Arizona’s new immigration law S.B. 1070, which has been relentlessly attacked by many liberals and the news media yet is overwhelmingly supported by Americans, is also serving as the prototype for immigration legislation in several other states as discussed below. Americans are sick and tired of the problems associated with illegal immigration: increased crime and violence, massive unreimbursed costs such as for healthcare, education, welfare, and the judicial system which are presently being paid by us through our tax dollars, burdens on our schools and even what is becoming a ubiquitous finding: bilingual signs and communications.
Despite this, the Obama Administration is fighting this law under the pretense that it necessarily requires “profiling”. This is not the true reason, however, as the legislation is essentially a replica of the federal law that adds controls to mitigate the “risk” of profiling. (Of course, liberals want to label “profiling” a racist action when in fact profiling represents the most logical, efficient and prudent way to detect what one is looking for which in this situation, are illegal aliens.)
Among the real reasons that Obama is against the law is for political purposes. He wants more of the Hispanic vote. As we have noted in previous posts, the fact that he would intentionally keep the border unsecured which also affords terrorists the ability to sneak into this country, is inexcusable, irresponsible, contemptuous and actions of what could be termed an anti-President.
Let’s reiterate. Obama resolutely refuses to secure our borders for personal political reasons which consequently places America in much greater jeopardy for future terrorism by allowing terrorist to infiltrate undetected into our country. This also financially burdens all 50 states (or in his mind, 57 states) and their citizens who have to bear all the attendant costs associated with these illegals which is estimated to be around $113 billion per year.
And one more thing. Ideology and narcissism aside, the Obama Administration and some liberal groups state that the cost of deporting the entire illegal alien population would be prohibitively expensive – estimated to be $285 billion over 5 years. The cost for them staying here during these 5 years is $565 billion ($113 billion per year times 5 years).
Interesting! We could actually save $280 billion over these five years if these illegal immigrants were sent back where they came from. That is $56 billion per year in net savings which would then jump to more than $113 billion per year after these first 5 years.
No wonder the federal government is against this: it would save us money instead of being a money losing proposition which the Democrats feel more comfortable with!
Arizona Immigration Law Emerges as Model for Other States
July 7, 2010
Arizona’s immigration law, considered controversial by some and under legal assault by the Obama administration, is fast emerging as a popular model in other states where illegal immigration is a hot-button issue.
And while protests against the law have drawn thousands to marches across the country, polls have consistently showed a majority of Americans favor the get-tough approach against illegal immigration.
At least three other states could pass similar legislation next year, and in many others, like Florida, GOP candidates are filming campaign ads and pushing debates favoring the law.
Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah have each taken steps against illegal immigration, and politicians in the three states are advocating further measures when their legislatures reconvene early next year, according to The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in at least 14 other states drew up bills that permit police officers to question anyone they suspect of being in the county illegally – the core issue of the Arizona law.
But it’s an open question in many of those states whether these bills would make it past sitting governors, many of whom are Democrats. In Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah, however, political factors improve the chances that state legislatures could follow Arizona's lead when they convene in 2011, according to the Post.
Oklahoma was actually the first state, not Arizona, to adopt legislation that was the toughest ever against undocumented immigrants. That happened in 2007. The measure made it a felony to knowingly provide transport or shelter to an illegal immigrant, and blocked illegal immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses and tuition.
The lawmaker responsible for the measure, Republican state Rep. Randy Terrill, has said he wants to go even further with another bill next year that would seize property from businesses that knowingly employ undocumented immigrants.
Terrill cited the arrest of an alleged Mexican drug cartel member last week as evidence that an "Arizona-plus" measure is needed urgently. He said the effect of Arizona's law had been to push illegal immigrants "straight down Interstate 40" toward Oklahoma, according to the Post.
In South Carolina, GOP Gov. Mark Sanford touted a comprehensive set of new measures against illegal immigration as the strictest yet when he signed it into law in 2008. The measure forced businesses to check the immigration status of their workers.
Harboring and transporting illegal immigrants also became a state crime. State lawmakers want to build on it and were quick this year to draw up an Arizona-style bill, introducing it less than a week after the Arizona measure had been signed.
"We had a bill that was introduced this year that was very similar to the final version of the Arizona legislation. It was too late for us to move on it, but I have every expectation a new bill will be introduced in January," Republican state Sen. Larry Martin told the Post.
"As long as an officer has a lawful reason to question someone, and then a suspicion develops [that] they are an undocumented person, then I think our law enforcement folks ought to be able to pursue that," he said.
In Utah, pro-immigrant advocates fear that new legislation clamping down on illegal immigration is inevitable next year. Several lawmakers there are advocating a crackdown, according to the Post.
On paper, Arizona's controversial new immigration law is not that different from the federal version. But the key difference is this: Arizona wants every illegal immigrant caught and deported. The federal government says treating all 11 million of the nation's illegal immigrants as criminals would overwhelm the system.
In its lawsuit challenging the Arizona law, the Justice Department says its policy is to focus on dangerous immigrants: gang members, drug traffickers, threats to national security. Law-abiding immigrants without documentation would largely be left alone.
Homeland Security officials say the government cannot possibly find, arrest and deport everyone who is here illegally. And trying to do so would also upset a balance crafted by Congress that takes into account humanitarian interests and foreign relations.
But proponents of the Arizona solution insist that's no reason not to try. And they say the state's toughest-in-the-nation law is a reasonable way to start.
"If it's really the case that they don't have enough resources to enforce the laws that Congress has passed, it would seem it's incumbent on them to go back to Congress and ask for more resources," said Steven Camarota, research director at the center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors stricter enforcement of immigration laws. "But since they don't do that, it sort of undermines the argument."
Arizona's new law is nearly identical to federal immigration law. At issue is how it is enforced. The federal government says the state law is unconstitutional because it usurps federal authority to protect U.S. borders and American citizens. Arizona counters that the federal government is not doing its job, which forces state officials to step in.
State lawmakers argue that the federal government already enlists local authorities to identify illegal immigrants who have been arrested for other crimes. The new law, they say, just extends that to police patrols.
The federal government says the law goes too far by making it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally and requiring police to question the immigration status of anyone they encounter who is believed to be undocumented.
The furor over the Arizona law is overblown, Camarota said Wednesday. It does not envision mass deportations or roundups, just a slow but steady pressure on illegal immigrants to leave Arizona — either for their home countries or for another state.
The number of illegal immigrants in the country fell for the first time this decade in 2007, and dropped another 800,000 between 2008 and 2009, primarily due to the recession and increased enforcement efforts.
As of January 2009, an estimated 10.8 million people were in the country illegally, 1 million less than the 2007 peak, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Deportations have been increasing, climbing from 185,944 in 2007 to 387,790 last year.
Many critics argue the federal government cannot selectively enforce immigration law, but it's common for law enforcement at all levels to prioritize. Small-time pot dealers do not receive the same level of investigation or prosecution as big-time heroin traffickers. The government has also tolerated medical marijuana in 14 states.
But Arizona's law has brought selective enforcement — and the differences that exist even among police agencies — into clearer focus.
Those differences are stark, even in the Phoenix metro area. Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris says in an affidavit supporting the federal suit that he will probably have to move detectives focused on violent crime to street patrol because regular officers will be busy enforcing Arizona's new law.
But Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has been at the forefront of the effort to empower local authorities to enforce immigration laws, routinely assigns deputies to crime sweeps where they target illegal immigrants.
The federal government is worried that other states will follow Arizona's lead, overwhelming federal agencies with non-criminal illegal immigrants who will cost the government millions to deport.
A March study by the liberal Center for American Progress estimated that deporting the entire illegal immigration population and securing the borders would cost $285 billion over five years.
In the government lawsuit, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection declared they will be forced to shift resources from major cases to minor ones if the law goes into effect as scheduled on July 29.
Five other lawsuits, filed by immigrant-rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and individuals, are already before a federal judge in Phoenix. The federal challenge filed Tuesday is expected to be transferred to the same judge, who has hearings set for next week on requests to block the law from taking effect.
The federal lawsuit focuses on a core constitutional concern — balancing power between the states and the federal government. More specifically, the issue centers on the long-running "pre-emption" legal argument that says federal law trumps state law.
The government sidestepped concerns about the potential for racial profiling and civil rights violations most often raised by immigration advocates. Experts said those are weaker arguments that do not belong in a federal legal challenge.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this story.
The immigration debate today is... well not really a debate. In both actions as well as verbally (to Sen. John Kyle of Arizona), Obama has recklessly and corruptly indicated the he will make sure that the United States continues to have open, unsecured borders until an agreement can be reached in a comprehensive reform that includes full amnesty for illegals.
Furthermore, his comments promote divisiveness among the states, specifically encouraging verbal and economic attacks on Arizona which is trying to protect itself from being overrun by the violence of the Mexican drug cartel and gangs and the deluge of destitute illegal aliens who are creating a budgetary crisis due to the billions of dollars a year that they cost the state.
Obama is the anti-President, one who seeks to divide and destroy rather than unite and protect. Such is the bedrock of his radical anti-American philosophy.
If you questions this assessment, just scrutinize his destructive, freedom restricting, financially reckless, disdainful actions and inactions over his first 18 months in office. To gain further insight, we also suggest that you read the recent bestseller, the Manchurian President by Aaron Klein.
Contrast this to the philosophy of Teddy Roosevelt on immigrants from over 100 years ago. Below are some of his thoughts on Immigrants and being an American:
"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes herein good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
From 1907
"Let us say to the immigrant not that we hope he will learn English, but
that he has got to learn it. Let the immigrant who does not learn it go
back. He has got to consider the interest of the United States or he
should not stay here. He must be made to see that his opportunities in
this country depend upon his knowing English and observing American
standards. The employer cannot be permitted to regard him only as an
industrial asset."
"We must in every way possible encourage the immigrant to rise, help him
up, give him a chance to help himself. If we try to carry him he may
well prove not well worth carrying. We must in turn insist upon his
showing the same standard of fealty to this country and to join with us
in raising the level of our common American citizenship."
Roosevelt strongly called for assimilation of these immigrants so they would become equal "Americans". This would be best served with the need for them to learn to speak English which would allow them to advance and become productive citizens. This is a constructive, positive approach.
What does Obama encourage? Essentially a balkanized America where illegal immigrants are granted rights, privileges, and services and allowed to maintain their primary allegiance to their homeland - and with nothing expected in return. Except, of course, their votes as Democrats. A destructive, financially ruinous, welfare dependency approach.
Millions of misguided voters found Obama to be quite articulate and disarming before the Presidential elections. Who knew that these “skills” would be applied in a widespread manner such as in arms negotiations and national defense? In case you missed it, Obama is effectively unilaterally disarming the United States and exposing us to a future apocalypse by mandating reductions, removal and/or cancellations of defensive and offensive weaponry.
Such actions are suicidal, indefensible and irresponsible. As discussed in the following article, Obama’s thorough disarming of our country will make us infinitely more vulnerable not just to Russia or China but also to North Korea, Iran, small belligerent nations and terrorists groups.
In our opinion, if Obama sets these actions in motion, Congress with public pressure should investigate the possibility of grounds for impeachment.
Dropping The Shield
Investors Business Daily 06/30/2010
National Security: The administration is ready to sign a treaty stripping us of our ability to defend ourselves against enemy nuclear missiles, including Iran's and North Korea's. In space, no one can hear you surrender.
On Monday, the ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, part of the U.S. missile defense shield, successfully shot down a ballistic missile launched from a ship's deck off Kauai, Hawaii. The test simulated an Iranian SCUD launched from the deck of a ship off the U.S. coast, which, if armed with a nuke, could devastate the American heartland.
The simulated Scud was launched from the deck of the decommissioned 603-foot amphibious assault ship Tripoli. U.S. Army soldiers of the 6th Air Defense Artillery Brigade from Fort Bliss, Texas, successfully intercepted it with a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor.
Missile defense, the dream of President Reagan, is a successful reality. With a layered system of ground-based, long-range interceptors, the sea-based Aegis system and theater systems such as the Patriot and THAAD, we can defend against — rather than just avenge — a ballistic missile attack.
Yet our disarmer in chief, President Obama, stands ready to strip us naked before our enemies by signing a treaty designed to demilitarize space. Since interceptors such as THAAD are designed to hit their targets on the edge of space and can be modified to kill satellites, such a treaty would effectively ban their use.
Almost simultaneously on Monday, the Obama administration unveiled a new space policy that reverses the Bush administration policy of unrestricted access to and operations in space. The Bush policy, released in August 2006, said it "rejects any limitations on the fundamental right of the United States to operate in and acquire data from space." We had a right to defend ourselves.
