Si vis pacem parabellum If I agreed with you, we would both be wrong We can thank public education for American gullibility... When did individualism and self reliance come to depend on the government? "A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own." Capital punishment means never having to say, "You again?" Liberals Use Guilt As Moral Weapon Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Let's Surprise NBC- Go to In God We Trust - FYI
Let's Surprise NBC- Go to In God We Trust - FYI
Here's your chance to let the media know where the people stand on our faith in God, as a nation. NBC is taking a poll on "In God We Trust" to stay on our American currency. Please send this to every Christian you know so they can vote on this important subject. Please do it right away, before NBC takes this off the web page. Poll is still open so you can vote. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10103521/ This is not sent for discussion, if you agree forward it. If you don't, delete it. By my forwarding it, you know how I feel. I'll bet this was a surprise to NBC..
Here's your chance to let the media know where the people stand on our faith in God, as a nation. NBC is taking a poll on "In God We Trust" to stay on our American currency. Please send this to every Christian you know so they can vote on this important subject. Please do it right away, before NBC takes this off the web page. Poll is still open so you can vote. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10103521/ This is not sent for discussion, if you agree forward it. If you don't, delete it. By my forwarding it, you know how I feel. I'll bet this was a surprise to NBC..
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Flashback Hypocrisy: Obama Campaign Ad Warned Voters about BIG SPENDER McCAIN
Shocking Hypocrisy Audio found Obama didnt like it when Bush Rushed Through Legislation
Hope: Obama's Era of Change pt. 1
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Go 48 years without releasing any documents and you too can be President!
Obama has lived for 48 years without leaving any footprints — none!
There is no Obama documentation — no records — no paper trail — None.
Original, vault copy birth certificate — Not released
Certificate of Live Birth — Released — Counterfeit
Obama/Dunham marriage license — Not released
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license — Not released
Soetoro adoption records — Not released
Fransiskus Assisi School School application — Released
Punahou School records — Not released
Selective Service Registration — Released — Counterfeit
Occidental College records — Not released
Passport (Pakistan) — Not released
Columbia College records — Not released
Columbia thesis — Not released
Harvard College records — Not released
Harvard Law Review articles — None (maybe 1, unsigned?)
Baptism certificate — None
Medical records — Not released
Illinois State Senate records — None
Illinois State Senate schedule — Lost
Law practice client list — Not released
University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
There is no Obama documentation — no records — no paper trail — None.
Original, vault copy birth certificate — Not released
Certificate of Live Birth — Released — Counterfeit
Obama/Dunham marriage license — Not released
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license — Not released
Soetoro adoption records — Not released
Fransiskus Assisi School School application — Released
Punahou School records — Not released
Selective Service Registration — Released — Counterfeit
Occidental College records — Not released
Passport (Pakistan) — Not released
Columbia College records — Not released
Columbia thesis — Not released
Harvard College records — Not released
Harvard Law Review articles — None (maybe 1, unsigned?)
Baptism certificate — None
Medical records — Not released
Illinois State Senate records — None
Illinois State Senate schedule — Lost
Law practice client list — Not released
University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
"I'm Tired"
By Robert A. Hall
I'll be 63 soon. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce, and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired. I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth around" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy or stupid to earn it. I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes". Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them-with their own money. I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the religious freedom and women's rights of Saudi Arabia, the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Gay people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela. Won't multiculturalism be beautiful? I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace", when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor": of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers": of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery": of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to. I believe "a man should be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin." I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial world of President Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of US Senators from Illinois. I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the emancipation proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom of the individual, and less in an all-knowing government. I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama's expenses, which were triple the cost, were wonderful. That thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great** example for the public to control weight and stress; that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his; that slammed Palin with two years as governor for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004. I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance. I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough. I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? Last I heard, Gay people did not choose to be Gay, but I damn sure that druggies chose to take drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana. I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on OUR welfare or crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"?
And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who is self-supporting, without their family being on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military. Those are the citizens we need. I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people then themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years-and still are? Not even close. So here's the deal;
I'll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq; or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear. I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers-bums are bi-partisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need bi-partisanship. I live in Illinois, where the "Illinois Combine" of Democrats and Republicans has worked together harmoniously to loot the public for years. And I notice that the tax cheats in Obama's cabinet are bi-partisan as well. I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor. Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing. I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination, or big-whatever for their problems. Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to get to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter. Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts state senate. He blogs at www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com
I'll be 63 soon. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce, and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired. I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth around" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy or stupid to earn it. I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes". Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them-with their own money. I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the religious freedom and women's rights of Saudi Arabia, the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Gay people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela. Won't multiculturalism be beautiful? I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace", when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor": of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers": of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery": of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to. I believe "a man should be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin." I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial world of President Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of US Senators from Illinois. I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the emancipation proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom of the individual, and less in an all-knowing government. I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama's expenses, which were triple the cost, were wonderful. That thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great** example for the public to control weight and stress; that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his; that slammed Palin with two years as governor for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004. I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance. I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough. I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? Last I heard, Gay people did not choose to be Gay, but I damn sure that druggies chose to take drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana. I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on OUR welfare or crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"?
And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who is self-supporting, without their family being on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military. Those are the citizens we need. I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people then themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years-and still are? Not even close. So here's the deal;
I'll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq; or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear. I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers-bums are bi-partisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need bi-partisanship. I live in Illinois, where the "Illinois Combine" of Democrats and Republicans has worked together harmoniously to loot the public for years. And I notice that the tax cheats in Obama's cabinet are bi-partisan as well. I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor. Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing. I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination, or big-whatever for their problems. Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to get to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter. Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts state senate. He blogs at www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com
Feds undercut civilian supply of ammunition
Feds undercut civilian supply of ammunition
WEAPONS OF CHOICEFeds undercut civilian supply of ammunitionPolicy leaves manufacturers without brass for cartridges
Posted: March 17, 20099:00 pm Eastern
By Drew Zahn© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Fired brass shell casings
A recent government policy change has taken a bite out of the nation's already stressed ammunition supply, leaving arms dealers scrambling to find ammo for private gun owners.
Georgia Arms is a company that for the last 15 years has been purchasing fired brass shell casings from the Department of Defense and private government surplus liquidators
. The military collects the discarded casings from fired rounds, then sells them through liquidators to companies like Georgia Arms that remanufacture the casings into ammunition for the law enforcement
and civilian gun owner communities.
But earlier this month, Georgia Arms received a canceled order, informed by its supplier that the government now requires fired brass casings be mutilated, in other words, destroyed to a scrap metal state.
The policy change, handed down from the Department of Defense through the Defense Logistics Agency, cuts a supply leg out from underneath ammunition manufacturers.
Learn here why it's your right -- and duty -- to be armed.
The policy has compelled Georgia Arms, for example, to cancel all sales of .223 and .308 ammunition, rounds used, respectively, in semi-automatic and deer hunting rifles, until further notice. Sharch Manufacturing, Inc. has announced the same cancellation of its .223 and .308 brass reloading components.
"They just reclassified brass to allow destruction of it, based on what?" Georgia Arms owner Larry Haynie asked WND. "We've been 'going green' for the last dozen years, and brass is one of the most recyclable materials out there. A cartridge case can be used over and over again. And now we're going to destroy it based on what? We don't want the civilian public to have it? It's a government injustice."
As WND reported, firearm sales have spiked since the election of a perceived anti-gun president, and Americans stockpiling bullets have produced a stressed ammunition market.
The Orlando Sentinel reports months of steady, heavy buying have left gun dealers in Florida facing shortages of ammunition.
"The survivalist in all of us comes out," John Ritz, manager of a Florida shooting range, told the Sentinel. "It's more about protecting what you have."
"People are just stockpiling," said a spokeswoman for Georgia Arms, which has seen bullet sales jump 100 percent since the election. "A gun is just like a car. If you can't get gas, you can't use it."
WND contacted the Defense Logistics Agency, the Department of Defense's largest combat support agency, several times seeking comment or explanation for the policy change but received none.
The National Rifle Association confirmed to WND that the DLA had been instructed to require the scrapping of the brass casings but declined further comment at this time.
Other gun advocates, however, have sounded off on the issue, eyeing the change in government policy with suspicion and filling the blogosphere with speculation that the effects of the policy change may be deliberate.
"It is an end-run around Congress. They don't need to try to ban guns – they don't need to fight a massive battle to attempt gun registration, or limit 'assault' weapon sales," writes firearm instructor and author Gordon Hutchinson on his The Shootist blog. "Nope. All they have to do is limit the amount of ammunition available to the civilian market, and when bullets dry up, guns will be useless."
