in single motherhood has come from increasing births to women who are cohabiting, not solo moms.

The problem with retreating from marriage as a bright line is that, in practical terms, young women in love are not very good at figuring out whether or not they are in a committed relationship.

A 2008 study by Kathryn Kost and colleagues, found that . . . .cohabitation is one of the most serious risk factors for contraceptive “failure.” In 2002, one out of five cohabiting women reported contraceptive “failure,” double the risk for married women. Compared with never-married or divorced single women, only cohabiting women had a significantly higher risk of contraceptive failure than married women.”

Retreating from marriage to “stable relationships” doesn’t work because cohabiting women believe they are in stable loving relationships, that is one reason they aren’t that motivated to prevent birth. I end with a modest proposal: “[T]he truth is we simply haven’t tried to do very much to encourage marital childbearing in this country. Before we give up completely, may I suggest one idea that would cost virtually no money at all and would involve no new government program?”

Why Stick with Marriage?

It’s still the best arrangement for kids — and parents

The news about marriage is not very good. A Pew Center analysis of American Community Survey data, released a few weeks ago, found that less than half of American children live with a married couple who are both in their first marriage — the intact, nuclear, married family — down from 61 percent as recently as 1980. Meanwhile the proportion of children who live with an unmarried parent (or parents) nearly doubled, from 19 percent to 34 percent.

(Of course, some of the 15 percent of children who live with parents who have remarried are the product of those new marital unions, and so they are also living in an intact married family. But while it may not be quite as bad as the Pew analysis suggest, it’s bad enough, with little or no sign of getting better.)

Two major family scholars, Andrew Cherlin and Isabel Sawhill, have recently released books tracing the decline of marriage.

Both books are morally as well as intellectually serious; both resist false dichotomies, recognizing that economics and cultural norms both play a role in the decline of marriage; both are generous to conservative thinkers on marriage with whom they only partly agree; and, most important, each scholar acknowledges the powerful scientific evidence that the decline of marriage has hurt children.

Yet each, in his or her way, is urging us to give up on the marriage line as no longer possible to defend or promote. Each wishes us to adapt to the collapse of marriage for the two-thirds of the population that is not college-educated by redrawing social norms of commitment at a different place than marriage.

In Labor’s Love Lost, Professor Andrew Cherlin beats the softer retreat:

We need to find ways to support stable partnerships without returning to the gender imbalances of the past. Stable partnerships do not necessarily involve marriage, but in the United States . . . cohabitation remains largely a short-term arrangement. So while supporting stable long-term cohabiting relationships should be part of any effort to stabilize working-class families, in practice much of what we may choose to do will consist of strengthening marriage among those who want it.

focus public efforts on a message that is distinct from encouraging marriage per se: urging young adults to wait to have their first child until they are confident that they are in a committed lasting partnership, either marital or cohabiting.

In Generation Unbound, the Brookings Institution’s Isabel Sawhill regretfully says she no longer believes reviving marriage is possible for the less-educated two-thirds of America. The old marriage norm should be replaced with a new social script: It is wrong to have children that are unplanned. “The old norm was ‘don’t have a child outside of marriage.’ The new norm should be ‘don’t have a child before you want one and are ready to parent.’” How would a young adult know whether he or she is “ready”? Like Cherlin, Sawhill retreats to the idea of “commitment”: “For most people it means completing their education, having a steady job, and having a committed partner.”

Here’s my problem with this nice-sounding new script: I think the majority of young people who have children outside marriage are already doing that, to the best of their limited youthful abilities.

Sixty percent of births to unwed mothers, as Sawhill notes, are to cohabiting women. Most of the recent increase in single motherhood has come from increasing births to women who are cohabiting, not solo moms.

The problem with retreating from marriage as a bright line is that, in practical terms, young women in love are not very good at figuring out whether or not they are in a committed relationship.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in National Review. Featured image courtesy of NRO and Dreamstime.

Obama to Congress — don’t pass sanctions — I wish to negotiate from a position of weakness

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President Obama and his cohort David Cameron, Prime Minister of Great Britain, are lobbying Congress not to pass a sanctions bill to take affect if Iran fails to give up its nuclear weapons program. At the same time Obama says he would have no trouble passing sanctions if talks fail.

So, it appears Obama’s threat of sanctions if talks fail is okay, but Congress’ sanctions if talks fail is some way not okay. It appears Obama feels his threat of sanctions would not be taken seriously by Iran but Congress’ would.

The low price of oil and its effects on the Iranian economy is precisely the time to pass sanctions legislation. The original sanction got Iran to the negotiating table in the first place.

Iran is a Radical Islamic terrorist State which Obama fails to acknowledge in the same way he ignores the existence of Radical Islamic terrorists. As a result of Obama’s negotiating position, Iran is on the cusp of achieving a nuclear weapons breakout. This in turn will result in the proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the Middle East.

Under these circumstances it is imperative for the U.S. Congress and Senate, both Republicans and Democrats to pass a sanctions bill without delay to take the necessary steps to protect America and its Allies and to prevent a future nuclear war and Armageddon.

What would have happened if Hitler had nuclear bombs and missiles? The parallel between the 1930’s and today are frightening.

  • Hitler wanted to create the 1,000 year Reich; Iran wishes to create the 1,000 year Caliphate.
  • Hitler rearmed in violation of Germany’s treaty; Iran is developing nuclear weapons in violation of its nuclear non-proliferation agreement.
  • Hitler wished to kill all Jews; Iran wishes to wipe Israel and its Jewish population off the face of the earth.
  • Once again Jews are being killed in Europe and are forced to emigrate because of the rising tide of Anti-Semitism; and Christians throughout the Muslim world are being killed solely because they are Christians.
  • Neville Chamberlain failed to understand Hitler; and Obama fails to understand Iran’s Radical Ayatollahs and their intention to establish a worldwide Islamic Caliphate.

Is there any doubt if Hitler had nuclear weapons Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other great U.S. cities would have been incinerated? Hitler chose death rather than surrender.

There is little doubt Ayatollah Khamenei would also seek death and Islamic Martyrdom if faced with defeat. Therefore the concept of ‘containment’ or mutual assured destruction (MAD) which appears to be Obama’s policy has no validity.

RELATED ARTICLE: Obama warns U.S. Congress against more sanctions on Iran

NASA Keeps Telling “Warmest” Lies

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On January 16 The New York Times reported the lies NASA keeps telling about global warming with an article titled “2014 Breaks Heat Record, Challenging Global Warming Skeptics.” We have reached the point where neither a famed government agency nor a famed daily newspaper can be believed simply because both are lying to advance the greatest hoax of the modern era.