That right will be surrendered unilaterally by a new space policy under which the U.S. will "consider proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies."
Such fairness is in the eyes of the beholder, and this administration does not have a good track record of enhancing the national security of the United States. For example, it has cut the number of ground-based interceptors planned for Alaska and Hawaii, both within range of North Korea's Taepodong-2.
It has also betrayed our Polish and Czech allies by scrapping plans for a similar system in Europe. And it has scrapped tested and ready systems like the Air Force's Airborne Laser (ABL), a modified Boeing 747-F that can be deployed anywhere in the world, loitering off an enemy's coast to destroy its missiles in their vulnerable boost phase. And it's reusable.
These "proposals and concepts" could come soon in the form of the PAROS (prevention of arms race in space) treaty. Like the nuclear freeze once proposed at the height of the Cold War, these Munich clones are designed not to prevent war, but to disarm America.
Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, among others, would like to see us unilaterally give up our ability to render their huge investments in nuclear missiles irrelevant.
A simple Iranian Scud missile, with a nuclear warhead, could be fired from an inconspicuous freighter in international waters off our coast and detonated high above the U.S. It would wreak near total devastation on America's technological, electrical and transportation infrastructure. The ship could then be scuttled, taking the identity of the attacker with it.
If a hostile power detonated a nuclear weapon high over the U.S., generating an electro-magnetic pulse that would fry virtually every circuit and electronic device in the country, America and its economy could be sent back a century or more.
Iran has practiced launching and detonating Scuds in midflight from ships in the Caspian Sea. Iran has also tested high-altitude explosions of its Shahab-3 ballistic missile, a test consistent with an EMP attack.
Surrendering missile defense through such a treaty amounts to more unilateral disarmament in the face of dangerous and hostile enemies. The president wants us to rally around a white flag.
The United States is headed by among its most inept, internationally scorned, ridiculed and disrespected Presidents ever (Jimmy Carter, an Obama advisor, is the competition for this “honor”). He is universally seen as a feckless amateur without leadership skills and a zero intimidation factor.
The anti-Reagan.
Add this to his far-felt pacifist beliefs and throw in a far left political appointee with little practical experience and the physiognomy of a school board member to serve as an arms negotiator with the ruthless Russians under Putin … and this spells a disaster in the making.
A sheep negotiating with wolves.
We are not safe while Obama remains our President!
The consequences of his ineptitude, lack of leadership and common sense, his destructive pacifism and quixotic ideologies are real existential threats to our country.
Missing Defense
Investors Business Daily 06/18/2010
Undersecretary of state for international security and arms control Ellen Tauscher
National Security: There seems to be only one thing White House arms negotiators want more than a reduction in U.S. nuclear weapons — a reduction in U.S. missile defenses to protect us from such weapons.
The Washington Times' Bill Gertz reports that U.S. diplomats are secretly negotiating with Russia to link nuclear arms reduction to limits on our anti-missile defenses.
As Gertz points out, "Pro-arms-control officials within the administration dislike missile defenses, viewing them as an impediment to offensive arms agreements."
Ellen Tauscher, the undersecretary of state for international security and arms control, has been talking to Moscow's deputy foreign minister, Sergei Rybakov, and that in and of itself should generate fears.
Tauscher's qualifications for her current job amount to little beyond her experience as a Democratic Party fundraiser and seven terms as a San Francisco congresswoman with a reputation, according to the media at least, as a centrist, but a voting record that shows her to be an unalloyed liberal.
Tauscher let it be known when she left the House for the State Department last year that her priority was to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the world.
If that requires giving away the store on missile defense, it's worth it in the worldview of an administration that was sure an extended hand would lead Iran to end its nuclear program.
Deputy Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty negotiator Frank Rose less than a month ago said at a London conference that the Obama administration was seeking a deal on missile defense "cooperation" via the Tauscher-Rybakov negotiations.
As quoted by Gertz, Rose said, "The door to tangible, mutually beneficial missile defense cooperation with the United States, and potentially with NATO, is wide open."
President Obama has already abandoned the Czechs and the Poles on missile defense against Russian aggression under the rule of former KGB operative Vladimir Putin.
Are we now going to leave ourselves defenseless too?
It's worth remembering the crucial role that a commitment to missile defense played in the demise of the Soviet empire.
Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky noted that President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, and the realization that Moscow didn't have the resources to compete with it, made Mikhail Gorbachev's advisers "finally accept demands for internal reform."
As British historian Andrew Roberts notes in his "History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900," Reagan himself would call strategic missile defense "the single most important reason, on the United States' side, for the historic breakthroughs that were to occur" in the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Yet the Obama administration's attitude is like that of the liberal internationalists of the 1980s, described by Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in his autobiography: "The idea that any country might try to defend itself against the nuclear weapons of another country was not only revolutionary, it was sacrilegious."
As Roberts notes, detentists at the time "alternately (and contradictorily) denounced" missile defense "as expensively unworkable and strategically destabilizing."
The decades since have proved that missile defense is fantastically workable. The only thing that will stop free people from defending themselves against nuclear missiles is leaders deluded by notions of utopianism and appeasement.
The Obama Administration egregiously lied to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer regarding the federal government’s assistance on illegal immigration. Instead, through a Hillary Clinton information leak while in South America, it was revealed that he would instead sue Arizona regarding its new illegal immigration law.
Both the impending action and the way this was exposed are despicable!
Compounding the corrupt and destructive and obstructive behavior of Obama, he told Arizona Senator Kyl that he had no intention whatsoever of securing the border until a comprehensive immigration solution was passed.
That’s right. He is subjecting Arizona as well as the rest of the country to invasion by violent Mexican drug gangs and members of the drug cartel, countless illegal aliens as well as Islamic terrorists from around the world.
And this is all for political reasons to serve his purposes.
This is not the action of a President of the United States. This is the action of an anti-President. A mole. Someone who does not care about the welfare of this country and who would rather see it harmed or destroyed.
Obama has stated this in his own words in a variety of ways. His actions over the last year and a half comport with this pernicious desire.
Obama Must Be Removed From Office!
Support Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in her battle to protect the state of Arizona as well as the rest of the United States against the malignant actions of Obama and his administration.
The magnitude of the violence associated with the uncontrolled drug smuggling and illegal immigration is so great in southern Arizona that the federal government is now warning American citizens to avoid these areas because of the danger. In effect, we have lost control of part of our own country because the federal government has abdicated its responsibility to protect the border, and by doing so, protecting Americans.
The cynical, divisive, irresponsible and condescending comments expressed and lies told by Obama regarding the new Arizona illegal immigration law, the security of our borders and the “rights” of these aliens as compared to the rights of American citizens further adds to ther overwhelming evidence of his lack of fitness and competence to be President and the emergent need to seek his removal from office after the November elections.
Negligent. Dismissive. Incompetent. Not fit to serve.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is yet another member of the Obama Administration (see Attorney General Eric Holder) who should be at the forefront of the immigration debate but could not find the time to read the 10 page Arizona immigration law yet did find the time to make derogatory and inflammatory comments regarding it for media reports. Even more ironic, absurd, unbelievable and evidence of the influence of political considerations, is that she was the Governor of Arizona prior to being selected by Obama to her present position. She was eminently aware of the uncontrolled illegal immigration problem at that time and had even requested federal government help.
So, two of the most important and relevant individuals in the federal government who should be responsible for constructively addressing the immigration problem have not been responsible or relevant. They have negligently abdicated their responsibilities to protect Americans and uphold the law.
Both Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder must be removed from office.
There are numerous mysteries associated with Obama most of which have received relatively little attention but are of substantial significance. Despite his claims that he has released his real and original birth certificate, many remain unconvinced regarding its authenticity and continue to question his true birthplace and nationality. Confusing the situation even more as a statement made by Michelle Obama in a recent speech where she Obama referred to Kenya as Barack’s home country.
There is also little or no information on his academics and performance, health records, and other personal matters. Recently, an extremely unusual and enigmatic occurrence has been uncovered – an inexplicable irregularity of his social security number that may reflect something sinister and secretive.
What is Obama hiding about his past?
BORN IN THE USA?
Investigators: Obama uses Connecticut Soc. Sec. # 3 experts insist White House answer new questions about documentation
By Jerome R. Corsi May 12, 2010
NEW YORK – Two private investigators working independently are asking why President Obama is using a Social Security number set aside for applicants in Connecticut while there is no record he ever had a mailing address in the state.
In addition, the records indicate the number was issued between 1977 and 1979, yet Obama's earliest employment reportedly was in 1975 at a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream shop in Oahu, Hawaii.
WND has copies of affidavits filed separately in a presidential eligibility lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia by Ohio licensed private investigator Susan Daniels and Colorado private investigator John N. Sampson.
The investigators believe Obama needs to explain why he is using a Social Security number reserved for Connecticut applicants that was issued at a date later than he is known to have held employment.
The Social Security website confirms the first three numbers in his ID are reserved for applicants with Connecticut addresses, 040-049.
"Since 1973, Social Security numbers have been issued by our central office," the Social Security website explains. "The first three (3) digits of a person's social security number are determined by the ZIP code of the mailing address shown on the application for a social security number."
The question is being raised amid speculation about the president's history fueled by an extraordinary lack of public documentation. Along with his original birth certificate, Obama also has not released educational records, scholarly articles, passport documents, medical records, papers from his service in the Illinois state Senate, Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and adoption papers.
Robert Siciliano, president and CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com and a nationally recognized expert on identity theft, agrees the Social Security number should be questioned.
"I know Social Security numbers have been issued to people in states where they don't live, but there's usually a good reason the person applied for a Social Security number in a different state," Siciliano told WND.
WND asked Siciliano whether he thought the question was one the White House should answer.
"Yes," he replied. "In the case of President Obama, I really don't know what the good reason would be that he has a Social Security number issued in Connecticut when we know he was a resident of Hawaii."
Siciliano is a frequent expert guest on identify theft on cable television networks, including CNN, CNBC and the Fox News Channel.
Daniels and Sampson each used a different database showing Obama is using a Social Security number beginning with 042.
WND has further confirmed that the Social Security number in question links to Obama in the online records maintained by the Selective Service System. Inserting the Social Security number, his birth date and his last name produces a valid Selective Service number.
To verify the number was issued by the Social Security Administration for applicants in Connecticut, Daniels used a Social Security number verification database. She found that the numbers immediately before and immediately after Obama's were issued to Connecticut applicants between the years 1977 and 1979.
"There is obviously a case of fraud going on here," Daniels maintained. "In 15 years of having a private investigator's license in Ohio, I've never seen the Social Security Administration make a mistake of issuing a Connecticut Social Security number to a person who lived in Hawaii. There is no family connection that would appear to explain the anomaly."
Does the Social Security Administration ever re-issue Social Security numbers?
"Never," Daniels said. "It's against the law for a person to have a re-issued or second Social Security number issued."
Daniels said she is "staking my reputation on a conclusion that Obama's use of this Social Security number is fraudulent."
There is no indication in the limited background documentation released by the Obama 2008 presidential campaign or by the White House to establish that Obama ever lived in Connecticut.
Nor is there any suggestion in Obama's autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," that he ever had a Connecticut address.
Also, nothing can be found in the public record that indicates Obama visited Connecticut during his high-school years.
Sampson's affidavit specifies that as a result of his formal training as an immigration officer and his 27-year career in professional law enforcement, "it is my knowledge and belief that Social Security numbers can only be applied for in the state in which the applicant habitually resides and has their official residence."
Daniels told WND she believes Obama had a different Social Security number when he worked as a teenager in Hawaii prior to 1977.
"I doubt this is President Obama's originally issued Social Security number," she told WND. "Obama has a work history in Hawaii before he left the islands to attend college at Occidental College in California, so he must have originally been issued a Social Security number in Hawaii."
The published record available about Obama indicates his first job as a teenager in Hawaii was at a Baskin-Robbins in the Makiki neighborhood on Oahu. USA Today reported the ice-cream shop still was in operation one year after Obama's inauguration.
Politifact.com, a website typically supportive of Obama, claims he worked at the Baskin-Robbins in 1975 or 1976, prior to the issuance of the number in question.
"It is a crime to use more than one Social Security number, and Barack Obama had to have a previous Social Security number to have worked at Baskin-Robbins," she insisted. "Under current law, a person is not permitted to use more than one Social Security number in a lifetime."
Another anomaly in the law enforcement databases searched by Daniels and Sampson is that the date 1890 shows up in the field indicating the birth of the number holder, along with Obama's birth date of 08/04/1961. A third date listed is 04/08/1961, which appears to be a transposition of Obama's birth date in an international format, with the day before the month.