A writer named Owen at the Boots & Sabers blog suspects the policy change is an effort by an anti-gun administration to raise the cost of ammunition.
"This policy didn't come out of the blue," writes Owen. "The Commander in Chief is clearly sending a message to gun owners that they should be paying more for ammunition. If he can't do it through regulatory action, he'll do it by forcing ammunition manufacturers to spend more on production."
Hutchinson reports Georgia Arms was manufacturing over 1 million rounds of .223 ammunition every month, but without the ability to purchase expended military ammunition, the company may be forced to lay off up to half its workforce.
Special offers:
When it's time to shoot back – Get 'Armed Response,' the guide to firearms, self-defense
Perfect gift for pistol-packin' mama – 'Stayin' Alive' shows guns are indeed for girls
"Shooting Back: The Right and Duty of Self-Defense"
Related stories:
Obama seeks 'assault weapons' ban
Is bill lying in wait to ban handguns?
Big Brother's new target: Tracking of all firearms
Congress' plan would let AG 'ban guns at will'
Group asks states to track citizens' ammo
Ban lifted on loaded guns in national parks
NRA's next target: Re-arming Chicago
NRA aims big-budget blitz at Obama
Supremes: Individuals have right to bear arms
Obama election triggers national gun rush
Chuck Norris: Thugs can look down barrel of my gun
Christian college to allow students to carry guns?
Feds pirate investor's gun-shop software
Feds suppress evidence in 'broken gun' conviction?
Man jailed for broken gun getting defense fund help
Gunmaker to feds: Make my day!
Gun expert claims feds punishing him
ACLU blasted on own blog over 2nd Amendment stand
Owner of broken rifle surrenders for 30-month sentence
30 months in jail for broken gun
Drill instructor convicted after rifle jams
Bloggers attack feds after agent forgets gun in airport
BATF rebuked for attacks on gun dealers
Gun shop: Complaint could have been ruse
Gun-shop owner gets 'breath of fresh air'
'Blog' puts fear into gun shop inspectors
New gun control: Shut down shops
Your doctor could put you on no-gun list
Expert offers teachers free weapons training
State quashed bill allowing handguns on campuses
Trial will debate 2nd Amendment rights
Buy a house, get a gun free
New use for schoolbooks: Stopping bullets
New Yorkers rally for 'illegal' guns
Clinton-era war on guns revealed
U.N. gun confab ends in frustration
The U.N.: Gunning for more power
NRA warns of U.N. gun control
Michael Douglas backs U.N. gun ban
'Anti-gang' bill endangers gun rights?
County drops homeowner gun charges
WEAPONS OF CHOICEFeds undercut civilian supply of ammunitionPolicy leaves manufacturers without brass for cartridges
Posted: March 17, 20099:00 pm Eastern
By Drew Zahn© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Fired brass shell casings
A recent government policy change has taken a bite out of the nation's already stressed ammunition supply, leaving arms dealers scrambling to find ammo for private gun owners.
Georgia Arms is a company that for the last 15 years has been purchasing fired brass shell casings from the Department of Defense and private government surplus liquidators
. The military collects the discarded casings from fired rounds, then sells them through liquidators to companies like Georgia Arms that remanufacture the casings into ammunition for the law enforcement
and civilian gun owner communities.
But earlier this month, Georgia Arms received a canceled order, informed by its supplier that the government now requires fired brass casings be mutilated, in other words, destroyed to a scrap metal state.
The policy change, handed down from the Department of Defense through the Defense Logistics Agency, cuts a supply leg out from underneath ammunition manufacturers.
Learn here why it's your right -- and duty -- to be armed.
The policy has compelled Georgia Arms, for example, to cancel all sales of .223 and .308 ammunition, rounds used, respectively, in semi-automatic and deer hunting rifles, until further notice. Sharch Manufacturing, Inc. has announced the same cancellation of its .223 and .308 brass reloading components.
"They just reclassified brass to allow destruction of it, based on what?" Georgia Arms owner Larry Haynie asked WND. "We've been 'going green' for the last dozen years, and brass is one of the most recyclable materials out there. A cartridge case can be used over and over again. And now we're going to destroy it based on what? We don't want the civilian public to have it? It's a government injustice."
As WND reported, firearm sales have spiked since the election of a perceived anti-gun president, and Americans stockpiling bullets have produced a stressed ammunition market.
The Orlando Sentinel reports months of steady, heavy buying have left gun dealers in Florida facing shortages of ammunition.
"The survivalist in all of us comes out," John Ritz, manager of a Florida shooting range, told the Sentinel. "It's more about protecting what you have."
"People are just stockpiling," said a spokeswoman for Georgia Arms, which has seen bullet sales jump 100 percent since the election. "A gun is just like a car. If you can't get gas, you can't use it."
WND contacted the Defense Logistics Agency, the Department of Defense's largest combat support agency, several times seeking comment or explanation for the policy change but received none.
The National Rifle Association confirmed to WND that the DLA had been instructed to require the scrapping of the brass casings but declined further comment at this time.
Other gun advocates, however, have sounded off on the issue, eyeing the change in government policy with suspicion and filling the blogosphere with speculation that the effects of the policy change may be deliberate.
"It is an end-run around Congress. They don't need to try to ban guns – they don't need to fight a massive battle to attempt gun registration, or limit 'assault' weapon sales," writes firearm instructor and author Gordon Hutchinson on his The Shootist blog. "Nope. All they have to do is limit the amount of ammunition available to the civilian market, and when bullets dry up, guns will be useless."
A writer named Owen at the Boots & Sabers blog suspects the policy change is an effort by an anti-gun administration to raise the cost of ammunition.
"This policy didn't come out of the blue," writes Owen. "The Commander in Chief is clearly sending a message to gun owners that they should be paying more for ammunition. If he can't do it through regulatory action, he'll do it by forcing ammunition manufacturers to spend more on production."
Hutchinson reports Georgia Arms was manufacturing over 1 million rounds of .223 ammunition every month, but without the ability to purchase expended military ammunition, the company may be forced to lay off up to half its workforce.
Special offers:
When it's time to shoot back – Get 'Armed Response,' the guide to firearms, self-defense
Perfect gift for pistol-packin' mama – 'Stayin' Alive' shows guns are indeed for girls
"Shooting Back: The Right and Duty of Self-Defense"
Related stories:
Obama seeks 'assault weapons' ban
Is bill lying in wait to ban handguns?
Big Brother's new target: Tracking of all firearms
Congress' plan would let AG 'ban guns at will'
Group asks states to track citizens' ammo
Ban lifted on loaded guns in national parks
NRA's next target: Re-arming Chicago
NRA aims big-budget blitz at Obama
Supremes: Individuals have right to bear arms
Obama election triggers national gun rush
Chuck Norris: Thugs can look down barrel of my gun
Christian college to allow students to carry guns?
Feds pirate investor's gun-shop software
Feds suppress evidence in 'broken gun' conviction?
Man jailed for broken gun getting defense fund help
Gunmaker to feds: Make my day!
Gun expert claims feds punishing him
ACLU blasted on own blog over 2nd Amendment stand
Owner of broken rifle surrenders for 30-month sentence
30 months in jail for broken gun
Drill instructor convicted after rifle jams
Bloggers attack feds after agent forgets gun in airport
BATF rebuked for attacks on gun dealers
Gun shop: Complaint could have been ruse
Gun-shop owner gets 'breath of fresh air'
'Blog' puts fear into gun shop inspectors
New gun control: Shut down shops
Your doctor could put you on no-gun list
Expert offers teachers free weapons training
State quashed bill allowing handguns on campuses
Trial will debate 2nd Amendment rights
Buy a house, get a gun free
New use for schoolbooks: Stopping bullets
New Yorkers rally for 'illegal' guns
Clinton-era war on guns revealed
U.N. gun confab ends in frustration
The U.N.: Gunning for more power
NRA warns of U.N. gun control
Michael Douglas backs U.N. gun ban
'Anti-gang' bill endangers gun rights?
County drops homeowner gun charges
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Clownish Rachel Maddow Rewrites History of Great Depression
Clownish Rachel Maddow Rewrites History of Great Depression, Reinforces Liberal Creation Myth
By Jack Coleman (Bio Archive)December 15, 2008 - 15:13 ET
Must have been that full moon. Or "fool full moon" as Rachel Maddow stumbled in referring to it.