Cartoon - Polar VortexRemember that 2014 started off with something called a “polar vortex” to describe the incredibly cold weather being experienced and remember, too, that we were being told that it was evidence of global warming! That’s how stupid the “Warmists” who keep saying such things think we are.

The Earth is in the 19th year of a natural cooling cycle based on the reduced radiation of the Sun which is in its own natural cycle. It hasn’t been getting warmer and most people who give it any thought at all know the truth of that.

Enough people have concluded this that, according to a recent CNN poll, more than half, 57%, say that global warming is not a global threat. In addition, the poll revealed that only 50% of Americans believe the alleged global warming is not caused by man-made emissions, while 23% believe it is the result of natural changes, and 26% believe global warming is not a proven fact.

That’s progress. No youngster under the age of 19 has ever experienced a single day of global warming. No computer model that ever predicted it has been accurate. Neither the Pope nor the President, nor any other world leader who repeats the global warming claim is correct.

The latest claim came from NASA and, as I continue to remind readers, it is a government agency whose budget depends on parroting the lies the President keeps telling about global warming.

Astrophysicist, Dr. David Whitehouse, said “The NASA press release is highly misleading…talk of a record is scientifically and statistically meaningless.” He was joined by climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer who said “We are arguing over the significance of hundredths of a degree.”

Do you believe that a hundredth of a degree makes a difference? Well, it does if you are a government agency desperately trying to keep the global warming hoax alive. Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels asked “Is 58.46 degrees distinguishable from 58.45 degrees? In a word, NO.”

Marc Morano, the editor of CFACT’s ClimateDepot.com, said, “There are dueling global data-sets—surface temperature records and satellite records—and they disagree. The satellites show an 18 year-plus global warming standstill and the satellite was set up to be ‘more accurate’ than the surface records.” As for the NASA claim, Morano dismissed it as “simply a political statement not based on temperature gauges.” Morano, a former member of the staff of the U.S. Senate Environmental & Public Works Committee, is working on an upcoming documentary “Climate Hustle.”

How does this affect you? The lie that carbon dioxide and methane emissions, dubbed “greenhouse gases”, are causing global warming is the basis for the Obama administration’s attack on the nation’s energy sector and, in particular, the provision of electricity by coal-fired plants. In the past six years many of these plants have been shut down or will be. The result is less electricity and higher prices for electricity. The other result is an attack on the oil and natural gas industry that drill to access these resources. There is not a scintilla of truth to justify what is being done to Americans in the name of global warming.

There is yet another result and that is the loss of jobs in the energy sector and the reduction in revenue to the nation and states it represents. The nation’s economy overall has been in sluggish state which the word “growth” doesn’t even begin to describe. That hurts everyone.

Heartland - Climate NewsMost of us don’t have a lot of time to get up to speed and stay there regarding the facts surrounding global warming or climate change. An excellent source of information is the Environment & Climate News, a monthly publication by The Heartland Institute, a thirty year old non-profit free market think tank that will sponsor its tenth annual International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, D.C. in June.

NASA has been allowed to degrade to the point where the agency that sent men to the Moon no longer has the capacity to even transport them to Mir, the space station built by the Russians. We have gone from the world’s leader in space exploration to an agency that has been turned into a propaganda machine asserting that a hundredth of a degree “proves” that global warming is happening.

The U.S. and the rest of the world are setting records, but they are records for how cold it has become everywhere. There was snow recently in Saudi Arabia from a storm that swept across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Does that sound like global warming to you? For an excellent source of information on the cooling of the planet, visit http://iceagenow.info.

You have an obligation to yourself, your family, friends and co-workers to not just know the truth but to denounce entities like NASA, the EPA, and The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, and others that keep repeating the lies about global warming.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

Radical Islamist or Violent Extremism: “What difference does it make?”

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Earlier today, we posted on the purported contrast in responses at yesterday’s White House joint news conference by UK Prime Minister David Cameron and President Obama  to a question raised by BBC correspondent, Nick Robinson about “the threat posed by fighters coming back from Syria”.  See: UK PM Cameron versus President Obama on Radical Islamic Terror Threat.

We learned early on after 9/11 to let public figures, whether media or political figures define themselves by their actions, not their nuanced words. The same is true for demonstrable Islamic terrorist actions seeking to impose self-censorship by deadly actions. The latest examples were the massacres in Paris at the Charlie Hebdoeditorial offices and the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket. Then there was the stunning slaughter of thousands in Baga, Nigeria by Boko Haram. Jews in France, Belgium, and the UK  have been the subject of Islamic terror attacks by Al Qaeda and Islamic State sympathizers and vets resulting in tens of deaths over the past decade. They no longer feel secure and contend they have no future in countries that cannot protect them. Despite the great play by the media following yesterday’s Joint White House Press Conference where PM Cameron used the “Radical Islamic expression while President Obama painfully avoided it. He choosing instead the opaque expression “violent extremism” full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. The reality is there is no difference between Cameron and Obama. They both ultimately avoid the “M” word for fear of arousing more unsettling Islamic terrorist actions begetting another round of public self-censorship. Have they evaded their responsibilities to define the doctrinal Islamist threat? Our Iconoclast post prompted Canadian Lawyer, Bill Narvey to write the following response.

Too much is being made of the descriptive differences employed by President Obama and PM Cameron in their speaking of the terrorists that attacked Charlie Hebdoand the kosher market.

What they are saying is really not that much different.

Obama refuses to use the words Muslim, Islamist, Jihadist, Muslim fundamentalist and the like to describe the terrorists.  Whereas Cameron does use those words, but then says these terrorists are not real Muslims or that they are perverting the teachings of the peaceful or great religion of Islam.

Obama has made that same point before a number of times.  For instance, several months ago he made a big thing about denying that Islam had anything to do with ISIS/ISIL.  He too, since his Cairo apology tour has been speaking of the peaceful or great religion of Islam.

Both Cameron and Obama also are quick to emphasize the point that the extremists or Muslim terrorists, whichever description your tongue can tolerate, are relatively few and that the vast majority of Muslims are good, decent and law abiding people.

They think that saying these things will be appreciated by the Jihadists and thus not piss them off more than they already are.  That the so called vast majority of the Muslim world will thank them for saying such nice things about them and Muslim relations with non-Muslim Westerners are enhanced by saying such nice things like the vast majority of the Muslim world are really good guys.

Even conservative commentators, such as those on Fox News are quick to qualify whatever criticisms or reporting they are doing on Jihadists, with those disclaimers.  While they pat themselves on the back for not shying away from calling Muslim terrorists, Muslim, Jihadist, Muslim fundamentalists and Islamists. unlike their media competition.  They exhibit by their own disclaimers that they too suffer to some extent from political correctness.  Perhaps it is also even fear they feel, but won’t admit.  If not for themselves, then for the many thousands of Fox employees who might be the target of some Muslim enraged by a Fox reporter who dares to speak bluntly about Muslim terrorism and Islamic scripture Jihadists liberally quote to justify their Jihadism.