Daniels disclosed to WND the name of the database she searched and produced a computer screen copy of the page that listed 1890 as a date associated with the 042 Social Security number.
Daniels said she can't be sure if the 1890 figure has any significance. But she said it appears the number Obama is using was previously issued by the Social Security Administration.
After an extensive check of the proprietary databases she uses as a licensed private investigator, Daniels determined that the first occurrence of Obama's association with the number was in 1986 in Chicago.
Daniels assumes, but cannot prove, that Obama took on a previously issued Social Security number that had gone dormant due to the death of the original holder.
Daniels has been a licensed private investigator in Ohio since 1995. Sampson formed his private investigations firm, CSI Consulting and Investigations, in 2008. He previously worked as a deportations law enforcement officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The Daniels and Sampson affidavits were originally recorded by attorney Orly Taitz in an eligibility case against Obama last year.
The magnitude of the ineptness of our intelligence agencies under Obama has been nothing short of staggering as illustrated by a multitude of recent terrorist events where information and tips were bungled, lost, not acted upon, etc. It's not a stretch of the imagination that we probably would get a more immediate and effective response regarding possible terrorist related activities from a street vendor than from federal agencies.
The incessant left wing attacks on Arizona’s new immigration law are ideologically based emotional rants void of substantive facts. If these demagogues and uninformed parroting protestors availed themselves to examine the law they would note that it is essentially identical to the federal law which the federal government has chosen to largely ignore – for political reasons.
Meanwhile, Arizonans are under assault from these illegals and the Mexican drug and smuggling trade and must protect themselves since the federal government has abdicated its Constitutional responsibility.
Cafferty Blasts Obama and the Dems For the Arizona Law
The vast majority of citizens of Arizona have been fed up with the soaring crime, kidnappings, costs, effects on education and quality of life related to immigration and are strongly behind the State’s new anti-immigration law. As we have indicated previously, their net cost to Arizona including unreimbursed health care, education, welfare, crime and prison and legal fees runs into the billions of dollars which the state doesn’t have. Furthermore, the citizens are tired of providing for the welfare of these illegals including shouldering a massive tax burden.
What we are hearing now are the hollow cries of the liberals and progressives claiming discrimination or worse in Arizona and calling for boycotts. This encourages bad and ILLEGAL behavior. These illegal aliens, a term that liberals avoid because it describes exactly what they are – law breakers, should not be entitled to services, subsidies, etc. just because they are in America. They are citizens of another country, namely Mexico. Let their government pay their expenses … and take them back instead of encouraging the opposite.
Thousands of people annually immigrate to America legally going through a rigorous process. These illegals can do the same.
Since the Federal Government has effectively abdicated its responsibility and by egregiously ignoring this chronic and uncontrolled long standing problem (for decades), Arizona's state government should be praised both for upholding the law and trying to protect its citizens.
Praising Arizona (In Border Battle)
Investors Business Daily 04/26/2010
Immigration: Arizona moves to protect its citizens from a raging border war, and the administration and its activist supporters cry racism. Why is antelope protection more important than protecting American lives?
'We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act," Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said Friday after signing a tough new immigration law giving police more power in dealing with illegal immigration. "But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created a dangerous and unacceptable situation."
Arizona's new law is a reminder that the states formed the federal government and not the other way around. One of the federal government's functions was to provide for the security of the new country against foreign enemies and intruders.
At this, and particularly under this administration, it has failed miserably.
There are 460,000 illegal aliens in Arizona, a number that increases daily, placing an undue burden on the state's schools, hospitals and law enforcement. Arizona has a window seat to an illegal invasion and on the escalating and violent drug war in Mexico that has put American lives and society at risk.
On March 27, the consequences of a porous and unprotected border claimed the life of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz after he radioed his brother that he was checking out someone he believed to be an illegal immigrant.
Incredibly, his murderer escaped to a pronghorn antelope area that the Interior Department of Secretary Ken Salazar had placed off-limits to U.S. Border Patrol agents.
So unserious is the administration about protecting the border that it has allowed a bureaucratic turf battle between Interior and Homeland Security to let 4.3 million acres of wilderness area become a haven and highway for illegal aliens, drug smugglers, human traffickers and potential terrorists.
The new law makes it a state crime to be in Arizona without proof of legal status, and would authorize police to demand documents from those they suspected could be illegal immigrants. It would also make it a crime to transport or hide illegal immigrants.
The police are authorized to act only when "REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES" and clearly states that police "MAY NOT SOLELY CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN" in inquiring about immigration status of a suspect individual.
President Obama calls Arizona's tough new law "irresponsible" and "misguided." But it wouldn't be necessary if the federal government fulfilled its responsibility to secure the border. We are a nation of immigrants — legal immigrants — but we are also a nation of laws that 70% of Arizonans and most Americans want to see enforced.
There may be something else afoot here. "We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters," stated Eliseo Medina, international executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union at a June 2009 Washington conference.
In 2008, Medina noted, "immigrants" and Latinos "voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of three voters that showed up." Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "voting with their feet." The more the merrier?
Americans want the federal government to protect our borders, not endangered species. They want the gaping holes in border protection closed and the National Guard sent to the border. What part of "National Guard" does the administration not understand?
Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County, was grilled by Geraldo Rivera on Fox News about what constituted probable cause under the new law. Arpaio responded: "During the course of the duties of law enforcement, my deputies, if someone doesn't have a license, doesn't speak English, 10 guys stashed in back of a van, I think that's reasonable action or probable cause to take action."
We think so too. It doesn't make sense to protect antelope but not the American people. The first duty of the federal government is to protect the rights, property and lives of U.S. citizens.
Iran is an implacable enemy that will relentlessly pursue the development of nuclear weapons and will not respond to any actions short of military intervention.
Israel takes Iran’s threats to annihilate and incinerate it absolutely seriously and in all likelihood will preemptively attack it if it appears that no other options are available.
Meanwhile, Obama threatens and treats our staunch ally Israel and its Prime Minister despicably over plans to build apartment buildings in Jerusalem yet voices appeasing words for our enemy and terrorist sponsoring nation Iran which is overtly developing nuclear weapons for intended use.
Neither country nor leaders of the rest of the world take Obama seriously except as seriously incompetent, misguided, inexperienced, weak and confused.
And that is a serious problem the whole world has to deal with!
So Now We Know: No Plan B For Iran
Investors Business Daily 04/19/2010
Iran: A leaked memo from the defense secretary reveals the administration has no alternatives to stop Iran's nuclear push if "soft power" fails. This should be a wake-up call, but we continue snoozing toward Armageddon.
President Obama campaigned on the notion that not talking to tyrants was not an option or a workable policy. He said he'd be willing to talk with anybody anywhere to bring peace and relieve tensions. Unlike President Theodore Roosevelt, however, he has been talking softly but forgetting about the big stick.
A memo written by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and unearthed by the New York Times confirms our suspicions that, while the administration occasionally raised its voice on Iran, there in fact existed no contingency plans to use the proverbial big stick if what is called "soft power" didn't dissuade Tehran from building a nuke.
Gates' analysis of our Iranian posture was written in January to President Obama's national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones.
According to the Times report, the memo "appears to reflect concern in the upper echelons of the Pentagon and the military that the White House did not have a well-prepared series of alternatives in place in case all the diplomatic steps finally failed."
The memo is said to have sparked the development of such contingency plans that are still in the early stages. Meanwhile, Iran continues to enrich uranium toward the 20% purity level and is adding advanced centrifuges while working on warhead designs and the missiles to deliver them.
For our part, we have abandoned contingency plans to deploy ground-based missile interceptors in Poland and tracking radars in the Czech Republic in favor of less-satisfactory substitutes. We are more concerned, it seems, about 1,600 apartments to be built in three years' time in a Jewish suburb in East Jerusalem.
We talk to thugs while we humiliate an ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the White House.
Obama has said to the thugs of the world, particularly to Iran, that "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." Judging by his relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons in response to our futile entreaties, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is responding with a hand gesture of another kind.
"It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them," Obama said last week.
Whether we like it or not?!
This does not appear to be a president capable of giving the order to strike even if we had plans to strike. We're too busy disarming and apologizing for our power and our past willingness to use it in the defense of ourselves and our allies.
Israel makes no such apologies. In 1981, it destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak. And in 2007, it bombed into obliteration a North Korean-supplied secret nuclear reactor in Syria. It has well-prepared plans to strike Iran.
The clock, and the Iranian nuke, is ticking. James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh, writing in this month's Foreign Affairs, declare: "If Iran's nuclear program continues to progress at its current rate, Tehran could have the nuclear material needed to build a bomb before U.S. President Barack Obama's current term in office expires."
It is getting perilously close to the time when either we or Israel will, as fighter pilots like to say, have to kick the tires and light the fires. We'd better plan for it.
In our post yesterday (Arizona Poised To Pass Aggressive Legislation To Deal With The Problems of Illegal Immigration Since Federal Government Hasn’t), the issues surrounding the impetus for creating an immigration enforcement bill were detailed. There has been overwhelming support for this legislation from the residents of Arizona - contrary to what many in the news media are reporting or claiming. Given all this, yesterday afternoon, Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill but also definitively stating that racial profiling will not be tolerated.
Bravo for Arizona!!
It is about time that some government seriously address this illegal immigration problem that is plaguing America, costing tens of billions of dollars yearly and markedly escalating the crime rate. Congress and the President (including past Presidents) have abrogated their responsibilities to protect us and secure our borders. One of the main reasons is political in nature – fear of angering one group of voters or another.
Meanwhile, Mr. Inept Obama has stated his opposition to the bill which he wants to annul and claims that it may violate civil rights. Many liberal and radical Hispanic groups are screaming racism, stating that their rights are violated, etc. and are protesting, even busing in people (unemployed or union members?) from California.
There are civil rights violations indeed regarding illegal immigration and it involves those of American born citizens (of American parents) living in Arizona. Why should they be forced to pay for the education, healthcare, welfare, incarceration and other costs attributed to these non-Americans? This is essentially involuntary servitude. Furthermore, quality of life is adversely affected on many levels because of this unaddressed problem.
These illegal aliens come here and cost Arizona billions of dollars. Opponents of the bill claim that these illegals pay taxes and contribute to Social Security. Yes, some may but the costs of the services that they use far exceeds (billions) what they contribute. Consequently, our schools are overcrowded and the education of native Arizonans is severely impacted. Hospitals are forced to close or markedly curtail services because of unreimbursed care. More than 50% of inmates in many jails are illegals. And more…
Until there is a comprehensive national plan that is sensible and effective, measures like this have to be implemented to protect American citizens.
Finally, it is disingenuous, corrupt and deconstructive to call these individuals “undocumented aliens”. They may or may not have documents or at least legitimate ones. That is not the point. They broke the law and entered the United States illegally, hence: “illegal immigrants”.
Arizona Governor Signs Controversial Immigration Enforcement Bill
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Friday signed into law a controversial bill that seeks to crack down on illegal immigration.
The sweeping measure will make it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally. It will also require local police officers to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are in the country illegally.
It takes effect 90 days after the current legislative sessions end in the next several weeks.
Before signing the bill, Brewer called the measure "another step forward in protecting the state of Arizona."
She said the bill "represents another tool for our state to use as we work to solve a crisis that we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix -- the crisis caused by illegal immigration."
Earlier, President Obama called the bill "misguided" and said it could violate people's civil rights. He said he's instructed the Justice Department to see if it is legal.
The bill's Republican sponsor, state Rep. Russell Pearce of Mesa, said Obama and other critics of the bill were "against law enforcement, our citizens and the rule of law."
Civil rights activists have said the bill would lead to racial profiling and deter Hispanics from reporting crimes.
Brewer said she wouldn't tolerate racial profiling.
Hundreds of protesters gathered at the State Capitol complex Friday calling on Brewer to veto the legislation.
Demonstrators have been camped outside the Capitol since the measure passed out of the Legislature on Monday. Their numbers have grown steadily throughout the week, with buses bringing protesters from as far away as Los Angeles.
About a dozen supporters of the measure also gathered.
Meanwhile, around the same time of the signing of the immigration reform bill in southern Arizona:
67 Illegal Immigrants Found Crammed in U-Haul Truck
The Border Patrol did not immediately know where the immigrants were from, where they were headed or what the conditions in the truck were
ELFRIDA, Ariz. -- Sixty-seven illegal immigrants were found crammed inside a U-Haul truck near Elfrida, Ariz. about 20 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border after deputies spotted it driving erratically.
Cochise County sheriff's spokeswoman Carol Capas said Friday that deputies pulled the U-Haul over Thursday evening, and the driver and front passenger ran out of the vehicle into the desert.