If the Newseum is accepting suggestions for exhibits, a possibility comes to mind -- the Pantheon of Unfortunate Punditry. First submission -- Maddow's hilarious revisionism of Herbert Hoover on her MSNBC show Friday. I've watched the segment several times, each time in awe at Maddow's supreme confidence, unrivalled since Ted Baxter in his heyday. I plan to preserve it for posterity, to share with my children as a cautionary tale -- This is what happens when a person makes an utter fool of herself in public.
Maddow told of Vice President Dick Cheney visiting Capitol Hill earlier in the week and warning congressional Republicans that if the GOP blocks the auto bailout, "... We will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever," according to the Los Angeles Times.
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Here's where Maddow kicked into gear, emboldened by the keen awareness that nearly all her viewers and hardly anyone at MSNBC know enough history to refute her assertions --
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That's a bad thing! Hoover is a political epithet in bad economic times because his response to the Depression (pause) was to first do nothing and then do stuff that made it worse. The country needed massive federal spending to stimulate demand and keep people working.
Hoover cut spending.The government had an economic responsibility to borrow some money and get credit moving. Hoover picked that awesome time to balance the budget. Everything was going the wrong direction economically, so the government needed to make some big, bold moves in the opposite direction.
Hoover picked that time to proclaim his own impotence, telling Congress in 1930, 'Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement.' (Maddow holds photo of Hoover to her face and mimics him) I'm Herbert Hoover, I can't do anything helpful. How about I hurt the economy some more instead because of my dumb, moralistic, ideologically-driven, ignorant, short-term, self-serving, bad ideas? I'll take this Depression and make it not just good, but great! That's the ticket -- the Great Depression!
What made Maddow's puppetry all the more insipid is that she's been on a tear of late condemning -- you guessed it -- revisionist history, specifically where she sees it emanating from the Bush administration on Iraq. Maddow has apparently decided to fight firefighters with fire, responding to her fantasies of revisionism where none exist and providing examples of the real thing.
For example, her claim that Hoover "cut" spending. By this, Maddow must mean Hoover did not increase federal spending at a rate preferred by liberals, who have resorted to this rhetorical sleight of hand for decades.
But as conservatives and Republicans are well aware, Hoover did the opposite -- he increased spending, and not by a little.
In his book "The Herbert Hoover Story," written by Reader's Digest senior editor Eugene Lyons and published in 1959, Lyons wrote this about Hoover's alleged tightwad tendencies --
He sought to provide jobs through public works; more was spent for this purpose in his administration than in the preceding thirty-six years, including the building of the Panama Canal. (emphasis in the original)
Surely Maddow has heard of at least one of these projects, which bears the name of the man instrumental in initiating it -- the Hoover Dam -- the largest public-works behemoth of the era. Other public projects begun by Hoover include the San Francisco Bay Bridge and the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
How's this for irony? Hoover's response to the stock market crash in 1929 was to call for massive federal spending on public works, which is exactly what Maddow wants Obama to do (though Maddow prefers to fetishize it as "infrastructure," a word she can't utter without squirming in her seat).
In an Oct. 5 article for National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg wrote --
William Leuchtenburg, possibly the greatest authority on the FDR era, wrote some years ago, "Almost every historian now recognizes that the image of Hoover as a 'do-nothing' president is inaccurate."
After the stock market crash in 1929, Hoover browbeat business leaders to keep wages and prices high. He invested heavily in public works projects. He pushed for an international moratorium on debts. He created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which later became a home for many of FDR's Brain Trusters. Hoover increased farm subsidies enormously.
Some of Hoover's interventions were good but ineffectual. A few were very, very bad and very effective.
In 1932, Hoover in effect repealed Calvin Coolidge's tax cuts, increasing the rates for the poorest taxpayers by more than 100 percent and hiking the top rate from 25 percent to 63 percent. Worse, contrary to his own better instincts, Hoover signed the disastrous Smoot-Hawley trade bill that raised protectionist walls at precisely the moment the world needed trade the most.
That Maddow knows little of Hoover is not surprising, despite the fact she earned a doctorate -- in political science at that -- from Oxford. For many liberals, American history starts on March 4, 1933 with Roosevelt's inauguration and FDR uttering the words, "We have nothing to fear ..."
But you'd think their knowledge of history would extend a tad earlier, to include the 1932 campaign and Roosevelt's criticism of Hoover -- as a spendthrift hellbent on enlarging the breadth and cost of goverment. Doing so, however, could prove problematic for liberals' foremost creation myth -- that Hoover caused the Great Depression, "Did Nothing" in response, and Roosevelt rode to the rescue. As mythology goes, this one is Homeric in its longevity and as accurate in its depiction of actual events.
Here's what Roosevelt said in accepting the Democratic presidential nomination --
I know something of taxes. For three long years I have been going up and down this country preaching that government -- federal and local and state -- costs too much. As an immediate program of action we must abolish useless offices. We must eliminate unnecessary functions of government -- functions, in fact, that are not definitely essential to the continuance of government. We must merge, we must consolidate subdivisions of government, and, like the private citizen, give up luxuries which we can no longer afford.
Roosevelt's concern was understandable, given the nation's economic crisis and federal spending under Hoover. As pointed out by former Business Week bureau chief Andrew W. Wilson in a Nov. 4 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, "Five Myths About the Great Depression" --
After declining or holding steady through most of the 1920, federal spending soared between 1929 and 1932 -- increasing by more than 50 percent, the biggest increase in federal spending ever recorded during peacetime.
I mentioned Maddow's commentary to a friend over the weekend, who told me he'd also seen it. That's the perception of Hoover, he sighed, and my friend was right. Just as it was global "perception" for millennia that the world was flat. Agreed, perception often trumps reality in politics, but perception cannot trump truth. This remains as true today it was in 1774 when a Boston lawyer named John Adams pointed out the stubborn nature of facts while defending British soldiers from an earlier pernicious perception.
Updated by N. Sheppard at 2:50 PM: To confirm what Andrew W. Wilson wrote on November 4, and to demonstrate just how wrong Maddow is about spending under Hoover, all one need do is examine the Historical Tables of the U.S. Budget available at OMB.
What most folks -- especially liberals! -- don't understand today is that prior to the Great Depression, the U.S. government didn't like to spend a lot of money except in times of war. As such, spending declined precipitously in the years following World War I, and then basically remained flat from 1924 through 1928.
Then, contrary to Maddow's assertion, in 1929 spending rose $166 million, or 5.6 percent. This may not seem much, but it was the biggest increase in spending since the end of World War I.
The following year, spending increased $193 million, or 6 percent. In 1931, it increased $257 million, or 7.7 percent. In 1932, it increased $1.08 billion, or 30 percent.
Add it all up, and annual spending increased by almost $1.7 billion dollars or 57 percent while Hoover was President.
Is this what Maddow believes to be a spending cut?
Rachel Maddow Still Can't Get it Right About Hoover
By Jack Coleman (Bio Archive)March 10, 2009 - 08:48 ET
How can you tell when MSNBC cable-show host Rachel Maddow utters falsehoods about Herbert Hoover? If she talks about him.This is becoming enough of a pattern for Maddow, as I've described previously at NewsBusters, to border on the pathological.Here she goes again, this time during her show Friday night while condemning Republicans calling for a "freeze" on federal spending for the rest of the fiscal year --
You know who else had the excellent idea to freeze government spending during a recession? This guy! (holds up photo of Hoover) H.H., President Herbert Hoover. His fundamental misunderstanding of how to shore up a failing economy was so celebrated that the great armies of homeless and jobless Americans gave him naming rights for the shanty towns where they all lived in cardboard boxes and burned-out cars during the Great Depression -- Hoovervilles. Hoovervilles. And now, (House Minority Leader) John Boehner and congressional Republicans are advocating the same policy.
Enboldened by smarm, Maddow went on to say --
In this context (referring to the recession), the Republicans are proposing a spending freeze. They're saying the government should stop spending. And also, rather than put your house fire out with water, they're going to switch the liquid in the firehose over to gasoline.
Much like that alleged tightwad Hoover during the Depression. Maddow at the same fire resolutely douses the blaze with water, regardless of whether it was electrical in origin.
Certain left-wing myths are so impervious to reality -- McCarthy chasing phantom communists, Reagan as amiable dunce, the doomed surge in Iraq -- that arguing with liberals about these sacrosanct beliefs is like trying to convert house plants. The best you can do is open them to sunlight.
When it comes to federal spending during Hoover's single term in office, 1929 to 1933, what actually happened? According to the Office of Budget and Management Web site, Table 1.1, just the opposite of what Maddow repeatedly claims.
Federal spending increased $166 million in 1929, or 5 percent. In 1930, it rose by $193 million over the preceding year, at 6 percent. The pattern continued in 1931, with an increase of $257 million, nearly 8 percent. And for 1932, it rose a whopping 30 percent, by $1.08 billion. All told, federal spending increased 57 percent in this four-year period, according to the OMB.