The age old wise caution by Sun Tzu, “know your enemy” is obviously very relevant to devising a winning strategy against your enemy.  Both Obama and Cameron fail in that regard as aforesaid.

Strategies and tactics to defeat an enemy however are not just about whether you dare to call your enemy by name, describe your enemy’s nature and know what moves them to be your enemy.

If you know who it is who wants to kill you and you know that they will not stop until they succeed, what you call these people and understanding what moves them becomes far less important than just focusing on devising strategies and tactics to kill them first.  After the enemy is dead one can spend more time navel gazing on what made them your enemy.

Both Obama and Cameron, like Cameron’s fellow EU leaders are failing miserably in this regard.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

A New Year: Why Mr. President, Why?

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Happy New Year my fellow Americans. Getting my butt back into the gym is my New Year Resolution. I saw a guy I thought was around my age who looked fantastic, very muscular. He said he was 57; his secret was protein and creatine supplements.

As I begin 2015, another year into the battle to save my country, I observe the daily news thinking, “Same old, same old.” President Obama continues to, in essence, give congress and American voters the finger; arrogantly governing unilaterally against the best interest, the will and protection of the American people.

My dear friend Victoria Jackson, former star of SNL, has been deemed a nut case for calling Obama a Muslim and a communist. While I can not confirm whether or not Vickie and other pundits are correct in their assessment, clearly Obama is on a different page than those of us who love freedom and America.

The question which continues to nag millions of Americans is why does this man do what he does? Why Mr President, why?

Why did you bring Ebola to America? Why do you refuse to place a travel ban into America from Ebola riddled countries?

After abdicating your responsibility to enforce immigration law, why did you sued Arizona for enforcing immigration law; leaving Arizonians open to attacks from immigration smugglers and violent Mexican drug cartels?

Why do you block border patrol officers from doing their job? Why did you dis American voters by granting executive amnesty to five million illegals?

Why are you planning to give illegals social security numbers, opening the floodgates for them to claim any number of credits; rewarding them for entering our country illegally with checks written by American taxpayers?

You once admitted that an influx of illegal immigrants will harm “the wages of blue-collar Americans” and “put strains on an already overburdened safety net.” Why then would you implement an open border policy guaranteed to attract the poor from around the world; encouraging them to break our immigration laws and receive taxpayer funded handouts?

Why have you forced schools across America to take in illegal students carrying various diseases?

Why did you refuse to call the shooting at Fort Hood a “terrorist attack” which blocked the victims and their families from receiving their entitled combat benefits? Why did you run to read the Boston bomber his Miranda rights which blocked interrogators from questioning him about other planned attacks on Americans?

Why did you join Al “scumbag” Sharpton and other race profiteers in furthering their insidious divisive hate-generating lie that America’s police target and murder blacks?

Why did you lie to the American people on at least 29 occasions that if they like their health-care plan and their doctor they could keep them?

Why did you attempt to bully the beautiful ministry of Little Sisters of the Poor, a 100 year old order of nuns to violate their faith by forcing them to sign a form supporting abortion services?

Why does your Obama care continue to cause millions to lose health care plans they like and Cancer patients losing their doctors credited with saving their lives?

Why did you deny additional security requests at our consulate in Benghazi which lead to the death of U.S. Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans during a 9/11/2012 terrorist attack? Why did you order the Benghazi Annex security team to “stand down” rather than attempt to rescue our Ambassador?

Why were military assets not deplored to defend our Benghazi consulate and save our Ambassador?

Why did you send Susan Rice on five national TV shows to knowingly lie to the American people, telling them that the Benghazi attack was caused by an anti-Muslim YouTube video that was seen by hardly anyone? Why do you persist in claiming that the war on terror is over despite glaring worldwide evidence proving otherwise?

Why did you choose to pass on attending the historic Paris, France rally in which 40 nations came together against Islamic extremism? Why do you refuse to admit that we are at war with radical Islam?

Why did you release five lethal Taliban terrorist leaders and continue to release other terrorists certain to reenter the battlefield to kill more Americans?

Why did you demand that the name of Jesus be covered up on a stage before you spoke? And yet, you passionately defend Islam. Why did you offer a new asylum decree favoring Muslims over Christians?

Why have you forcefully burdened our military with social engineering policies which critics say will undermine good order and discipline for decades?

Why have you launched a war on coal estimated to cost nearly a quarter-million jobs per year and force plants across America to close?

Why do you vow to Veto the Keystone XL oil pipeline bill which will further energy independence and create jobs for thousands of Americans?

Folks, cited in this article is only the tip of the iceberg of Obama’s war on America as founded: his attacks on traditional Americanism and Christian values – his unseemly attempts to divide us along racial lines to silence opposition to his overreaches – his thuggish use of government agencies to bully and intimidate Americans into submission – his encouraging the sin of covetousness/class envy to divide Americans along economic lines – his attempts to addict as many Americans as possible to government dependency and his relentless efforts to diminish the worldwide influence of the United States of America.

Who are you Mr President? Why are you always on the wrong side of what is best for America and her people? What is your ultimate goal?

Many of us are scratching our heads, asking;…why Mr President, why?

The End-around Impeachment? GOP now Controls 30 State Legislatures

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Everyone knows there’s a huge difference between presidential and midterm election cycles — but not everyone knows how big a difference. Presidential election cycles are starting to resemble episodes of American Idol — what season, I have no idea.

The midterm election cycles are where those who understand legislative process and policy rise to the top — and why in the last midterm cycle of 2014 the Democrats pulled out all the stops to monger fear, coerce, and intimidate their way into a victory. They failed, but the question is just how bad have the Democrats failed under President Obama in the crucial midterm elections in a comparative analysis?

As reported by the Washington Post, “Everyone knows by now that 2010 and 2014 were very good to the Republican Party. What they don’t understand (or understand well enough) is just how good. Yes, Republicans now control the Senate and have their largest majority in the House since World War II.”

“But it’s downballot (way downballot) where the depth of the Republican victories over the past three elections truly reveal themselves — and where the impact will be felt over the long term. In the past three elections, Republicans have gained 913 state legislative seats, according to calculations made by Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia. Here are Sabato’s figures in chart form — and with historical comparisons — via GOP lobbyist Bruce Mehlman.”

public office seats won and lost

The Post further asserts, “Now, there are more 7,000 state legislative seats in the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which makes that 913 number slightly less eye-popping. Still, the Democratic losses between 2010 and 2014 amount to 12 percent of all state legislative seats nationwide. As NCSL notes, Republicans now control more than 4,100 seats — their highest number since 1920. After taking over 11 legislative chambers from Democrats in 2014, Republicans now control 30 state legislatures completely — and have full control of state government (state legislature and governorship) in 23 states. Democrats, by contrast, have full control of 11 state legislatures and total control of state government in just seven states.”