The two, believed to be smugglers, got away.
Meanwhile, deputies found 67 illegal immigrants in the back of the 26-foot truck.
Capas says the truck appeared to have been loaded in the last seven hours and that it was "cramped."
She could not speak to the conditions inside the truck and says the immigrants were turned over to the Border Patrol.
Border Patrol spokesman Mario Escalante did not immediately know where the immigrants were from, where they were headed or what the conditions in the truck were, although he says none had to be taken to the hospital.
The Federal government has shown itself to be inept or at least politically corrupt and publicly insincere in addressing the chronic and dangerous problem of illegal immigration. The border states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas have been particularly hard hit with the noxious impact of widespread and overwhelming costs and spiraling out of control crime. Arizona, in fact, has the second highest kidnapping rate in the world which directly stems from the Mexican drug gangs and cartel.
Fed up (no pun intended) with years of inaction, unfulfilled promises and excuses, Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer and the Republican dominated state legislature have decided that it’s imperative that this issue be seriously addressed to protect the security, safety, financial resources and quality of life of its citizens. The state has recently passed several bills designed to better control illegal immigration but this new law, which has not yet been signed by the Governor, goes much further in aggressively addressing this problem. Arizona residents overwhelmingly support this law.
Arizona’s previous Governor, the incompetent Democrat Janet Napolitano, did little to address the issue and actively thwarted attempts by others to do so. Ironically and not suprisingly, because of her early vocal support for Obama, he selected her to be the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. We have since seen enough of her inaction (pun here)!
Arizona Immigration Law Sparks National Uproar
Paul Davenport Phoenix, Arizona April 22, 2010
Lawmakers approved a sweeping immigration bill Monday intended to ramp up law enforcement efforts even as critics complained it could lead to racial profiling and other abuse.
The state Senate voted 17-11 nearly along party lines to send the bill to Gov. Jan Brewer, who has not taken a position on the measure championed by fellow Republicans. The House approved the bill April 13.
"This bill goes a long way to bringing law and order to the state," said Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, who cited costly services provided to illegal immigrants and the recent slaying of a southeastern Arizona rancher near the U.S.-Mexico border as reasons for the move.
The new measure would be the latest crackdown in Arizona, which has an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants and is the nation's busiest border crossing point.
Arizona enacted a law in 2005 making human smuggling a state crime and prohibited employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants with a law in 2007.
The latest bill would make it a state crime for illegal immigrants to not have an alien registration document. It also would require police to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally.
Other provisions allow citizen lawsuits against government agencies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws, and make it illegal for people to hire illegal immigrants for day labor or knowingly transport them.
Republican Sen. Russell Pearce of Mesa, who sponsored the bill, said it will take handcuffs off police and put them on violent criminals. "Enough is enough," Pearce said.
U.S. Sen. John McCain on Monday called the bill a "tool that I think needs to be used." His office later said that wasn't an endorsement.
It's also a commentary on the frustration that our state Legislature has that the federal government has not fulfilled its constitutional responsibilities to secure our borders," the Arizona Republican said.
Sen. Leah Landrum Taylor, D-Phoenix, predicted the legislation would cause chaos by spawning suspicion among neighbors, friends and relatives about who might be in the country illegally.
"Our state will be going completely backward," she said.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund has all but promised a legal challenge if the legislation becomes law.
The organization claims the measure is unconstitutional because the federal government is responsible for immigration enforcement.
"The bill is so vague that it encourages investigation and arrest of people ... who essentially have done nothing wrong but because of their racial profile," said Gladys Limon, an attorney for the Los Angeles-based group.
Mexico's embassy also has voiced concerns about racial profiling.
Arizona law enforcement groups are split on the bill, with a union for Phoenix Police Department officers supporting it and a statewide association of police chiefs opposed.
Calls, e-mails and letters on the bill were running 3-1 in favor, Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman said.
Brewer's predecessor, Janet Napolitano, a Democrat who is now President Barack Obama's Homeland Security secretary, vetoed similar proposals.
Current law in Arizona and most states doesn't require police to ask about the immigration status of those they encounter, and some police officials say allowing such questions would deter immigrants from cooperating in other investigations.
The bill is regarded as carrying political high stakes for Brewer, who faces challenges from fellow conservatives in the Aug. 24 Republican primary.
If she vetoes it, "she would be crushed in the primary," said Mike Gardner, a business lobbyist and former legislator.
Vincent Picard, a federal Immigration and Customs enforcement spokesman in Phoenix, declined comment on the Arizona legislation and referred a reporter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Washington headquarters.
Agency officials gave only a written statement about Homeland Security immigration policy and refused to speak on the record about the Arizona legislation.
Arizona police use the human smuggling law from time to time to charge suspects.
In Maricopa County, however, more than 1,500 people were convicted under that law, with 85 percent immigrants, not smugglers.
To reduce the economic incentive for immigrants to sneak into the country, Arizona lawmakers also approved a civil law in 2007 that prohibits employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.
Authorities across Arizona have examined several dozen complaints of employer sanction violations. But in the more than two years since that law took effect, only two cases have been settled with employers admitting to violating the law.
Associated Press Writers Jacques Billeaud and Jonathan J. Cooper contributed to this report.
Arizona Voters Support Controversial Immigration Bill, Poll Finds
- FOXNews.com April 21, 2010
An overwhelming majority of Arizona voters support a controversial bill that would give state officials broad new powers to arrest people suspected of being illegal immigrants, a new poll finds.
An overwhelming majority of Arizona voters support a controversial bill that would give state officials broad new powers to arrest people suspected of being illegal immigrants, a new poll finds.
The Rasmussen Reports poll found 70 percent of likely voters in Arizona back the bill, which cleared the state Legislature this week and awaits the governor's signature, despite concerns about potential civil rights violations.
The survey found 53 percent of voters are worried that immigrants' civil rights could be infringed in the effort to find and deport illegal immigrants. Forty-six percent were not concerned about that possibility.
But for immigrant-rights activists in Washington and elsewhere, the state bill has become a flashpoint in the national debate.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who has led the charge against the bill on Capitol Hill, said Wednesday that he wants the Department of Justice to be prepared to "go immediately to court" to stop Arizona officials from enforcing the law if it is signed.
"There will be many, many people, American citizens, whose rights will be violated when the police come to them for no other reason than to check their immigration status," he told Fox News.
The Arizona bill would create a new misdemeanor crime for failing to have an alien registration document; allow officers to arrest anyone unable to show documents proving their legal residence in the country; and allow people to sue over claims that a government agency is hindering immigration enforcement.
The Rasmussen poll reflected bipartisan support for the bill in Arizona. Eighty-four percent of Republicans support it -- but so do 51 percent of Democrats. Forty-three percent of Democrats oppose it.
The poll of 500 likely voters was conducted last Wednesday. It had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
We have previously commented on Obama’s imprudent and reckless new nuclear weapons usage policy which irrefutably places us both at greater risk of attack with loss of the deterrence factor and impedes our ability to respond appropriately and effectively (Even A 4th Grader Would Know That Obama’s New Nuclear Policy Is Wrong). In the following scathing editorial by Charles Krauthammer, he adds some unintended consequences to this as well which are immensely significant – both for us and the rest of the world.
President Obama's Naive Nuclear Posturing
By Charles Krauthammer 04/09/2010
Nuclear doctrine consists of thinking the unthinkable. It involves making threats and promising retaliation that is cruel and destructive beyond imagining. But it has its purpose: to prevent war in the first place.
During the Cold War, we let the Russians know that if they dared use their huge conventional military advantage and invaded Western Europe, they risked massive U.S. nuclear retaliation. Goodbye Moscow. Was this credible? Would we have done it? Who knows? No one's ever been there. A nuclear posture is just that — a declaratory policy designed to make the other guy think twice.
Our policies did. The result was called deterrence. For half a century, it held. The Soviets never invaded. We never used nukes. That's why nuclear doctrine is important.
The Obama administration has just issued a new one that "includes significant changes to the U.S. nuclear posture," said Defense Secretary Bob Gates. First among these involves the U.S. response to being attacked with biological or chemical weapons.
Under the old doctrine, supported by every president of both parties for decades, any aggressor ran the risk of a cataclysmic U.S. nuclear response that would leave the attacking nation a cinder and a memory.
Again: Credible? Doable? No one knows. But the threat was very effective.
Under President Obama's new policy, however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is "in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)," explained Gates, then "the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it."
Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker is up-to-date with its latest IAEA inspections, well, it gets immunity from nuclear retaliation. (Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs and other conventional munitions.)
However, if the lawyers tell the president that the attacking state is NPT noncompliant, we are free to blow the bastards to nuclear kingdom come.
This is quite insane. It's like saying that if a terrorist deliberately uses his car to mow down a hundred people waiting at a bus stop, the decision as to whether he gets (a) hanged or (b) 100 hours of community service hinges entirely on whether his car had passed emissions inspections.
Apart from being morally bizarre, the Obama policy is strategically loopy. Does anyone believe that North Korea or Iran will be more persuaded to abjure nuclear weapons because they could then carry out a biological or chemical attack on the U.S. without fear of nuclear retaliation?
The naivete is stunning. Similarly the Obama pledge to forswear development of any new nuclear warheads, indeed, to permit no replacement of aging nuclear components without the authorization of the president himself. This under the theory that our moral example will move other countries to eschew nukes.
On the contrary. The last quarter-century — the time of greatest superpower nuclear arms reduction — is precisely when Iran and North Korea went hell-bent into the development of nuclear weapons.
It gets worse. The administration's Nuclear Posture Review declares U.S. determination to "continue to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks." The ultimate aim is to get to a blanket doctrine of no first use.
This is deeply worrying to many small nations who for half a century relied on the extended U.S. nuclear umbrella to keep them from being attacked or overrun by far more powerful neighbors.
When smaller allies see the United States determined to move inexorably away from that posture — and for them it's not posture, but existential protection — what are they to think?
Fend for yourself. Get yourself your own WMDs. Go nuclear if you have to. Do you imagine they are not thinking that in the Persian Gulf? This administration seems to believe that by restricting retaliatory threats and by downplaying our reliance on nuclear weapons, it is discouraging proliferation.
But the opposite is true. Since World War II, smaller countries have agreed to forgo the acquisition of deterrent forces — nuclear, biological and chemical — precisely because they placed their trust in the firmness, power and reliability of the American deterrent.
Seeing America retreat, they will rethink. And some will arm. There is no greater spur to hyper-proliferation than the furling of the American nuclear umbrella.
Few in Hollywood are Conservatives and even rarer are those who are outspoken on these beliefs. One of those individuals is Jon Voight. Given that most people associated with Hollywood are supporters of the far-left and with many zealots among them, opening admitting that one is a Conservative often is a career killer.
Jon Voight was a guest on the Mike Huckabee show on April 10th, 2010. On the show he read an open letter to America and to Barack Obama where he discussed the future of America and the need for us all to get involved in our individual states Tea-Party movement in order to save our nation.
The following is the text of the letter:
“In one year, the American people are witnessing the greatest lie that is cleverly orchestrated by President Obama and his whole administration. The lie is a potent aggression that feeds the needs of people who either have not educated themselves enough to understand the assault upon us all or the very poor and needy who live to be taken care of.
President Obama feeds these people poison, giving them the idea that they are entitled to take from the wealthier who have lived and worked in a democracy that understands that capitalism is the only truth that keeps a nation healthy and fed. Now the lie goes very deep and President Obama has been cleverly trained in the Alinsky method and it would be very important that every American knows what that method is.
It is a socialistic, Marxist teaching and with it, little by little, he rapes this nation, taking down our defenses, making new language for the Islamic extremists. The world looked up to us as a symbol of hope and prosperity now wonders what will become of the entire world if America is losing its power.
The American people who understand exactly what is taking place have come together in the thousands, vowing to try to stay together as a unit of love and freedom for all men and women, from all walks of life, shivering to think that this once great nation will be a third world country.
This will be the first president to ever weaken the United States of America. President Obama uses his aggression and arrogance for his own agenda, against the will of the American people when he should be using his will and aggression against our enemies.
Every loving American for peace and truth and the security of our nation must come out and join the Tea Parties in their states. The opposition will continue their tactics; they will lie and plant their own bullies amongst us. Everyone must pay close attention to who stands next to them. We can weed out the liars and agitators.
Let us all stay in Gods light. Let no man put asunder. We can and we will prevail. God bless us all!”
In a very clear, logical, and convincing speech, Liz Cheney criticized Obama for his recklessly apologizing for America and weakening our positions of leadership and power in the world which engenders belligerence and attacks from our enemies who see us as inept, confused, weak and lacking resolve. She also berated him for his indefensible positions vis-à-vis Iran.