It was a "freeze" on spending much the way bitter cold is evidence of global warming, another laughable claim from the left. Not surprisingly, Maddow relies on anecdote to make her shabby claim -- shanty towns dubbed "Hoovervilles" during the Depression -- instead of the "empirical evidence" she touted but never produced, given its pie-in-face potential for besmirking her dogma.
Maddow also gets it wrong about what current-day Republicans in Congress are proposing -- they want to "freeze" spending, which beyond MSNBC is universally understood to mean maintaining spending at current levels. This is hardly suggesting we "stop" spending. An actual example of a politician determined to follow Hoover's lead by vastly increasing federal spending in an economic slump? Barack Obama.
By Jack Coleman (Bio Archive)December 15, 2008 - 15:13 ET
Must have been that full moon. Or "fool full moon" as Rachel Maddow stumbled in referring to it.
If the Newseum is accepting suggestions for exhibits, a possibility comes to mind -- the Pantheon of Unfortunate Punditry. First submission -- Maddow's hilarious revisionism of Herbert Hoover on her MSNBC show Friday. I've watched the segment several times, each time in awe at Maddow's supreme confidence, unrivalled since Ted Baxter in his heyday. I plan to preserve it for posterity, to share with my children as a cautionary tale -- This is what happens when a person makes an utter fool of herself in public.
Maddow told of Vice President Dick Cheney visiting Capitol Hill earlier in the week and warning congressional Republicans that if the GOP blocks the auto bailout, "... We will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever," according to the Los Angeles Times.
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Here's where Maddow kicked into gear, emboldened by the keen awareness that nearly all her viewers and hardly anyone at MSNBC know enough history to refute her assertions --
Story Continues Below Ad ↓
That's a bad thing! Hoover is a political epithet in bad economic times because his response to the Depression (pause) was to first do nothing and then do stuff that made it worse. The country needed massive federal spending to stimulate demand and keep people working.
Hoover cut spending.The government had an economic responsibility to borrow some money and get credit moving. Hoover picked that awesome time to balance the budget. Everything was going the wrong direction economically, so the government needed to make some big, bold moves in the opposite direction.
Hoover picked that time to proclaim his own impotence, telling Congress in 1930, 'Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement.' (Maddow holds photo of Hoover to her face and mimics him) I'm Herbert Hoover, I can't do anything helpful. How about I hurt the economy some more instead because of my dumb, moralistic, ideologically-driven, ignorant, short-term, self-serving, bad ideas? I'll take this Depression and make it not just good, but great! That's the ticket -- the Great Depression!
What made Maddow's puppetry all the more insipid is that she's been on a tear of late condemning -- you guessed it -- revisionist history, specifically where she sees it emanating from the Bush administration on Iraq. Maddow has apparently decided to fight firefighters with fire, responding to her fantasies of revisionism where none exist and providing examples of the real thing.
For example, her claim that Hoover "cut" spending. By this, Maddow must mean Hoover did not increase federal spending at a rate preferred by liberals, who have resorted to this rhetorical sleight of hand for decades.
But as conservatives and Republicans are well aware, Hoover did the opposite -- he increased spending, and not by a little.
In his book "The Herbert Hoover Story," written by Reader's Digest senior editor Eugene Lyons and published in 1959, Lyons wrote this about Hoover's alleged tightwad tendencies --
He sought to provide jobs through public works; more was spent for this purpose in his administration than in the preceding thirty-six years, including the building of the Panama Canal. (emphasis in the original)
Surely Maddow has heard of at least one of these projects, which bears the name of the man instrumental in initiating it -- the Hoover Dam -- the largest public-works behemoth of the era. Other public projects begun by Hoover include the San Francisco Bay Bridge and the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
How's this for irony? Hoover's response to the stock market crash in 1929 was to call for massive federal spending on public works, which is exactly what Maddow wants Obama to do (though Maddow prefers to fetishize it as "infrastructure," a word she can't utter without squirming in her seat).
In an Oct. 5 article for National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg wrote --
William Leuchtenburg, possibly the greatest authority on the FDR era, wrote some years ago, "Almost every historian now recognizes that the image of Hoover as a 'do-nothing' president is inaccurate."
After the stock market crash in 1929, Hoover browbeat business leaders to keep wages and prices high. He invested heavily in public works projects. He pushed for an international moratorium on debts. He created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which later became a home for many of FDR's Brain Trusters. Hoover increased farm subsidies enormously.
Some of Hoover's interventions were good but ineffectual. A few were very, very bad and very effective.
In 1932, Hoover in effect repealed Calvin Coolidge's tax cuts, increasing the rates for the poorest taxpayers by more than 100 percent and hiking the top rate from 25 percent to 63 percent. Worse, contrary to his own better instincts, Hoover signed the disastrous Smoot-Hawley trade bill that raised protectionist walls at precisely the moment the world needed trade the most.
That Maddow knows little of Hoover is not surprising, despite the fact she earned a doctorate -- in political science at that -- from Oxford. For many liberals, American history starts on March 4, 1933 with Roosevelt's inauguration and FDR uttering the words, "We have nothing to fear ..."
But you'd think their knowledge of history would extend a tad earlier, to include the 1932 campaign and Roosevelt's criticism of Hoover -- as a spendthrift hellbent on enlarging the breadth and cost of goverment. Doing so, however, could prove problematic for liberals' foremost creation myth -- that Hoover caused the Great Depression, "Did Nothing" in response, and Roosevelt rode to the rescue. As mythology goes, this one is Homeric in its longevity and as accurate in its depiction of actual events.
Here's what Roosevelt said in accepting the Democratic presidential nomination --
I know something of taxes. For three long years I have been going up and down this country preaching that government -- federal and local and state -- costs too much. As an immediate program of action we must abolish useless offices. We must eliminate unnecessary functions of government -- functions, in fact, that are not definitely essential to the continuance of government. We must merge, we must consolidate subdivisions of government, and, like the private citizen, give up luxuries which we can no longer afford.
Roosevelt's concern was understandable, given the nation's economic crisis and federal spending under Hoover. As pointed out by former Business Week bureau chief Andrew W. Wilson in a Nov. 4 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, "Five Myths About the Great Depression" --
After declining or holding steady through most of the 1920, federal spending soared between 1929 and 1932 -- increasing by more than 50 percent, the biggest increase in federal spending ever recorded during peacetime.
I mentioned Maddow's commentary to a friend over the weekend, who told me he'd also seen it. That's the perception of Hoover, he sighed, and my friend was right. Just as it was global "perception" for millennia that the world was flat. Agreed, perception often trumps reality in politics, but perception cannot trump truth. This remains as true today it was in 1774 when a Boston lawyer named John Adams pointed out the stubborn nature of facts while defending British soldiers from an earlier pernicious perception.
Updated by N. Sheppard at 2:50 PM: To confirm what Andrew W. Wilson wrote on November 4, and to demonstrate just how wrong Maddow is about spending under Hoover, all one need do is examine the Historical Tables of the U.S. Budget available at OMB.
What most folks -- especially liberals! -- don't understand today is that prior to the Great Depression, the U.S. government didn't like to spend a lot of money except in times of war. As such, spending declined precipitously in the years following World War I, and then basically remained flat from 1924 through 1928.
Then, contrary to Maddow's assertion, in 1929 spending rose $166 million, or 5.6 percent. This may not seem much, but it was the biggest increase in spending since the end of World War I.
The following year, spending increased $193 million, or 6 percent. In 1931, it increased $257 million, or 7.7 percent. In 1932, it increased $1.08 billion, or 30 percent.
Add it all up, and annual spending increased by almost $1.7 billion dollars or 57 percent while Hoover was President.
Is this what Maddow believes to be a spending cut?
Rachel Maddow Still Can't Get it Right About Hoover
By Jack Coleman (Bio Archive)March 10, 2009 - 08:48 ET
How can you tell when MSNBC cable-show host Rachel Maddow utters falsehoods about Herbert Hoover? If she talks about him.This is becoming enough of a pattern for Maddow, as I've described previously at NewsBusters, to border on the pathological.Here she goes again, this time during her show Friday night while condemning Republicans calling for a "freeze" on federal spending for the rest of the fiscal year --
You know who else had the excellent idea to freeze government spending during a recession? This guy! (holds up photo of Hoover) H.H., President Herbert Hoover. His fundamental misunderstanding of how to shore up a failing economy was so celebrated that the great armies of homeless and jobless Americans gave him naming rights for the shanty towns where they all lived in cardboard boxes and burned-out cars during the Great Depression -- Hoovervilles. Hoovervilles. And now, (House Minority Leader) John Boehner and congressional Republicans are advocating the same policy.