This also relates to the story we reported on the recent Gallup Poll, which showed only 24 percent of Americans identify themselves as liberal. Of course control of these state legislatures still doesn’t reflect a critical statistic — liberal progressive control of major urban population centers.

In any event, the seismic shift in this chart shows that the policies of President Obama are horrifically unpopular — and his own 2009 chart-topping popularity is waning. The data also reflects how toxic it has been for Democrats across the country associated with Barack Obama and his policies. As a matter of fact, nearly 50% of the Senators who voted for the Affordable Care Act have been retired (2010-2014).

Regardless of what happens in Washington DC, we the people still have power at the state level, which is why these midterm election results are so important.

As the Post points out:

1. Policy is made at the state legislative level.
2. State legislatures and governors redraw congressional lines, and the next redistricting is in 2020 — but trust me that’s no guarantee if you don’t play the good ol’ boy game.
3. State legislatures are the minor leagues – it’s where the next generation is groomed, as we saw in the case of Obama.

But here’s the secret weapon: the Convention of States (COS) movement needs 34 state legislatures to present an amendment to the Constitution for approval. At 38 states, well, guess what? States don’t need Congressional approval for a Constitutional Amendment. Right now the GOP controls 30 state legislatures – that’s why it matters. Who needs impeachment when you have the power to amend the Constitution? With enough states, we’d have the power to stop another tyrannical power grab.

Therefore, I do support the Article V Convention of States, because the federal government just doesn’t seem serious about fiscal responsibility — or national security, or the treatment of our veterans for that matter. Sure, we all paid attention to the 2014 House and Senate races — but something happened on the road to Utopia — the contest for state legislatures was happening, and in that contest, there is no contest: Republicans are winning in a landslide — something that’s certainly not going to make ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC or PBS.

You can make your voice heard with your state legislator and learn more about The Convention of States here.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

BREAKING NEWS — Mohammad Hi-Jacked Islam!?

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son of hamas quote on islam

For a larger view click on the image.

HUH…Mohammed hi-Jacked Islam? What does that mean? Well, if you have been watching the news coverage of the Paris attacks you would think that the religion of Islam, Mohammad’s religion, had absolutely nothing to do with the actions of Muslim jihadis.

In this show we analyze the logically absurd and politically driven viewpoint of the Obama Administration’s understanding of Muslim terrorism and Islamic jihad.

Our team takes a look at a mumbling-stumbling Josh Earnest, Press secretary for President Obama and elitist Maria Harf, Spokesperson for the Department of State as they do all they can to AVOID saying the word Muslim and the word terrorism is the same sentence!

Tune in, this is both very funny and very sad.

To learn more visit The United West website.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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India: Muslim cleric says what Charlie Hebdo jihadis did “was completely legitimate as per Sharia laws”

Changing the Rules of the Democracy Game in Europe

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The situation in Europe is intolerable. At any given moment one of the thousands of Jihadists living in Europe can be annoyed by a movie, article or caricature published in a newspaper, grab the closest Kalashnikov and spread death and destruction in editorial offices, shops, museums, schools and on the streets.

He can hurl bombs – homemade or imported – into restaurants, movie houses, theaters, railroad stations, pour oil on highways and perpetrate other terrorist acts which will not be enumerated here so as not to give him any ideas.

There are various factors that indicate the potential for a major explosion:

  1. The enormous number – tens of millions – of Muslims in Europe, a large number to take into account even if only a small fraction of them turn radical.  Look at it this way: if, of the fifty million Muslims in Europe, only one in a thousand becomes a Jihadist, that means there are still fifty thousand Jihadists like the ones who turned Paris into an urban battleground last week.
  2. The fact is that many Muslims did not integrate into European culture. Many of them live in areas where they constitute the vast majority, where the language heard on the street is not French, schools are locally run even if they are called public schools, the mosque is the center of the neighborhood and the Imam is the spiritual leader who guides the perplexed (and there are many) and sustains the stumbling, especially economically. Many Muslims have really remained in their land of origin, both psychologically and mentally, and Islamic Sharia – anti-democratic by definition – is more important to them than the laws of the land in which they reside.
  3. Europe places almost no limitations on Muslim immigration. There is no proper guarding of the coastline and when illegal infiltrators arrive, they receive fair treatment, work permits, financial support, public housing, medical care and education without any linkage to their contribution to the society and economic system that absorbs them. The good reception the immigrants receive is sure to bring the rest of the family tomorrow, the day after that and next week.
  4. European security forces are not using sufficient surveillance forces to keep track of the Jihadists and their fellow travelers as well as their support systems. There is almost no one listening to what is being said in mosques, not enough tracking of Syrian and Iraqi war veterans, very little supervision of what is going on in the public sector. In France there are Muslim neighborhoods closed to police. In Germany there are already Islamist “modesty enforcing officers”  who force the locals to fall into step with behavioral requirements.

As a result of these factors, many Muslims feel that Europe is theirs. They pray on the streets and block traffic, including ambulances, force supermarkets to stop selling pork and alcoholic beverages, demand that churches cease to ring their bells and force women to dress according to Islamic law when outside the home. Europe’s economy – especially the financial market – is increasingly accepting Sharia requirements. European young women are seen as legitimate prey to satisfy the lusts of some of the immigrants, and the percentage of Muslims among those in jail is much higher than their percentage of the general population. This fact reflects the derision the immigrants and their sons feel for European law.

An Algerian colleague who fled his country thirty years ago once told me: “Algerians do not move from Algeria to France; they move Algeria to France”. The problem is worse when considering Muslims from Central Africa – Chad, Mali, Niger – because they suffer discrimination based on their skin color and not only their religion, a fact which explains why south Sahara Muslims are involved in terror acts: the terrorist that attacked the Hyper Casher store and the terrorist who tortured Ilan Halimi to death in 2006 were of African origin.

Europe’s reality today is a continent that is adopting another culture at a rapid pace. Dreams of cultural diversity have been shown to be unfounded delusions, as the immigrant culture is sure of itself and easily subjugates the fragile indigent culture which has divested itself of all values and has no desire to defend itself from the external threat it faces.

European nations have lost their immune system and are falling prey to new ideas, post modern in nature, that have broken Europe’s spirit and destroyed Europe’s ability to defend itself and its culture. Europe is sacrificing its values and cultural and physical existence on the altar of human rights, of which nothing will survive when Europe ceases to be Europe.

Is there anything to be done?