Here, with America’s security in the balance, Republicans, Democrats and Independents should speak as one to the administration: President Obama, stop apologizing for this great nation and start defending her."
The massive and ever increasing debt that the United States is incurring is threatening our future security in a variety of ways and is quite concerning to the military.
Deficits making U.S. military nervous
Will Obama have enough money left for national security?
Jerome R. Corsi March 17, 2010
WorldNetDaily
With the Obama administration pressing for a government takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy to grant health-care benefits to all Americans, the U.S. military is worried that the United States is already losing the ability to afford national defense.
The deteriorating international trade position of the U.S. as documented by the CIA is a national security concern by the U.S. military, according to the Joint Operating Environment 2010 report, or JOE 2010, released Monday by the United States Joint Forces Command, or USJFCOM.
The CIA World Factbook lists the U.S., with a negative current account balance of $380 billion, in last place among 183 nations in 2009. China, in contrast, is listed as No. 1, with a positive current account balance of $296 billion.
Nor is the United States position in international trade improving.
The U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis reported in December that the U.S. current account deficit increased to $108 billion in the third quarter of 2009 from $98 billion in the second quarter of 2009.
The current account is the broadest measure of international trade, defined as net exports and imports, plus net income and transfer payments made between nations. The largest measure is a positive or negative balance of international trade as defined by the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis
Reviewing the military implications, the JOE 2010 report stressed that the U.S. "chronic trade and current exchange balances have exacerbated both U.S. current account deficits and overall governmental indebtedness such that the amount of U.S. government debt held by foreigners has grown from 1.3 trillion to 3.5 trillion dollars representing 40 percent of total U.S. debt."
The USJFCOM points out in the JOE 2010 that total U.S. foreign debt has accumulated to $2.165 trillion, with China holding in U.S. Treasury debt $798 billion of its accumulated $1.95 trillion surplus in foreign exchange reserves.
With China holding a balance-of-trade advantage, exporting $270 billion annually to the U.S., while importing $61 billion to the U.S., the U.S. negative foreign exchange position vis-à-vis China is unlikely to change in the near future.
With concern the JOE 2010 notes "the emerging scale of U.S. government borrowing creates uncertainty about both our ability to repay the ever growing debt and the future value of the dollar."
WND has previously reported that the total negative net worth of the U.S. on a Generally Accepted Accounting Practices, or GAAP, basis was $70.7 trillion in 2009, five times last year's U.S. GDP and $10 trillion more than the world's GDP.
The JOE 2010 correctly noted that the unfunded obligations constitution the nation's $70.7 trillion negative net worth are a result of the U.S. baby-boom generation coming of age to receive entitlement benefits in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, while the underlying working population that pays to support the programs are declining as a consequence both of demographics and unemployment.
With regard to national defense implications of the deteriorating U.S. economic position, the JOE 2010 worried that should China demand higher interest rates as an inducement to continuing to buy the U.S. Treasury debt needed to finance continuing trillion dollar U.S. federal budget deficits, the U.S. could suffer a "hard landing" that could increase the perception the U.S. no longer controls its financial future.
Noting President Obama's warning that the U.S. economy will add $9 trillion debt over the next decade, the JOE 2010 warned the result could be "a decreased ability of the United States to allocate dollars to defense."
"Rising debt and deficit financing of government operations will require ever-larger portions of government outlays for interest payments to service the debt," the JOE 2010 cautioned. "Indeed, if current trends continue, the U.S. will be transferring approximately 7 percent of its total economic output abroad simply to service its foreign debt."
To illustrate its concern, the USJFCOM cited an alarming litany of historic examples, including the following:
• Habsburg Spain defaulted on its debt 14 times in 150 years and was staggered by high inflation until its overseas empire collapsed;
• Bourbon France became so beset by debt due to its many wars and extravagances that by 1788 the contributing social stresses resulted in its overthrow by revolution;
• Interest ate up 44 percent of the British government budget during the interwar years 1919-1930, inhibiting its ability to rearm against Germany.
"Unless current trends are reversed, the U.S. will face similar challenges, anticipating an ever-growing percentage of the U.S. government budget going to pay interest on the money borrowed to finance our deficit spending," the JOE 2010 concluded.
The USJFCOM expressed concern that U.S. current account and federal budget deficits will inevitably mean fewer dollars available to spend on defense.
In 1962, defense accounted for approximately 49 percent of total U.S. government expenditures, but by 2008 defense spending dropped to 20 percent of total government spending.
"Following current trend lines, by 2028 the defense budget will likely consume between 2.6 percent and 3.1 percent of GDP – significantly lower than the 1990s average of 3.8 percent," the JOE 2010 stressed, noting that by 2028 the Department of Defense could shrink to less than 10 percent of the total federal budget.
"The fundamental issues for the Joint Force are the long term sustainability of our current allocation of the federal budget and how we can contribute to continued security while operating within the fiscal constraints that are unfolding."
The husband and wife White House party crashers (trespassers) generated a tremendous amount of outrage from Democrats/liberals yet the millions of illegal gate crashers (from Mexico) seem to garner little interest or concern often from both sides of the aisle. The following video recorded in Congress parallels the two situations in a tongue in cheek fashion.
How convenient. The same group that perpetrates virtually all of the terrorism worldwide and frequently uses hidden or disassembled bomb materials, ostensibly claims that airport body scanners violate their “religion’s” tenet of modesty and they want an exemption. Meanwhile, they will hide these explosives in body cavities, orifices and implanted devices in order to violate the right to life of many others.
Even though the scanners won’t necessarily be able to detect every one of these devices or discern which ones are laden with explosives, pat downs by security guards will likely miss virtually all of these devices. If the TSA acquiesces to their demand, terrorists will exploit this and security will be further lowered jeopardizing the lives of thousands.
There should be no preferential treatment for Muslims. Period.
Muslim-American body issues fatwa against airport body scanners
IANS February 12, 2010
WASHINGTON: Some Muslim-American groups are supporting a fatwa issued by a body of Islamic scholars forbidding Muslims from going through full body scanners at airports, a media report said.
The Fiqh Council of North America issued the religious ruling this week that says going through the airport scanners would violate Islamic rules on modesty, Free Press reported.
"It is a violation of clear Islamic teachings that men or women be seen naked by other men and women," reads the fatwa issued Tuesday. "Islam highly emphasises haya (modesty) and considers it part of faith. The Quran has commanded the believers, both men and women, to cover their private parts."
After the Christmas Day bombing attempt in Detroit by a Muslim suspect from Nigeria, some US airports are now in the process of buying and using the body scanners to find explosives and other dangerous materials carried by terrorists.
But Muslim groups say the scanners, which show in graphic detail the outlines of a person's body, go against their religion. One option offered to passengers who don't want to use the scanners would be a pat down by a security guard. The Muslim groups are urging members to undergo those instead.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says it endorses the fatwa. "We support the Fiqh Council's statement on full-body scanners and believe that the religious and privacy rights of passengers can be respected while maintaining safety and security," Nihad Awad, national executive director of CAIR was quoted as saying.
Currently, there are 40 full-body scanners at 19 airports in the US, including two in Detroit, said spokesman Jim Fotenos of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). There are plans for 450 more body scanners in US airports, he said.
In a statement, the TSA said it is committed to keeping passengers safe and also protecting their privacy.
"TSA's mission is to keep the travelling public safe. Advanced imaging technologies are an important tool in a multi-layered security system to detect evolving threats such as improvised explosive devices.
"TSA's use of these technologies includes strong protections in place to safeguard passenger privacy. Screening images are automatically deleted, and the officer viewing the image will never see the passenger."
The TSA stressed that the body scanners are "optional to all passengers". Those who turn them down, "will receive equivalent screening that may include a physical pat-down, hand-wanding, and other technologies".
"Physical pat-downs are performed by transportation security Officers of the same sex as the passenger in a private screening area, if the passenger requests."
Body scanners "do not produce photos", the agency said. Rather, the images "look like chalk outlines".
Iran has been openly and resolutely defiant to the rest of the world with its acceleration of the enrichment of uranium that is clearly intended for military purposes and it possesses the will and theology to use it. On the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, Iran has markedly ratcheted up the decibel level of its bellicose and threatening rhetoric aimed at the outside world while concurrently threatening its own citizens who oppose the regime. We have witnessed countless times the wanton brutality that it inflicts on its own people.
This is a country that may stop its violence and threats of regional and world destruction only with a regime change or a successful military attack on it. So far, the best and last hope of that strike appears to be from Israel. Short of that, Iran will complete its intended development of nuclear weapons followed then by their deployment.
A destabilization of the government facilitated by massive uprisings by the citizens along with some fire power is a very long shot possibility to ultimately thwart their usage of nuclear weapons by "peaceful" means. Unfortunately, the opposition presently has little weaponry to fight the government with. Making matters worse, the Obama Administration has been egregiously and negligently silent in support of the Iran’s citizenry even amidst the uprisings. He has shown no solidarity with the protesters which is the absolute least he could do. When he has to be berated by the vacuous, bumbling Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton to make some sort of statement, you know there are severe problems. Meanwhile in welcomed and positive contrast, the leaders of other Western countries have been notably and persistently vociferous in their support of the oppressed Iranian protesters.
Obama has been the antithesis of what an American President should be - a feckless, incompetent, clueless individual who is devoid of any significant leadership skills except when it comes to finding ways to exalting his own self-importance, thus feeding his insatiable narcissism. The American people know this. The world knows this. And Iran clearly knows this.
Unfortunately, this abysmal void of leadership and insight may lead to a nuclear Armageddon.
Obama recently declared in a meeting with the GOP that “he is not an ideologue. Really!”
Really?
With regard to terrorism, Obama’s ideology and that of his radical left adhere to a policy that places our intelligence agencies on the defensive and their agents at legal risk while jeopardizing the security of our country. Meanwhile, they steadfastly remind us of the “inherent” rights of terrorists including Mirandizing them and even providing them with taxpayer funded attorneys.
Unbelievably, the Obama Administration has made it a priority to question a few of our CIA agents about some issues arising a few years ago yet could not find the time to address the far more important matter of implementing the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) which would allow us to interrogate terrorists and extract vital information.
Obama administration takes several wrong paths in dealing with terrorism By Michael V. Hayden January 31, 2010
In the war on terrorism, this country faces an enemy whose theory of warfare ends the hard-won distinction in modern thought between combatant and noncombatant. In doing that for which we have created government -- ensuring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- how can we be adequately aggressive to ensure the first value, without unduly threatening the other two? This is hard. And people don't have to be lazy or stupid to get it wrong.
We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day. We allowed an enemy combatant the protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is not "an isolated extremist." He is the tip of the spear of a complex al-Qaeda plot to kill Americans in our homeland.
In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?
When questioning its detainees, the CIA routinely turns the information provided over to its experts for verification and recommendations for follow-up. The responses of these experts -- "Press him more on this, he knows the details" or "First time we've heard that" -- helps set up more detailed questioning.
None of that happened in Detroit. In fact, we ensured that it wouldn't. After the first session, the FBI Mirandized Abdulmutallab and -- to preserve a potential prosecution -- sent in a "clean team" of agents who could have no knowledge of what Abdulmutallab had provided before he was given his constitutional warnings. As has been widely reported, Abdulmutallab then exercised his right to remain silent.
In retrospect, the inadvisability of this approach seems self-evident. Perhaps it didn't appear that way on Dec. 25 because we have, over the past year, become acclimated to certain patterns of thought.
Two days after his inauguration, President Obama issued an executive order that limited all interrogations by the U.S. government to the techniques authorized in the Army Field Manual. The CIA had not seen the final draft of the order, let alone been allowed to comment, before it was issued. I thought that odd since the order was less a legal document -- there was no claim that the manual exhausted the universe of lawful techniques -- than a policy one: These particular lawful techniques would be all that the country would need, at least for now.
A similar drama unfolded in April over the release of Justice Department memos that had authorized the CIA interrogation program. CIA Director Leon Panetta and several of his predecessors opposed public release of the memos in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on the only legitimate grounds for such a stand: that the documents were legitimately still classified and their release would gravely harm national security. On this policy -- not legal -- question, the president sided with his attorney general rather than his CIA chief.
In August, seemingly again in contradiction to the president's policy of not looking backward and over the objections of the CIA, Justice pushed to release the CIA inspector general's report on the interrogation program. Then Justice decided to reopen investigations of CIA officers that had been concluded by career prosecutors years ago, even though Panetta and seven of his predecessors said that doing so would be unfair, unwarranted and harmful to the agency's current mission.