Enboldened by smarm, Maddow went on to say --
In this context (referring to the recession), the Republicans are proposing a spending freeze. They're saying the government should stop spending. And also, rather than put your house fire out with water, they're going to switch the liquid in the firehose over to gasoline.
Much like that alleged tightwad Hoover during the Depression. Maddow at the same fire resolutely douses the blaze with water, regardless of whether it was electrical in origin.
Certain left-wing myths are so impervious to reality -- McCarthy chasing phantom communists, Reagan as amiable dunce, the doomed surge in Iraq -- that arguing with liberals about these sacrosanct beliefs is like trying to convert house plants. The best you can do is open them to sunlight.
When it comes to federal spending during Hoover's single term in office, 1929 to 1933, what actually happened? According to the Office of Budget and Management Web site, Table 1.1, just the opposite of what Maddow repeatedly claims.
Federal spending increased $166 million in 1929, or 5 percent. In 1930, it rose by $193 million over the preceding year, at 6 percent. The pattern continued in 1931, with an increase of $257 million, nearly 8 percent. And for 1932, it rose a whopping 30 percent, by $1.08 billion. All told, federal spending increased 57 percent in this four-year period, according to the OMB.
It was a "freeze" on spending much the way bitter cold is evidence of global warming, another laughable claim from the left. Not surprisingly, Maddow relies on anecdote to make her shabby claim -- shanty towns dubbed "Hoovervilles" during the Depression -- instead of the "empirical evidence" she touted but never produced, given its pie-in-face potential for besmirking her dogma.
Maddow also gets it wrong about what current-day Republicans in Congress are proposing -- they want to "freeze" spending, which beyond MSNBC is universally understood to mean maintaining spending at current levels. This is hardly suggesting we "stop" spending. An actual example of a politician determined to follow Hoover's lead by vastly increasing federal spending in an economic slump? Barack Obama.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
US To Give $900 Million To Hamas (via Gaza)…
US To Give $900 Million To Hamas (via Gaza)…
By PUMA Pundit • February 23, 2009
You have got to be kidding me. Obama wants to spend $900 million of taxpayer money to strengthen Gaza. Gaza is run by Hamas, an organizaton whose objective it is to eradicate Isreal from the face of the earth…
Ok, let me rephrase. We are going to give $900 million to an area which is totally controlled by an organization which is committed to wiping Israel off of the face of the earth?I guess it was to be expected, afterall, Gaza was a hotbed of Obama support…
Either way, help, my country has been hijacked… AP
The United States plans to offer more than $900 million to help rebuild Gaza after Israel’s invasion and to strengthen the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, U.S. officials said on Monday.
The money, which needs U.S. congressional approval, will be distributed through U.N. and other bodies and not via the militant group Hamas, which rules Gaza, said one official.
“This money is for Gaza and to help strengthen the Palestinian Authority. It is not going to go to Hamas,” said the official, who asked not to be named as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton planned to announce the funding at a donors’ conference in Egypt next week.
Neither the United States nor Israel have direct contact with the Islamist Hamas movement which runs Gaza and remains formally committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.
The official said the pledge was a mix of money already earmarked for the Palestinians and some new funding.
“The package is still shaping up,” he said, when asked for specifics over how the money would be spent and a breakdown of old and new funding.
In December, the former Bush administration said it would give $85 million to the U.N. agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
The March 2 donors’ conference in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh resort aims to raise humanitarian and rebuilding funds for Gaza after Israel’s invasion last December to suppress rocket fire against its cities.
Preliminary estimates put damage from the offensive, in which 1,300 Palestinians died, at nearly $2 billion.
Clinton’s bid to get “substantial” funds could face an uphill battle in Congress because Hamas continues to rule Gaza and the U.S. focus is on its own souring economy.
By PUMA Pundit • February 23, 2009
You have got to be kidding me. Obama wants to spend $900 million of taxpayer money to strengthen Gaza. Gaza is run by Hamas, an organizaton whose objective it is to eradicate Isreal from the face of the earth…
Ok, let me rephrase. We are going to give $900 million to an area which is totally controlled by an organization which is committed to wiping Israel off of the face of the earth?I guess it was to be expected, afterall, Gaza was a hotbed of Obama support…
Either way, help, my country has been hijacked… AP
The United States plans to offer more than $900 million to help rebuild Gaza after Israel’s invasion and to strengthen the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, U.S. officials said on Monday.
The money, which needs U.S. congressional approval, will be distributed through U.N. and other bodies and not via the militant group Hamas, which rules Gaza, said one official.
“This money is for Gaza and to help strengthen the Palestinian Authority. It is not going to go to Hamas,” said the official, who asked not to be named as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton planned to announce the funding at a donors’ conference in Egypt next week.
Neither the United States nor Israel have direct contact with the Islamist Hamas movement which runs Gaza and remains formally committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.
The official said the pledge was a mix of money already earmarked for the Palestinians and some new funding.
“The package is still shaping up,” he said, when asked for specifics over how the money would be spent and a breakdown of old and new funding.
In December, the former Bush administration said it would give $85 million to the U.N. agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
The March 2 donors’ conference in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh resort aims to raise humanitarian and rebuilding funds for Gaza after Israel’s invasion last December to suppress rocket fire against its cities.
Preliminary estimates put damage from the offensive, in which 1,300 Palestinians died, at nearly $2 billion.
Clinton’s bid to get “substantial” funds could face an uphill battle in Congress because Hamas continues to rule Gaza and the U.S. focus is on its own souring economy.
Foreign ties of nominee questioned
Foreign ties of nominee questioned
Eli Lake (Contact)
An independent inspector general will look into the foreign financial ties of Chas W. Freeman Jr., the Obama administration's pick to serve as chairman of the group that prepares the U.S. intelligence community's most sensitive assessments, according to three congressional aides.
The director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, last Thursday named Mr. Freeman, a veteran former diplomat, to the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council, known inside the government as the NIC. In that job, Mr. Freeman will have access to some of America's most closely guarded secrets and be charged with overseeing the drafting of the consensus view of all 16 intelligence agencies.
His selection was praised by some who noted his articulateness and experience as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a senior envoy to China and other nations. But it sparked concerns among some members of Congress from both parties, who asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's inspector general, Edward McGuire, to investigate Mr. Freeman's potential conflicts of interest.
Mr. Freeman has not submitted the financial disclosure forms required of all candidates for senior public positions, according to the general counsel's office of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Nor did Mr. Blair seek the White House's approval before he announced the appointment of Mr. Freeman, said Mr. Blair's spokeswoman, Wendy Morigi.
"The director did not seek the White House's approval," Ms. Morigi said. "In addition to his formal background security investigation, we expect that the White House will undertake the typical vetting associated with senior administration assignments."
Among the areas likely to be scrutinized in the vetting process are Mr. Freeman's position on the international advisory board of the China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC). The Chinese government and other state-owned companies own a majority stake in the concern, which has invested in Sudan and other countries sometimes at odds with the United States, including Iran.
Mr. Freeman is also president of the nonprofit educational organization Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), which paid him $87,000 in 2006, and received at least $1 million from a Saudi prince. He also has chaired Projects International, a consulting firm that has worked with foreign companies and governments.
Lindsay Hamilton, a spokeswoman for Rep. Steve Israel, a Democrat from New York who sits on the House Appropriations Committee's select intelligence oversight panel that funds the classified budgets for the intelligence community, said her boss had been in touch with Mr. McGuire, who was appointed by the first director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte.
"Congressman Israel spoke with DNI inspector McGuire. The inspector said he would look into the matter. And the congressman is pleased with his response." Two other congressional aides also said the inspector general would start his inquiries soon.
Ms. Morigi said only that Mr. McGuire was "reviewing the letter."
The ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican, said the questions arising from Mr. Freeman's past associations and business relationships should disqualify him from the NIC post.
"What kind of vetting process did Blair go through on this?" he asked. He added that the disclosures about Mr. Freeman's relationships "may give Blair an out now. If he is on the board of these kinds of companies, it may provide a rather easy out to disqualify him."
Chinese connection
Topping the list of concerns will be Mr. Freeman's links to CNOOC. He joined the board of international advisers for the Chinese concern in March 2004, one year before the company made an unsuccessful bid to purchase the American energy company Unocal. Since then, CNOOC has been a source of worry for lawmakers from both parties as well as the Treasury Department as it looks to discourage oil field investment in Iran.