First, let me point out as clearly as possible: what is written below is not a recommendation or call to any specific action. It is a list of possible measures with which every person and every country can either agree or disagree. Second, in Europe there are millions of Muslims who arrived there in order to become Europeans, adopt European culture and live with and live within Europe as citizens with equal rights and responsibilities.

They contribute to European society, to Europe’s economy and to the country in which they live a normative lifestyle. They are not terrorists, do not support terrorists and are wholeheartedly against terror. One of them hid Jews in the freezer room of HyperCasher in Paris after shutting the motor. May he be blessed. No one has the right to minimize by an iota the good deeds of these Muslims.

That is why the question at hand is what European nations can do in order to guard against Jihadists. And the answer is made up of a long list of procedures and steps whose goal is to turn the immigrant population into a European one. Of course, any Muslim who does not like these steps can leave Europe and find a home that is more suited to his cultural preferences.

The countries of Europe must own up to the fact that they are in a state of cultural emergency, change the rules of the democracy game and modify existing laws. The peoples of Europe must understand that any nation that does not know how to defend itself is doomed to disappear, a culture that is unable to preserve its values is marching proudly into the window case of a museum exhibit and a society that does not bring the next generation into the world is not going to exist in that next generation.

Future legal systems must reflect Europe’s desire to preserve its civilization, heritage and culture:

Every Muslim suspected of inciting to violence, possessing an unregistered weapon, of attending weapons training or operating in Syria and Iraq must be kept from entering or remaining in Europe by governmental order.

Areas into which law enforcement forces dare not enter must be opened before them.

Every mosque must contain a recording system and cameras that allow local security organizations to ensure that no subversive or anti-governmental activity is taking place within its confines.

Imam’s speeches are to be read from a written page that is submitted to local security organizations. Imams will not be allowed to speak unless their words are recorded and documented. They must speak in the language of the host country and not in that of the country of origin.

A Muslim who visits his country of origin will have to prove the reason for his trip and what he did while there. Anyone who arouses suspicions that while in his country of origin he acted or prepared to act against his host country or against armies in other parts of the world will lose the right to return to Europe.

Imams caught inciting to violence will be returned to their country of origin forthwith.

Along with the leaders of street gangs, organizations that advance the rule of Sharia law will be closed and their members sent back to their countries of origin.

Charity fund managers will have to prove what the source of every eurocent is and where it is going.

Every immigrant will be given a year to learn a trade or choose a vocation and find his place in a normative place of work, begin paying taxes and saving for his pension fund. Anyone who does not fulfill these conditions will not be eligible for financial help and be returned to his country of origin.

Every Muslim must take part in a course to learn the local language, the history and anthem of the host country. He will have to pass a vocational course and pledge allegiance to his new country, its laws and values.

Bigamy and polygamy will be strictly outlawed and defined as a crime against women. Family violence and especially honor killings will be sufficient reason to return the entire family to its country of origin.

Female circumcision will be outlawed and anyone participating in this practice, whether parent of circumcisor, will be thrown out of Europe immediately.

Covering one’s face will be forbidden and any woman caught with her face covered in the street will be sent back to her country of origin with her entire family. Selling face coverings will be against the law.

Public schools in which children of immigrants are enrolled will be under constant supervision to ensure that they are not educating in ways that cannot coexist with the values of the host country.

Newspapers, radio and television will be forums for free debate and open to discussions of religion and tradition, free of censorship of their written and spoken content, including caricatures.

The standard punishment for immigrant criminals will be a return to their land of origin.

The rules of political correctness will be abandoned and criticism of religions, all religions, will become legitimate and accepted.

An official body will be formed to check the purpose of organizations, their ideologies, their goals and the way they intend to try to reach them.

Only flags of the host country, the EU or organizations recognized by the government will be allowed.

Any opinion on social media that is in favor of Jihad will get the writer of said opinion a free ticket on a flight back to his country of origin.

Every organization connected to Islamic terror, the Muslim Brotherhood and the like will be illegal.

Each country will encourage births by providing economic support to couples who show they identify with the ethos of the country in which they live.

Any immigrant who criticizes the above measures will be sent elsewhere, preferably to his country of origin, where he will feel more at home.

At the same time, the countries of Europe must begin investing in unemployment-ridden Islamic countries so that their citizens will be less motivated to emigrate to Europe.

The above measures may seem severe and anti-democratic, but it is simply hypocrisy to believe that a democracy must protect those who are against the very idea of democracy for ideological and religious reasons. Democracies must defend themselves and their citizens or they will simply disappear.  No democracy should turn into a prescription for cultural suicide, every democracy must express itself in such a way that the culture of those who created it can survive.

It will take only a short while for these measures to seem absolutely crucial to preserve European culture. Preventing the application of these measures will only increase the hatred of Europe’s traditional societies for the immigrants, a hatred whose signs we can already see at the “Pagida” organization protests in Germany. The present situation is leading Europe to an explosion between Muslim immigrants and European society, an explosion which may destroy Europe. If determined steps are not taken to absorb the Muslim immigrants into European society the results may be destructive to the society, regimes and economies of the European countries.

A question that rises naturally is what is going on n the USA. There are those who claim that ithas already embarked on a track similar to that of Europe, but that it lags 15 years behind Europe, so that if there is no change in the USA’s attitude to Islamization, in another 15 years America will look just like Europe today.  Take this as a warning.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on

Guardian . . . of what?

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The Guardian, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, does for the reading public what Common Core books, also supported by the Gateses, do for American students – it provides a wealth of misinformation with an agenda.  In its Global Development section, writer Liz Ford wrote of the role of girls and women under Islam, specifically Palestinians, and the violence to which they are subjected in their society.

quran 2Because her itemization was inaccurate and lacking references, I can provide some specifics about their driving force:

  • Koran 4:34 Allah has made men superior to women and, therefore, women must be obedient or be admonished and beaten.
  • M10-12 If the wife is rebellious, the man may warn her, follow with hitting, and beating but not breaking her bones or damaging her face.  He may even imprison her in a room and withhold food and clothing.
  • M10:4 A man may forbid his wife to leave the home.
  • 022:1 Women may never become judges (they are not equal)
  • L10:3 A woman’s value is half that of a man, because her “mind is deficient.”  A woman should receive half the money of a man in an indemnity case, because women lack in intelligence and religion.
  • 2:282 Her testimony is worth half the man’s.
  • Bukhari 7,722,229  Deals with female genital mutilation and is compulsory.  The term “circumcision” deceptively applies to both men and women, but what they do to women is indeed severe mutilation.
  • 012.6  Extra-marital relations are forbidden, and the penalty for women is stoning to death; it is also recommended in “honor” killings.  Men are held blameless.
  • Bukhari 7,62.18  It is lawful to take a child bride.  Mohammed was 51 when he proposed to six-year-old Aisha.  Recently it was announced that a man may marry an infant who is still being breastfed.

woman in burqaThe Palestinian National Authority Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) is acknowledging its gender issues in order to work toward developing a Palestinian state. According to a report published by the Palestinian Authority in 2011, culture and tradition were often the main justifications for violence against women in “Palestine.”  Each of the reasons for humiliation and cruelty towards women is included in the Koran, some of which are noted above.