In November, Justice announced that it intended to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several others in civilian courts for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The White House made clear that this was a Justice Department decision, which is odd because the decision was not legally compelled (other detainees are to be tried by military commissions) and the reasons given for making it (military trials could serve as a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda, harm relations with allies, etc.) were not legal but political.
Even tough government organizations, such as those in the intelligence community, figure out pretty quickly what their political masters think is not acceptable behavior. The executive order that confined interrogations to the Army Field Manual also launched a task force to investigate whether those techniques were sufficient for national needs. Few observers believed that the group would recommend changes, and to date, no techniques have been added to the manual.
Intelligence officers need to know that someone has their back. After the Justice memos were released in April, CIA officers began to ask whether the people doing things that were currently authorized would be dragged through this kind of public knothole in five years. No one could guarantee that they would not.
Some may celebrate that the current Justice Department's perspective on the war on terrorism has become markedly more dominant in the past year. We should probably understand the implications of that before we break out the champagne. That apparently no one recommended on Christmas Day that Abdulmutallab be handled, at least for a time, as an enemy combatant should be concerning. That our director of national intelligence, Denny Blair, bravely said as much during congressional testimony this month is cause for hope.
Actually, Blair suggested that the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), announced by the administration in August, should have been called in. A government spokesman later pointed out that the group does not yet exist.
There's a final oddity. In August, the government unveiled the HIG for questioning al-Qaeda and announced that the FBI would begin questioning CIA officers about the alleged abuses in the 2004 inspector general's report. They are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway.
(The writer was director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009.)
Obama’s actions and policies on terrorism belie his meaningless rhetoric and that was reinforced again in his State of the Union address. Actions speak louder than words so until we see some concrete changes, his words should be considered irrelevant.
Charles Krauthammer trenchantly assesses Obama’s feckless responses regarding the recent terrorist attack and terrorism in general. His underwhelming, inaccurate and delayed statements reflect his disconnect and abominable comprehension of the gravity of the situation that we are facing. This and the incompetence that his Administration regularly displays does not instill an iota of confidence in the American people that the Federal government is doing all that it can do to protect us.
Andrew Bostom, the author of The Legacy of Jihad (Prometheus, 2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (Prometheus, November, 2008), posted the following on his website on September 28, 2008. This is a speech delivered by Geert Wilders who is the chairman of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands regarding the threat to the world that Islam presents. The Netherlands is one of the main European countries at the forefront of this cancerous Islamization invasion that threatens the freedoms and liberties of peaceful peoples of other religions and cultures.
With the dramatic worldwide rise of terrorism almost exclusively perpetrated by Muslims and a multitude of Islamic attacks of various degrees affecting the United States over more than the last decade, this speech is eminently pertinent, insightful, and significant. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that we are dealing with an enemy that is relentlessly intent on destroying non-believers and imposing Sharia law, an enemy that is indoctrinated by a religion founded on violence, hate, intolerance, and total abrogation of human rights and freedoms except for a select few.
Excuses, “politically correct” doctrines, actions and legislation espoused and supported by liberals including their transfer of billions of dollars away from security related issues and intelligence gathering renders us even more vulnerable to attacks, violence and losses of our personal freedoms and rights. Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano and other ideologues of the Democratic party are the main facilitators of this, jeopardizing the security and lives of over three hundred million Americans.
We must understand this metastasizing Islamic enemy and stop it before it obtains world domination.
We must also oust our politicians who are placing this country at far greater risk than necessary.
Geert Wilders: Wisdom and Courage
…liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.
Geert Wilders, chairman Party for Freedom, the Netherlands
Speech at the Four Seasons, New York
September 25, 2008
Dear friends,
Thank you very much for inviting me. Great to be at the Four Seasons. I come from a country that has one season only: a rainy season that starts January 1st and ends December 31st. When we have three sunny days in a row, the government declares a national emergency. So Four Seasons, that’s new to me.
It’s great to be in New York. When I see the skyscrapers and office buildings, I think of what Ayn Rand said: “The sky over New York and the will of man made visible.” Of course. Without the Dutch you would have been nowhere, still figuring out how to buy this island from the Indians. But we are glad we did it for you. And, frankly, you did a far better job than we possibly could have done.
I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe? Patriots from around Europe risk their lives every day to prevent precisely this scenario form becoming a reality.
My short lecture consists of 4 parts.
First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. Thirdly, if you are still here, I will talk a little bit about the movie you just saw. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.
The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks. The Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square and Rome’s ancient buildings and maybe the canals of Amsterdam. They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago.
But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world, a world very few visitors see – and one that does not appear in your tourist guidebook. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration. All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It’s the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corner. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.
There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.
Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighbourhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims. Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear “whore, whore”. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin. In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can in many cases no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity. In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighbourhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel. I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.
A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.
Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France. One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favour of a worldwide caliphate. A Dutch study reported that half of Dutch Muslims admit they “understand” the 9/11 attacks.
Muslims demand what they call ‘respect’. And this is how we give them respect. Our elites are willing to give in. To give up. In my own country we have gone from calls by one cabinet member to turn Muslim holidays into official state holidays, to statements by another cabinet member, that Islam is part of Dutch culture, to an affirmation by the Christian-Democratic attorney general that he is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.
Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behaviour, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. Some prefer to see these as isolated incidents, but I call it a Muslim intifada. I call the perpetrators “settlers”. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.
Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighbourhoods, their cities, their countries.
Politicians shy away from taking a stand against this creeping sharia. They believe in the equality of all cultures. Moreover, on a mundane level, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.
Our many problems with Islam cannot be explained by poverty, repression or the European colonial past, as the Left claims. Nor does it have anything to do with Palestinians or American troops in Iraq. The problem is Islam itself.
Allow me to give you a brief Islam 101. The first thing you need to know about Islam is the importance of the book of the Quran. The Quran is Allah’s personal word, revealed by an angel to Mohammed, the prophet. This is where the trouble starts. Every word in the Quran is Allah’s word and therefore not open to discussion or interpretation. It is valid for every Muslim and for all times. Therefore, there is no such a thing as moderate Islam. Sure, there are a lot of moderate Muslims. But a moderate Islam is non-existent.
The Quran calls for hatred, violence, submission, murder, and terrorism. The Quran calls for Muslims to kill non-Muslims, to terrorize non-Muslims and to fulfil their duty to wage war: violent jihad. Jihad is a duty for every Muslim, Islam is to rule the world – by the sword. The Quran is clearly anti-Semitic, describing Jews as monkeys and pigs.
The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages – at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. He advised on matters of slavery, but never advised to liberate slaves. Islam has no other morality than the advancement of Islam. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad. There is no gray area or other side.
Quran as Allah’s own word and Mohammed as the perfect man are the two most important facets of Islam. Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means ‘submission’. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.
This is what you need to know about Islam, in order to understand what is going on in Europe. For millions of Muslims the Quran and the live of Mohammed are not 14 centuries old, but are an everyday reality, an ideal, that guide every aspect of their lives. Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam “the most retrograde force in the world”, and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran.
Which brings me to my movie, Fitna.
I am a lawmaker, and not a movie maker. But I felt I had the moral duty to educate about Islam. The duty to make clear that the Quran stands at the heart of what some people call terrorism but is in reality jihad. I wanted to show that the problems of Islam are at the core of Islam, and do not belong to its fringes.
Now, from the day the plan for my movie was made public, it caused quite a stir, in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. First, there was a political storm, with government leaders, across the continent in sheer panic. The Netherlands was put under a heightened terror alert, because of possible attacks or a revolt by our Muslim population. The Dutch branch of the Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir declared that the Netherlands was due for an attack. Internationally, there was a series of incidents. The Taliban threatened to organize additional attacks against Dutch troops in Afghanistan, and a website linked to Al Qaeda published the message that I ought to be killed, while various muftis in the Middle East stated that I would be responsible for all the bloodshed after the screening of the movie. In Afghanistan and Pakistan the Dutch flag was burned on several occasions. Dolls representing me were also burned. The Indonesian President announced that I will never be admitted into Indonesia again, while the UN Secretary General and the European Union issued cowardly statements in the same vein as those made by the Dutch Government. I could go on and on. It was an absolute disgrace, a sell-out.
A plethora of legal troubles also followed, and have not ended yet. Currently the state of Jordan is litigating against me. Only last week there were renewed security agency reports about a heightened terror alert for the Netherlands because of Fitna.
Now, I would like to say a few things about Israel. Because, very soon, we will get together in its capitol. The best way for a politician in Europe to loose votes is to say something positive about Israel. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I, however, will continue to speak up for Israel. I see defending Israel as a matter of principle. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel. First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz, second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense.
Samuel Huntington writes it so aptly: “Islam has bloody borders”. Israel is located precisely on that border. This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam’s territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Aceh in Indonesia. Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.
The war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.
Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything. Therefore, it is not that the West has a stake in Israel. It is Israel.
It is very difficult to be an optimist in the face of the growing Islamization of Europe. All the tides are against us. On all fronts we are losing. Demographically the momentum is with Islam. Muslim immigration is even a source of pride within ruling liberal parties. Academia, the arts, the media, trade unions, the churches, the business world, the entire political establishment have all converted to the suicidal theory of multiculturalism. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a ‘right-wing extremists’ or ‘racists’. The entire establishment has sided with our enemy. Leftists, liberals and Christian-Democrats are now all in bed with Islam.
This is the most painful thing to see: the betrayal by our elites. At this moment in Europe’s history, our elites are supposed to lead us. To stand up for centuries of civilization. To defend our heritage. To honour our eternal Judeo-Christian values that made Europe what it is today. But there are very few signs of hope to be seen at the governmental level. Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown, Berlusconi; in private, they probably know how grave the situation is. But when the little red light goes on, they stare into the camera and tell us that Islam is a religion of peace, and we should all try to get along nicely and sing Kumbaya. They willingly participate in, what President Reagan so aptly called: “the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.”
If there is hope in Europe, it comes from the people, not from the elites. Change can only come from a grass-roots level. It has to come from the citizens themselves. Yet these patriots will have to take on the entire political, legal and media establishment.
Over the past years there have been some small, but encouraging, signs of a rebirth of the original European spirit. Maybe the elites turn their backs on freedom, the public does not. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat to our national identity. I don’t think the public opinion in Holland is very different from other European countries.
Patriotic parties that oppose jihad are growing, against all odds. My own party debuted two years ago, with five percent of the vote. Now it stands at ten percent in the polls. The same is true of all smililary-minded parties in Europe. They are fighting the liberal establishment, and are gaining footholds on the political arena, one voter at the time.
Now, for the first time, these patriotic parties will come together and exchange experiences. It may be the start of something big. Something that might change the map of Europe for decades to come. It might also be Europe’s last chance.
This December a conference will take place in Jerusalem. Thanks to Professor Aryeh Eldad, a member of Knesset, we will be able to watch Fitna in the Knesset building and discuss the jihad. We are organizing this event in Israel to emphasize the fact that we are all in the same boat together, and that Israel is part of our common heritage. Those attending will be a select audience. No racist organizations will be allowed. And we will only admit parties that are solidly democratic.
This conference will be the start of an Alliance of European patriots. This Alliance will serve as the backbone for all organizations and political parties that oppose jihad and Islamization. For this Alliance I seek your support.
This endeavor may be crucial to America and to the West. America may hold fast to the dream that, thanks tot its location, it is safe from jihad and shaira. But seven years ago to the day, there was still smoke rising from ground zero, following the attacks that forever shattered that dream. Yet there is a danger even greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America – as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem.
Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.
This is not the first time our civilization is under threat. We have seen dangers before. We have been betrayed by our elites before. They have sided with our enemies before. And yet, then, freedom prevailed.
These are not times in which to take lessons from appeasement, capitulation, giving away, giving up or giving in. These are not times in which to draw lessons from Mr. Chamberlain. These are times calling us to draw lessons from Mr. Churchill and the words he spoke in 1942:
“Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy”.
Obama is a real and constant threat to our country... but intimidates no one else. Does that make him an enemy of the United States? Or incompetent, weak and reckless - as well?
According to released information, the Obama Administration was made aware by Saudi Arabia’s chief counterterrorism official in October of the underwear bomb technique. Unfortunately, the gravity of the information wasn’t appreciated nor was it shared among our intelligence agencies – again highlighting the sheer incompetence and lack of communication that continues to plague the government agencies charged with protecting us.
The enormity of the ineptness, confusion and pervasiveness of lack of communications within and among our intelligence agencies is staggering. This should also serve as an illustrative microcosm of what we could expect with government run healthcare which would be factors larger and with myriad more agencies involved.