The State Department looked into whether CNOOC violated the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act at the end of 2007 when the company announced a deal to help develop the North Pars gas field.
President Obama has supported sanctions against businesses investing in Iran. In August, his campaign put out a press release titled: "What McCain Won't Tell You About Iran," highlighting the lobbying work for CNOOC by Charlie Black, a strategist for Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
"CNOOC is among those companies that appears to be capitalizing on the U.S.-led effort to isolate Iran economically, particularly in the energy sector," said Roger Robinson, the president and chief executive officer of Conflict Securities Advisory Group, a Washington-based risk management company that specializes in identifying and profiling public companies with business ties to states accused of sponsoring terrorism.
Mr. Freeman's connection to CNOOC could oblige him to recuse himself from some matters regarding China as well as Myanmar. In October 2007, CNOOC's chief financial officer publicly refused to divest from that country a month after army soldiers opened fire on a crowd protesting the ruling junta, suggesting instead that CNOOC would increase its investments.
The incident prompted the United States to toughen sanctions on the junta, according to statements at the time from the State Department.
Mideast money
Mr. Freeman's ties with Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) also have come under scrutiny. According to the 2006 tax returns for the organization - considered a nonprofit by the Internal Revenue Service - 11 donors contributed a total of more than $2.7 million that year.
MEPC's acting director, Jon Roth, said the organization would not disclose the names of the donors, but added, "If the government needs something, we will cooperate with them."
In 2007, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud announced that he had provided a gift of $1 million to the MEPC for its endowment. Prince Alwaleed's attempt to give New York money after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was refused by New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Buck Revell, the FBI's associate deputy director responsible for investigations and intelligence from 1980 to 1991, said the receipt of Saudi money alone is not a reason to disqualify Mr. Freeman.
"Saudi money is everywhere. It is in the George Bush library, it is in the Clinton library, it's everywhere. So that in and of itself is not disqualifying," Mr. Revell said. "But how that money was used - was it used for the correct purposes, was it diverted to other entities or other organizations - that would raise issues of security. If it is going to organizations that say Israel should be wiped from the face of the earth and other stuff, that would raise issues."
Another issue of concern is the client base for Projects International. On its Web site, the company lists among its clients Gulf Catering Co., a subsidiary of Agility Defense & Government Services, which prepares the meals for the dining facilities that serve U.S. troops in Iraq.
In 2005, Gulf Catering Co. was accused of offering a $50,000 bribe to an Army chief warrant officer in Iraq to win a bid to provide the U.S. military in Iraq with napkins and cutlery, according to an investigation by the Army Criminal Investigation Command first reported by USA Today in 2007.
Voice of experience
Three former NIC chairmen and one former vice chairman told The Washington Times that Mr. Freeman's business ties to China, Saudi Arabia and other nations should be vetted before Mr. Freeman takes his post.
Fritz W. Ermarth, who served as chairman of the NIC between 1988 and 1993, said, "Mr. Freeman's political and business associations will be or should be vetted and then reviewed in a polygraph examination for potential hazards to security."
He said the "political correctness" of Mr. Freeman's past associations "will not be and should not be at issue from a security point of view. But they are legitimate issues for argument and discussion from a political point of view, where the question is not just the orientation of Mr. Freeman, but the orientation of the administration."
Henry Rowen, who chaired the council from 1981 to 1983, said, "There are all kinds of perception issues here."
He added, "He is on the board of CNOOC. I don't think it should matter or that alone disqualifies him. Of course this is legitimate to look at, you have to look at the whole record. It has to be looked at, but I don't see anything to disqualify him."
Robert Hutchings, who headed the NIC from 2003 to 2005, said the same criteria that apply to other senior U.S. administration officials should apply to Mr. Freeman. "If he recuses himself [on issues where there might be a conflict of interest] or places his assets in a blind trust, so there is no question of him benefiting - so long as he can play by these rules, it should be a fine choice," Mr. Hutchings said.
Currently diplomat-in-residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Mr. Hutchings said Mr. Freeman's business expertise could be an asset in his new post. As NIC chairman, Mr. Hutchings said, he hired two national intelligence officers, dealing with international real estate and software, who had business backgrounds.
Talking points
Herb Meyer, a deputy chairman of the NIC during the Reagan administration, said business connections with China and Saudi Arabia were a concern, but he was more worried about Mr. Freeman's views.
"What concerns me more is what he has said and written. What matters here is his judgment and that seems to be the point that everyone is skating away from," Mr. Meyer said. "Can you imagine if I had stood up and explained away Tiananmen Square? He does not have the intellectual fire power to sort through the intelligence and reach a plausible conclusion."
Mr. Meyer was referring to a 2006 e-mail attributed to Mr. Freeman saying China was justified in cracking down on students protesting at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and should have acted sooner to suppress the civil disobedience.
The Washington Times could not corroborate that the e-mail that was reportedly sent by Mr. Freeman to members of the China Security Listserv, a private group of policy analysts. But it tracks with other public statements from Mr. Freeman, such as his characterization in an April 25 speech to the National War College Alumni Association that described Tibetan protests last year as a "race riot." Mr. Freeman did not respond to requests for comment.
Other China analysts praised Mr. Freeman, who is said to speak Mandarin Chinese better than almost anyone else in the Foreign Service and who interpreted for President Nixon on his groundbreaking trip to China in 1972.
David Lampton, director of the China Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, said, "We're lucky to have a person of this caliber. He's an excellent mind in general and has long experience in the area of the world I know best."
The Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch said, however, that Mr. Freeman's nomination sends the wrong message.
"A capacity to make moral distinctions may not be a prerequisite for being a good intelligence analyst," Tom Malinowski said. "But for such a high-profile appointment, it would still be wise for President Obama to weigh the message sent by choosing someone who has so consistently defended and worked for the clenched fists the president so eloquently challenged in his inaugural address."
Eli Lake (Contact)
An independent inspector general will look into the foreign financial ties of Chas W. Freeman Jr., the Obama administration's pick to serve as chairman of the group that prepares the U.S. intelligence community's most sensitive assessments, according to three congressional aides.
The director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, last Thursday named Mr. Freeman, a veteran former diplomat, to the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council, known inside the government as the NIC. In that job, Mr. Freeman will have access to some of America's most closely guarded secrets and be charged with overseeing the drafting of the consensus view of all 16 intelligence agencies.
His selection was praised by some who noted his articulateness and experience as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a senior envoy to China and other nations. But it sparked concerns among some members of Congress from both parties, who asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's inspector general, Edward McGuire, to investigate Mr. Freeman's potential conflicts of interest.
Mr. Freeman has not submitted the financial disclosure forms required of all candidates for senior public positions, according to the general counsel's office of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Nor did Mr. Blair seek the White House's approval before he announced the appointment of Mr. Freeman, said Mr. Blair's spokeswoman, Wendy Morigi.
"The director did not seek the White House's approval," Ms. Morigi said. "In addition to his formal background security investigation, we expect that the White House will undertake the typical vetting associated with senior administration assignments."
Among the areas likely to be scrutinized in the vetting process are Mr. Freeman's position on the international advisory board of the China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC). The Chinese government and other state-owned companies own a majority stake in the concern, which has invested in Sudan and other countries sometimes at odds with the United States, including Iran.
Mr. Freeman is also president of the nonprofit educational organization Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), which paid him $87,000 in 2006, and received at least $1 million from a Saudi prince. He also has chaired Projects International, a consulting firm that has worked with foreign companies and governments.
Lindsay Hamilton, a spokeswoman for Rep. Steve Israel, a Democrat from New York who sits on the House Appropriations Committee's select intelligence oversight panel that funds the classified budgets for the intelligence community, said her boss had been in touch with Mr. McGuire, who was appointed by the first director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte.
"Congressman Israel spoke with DNI inspector McGuire. The inspector said he would look into the matter. And the congressman is pleased with his response." Two other congressional aides also said the inspector general would start his inquiries soon.
Ms. Morigi said only that Mr. McGuire was "reviewing the letter."
The ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican, said the questions arising from Mr. Freeman's past associations and business relationships should disqualify him from the NIC post.
"What kind of vetting process did Blair go through on this?" he asked. He added that the disclosures about Mr. Freeman's relationships "may give Blair an out now. If he is on the board of these kinds of companies, it may provide a rather easy out to disqualify him."
Chinese connection
Topping the list of concerns will be Mr. Freeman's links to CNOOC. He joined the board of international advisers for the Chinese concern in March 2004, one year before the company made an unsuccessful bid to purchase the American energy company Unocal. Since then, CNOOC has been a source of worry for lawmakers from both parties as well as the Treasury Department as it looks to discourage oil field investment in Iran.