Despite the report’s admission that specified Islamic culture and tradition as the cause of abuse toward women, the Guardian’s writer, Liz Ford, has chosen to blame Israel – the only country in the Middle East where all its citizens live in freedom and with equal rights.  She has also called Israel an “occupier,” when, in fact, the territory is “disputed.”  The territory has been Judea and Samaria for thousands of years, and Jordan annexed the area for a mere nineteen years (1948 – 1967) after the aggressive war against the new Jewish State.  Thus, Ford’s information was incorrect, misleading and inflammatory.  The mistreatment of women by Arabs and Muslims began at least 14 centuries earlier.  Note, too, that if we delve into the times of Jews in restricted areas (ghettos),  in the Middle East, Spain, Italy and Eastern Europe, a loving Jewish family life is what kept them stronger under duress.

Another study in the same report, conducted by UN Women in 2009, blamed the men’s violence against women on the stress they felt after Israel’s military strikes on Gaza in December, 2008.  With that reasoning, Jewish men who suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome from the preponderance of Palestinian rocket fire on Israel or sudden attacks on the street should have been equally violent, but there are no reports of comparable familial abuse in Israel.

Through World Wars I and II, we heard of no abuse between husbands and wives who were fleeing for their lives from the impending horrors.  If anything, families were protective and more caring of each other.  And, despite the constant conditions of war from neighboring Islamic states, Israelis were rated among the happiest people in the world – not stressed from spousal abuse.  In fact, it is highly unlikely that Israel’s medical, technological, and other creative innovations and advancements could have been made by abused, unhappy, depressed individuals.

Are we to believe that Palestinian men have no self-control following military strikes on Gaza?  By now, we have learned that Palestinian men have no self-control, period.  In several previous articles, I have reported how the children are taught to hate and abuse animals, practice with weapons and hope to be shaheeds(martyrs), continue their training to behead live animals and captured humans, and increase their propensity for violence with staged “days of rage.”  They cover their faces uniformly, hiding human expression, thereby hindering camaraderie and bonding, and developing an insensitivity to others. They celebrate death with distributed sweets when a son is killed while murdering Jews.  Men gather in plazas to relish stoning someone’s wife to death.  They have been robbed of all kindness and there is nothing left for even their own family members.  Clearly, Islamic Sharia law, destroying freedoms and the sanctioning of hate, victimization, abuse, and killing, leads to dehumanization, pain, contempt, and despair.

Another Guardian writer, Angela Robson, blamed the blockade for her husband’s job loss and consequential beastly behavior.  Ohio was fifth in the U.S. for job losses (more than 303,000) attributed to the non-oil trade deficit in 2007.  Michigan lost 319,200 jobs, 7.5 percent of total employment lost.  California ranked first in terms of actual job losses, 696,000.  The Economic Policy Institute reported four million jobs lost nationally in the U.S. in 2007, 70 percent of the displaced jobs in the manufacturing sector.  America had no comparable increase in spousal abuse.

The Guardian has been repeatedly responsible for “news reports” that are nonsensical, but insulting and destructive, propaganda that appeals to the ignorant.  It makes one wonder how they can benefit from lying about a democracy while supporting a tyrannical regime.  Is the Guardian welcoming the Islamic takeover in the UK?  Does it welcome an ever-growing welfare role of immigrants who will never assimilate, but who will amplify violence on the streets of England’s fair cities, and ultimately impose Sharia laws on the land?  The average citizen is alleged to be apolitical and unaffected.  It makes one wonder just how many people in Merrie Olde England have lost sight of any lessons from WW II and are choosing to slumber again.

James Madison, of English descent, wisely said, “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”

The EPA’s Methane Madness: The EPA thinks cow flatulence is a serious problem

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The Obama administration’s attack on America’s energy sector is insane. They might as well tell us what to eat. Oh, wait, Michelle Obama is doing that. Or that the Islamic State is not Islamic. Oh, wait, Barack Obama said that.

Or that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is about protecting the environment. It used to be decades ago, but not these days.

There was a time when the EPA was devoted to cleaning up the nation’s air and water. It did a very good job and we now all breathe cleaner air and have cleaner water. At some point, though, it went from a science-based government agency to one for which science is whatever they say it is and its agenda is the single minded reduction of all sources of energy, coal, oil and natural gas, by telling huge lies, citing junk science, and generating a torrent of regulation.

Americans have been so blitzed with global warming and climate change propaganda for so long one can understand why many just assume that these pose a hazard even though there hasn’t been any warming for 19 years and climate change is something that has been going on for 4.5 billion years. When the EPA says that it’s protecting everyone’s health, one can understand why that is an assumption many automatically accept.

The problem is that the so-called “science” behind virtually all of the EPA pronouncements and regulations cannot even be accessed by the public that paid for it. The problem is so bad that, in November 2014, Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) introduced a bill, HR 4012, the Secret Science Reform Act, to address it. It would force the EPA to disclose all scientific and technical information before proposing or finalizing any regulation.

As often as not, those conducting taxpayer funded science studies refuse to release the raw data they obtained and the methods they used to interpret it. Moreover, agency “science” isn’t always about empirical data collection, but as Ron Arnold of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, noted in 2013, it is “a ‘literature search’ with researchers in a library selecting papers and reports by others that merely summarize results and give opinions of the actual scientists. These agency researchers never even see the underlying data, much less collect it in the field.”

The syndicated columnist, Larry Bell, recently noted that “Such misleading and downright deceptive practices openly violate the Information Quality Act, Executive Order 12688, and related Office of Management and Budget guidelines requiring that regulatory agencies provide for full, independent, peer review of all ‘influential scientific information.’” It isn’t that there are laws to protect us from the use of junk science. It’s more like they are not enforced.

These days the EPA is on a tear to regulate mercury and methane. It claims that its mercury air and toxics rule would produce $53 billion to $140 billion in annual health and environmental benefits. That is so absurd it defies the imagination. It is based on the EPA’s estimated benefits from reducing particulates that are—wait for it—already covered by existing regulations!

Regarding the methane reduction crusade the EPA has launched, Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, says “EPA’s methane regulation is redundant, costly, and unnecessary. Energy producers are already reducing methane emissions because methane is a valuable commodity. It would be like issue regulations forcing ice cream makers to spill less ice cream.”