White House Adviser Briefed in October on Underwear Bomb Technique
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball Newsweek January 02, 2010
White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan was briefed in October on an assassination attempt by Al Qaeda that investigators now believe used the same underwear bombing technique as the Nigerian suspect who tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, U.S. intelligence and administration officials tell NEWSWEEK.
The briefing to Brennan was delivered at the White House by Muhammad bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s chief counterterrorism official. In late August, Nayef had survived an assassination attempt by an operative dispatched by the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda who was pretending to turn himself in. The operative had tried to kill the Saudi prince by detonating a bomb on his body, but stumbled on his way into the prince's palace and blew himself up.
Saudi officials initially thought the bomb had been secreted in the operative's anal cavity. But after investigating the matter more thoroughly, they concluded it had likely been sewn into his underwear, thereby allowing the operative to bypass security checks before his meeting with the prince. A main purpose of Nayef's briefing for Brennan was to alert U.S. officials to the use of the underwear technique.
U.S. officials now suspect that Nayef's attempted assassin and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian suspect aboard the Northwest flight, had the same bomb maker in Yemen, intelligence experts tell NEWSWEEK. At the briefing for Brennan, Nayef was concerned because “he didn’t think [U.S. officials] were paying enough attention” to the growing threat from Al Qaeda in Yemen, said a former U.S. intelligence official familiar with the briefing. (A senior Saudi official told NEWSWEEK Saturday that “we don't have any concerns that the U.S. government isn't sufficiently concerned about Yemen. In the latter part of the Bush administration and in this administration, the U.S. has been very focused on the dangers emanating from Yemen.”)
The briefing for Brennan could raise questions on Capitol Hill about how widely information was shared within the government about the apparently new technique used by Al Qaeda. A senior administration official said, however, that within a week after the assassination attempt on Nayef, President Obama had dispatched Brennan to Saudi Arabia to discuss the attack. “The October visit by Prince Nayef to Washington was part of this ongoing cooperation, which included developing the forensics out of the attack,” the official said. “That forensics information was widely shared within the U.S. government, as is all information about the evolving threats and tactics employed by our enemies.”
The briefing for Brennan is among a series of pre-Christmas warnings suggesting that the breakdown in the U.S. intelligence system prior to the Northwest attack may have been worse than has been publicly acknowledged, according to an article in the new issue of NEWSWEEK, “The Radicalization of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.”
In the months before the Christmas attack, the article reports, there were many warning signs coming out of Yemen. In early October, Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric based in Yemen, posted a provocative message on his English-language Web site: “Could Yemen be the next surprise of the season?” Al-Awlaki hinted at an upcoming attack that would make Yemen “the single most important front of jihad in the world.”
Al-Awlaki, who had had contacts with two of the 9/11 hijackers, is the same imam who had been exchanging e-mails with the U.S. Army psychiatrist who later killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. He is a now central figure in the Detroit investigation: prior to the Christmas incident, the National Security Agency had intercepted communications between a phone used by al-Awlaki and Abdulmutallab, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official tells NEWSWEEK. The official says that al-Awlaki may also have been involved in other intercepted communications indicating that Al Qaeda was planning to use an unidentified “Nigerian” in an attack over the holiday season. As NEWSWEEK reported on Friday, U.S. intelligence officials at a White House Situation Room briefing on Dec. 22 presented President Obama with a document on pre-holiday terror threats called “Key Homeland Threats.” But a senior administration official said there was no mention of Yemen in the written briefing document. The official would not say whether Yemen was discussed at the briefing.
Former U.S law-enforcement and intelligence officials are scathing about the U.S. government’s handling of pre-Christmas intelligence about Abdulmutallab and the prospect of a possible attack from Yemen. “The system should have been lighting up like a Christmas tree,” said Ali Soufan, a former senior FBI counterterrorism agent who spent years tracking Qaeda suspects in Yemen (and often battled with the CIA over information sharing).
When Abdulmutallab’s father visited the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, in November to report his concerns that his son might have been involved with Islamic extremists in Yemen, the FBI had no representative at the meeting; the FBI maintains an attaché only in Lagos on the southern coast, not in Abuja, the capital. But the CIA, which did have an officer present who wrote up a report on the meeting, never told the FBI about Abdulmutallab.
Much of the blame for the breakdown is being aimed at the National Counterterrorism Center, a unit of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was created as part of a host of 9/11 reforms aimed at promoting better information sharing within the U.S. intelligence community. Frances Fragos Townsend, President Bush’s chief homeland-security adviser, says that analysts at the NCTC should have been pushing, or pinging, the system for more information on Abdulmutallab. “It was NCTC’s responsibility to connect the dots, and ask for additional dots if they don’t have enough,” she said. Instead, the original report about the visit of Abdulmutallab’s father appears to have been dropped in a “dead-letter file.”
(NCTC Director Michael Leiter issued the following statement on Saturday, "The failed attempt to destroy Northwest Flight 253 is the starkest of reminders of the insidious terrorist threats we face. While this attempt ended in failure we know with absolute certainty that Al-Qa’ida and those who support its ideology continue to refine their methods to test our defenses and pursue an attack on the Homeland. Our most sacred responsibility is to be focused on our mission--detecting and preventing terrorist attacks from happening on our soil and against U.S. interests. The American people expect and deserve nothing less.")
White House officials say President Obama has been keenly focused on the Qaeda threat from Yemen for months. As the NEWSWEEK story reports, the president has authorized a covert war in the country: when Yemeni jets bombed Qaeda targets on Dec. 17 and 24 (including a strike that tried, but failed, to kill al-Awlaki), the United States supplied intelligence, missiles, and military support. American spies and special forces are on the ground, assisting the Yemenis.
The incompetence of the inaction and then the response of the Obama administration regarding the recent failed airline terrorist attack are astounding. Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security chief, gave the most lame, inept excuses imaginable. She engenders no confidence by the American people that we are being even adequately protected from terrorist threats. Her “body of work” to date in the Obama Administration has been abysmally dismal, repeatedly reaffirming that she is not qualified for this job and needs to be fired immediately.
If only we could do the same with Obama…
Napolitano Builds Up Undie Bomber: Terrorists Went To 'Great Lengths'
By Mark Finkelstein NewsBusters.org 12-30-2009
Like a football coach trying to explain away the trouncing his team just took by building up the opponent, Janet Napolitano is seeking to diminish the Obama administration's NWA 253 failure by exaggerating the cunning of the Christmas Day plot.
The hapless Homeland Security head has a 679-word piece in today's USA Today basically promising to do better. She begins with this line [emphasis added]:
Friday's attempted terrorist attack against Northwest Flight 253 near Detroit is a powerful illustration that terrorists will go to great lengths to try to defeat the security measures that have been put in place since September 11, 2001.
"Great lengths?" Really? You buy a plane ticket for a kid, stick a few ounces of explosives in his nappies, then hope he'll make it onboard and remember which end to light.
And far from choosing someone with a good chance of completing his murderous mission, the plotters picked a guy with enough red flags surrounding him to have stocked a May Day parade back in the old Soviet Union. Need we count some of the ways?
• Denied British visa.
• On some kind of US watch list.
• Father warned our embassy and various intel agencies.
• Paid cash.
• One-way ticket.
• No checked luggage.
Napolitano would want us to imagine diabolical masterminds behind a fiendish plot that the Obama admin might be excused for not undoing. But far from demonstrating the "great lengths" to which the terrorists will go, what happened on
December 25th illustrates only the deep incompetence of those responsible for stopping it.
Will the MSM note Napolitano's latest lame excuse? How much longer can she possibly remain in office?
You have to believe that things are abysmally bad with our government when a failed nation like Somalia can better identify and prevent terrorists from boarding an airplane than the United States can. Even with a jackpot of warnings well preceding the recent failed airplane terrorist attack including from the terrorist’s own father, our government still couldn’t protect us. The only thing more the terrorist could have done to alert our security agencies was wear a large sign with flashing lights announcing:
“I am a terrorist and will try to blow-up this plane.”
And Obama and the Democrats think they can do a great job managing the healthcare for over 300 million people what they can’t even manage one bungling terrorist…?
Even Mogadishu Does It Better Than DHS
Investors Business Daily 12/30/2009
For all the billions the U.S. spends on intelligence and homeland security, it's Somalia that has racked up a better record of stopping jet terrorists with explosive-filled underwear. Anyone out there appalled?
Last Nov. 11, sharp-eyed African Union troops, who serve as airport security in the failed state of Somalia, pinpointed a terrorist with a syringe detonator, lethal powder and explosives in his pants trying to board a Dubai-bound jetliner in Mogadishu.
They yanked him out of line and stopped him from getting on.
It's eerily similar in detail to the Christmas Day terror attack on a Northwest Airlines jetliner headed from Amsterdam to Detroit.
The chemicals and detonator were the same. The syringe and underwear were similar. It was consistent with the warning the al-Qaida-associated Nigerian arrested in Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, gave upon his arrest — that many more airline attacks like his were on the way. And by one news account, it happened on 11/11, a date favored by al-Qaida for strikes.
But the difference is in how it ended — in the U.S., with an unscripted passenger leaping onto the terrorist in the act of detonating himself amid burning chemicals, and stopping him.
In Somalia, the rudimentary security apparatus in the nation that ranks rock-bottom on every major development indicator stopped him before he even got on. Incredibly, it means that in this case passengers would have been safer flying out of Mogadishu than depending on elaborate U.S. security measures coming into Detroit.
All the $50.5 billion spent on Homeland Security and the even higher black budgets of the intelligence agencies didn't help. What in the heck is this money for?
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's first statement was that the system worked. What she meant by that was frisking every blue-haired old lady or any other random person authorities can get their hands on. They know these people are not terrorists, but they do it to so that Muslim passengers and the terrorists among them don't feel profiled. All the political correctness boxes got checked off.
For African Union soldiers doing security in a hellhole like Mogadishu, it meant stopping a terror attack at all costs.
Instead of going after the elderly, they zeroed in on a curiously acting young man with a terrorist profile, and gave him the extra pat-down in all the right places. That was all it took to bag a terrorist.
The Africans didn't have any special intelligence from Nigerian relatives on the other end of the continent that could be transmitted securely. They didn't have no-fly lists with expensive computer systems for accessing them. They didn't have clearance to obtain electronic intelligence of al-Qaida chatter from Yemen, which signaled that "a Nigerian" was going to try to take out a U.S. airliner.
But they did have a seriousness of purpose about stopping terror even in a garden spot like Mogadishu. "We don't know whether he's linked with al-Qaida or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed," a Somali police spokesman told the Associated Press. Unlike the White House, he wasn't afraid to use the word "terrorist."
It comes down to the fact that Somalia has seen what terrorists do.
Last Sept. 17, terrorists targeted the African Union in a double-suicide attack on a base in Mogadishu, killing 21 and injuring at least 30 others. Then, on Dec. 3, terrorists struck again in a suicide bombing on a hotel in Mogadishu, killing several government ministers and at least 30 civilians.
But the U.S. government, the intelligence agencies that are currently engaged in turf battles and the foolish leadership of the Department of Homeland Security have yet to show that urgency, given the string of blunders in the wake of the Detroit attack.
Maybe it will take a successful terror strike to re-sensitize them.
But right now, it ought to shame them that Somali airports might be safer to fly than those in the U.S.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that we have become more vulnerable once again to acts of terrorism as evidenced by this near catastrophe on Northwest flight 253. The extreme left Obama Administration has expunged the word “terrorist” from its official vocabulary and in its treatment of security issues. These terrorists have taken note of this weakened position and will relentlessly continue to exploit it. There will not be abatement until we consistently acknowledge their existence and display unwavering resolve to extirpate them. They will only be somewhat dissuaded by a show of unity and power.
In the following video clip from MSNBC, Matt Lauer excoriates Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for the Obama Administration’s ineptness in this incident. Here was a suspicious Muslim who had already been identified two years ago during the Bush Administration as representing a material threat yet was allowed to board a plane with a one-way ticket paid in cash and without a passport.
Napolitano, as evidenced by abysmal past comments and actions/ inactions, comes across as a feckless, out of touch political appointee who is in way over her head and who is endangering the security of the United States.
A story posted in The Cable indicated that as a backdrop for a speech that Obama delivered, the White House demanded that an older F-15 fighter be used rather than a state of the art F-22, which the fighter that he opposed. At best, if the reasoning for this was that Obama would perceive it as a personal embarrassment, then this was a very petty small minded concern. If one or all of the following were true then it unfortunately confirms the image that he has projected thus far - a weak, indecisive, incompetent, servile, socialist ideologue:
1.) Obama doesn’t want to project any aura of power, strength, resoluteness or superiority to the rest of the world because he is afraid of offending our enemies and/or
2.) Obama detests the military and/or
3.) Obama feels that we don’t need to protect our country or its interests (with sophisticated equipment) since all the nations of the world will be singing kumbaya and/or
4.) Obama would rather use the money for his socialist agenda rather than protect our country
Any way you look at it, Obama is the antithesis of what the Commander-in-Chief should be. And that is VERY BAD for America!