The State Department looked into whether CNOOC violated the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act at the end of 2007 when the company announced a deal to help develop the North Pars gas field.
President Obama has supported sanctions against businesses investing in Iran. In August, his campaign put out a press release titled: "What McCain Won't Tell You About Iran," highlighting the lobbying work for CNOOC by Charlie Black, a strategist for Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
"CNOOC is among those companies that appears to be capitalizing on the U.S.-led effort to isolate Iran economically, particularly in the energy sector," said Roger Robinson, the president and chief executive officer of Conflict Securities Advisory Group, a Washington-based risk management company that specializes in identifying and profiling public companies with business ties to states accused of sponsoring terrorism.
Mr. Freeman's connection to CNOOC could oblige him to recuse himself from some matters regarding China as well as Myanmar. In October 2007, CNOOC's chief financial officer publicly refused to divest from that country a month after army soldiers opened fire on a crowd protesting the ruling junta, suggesting instead that CNOOC would increase its investments.
The incident prompted the United States to toughen sanctions on the junta, according to statements at the time from the State Department.
Mideast money
Mr. Freeman's ties with Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) also have come under scrutiny. According to the 2006 tax returns for the organization - considered a nonprofit by the Internal Revenue Service - 11 donors contributed a total of more than $2.7 million that year.
MEPC's acting director, Jon Roth, said the organization would not disclose the names of the donors, but added, "If the government needs something, we will cooperate with them."
In 2007, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud announced that he had provided a gift of $1 million to the MEPC for its endowment. Prince Alwaleed's attempt to give New York money after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was refused by New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Buck Revell, the FBI's associate deputy director responsible for investigations and intelligence from 1980 to 1991, said the receipt of Saudi money alone is not a reason to disqualify Mr. Freeman.
"Saudi money is everywhere. It is in the George Bush library, it is in the Clinton library, it's everywhere. So that in and of itself is not disqualifying," Mr. Revell said. "But how that money was used - was it used for the correct purposes, was it diverted to other entities or other organizations - that would raise issues of security. If it is going to organizations that say Israel should be wiped from the face of the earth and other stuff, that would raise issues."
Another issue of concern is the client base for Projects International. On its Web site, the company lists among its clients Gulf Catering Co., a subsidiary of Agility Defense & Government Services, which prepares the meals for the dining facilities that serve U.S. troops in Iraq.
In 2005, Gulf Catering Co. was accused of offering a $50,000 bribe to an Army chief warrant officer in Iraq to win a bid to provide the U.S. military in Iraq with napkins and cutlery, according to an investigation by the Army Criminal Investigation Command first reported by USA Today in 2007.
Voice of experience
Three former NIC chairmen and one former vice chairman told The Washington Times that Mr. Freeman's business ties to China, Saudi Arabia and other nations should be vetted before Mr. Freeman takes his post.
Fritz W. Ermarth, who served as chairman of the NIC between 1988 and 1993, said, "Mr. Freeman's political and business associations will be or should be vetted and then reviewed in a polygraph examination for potential hazards to security."
He said the "political correctness" of Mr. Freeman's past associations "will not be and should not be at issue from a security point of view. But they are legitimate issues for argument and discussion from a political point of view, where the question is not just the orientation of Mr. Freeman, but the orientation of the administration."
Henry Rowen, who chaired the council from 1981 to 1983, said, "There are all kinds of perception issues here."
He added, "He is on the board of CNOOC. I don't think it should matter or that alone disqualifies him. Of course this is legitimate to look at, you have to look at the whole record. It has to be looked at, but I don't see anything to disqualify him."
Robert Hutchings, who headed the NIC from 2003 to 2005, said the same criteria that apply to other senior U.S. administration officials should apply to Mr. Freeman. "If he recuses himself [on issues where there might be a conflict of interest] or places his assets in a blind trust, so there is no question of him benefiting - so long as he can play by these rules, it should be a fine choice," Mr. Hutchings said.
Currently diplomat-in-residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Mr. Hutchings said Mr. Freeman's business expertise could be an asset in his new post. As NIC chairman, Mr. Hutchings said, he hired two national intelligence officers, dealing with international real estate and software, who had business backgrounds.
Talking points
Herb Meyer, a deputy chairman of the NIC during the Reagan administration, said business connections with China and Saudi Arabia were a concern, but he was more worried about Mr. Freeman's views.
"What concerns me more is what he has said and written. What matters here is his judgment and that seems to be the point that everyone is skating away from," Mr. Meyer said. "Can you imagine if I had stood up and explained away Tiananmen Square? He does not have the intellectual fire power to sort through the intelligence and reach a plausible conclusion."
Mr. Meyer was referring to a 2006 e-mail attributed to Mr. Freeman saying China was justified in cracking down on students protesting at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and should have acted sooner to suppress the civil disobedience.
The Washington Times could not corroborate that the e-mail that was reportedly sent by Mr. Freeman to members of the China Security Listserv, a private group of policy analysts. But it tracks with other public statements from Mr. Freeman, such as his characterization in an April 25 speech to the National War College Alumni Association that described Tibetan protests last year as a "race riot." Mr. Freeman did not respond to requests for comment.
Other China analysts praised Mr. Freeman, who is said to speak Mandarin Chinese better than almost anyone else in the Foreign Service and who interpreted for President Nixon on his groundbreaking trip to China in 1972.
David Lampton, director of the China Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, said, "We're lucky to have a person of this caliber. He's an excellent mind in general and has long experience in the area of the world I know best."
The Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch said, however, that Mr. Freeman's nomination sends the wrong message.
"A capacity to make moral distinctions may not be a prerequisite for being a good intelligence analyst," Tom Malinowski said. "But for such a high-profile appointment, it would still be wise for President Obama to weigh the message sent by choosing someone who has so consistently defended and worked for the clenched fists the president so eloquently challenged in his inaugural address."
Monday, March 9, 2009
To my special friend Gordon, 25 DVDs: Obama gives Brown a set of classic movies. Let's hope he likes the Wizard of Oz | Mail Online
To my special friend Gordon, 25 DVDs: Obama gives Brown a set of classic movies. Let's hope he likes the Wizard of Oz Mail Online
To my special friend Gordon, 25 DVDs: Obama gives Brown a set of classic movies. Let's hope he likes the Wizard of Oz
By Ian DruryLast updated at 8:17 AM on 06th March 2009
Comments (22)
Add to My Stories
As he headed back home from Washington, Gordon Brown must have rummaged through his party bag with disappointment.
Because all he got was a set of DVDs. Barack Obama, the leader of the world's richest country, gave the Prime Minister a box set of 25 classic American films - a gift about as exciting as a pair of socks.
Mr Brown is not thought to be a film buff, and his reaction to the box set is unknown. But it didn't really compare to the thoughtful presents he had brought along with him.
Marking the special relationship: The Browns put a lot of thought into their gifts for the Obamas - but the gesture did not seem to be reciprocated
The Prime Minister gave Mr Obama an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet.
More...
Presidential cover-up? Barack Obama doesn't dye his hair, his barber insists - it's just how I cut it
'Spectacular wives' Sarah Brown and Michelle Obama hold their first formal meeting
America's salute to Gordon Brown and his new deal
Now Brown is snubbed by American press as his visit barely rates a mention
The First Dinner Lady: While President Obama doles out cash, Michelle ladles out lunch
The unique present delighted Mr Obama because oak from the Gannet's sister ship, HMS Resolute, was carved to make a desk that has sat in the Oval Office in the White House since 1880.
Mr Brown also handed over a framed commission for HMS Resolute and a first edition of the seven-volume biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.
In addition, Mr Brown and his wife showered gifts on the Obama children giving Sasha and Malia an outfit each from Topshop and six children's books by British authors which are shortly to be published in America.
In return, the Obamas gave the Browns two models of the presidential helicopter, Marine One, to take home to sons Fraser and John.
Mrs Brown has been praised for her well-chosen gifts for the Obama children - but Mrs Obama's gift to the Brown children appeared less thoughtful
The Prime Minister has not had the best of luck when receiving gifts from U.S. presidents.
He was given a fur-trimmed brown leather bomber jacket by George W. Bush during his first trip to America in the summer of 2007.
Commentators gleefully pointed out that the garment was hardly in keeping with Mr Brown's usual sober attire of business suit and tie.
Downing Street yesterday refused to state which movies were in the box set.
But the Mail has learned it included classics such as Star Wars, The Godfather and Citizen Kane and was produced by the American Film Institute as a 'special request' for the White House last month.