“The Obama administration’s latest attack on American energy,” said Pyle, “reaffirms that their agenda is not about the climate at all—it’s about driving up the cost of producing and using natural gas, oil, and coal in America. The proof is the EPA’s own research on methane which shows that this rule will have no discernible impact on the climate.”

S. Fred Singer, founder and Director of the Science and Environmental Policy Project as well as a Senior Fellow with The Heartland Institute says “Contrary to radical environmentalists’ claims, methane is NOT an important greenhouse gas; it has a totally negligible impact on climate. Attempts to control methane emissions make little sense. A Heartland colleague, Research Fellow H. Sterling Burnett, says “Obama is again avoiding Congress, relying on regulations to effectively create new laws he couldn’t legally pass.”

As Larry Bell noted, even by the EPA’s own calculations and estimates, the methane emissions limits, along with other limits on so called greenhouse gases “will prevent less than two-hundredths of a degree Celsius of warming by the end of this century.”

That’s a high price to pay for the loss of countless plants that generate the electricity on which the entire nation depends for its existence. That is where the EPA is taking us.

Nothing the government does can have any effect on the climate. You don’t need a PhD in meteorology or climatology to know that.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of The Peoples Cube.

CLICHÉS OF PROGRESSIVISM #40 — “The Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor Are Getting Poorer”

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Imagine you could go back in time 50 years. Suppose the reason you are doing so is to put policies into place that would ensure that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. (Why anyone would want to do this is beside the point, but stay with me.) What policies would you set?

  1. You would want to price poor, unskilled people out of the labor market with an ever-increasing minimum wage;
  2. You would provide special favors, artificial competitive advantages, and taxpayer subsidies to the politically well-connected (i.e., those already rich);
  3. You would stifle new, small businesses with stacks of regulations and bureaucratic paperwork;
  4. You would (literally) pay people to stay in poverty, to be dependent on government, so that any work ethic would be suppressed and eroded.
  5. You would implement an erratic and largely inflationary monetary policy that erodes savings and creates destructive booms and busts.

All five of these in combination might do the trick. Throw up barriers to the progress of the poor, or pay people to stay poor, or rig the system so the rich and politically well-connected get artificial economic advantages and chances are, the poor will indeed get poorer and the rich will get richer.

By now you have probably noticed that every one of the policies above has been implemented to varying degrees since the Great Society. And yet the poor have still not gotten poorer in the United States.

According to professional skeptic Michael Shermer:

The top-fifth income earners in the U.S. increased their share of the national income from 43 percent in 1979 to 48 percent in 2010, and the top 1 percent increased their share of the pie from 8 percent in 1979 to 13 percent in 2010. But note what has not happened: the rest have not gotten poorer. They’ve gotten richer: the income of the other quintiles increased by 49, 37, 36 and 45 percent, respectively.

Detractors will try to argue that the poorest quintiles have a smaller percentage of the overall pie. And that might be true, but the pie is much, much bigger. Would you rather have 50 percent of a million or 20 percent of a billion? Another way of putting this is: Would you rather be better off, even if that meant certain people were super well off? Or would you rather everyone were worse off, as long as everyone were relatively equal?

That the poorest among us are still, on balance, doing better today than they were 50 years ago is a remarkable testimony to what relatively free people and markets can do, even as governments put up roadblocks. So if the poor aren’t getting poorer, why do people say they are?

If one starts with the assumption that an equal distribution of wealth is the ultimate goal, then he or she is not terribly concerned with how much of that wealth is created to begin with. But some people, at least, understand that wealth has to be created and that when there is more wealth created the poorest among us will tend to be better off. The choice of starting points boils down then to whether one cares about distributing wealth evenly or growing overall wealth through productive activity.

One reason this particular cliché manages to hang around is that people generally take a static view of the economy. The idea is that wealth is like a giant pie, which neither grows nor shrinks, but gets carved up and distributed certain ways. So, some people end up with the false idea that the only way the rich can be richer is if part of the wealth pie is taken from the poor. From this they conclude justice demands a different distribution of the pie. Advocates of “meritocracy” believe the static pie should be divided according to talent and hard work. Advocates of “social justice” think the pie should be divided according to some concept of equality. Both are wrong, but the fundamental error is in thinking that wealth is a static pie to start with. It is not.

Wealth can better be imagined as a growing pie, or better, a growing ecosystem. Of course, wealth doesn’t always grow, but it tends to—as long as people have the incentives to be productive. Merit and hard work tend to be rewarded in this growing pie, but rewards more generally accrue to those who create value for others.

In other words, someone who works really hard might not be rewarded if no one finds his work valuable—say, a man who digs ditches and fills them up again. Likewise, work that might be considered meritorious in an obscure academic journal might not confer any earthly good on humanity outside of the journals’ four-person review committee.

Advocates of so-called social justice want the wealth pie to be divided according to an arbitrary and subjective abstraction like “fairness” or equal outcomes. But carving up wealth according to some nebulous concept of justice ignores the actual ecosystem in which people operate. In other words, such a concept ignores the behaviors, incentives and exchanges that encourage people to be productive—i.e. to generate wealth. By distributing from rich to poor, you end up paying poorer people to be less productive, while punishing more productive people. The distribution that would flow from people making more goods and services available to all is lost by degree, making everyone worse off. If taxation and redistribution for the sake of equal outcomes makes us all worse off than we would otherwise have been, how is this social justice?

Egalitarian concepts of social justice also ignore any moral considerations that might attach to how an unequal distribution might have come about. If growing overall wealth is about people creating different degrees of value for each other, and taking different risks, then the rewards of value creation will never flow equally. Some people will make more money than others, for example, whether it’s because they were smarter investors, cleverer innovators, or better organizers. The rest of us enjoy the fruits of those efforts, so we might want successful people to keep investing, innovating and organizing — even if that means they get richer. And we might want to acknowledge that they deserve what they have.

(Editor’s Note: Economist Thomas Sowell has said, “Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?” I often ask this question of a redistributionist in the presence of another person and ask the former to specifically tell me how much is his ‘fair share’ of what the other person in our presence has earned. I’m still waiting for a satisfactory answer.)

Those of us who are not as productive (or, politically well-connected, as the case may be) still enjoy remarkable abundance in relatively free societies. In the United States, for example, all quintiles have become wealthier overall, over the last 30 years.

It is also true that there are fewer desperately poor people around the world. In only 20 years, extreme global poverty has been cut in half.  That is a remarkable achievement—one that is attributable to policies of liberalization (freer markets) around the world, which progressive activists and egalitarians decry. In other words, those who say the poor are getting poorer are simply wrong. And there are hundreds of millions of people thriving today who can talk about how much better things have gotten.