White House aides insisted F-22 be removed from Obama speech venue
Josh Rogin 12/02/2009
When President Obama spoke to troops at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base last month, the unit there parked a shiny new F-22 fighter plane in the hanger. But according to multiple sources, White House aides demanded the plane be changed to an older F-15 fighter because they didn't want Obama speaking in front of the F-22, a controversial program he fought hard to end.
"White House aides actually made them remove the F-22-said they would not allow POTUS (President of the United States) to be pictured with the F-22 in any way, shape, or form," one source close to the unit relayed.
Stephen Lee, a public affairs officer at Elmendorf, confirmed to The Cable that the F-22 was parked in the hanger and then was replaced by an F-15 at the White House's behest.
The airmen there took offense to the Obama aides' demand, sources told The Cable, seeing it as a slight to the folks who are operating the F-22 proudly every day. They also expressed bewilderment that the White House staff would even care so much as to make an issue out of the fact that the F-22 was placed in the hanger with the president.
A White House official, commenting on background basis, told The Cable that yes, there were discussions about which plane or planes would be in the hanger, but that they were not meant as an insult to the pilots and other personnel who work on the F-22. The official couldn't elaborate on why the White House aides felt it necessary to get involved in the matter in the first place.
The official pointed to Obama's speech to the troops that day, where he praised both the 90th Fighter Squadron, known as the "Dicemen," and the 525th Fighter Squadron, the "Bulldogs," both of which operate the F-22.
Even so, the Air Force personnel thought it odd the White House wanted to display the older plane rather than the more advanced plane that, in the eyes of its supporters, represents the latest and greatest in American aviation.
The Obama administration fought hard and successfully to cut off production of the F-22 at 187 planes, a number Defense Secretary Robert Gates endorsed but that was hundreds less than originally planned and about half of the 381 planes Air Force leadership lobbied hard for in the years preceding Obama's inauguration.
"It's one thing to be against further production; quite another to slight the folks who are flying them in the operational world," one source said, adding that "the F-15 pictured was put into service roughly around the same period when Obama graduated from college. It's vintage."
What previously was thought to be unreachable levels of arrant incompetence, imprudence, recklessness and arrogance by Obama and his administration seems to be superseded on a frighteningly regular basis to new highs (and therefore, lows). His radical and destructive ideology is not only causing irreparable harm to our freedoms and rights but is also compromising our security, placing all Americans at risk, as seen with his plan to try terrorists in civil trials in Federal Courts.
At first thought many may question why this is such a big deal. The answer to this is cogently delineated in the following scathing editorial written by Thomas Sowell.
What can we do? Write your Senators and Representative requesting that they block funding for the trial(s) so that they will no be able to proceed in Federal Court and must, therefore, be adjudicated by military courts.
Deepest Bow Is Reserved For World Opinion
By Thomas Sowell
In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.
Terrorists are not even entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions, much less the Constitution of the United States. Terrorists have never observed, nor even claimed to have observed, the Geneva Conventions, nor are they among those covered by it.
But over and above the utter inconsistency of what is being done is the utter recklessness it represents.
The last time an attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a matter of domestic criminal justice was after a bomb was exploded there in 1993. Under the rules of American criminal law, the prosecution had to turn over all sorts of information to the defense — information that told the al-Qaida international terrorist network what we knew about them and how we knew it.
This was nothing more and nothing less than giving away military secrets to an enemy in wartime — something for which people have been executed, as they should have been.
Secrecy in warfare is a matter of life and death. Lives were risked and lost during World War II to prevent Nazi Germany from discovering that Britain had broken its supposedly unbreakable Enigma code and could read their military plans that were being radioed in that code.
"Loose lips sink ships" was the World War II motto in the United States. But loose lips are mandated under the rules of criminal prosecutions.
Tragically, this administration seems hell-bent to avoid seeing acts of terrorism against the United States as acts of war. The very phrase "war on terrorism" is avoided, as if that will stop the terrorists' war on us.
The mind-set of the left behind such thinking was spelled out in a San Francisco Chronicle editorial, which said that "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will be tried the right way — the American way, in a federal courtroom where the world will see both his guilt and the nation's adherence to the rule of law."
This is not the rule of law, but the application of laws to situations for which they were not designed.
How many Americans may pay with their lives for the intelligence secrets and methods that can be forced to be disclosed to al-Qaida was not mentioned. Nor was there mention of how many foreign nations and individuals whose cooperation with us in the war on terror has been involved in countering al-Qaida — nor how many foreign nations and individuals will have to think twice now, before cooperating with us again, when their role can be revealed in court to our enemies, who can exact revenge on them.
Behind this decision and others is the notion that we have to demonstrate our good faith to other nations, sometimes called "world opinion." Just who are these saintly nations whose favor we must curry, at the risk of American lives and the national security of the United States?
Internationally, the law of the jungle ultimately prevails, despite pious talk about "the international community" and "world opinion," or the pompous and corrupt farce of the United Nations. Yet this is the gallery to which Barack Obama has been playing, both before and after becoming president of the United States.
In the wake of the obscenity of a trial of terrorists in federal court for an act of war — and the worldwide propaganda platform it will give them — it may seem to be a small thing that President Obama has been photographed yet again bowing deeply to a foreign ruler. But how large or small an act is depends on its actual consequences, not on whether the politically correct intelligentsia think it is no big deal.
As a private citizen, Barack Obama has a right to make as big a jackass of himself as he wants to. But as president of the United States, his actions not only denigrate a nation that other nations rely on for survival, but raise questions about how reliable our judgment and resolve are — which in turn raises questions about whether those nations will consider themselves better off to make the best deal they can with our enemies.
We have come across a new website, KeepAmericaSafe.com, that should be of interest to you and which we can strongly recommend. Started by Elizabeth Cheney, the eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, its intent is to fight the radical policies of the Obama administration which are making the nation weaker and vulnerable.
Their Mission Statement outlines its purpose and the present security scenario as:
“… to provide information for concerned Americans about critical national security issues. Keep America Safe seeks to influence public policy by encouraging dialogue between American citizens and their elected representatives in order to produce legislation and executive action that enhances the national security of the United States.
The United States remains a nation at war. We face a growing threat from rogue regimes that seek or have already obtained nuclear weapons. America’s interests are challenged by an authoritarian China, a resurgent Russia, and dictators in our own hemisphere who ally themselves with our adversaries. Amidst the great challenges to America’s security and prosperity, the current administration too often seems uncertain, wishful, irresolute, and unwilling to stand up for America, our allies and our interests.
Keep America Safe believes the United States can only defeat our adversaries and defend our interests from a position of strength.”
This website, www.saveyourrights.com, concentrates largely on addressing issues that impact our personal, social, economic and religious rights and freedoms from government controls, intrusions and dictates and other noxious domestic causes. KeepAmericaSafe.com is complementary in that it addresses our Federal government’s policies and their impact on our security and ultimately, therefore, foreign threats to our freedoms.
New Yorkers have ex-President George Bush to thank for the recent prevention of a terrorist attack on the subway system there. This was the most serious terrorism plot against the United States since 9/11. It was as a consequence of the Patriot Act that he so fervently fought for that saved the day in this case. The primary individual charged had been identified and tracked while Bush was still President – it was not initiated under Obama. This same Patriot Act which was bitterly maligned and fought by the Left also served to keep America safe through Bush’s tenure.
As for Obama, a resolute critic of this legislation and of Bush, he was extremely fortunate politically that this attack was thwarted as it could have irreparably damaged his Presidency. Will he take heed of this and request renewal of its provisions which are set to expire Dec. 31st of this year or will he resolutely continue to adhere to his reckless ideology and jeopardize the security and safety of the citizens of this country? We hope he wisely chooses the former.
Americans have increasingly realized that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an ironic and misleading misnomer much like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is as the formal name of the North Korea with its brutally repressive government. The ACLU was essentially founded on communist principles and its actions of relentlessly defending anti-American individuals, issues and ideology just continues to reinforce this position. In recent years, they have sought to expose counterterrorism operations which has endangered the lives of American military and intelligence officials and aimed to undermine our national security through endless litigation.
Though egregious, it should come as no surprise that the ACLU now is involved in spying for the enemies of America. That’s right! It’s called “Project CIA Paparazzi” whereby they are photographing and obtaining information of undercover CIA agents and other intelligence personnel and then presenting them to al-Qaida terrorists as part of their “rightful” defense.
Meanwhile, no ink is being consumed on outrage by the liberal news media as this story is a non-event to them not mandating coverage. Again, no surprise.
North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-Il may be a brutal, unpredictable tyrant but he is not stupid. He realizes the ineptness and naiveté of Obama’s responses thus far to a variety of threats around the globe and is exploiting these weaknesses. Of course, even a village idiot can see the follies of Obama’s incompetent responses, actions and inactions. North Korea is threatening the United States with nuclear conflagration, specifically Hawaii and the West Coast, so what are Obama’s responses? “We are monitoring the situation”. Will the U.S. also be a bystander photographing missiles targeting Hawaii to see how it all turns out? His other action was even more troubling and telling: cutting money devoted to missile defense systems that would be protecting the U.S.
So let’s sum this up. An enemy is threatening us with a nuclear attack and Obama’s responses are: 1.) We will just watch and see if they really mean what they say even if it means following the missiles all the way to Hawaii and 2.) Let’s cut our missile defense. We can use the money saved from the “unnecessary” defense of our country to fund pork laden bills and extravagant White House parties.
It is a good thing that one of Ronald Reagan's legacies is still protecting us: his Star Wars missile defense systems!
Obama’s naivety, real world inexperience, groveling to the Arab countries and perceived (and REAL) image of weakness has allowed Iran to continue uncontested in its goal of developing a nuclear weapon. Unfortunately, the consequences of Iran possessing such a weapon can (will) be disastrous.
His thought processes overall here defy logic as discussed in the following editorial. Another note: ideology trumps rationality.
If you didn’t know better, you would think that Obama is a plant or pro tempore President supplied by another country. He has relentlessly been bashing our country, its policies and its citizens (us), wherever he travels abroad. To paraphrase his famous statement recently, “Americans can be arrogant, dismissive and derisive.” Instead of touting the United States as the World’s protector and champion of liberty and freedom, saving millions of lives and costing hundreds of thousands of our own to do so, he bemuses that we should not be imposing our values and ideals like these ones on others. Our President should be a resolute defender and cheerleader of our great country. Instead, he relentlessly denigrates it in a condescending way. Obama, you are the one who is arrogant, dismissive and derisive!
His comments and attitudes also have predictably emboldened our enemies to proceed unfettered and without fear with their malevolent plans. They see us as weak, bitterly divided, directionless and just plain vulnerable. Ripe for the picking. Kim Jong-il of North Korea doesn’t appear to be intimidated by us. Let’s see: North Korea conducts a large underground nuclear detonation followed a day later by the belligerent firing of multiple missiles. Now he has plans for an imminent launch of an ICBM capable of delivering a nuclear warhead which can travel 4000 miles, enough to reach Alaska. What has been our response? Oh, we will be monitoring the situation. And we need to get back to the negotiating table. Right! Kim Jong-il must surely be quaking in his boots.
It is the same story in Iran where the ramifications and collateral effects would be far more severe. Full steam ahead with their nuclear weapons program! What makes this situation even more egregious is that they know that the only country which has the chutzpah, capability and moral rectitude to stop them, Israel, has been directly warned and threatened by Obama in no uncertain terms not to conduct a preemptive attack.
Circumstances are evolving into a scenario that is a perfect storm for a nuclear holocaust.
For more on this, view the following video of Sean Hannity interviewing Mitt Romney.
Obama as well as the Democratic Party just can’t seem to admit that there are Islamic terrorists plotting relentlessly to attack us and our way of life. It was virtually never mentioned during the Presidential campaign by any of the Democratic candidates and has become a "verbum non grata" for this Obama Administration. When he delivered a speech on homeland security on May 21st, shockingly he did not acknowledge the arrest earlier in the day of four Islamic terrorists in New York City who were in the processing of staging several attacks there. For clarification as well, it was under the Bush administration that this plot was infiltrated and able to be successfully thwarted. There is no credit due Obama.
The video below is a news report of the arrests and detailing some of the specifics.
The following is an editorial by Michelle Malkin on Obama's silence on this matter:
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