Summary

  • Progressives should be honest and admit that the anti-free market policies they’ve promoted and achieved in the last half-century have disadvantaged the poor and conferred favors upon the rich and politically well-connected.
  • Amazingly, in spite of those policies, the poor overall are still better off than they were 50 years ago. Imagine the progress that might have happened had these policies not been in place!
  • Redistributing wealth is just slicing the pie differently, at the risk of shrinking the pie. It’s a static view of wealth, one that’s greatly inferior to a view of baking a bigger pie for everybody.

For further information, see:

“How the World is Getting Better” by Phil Harvey

“The World is Getting Better” by Sam Harris

“The Free Market: Lifting All Boats” by Don Mathews

“Dear Ultra-Rich Man” by Max Borders

“Free the Poor” by Julian Adorney

“The Quackery of Equality” by Lawrence W. Reed

If you wish to republish this article, please write editor@fee.org.

ABOUT MAX BORDERS

Max Borders is the editor of The Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also cofounder of the event experience Voice & Exit and author of Superwealth: Why we should stop worrying about the gap between rich and poor.

(Editor’s Note: The author is director of content at the Foundation for Economic Education and editor of its journal, The Freeman.)

Sword of Damocles Over Petraeus’ Head

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By Wallace Bruschweiler:

The New York Times, Jan 9, 2015 reports, “At a news conference shortly after Mr. Petraeus resigned, President Obama said he had no evidence that Mr. Petraeus had disclosed classified information “that in any way would have had a negative impact on our national security…We are safer because of the work that Dave Petraeus has done,” Mr. Obama said, referring to his career in government. “And my main hope right now is — is that he and his family are able to move on and that this ends up being a single side note on what has otherwise been an extraordinary career.”

Behind the scenes,  President Obama’s proclamation above betrays his ongoing political maneuverings against retired General David Petraeus.  President Obama has successfully  derailed any future 2016 run for the White House Petraeus may have had.  Now President Obama must keep retired General Petraeus silent on what really happened leading up to and after the Benghazi massacre.

RT News reports, “The FBI and Justice Department are recommending felony charges be brought against retired Gen. David Petraeus for providing classified information to his former mistress when he was director of the CIA, according to officials.

The announcement was first reported by The New York Times and follows an investigation into an affair Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer who was writing his biography. The investigation, opened in 2012, centered on whether he gave her access to his CIA email account and other highly classified information, much of which was found stored on Broadwell’s personal computer.”

We shouldn’t forget that Paula Broadwell’s background includes Military Intelligence, a security clearance, and author of “All In – The Education of General David Petraeus.”

“Petraeus has indicated to the Justice Department that he has no interest in a plea deal that would spare him an embarrassing trial.”

White House sources told Bloomberg News that the Obama administration has sought Petraeus’s advice on the fight against the Islamic State and that he still has his security clearance.

Rep Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said, “If he has done something wrong, charge him, if he has not, let him go,” he said. “At this point I don’t know what their motivation is. But I worry they will let this linger until the President leaves office.”

As Director of the CIA, General Petraeus, was in a unique position to know all details surrounding the Benghazi terrorist attack.  Petraeus knows who was responsible for the now infamous ‘stand down’ order, why repeated requests for additional security at the Benghazi compound were ignored, and why was Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin meeting with Ambassador Stevens one hour before the attack on September 11, 2012?

Approximately one hour after the meeting with General Ali Sait Akin, Ambassador Chris Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed during an extended assault by more than 100 Islamic Jihadists.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) started their still unresolved criminal investigation on General Petraeus over two year ago.  Last week Attorney General Eric Holder declared that a “final decision will be decided by him or his successor.”

Conclusion

Are we faced with a typical blackmail situation?

Is the Sword of Damocles over Petraeus’ head regarding his potentially damaging testimony at Rep. Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi hearings?

Would General Petraeus potentially implicate Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration in a legacy destroying Benghazi coverup that cost four Americans their lives, amongst them a United States Ambassador?

Who are the most liberal and conservative candidates for President in 2016?

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crowdpac rick perryStartup Crowdpac.com is a new political website that ranks 24 potential candidates for President in 2016. According to Crowpac’s methodology there are no moderate politicians running, to date. Crowdpac ranks the 2016 Presidential candidates in a unique and comprehensive way using a 20 point scale, with 10L a perfect liberal record and 10C the perfect conservative record. Their website states:

Crowdpac is the definitive resource for objective data on US political candidates. Our unique data model shows you where politicians stand on the issues, based on what they say, how they vote and who gives them money. Crowdpac’s mission is to help everyone participate more easily and effectively in the political process. Crowdpac is independent, non-partisan and for-profit. This is the new politics.

In the liberal camp the spread between being more liberal with Bernie Sanders at 8.3L or less liberal with Joe Biden at 4.4L is 3.9 points. On the conservative side the spread is 7.5 with Rand Paul being the perfect conservative at 10.0C and Governor Chris Christie the least conservative at 2.5C. Liberal candidates are much more like minded than are the conservative candidates. The separation between the least liberal candidate (Biden) and the least conservative candidate (Christie) is 8.1 points, according to Crowdpac’s scale.

The infographic below provides an overview of the rankings:

ranking liberals and conservatives

For a larger view click on the image.

crowdpac hillary clintonCrowdpac polls show that liberals are backing Hillary Clinton by a large margin, while conservatives are still making up their minds. The polling spread between the two top liberal candidates (Clinton and Warren) is 49.5%, while for the top two conservative candidates (Bush and Christie) it is 5.8%. Bush and Christie are the most liberal candidates on the conservative scale.

Many have written that President Obama is the most liberal President in the history of the United States. He is also one of the most unpopular as are his policies. So what does the data from Crowdpac really telling us? Are voters looking for a conservative liberal or liberal conservative or neither?

Time will tell.

RELATED CHART COURTESY OF THE WASHINGTON POST:

public office seats won and lost

This chart shows the number of seats won (blue) or lost (red) at the state and federal levels by U.S. Presidents since 1953. The graphic is courtesy of the Washington Post.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Political Startup Ranks the Most Conservative, Liberal 2016 Candidates

Conservative Lawmakers Prepare to Split From Republican Study Committee

Does The Democratic Party Have a Future?

Betrayal! RINOs Secretly Crafting Broad Amnesty Bill, McConnell Says Forget Reversing Obama’s Amnesty; GOP Suicide Countdown Begins

Republicans Bracing for Obama’s Massive Spending Hike

EDITORS NOTE: The features images are courtesy of Crowdpac.com.

Video: On Obama’s “Countering Violent Extremism” summit

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On Monday I appeared on Sun TV’s Straight Talk with Pat Bolland to discuss Obama’s coming “Countering Violent Extremism” summit and the ongoing refusal to acknowledge the reality of the jihad threat.