Perhaps pertinently, given Britain is floundering in an economic slump, the DVD collection was thought to feature the movie of John Steinbeck's Great Depression novel, 'The Grapes Of Wrath'.
The gift also included the Oscar-winning boxing biopic 'Raging Bull' starring Robert Di Nero and Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho - maybe a comment on the PM's notorious short fuse?
And he will hope that at a General Election the British public do not shun his imploration for another term in office by thinking at the ballot box of the famous line from another of the movies, Casblanca: 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.'
But following Mr Brown's his recent troubles - the UK entering recession, soaring job losses and home repossessions, Labour struggling in the polls and threats of leadership challenges - he may be pleased at being able to settle down for a quiet night in front of the ultimate feel-good movie: It's A Wonderful Life.
To my special friend Gordon, 25 DVDs: Obama gives Brown a set of classic movies. Let's hope he likes the Wizard of Oz
By Ian DruryLast updated at 8:17 AM on 06th March 2009
Comments (22)
Add to My Stories
As he headed back home from Washington, Gordon Brown must have rummaged through his party bag with disappointment.
Because all he got was a set of DVDs. Barack Obama, the leader of the world's richest country, gave the Prime Minister a box set of 25 classic American films - a gift about as exciting as a pair of socks.
Mr Brown is not thought to be a film buff, and his reaction to the box set is unknown. But it didn't really compare to the thoughtful presents he had brought along with him.
Marking the special relationship: The Browns put a lot of thought into their gifts for the Obamas - but the gesture did not seem to be reciprocated
The Prime Minister gave Mr Obama an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet.
More...
Presidential cover-up? Barack Obama doesn't dye his hair, his barber insists - it's just how I cut it
'Spectacular wives' Sarah Brown and Michelle Obama hold their first formal meeting
America's salute to Gordon Brown and his new deal
Now Brown is snubbed by American press as his visit barely rates a mention
The First Dinner Lady: While President Obama doles out cash, Michelle ladles out lunch
The unique present delighted Mr Obama because oak from the Gannet's sister ship, HMS Resolute, was carved to make a desk that has sat in the Oval Office in the White House since 1880.
Mr Brown also handed over a framed commission for HMS Resolute and a first edition of the seven-volume biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.
In addition, Mr Brown and his wife showered gifts on the Obama children giving Sasha and Malia an outfit each from Topshop and six children's books by British authors which are shortly to be published in America.
In return, the Obamas gave the Browns two models of the presidential helicopter, Marine One, to take home to sons Fraser and John.
Mrs Brown has been praised for her well-chosen gifts for the Obama children - but Mrs Obama's gift to the Brown children appeared less thoughtful
The Prime Minister has not had the best of luck when receiving gifts from U.S. presidents.
He was given a fur-trimmed brown leather bomber jacket by George W. Bush during his first trip to America in the summer of 2007.
Commentators gleefully pointed out that the garment was hardly in keeping with Mr Brown's usual sober attire of business suit and tie.
Downing Street yesterday refused to state which movies were in the box set.
But the Mail has learned it included classics such as Star Wars, The Godfather and Citizen Kane and was produced by the American Film Institute as a 'special request' for the White House last month.
Perhaps pertinently, given Britain is floundering in an economic slump, the DVD collection was thought to feature the movie of John Steinbeck's Great Depression novel, 'The Grapes Of Wrath'.
The gift also included the Oscar-winning boxing biopic 'Raging Bull' starring Robert Di Nero and Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho - maybe a comment on the PM's notorious short fuse?
And he will hope that at a General Election the British public do not shun his imploration for another term in office by thinking at the ballot box of the famous line from another of the movies, Casblanca: 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.'
But following Mr Brown's his recent troubles - the UK entering recession, soaring job losses and home repossessions, Labour struggling in the polls and threats of leadership challenges - he may be pleased at being able to settle down for a quiet night in front of the ultimate feel-good movie: It's A Wonderful Life.
Zing! Times Asks Obama: "Are You a Socialist?"
Zing! Times Asks Obama: "Are You a Socialist?"
Zing! Times Asks Obama: "Are You a Socialist?" Reporter Peter Baker defends the question from outcry from the Angry Left: "The point is not the label, per se, but the question of whether the times and the solutions under consideration represent some sort of paradigm shift in our national thinking about the role of government in society. In a moment of taxpayer bank bailouts and shifting tax burden proposals and exploding deficits and expansive health care and energy plans, what is the future of American-style capitalism?" Posted by: Clay Waters 3/9/2009 3:31:12 PM
Immediately after his big interview with the Times that dominated the front of Sunday's paper, President Obama took issue with one of the questions from the Times regarding whether or not he was a socialist. The Times had asked Obama:
The first six weeks have given people a glimpse of your spending priorities. Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?
Obama responded:
You know, let’s take a look at the budget -- the answer would be no.
Later, Obama called the Times to expound further, chiding the Times for asking the question, Jeff Zeleny reported in a sidebar, "The President Is on the Line To Follow Up on an Answer."
Less than 90 minutes after Air Force One landed, the telephone rang. President Obama was on the line, wanting to add one more point to a response he gave during an interview with The New York Times.
On a flight from Ohio to Washington on Friday, Mr. Obama was asked whether his domestic policies suggested that he was a socialist, as some conservatives have implied.
“The answer would be no,” he said, laughing for a moment before defending his administration for “making some very tough choices” on the budget.
As the interview progressed, Mr. Obama never returned to the question. When he called, he said he had been thinking about it as he boarded the helicopter taking him back to the White House.
“It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question,” Mr. Obama said from the Oval Office.
Zeleny laid out the groundwork for the question:
But his budget plan prompted criticism suggesting that he was intent on undoing the dominance of conservative ideas that started under Ronald Reagan, and that he had revealed himself as a free-spending liberal.
Indeed, the Times itself made the point, favorably, in a column by David Leonhardt on the February 27 front page:
The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters.
Liberal blogger Greg Sargent at the Plum Line blog wondered what the Times was thinking when it asked Obama if he was a socialist and noted the paper was taking fire from the left for it. Sargent got a tart response from Times reporter Peter Baker (for background, the Plum Line is hosted on whorunsgov.com, a product of the Washington Post, which owns Newsweek). Sargent:
I emailed a Times political editor to ask what the rationale behind the question was and got back the following from Baker, the Times reporter:
The goal of the question was to get at the same issue your sister publication, Newsweek, was addressing with its recent cover story, “We Are All Socialists Now.”
The point is not the label, per se, but the question of whether the times and the solutions under consideration represent some sort of paradigm shift in our national thinking about the role of government in society. In a moment of taxpayer bank bailouts and shifting tax burden proposals and exploding deficits and expansive health care and energy plans, what is the future of American-style capitalism?
We were also interested in exploring how a new president defines his political philosophy, something that has been the subject of intense debate. We wanted to draw him out on all of that and I think his answers, both in the interview itself and the follow-up phone call, were interesting and important.
Zing! Times Asks Obama: "Are You a Socialist?" Reporter Peter Baker defends the question from outcry from the Angry Left: "The point is not the label, per se, but the question of whether the times and the solutions under consideration represent some sort of paradigm shift in our national thinking about the role of government in society. In a moment of taxpayer bank bailouts and shifting tax burden proposals and exploding deficits and expansive health care and energy plans, what is the future of American-style capitalism?" Posted by: Clay Waters 3/9/2009 3:31:12 PM
Immediately after his big interview with the Times that dominated the front of Sunday's paper, President Obama took issue with one of the questions from the Times regarding whether or not he was a socialist. The Times had asked Obama:
The first six weeks have given people a glimpse of your spending priorities. Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?
Obama responded:
You know, let’s take a look at the budget -- the answer would be no.
Later, Obama called the Times to expound further, chiding the Times for asking the question, Jeff Zeleny reported in a sidebar, "The President Is on the Line To Follow Up on an Answer."
Less than 90 minutes after Air Force One landed, the telephone rang. President Obama was on the line, wanting to add one more point to a response he gave during an interview with The New York Times.
On a flight from Ohio to Washington on Friday, Mr. Obama was asked whether his domestic policies suggested that he was a socialist, as some conservatives have implied.
“The answer would be no,” he said, laughing for a moment before defending his administration for “making some very tough choices” on the budget.
As the interview progressed, Mr. Obama never returned to the question. When he called, he said he had been thinking about it as he boarded the helicopter taking him back to the White House.
“It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question,” Mr. Obama said from the Oval Office.
Zeleny laid out the groundwork for the question:
But his budget plan prompted criticism suggesting that he was intent on undoing the dominance of conservative ideas that started under Ronald Reagan, and that he had revealed himself as a free-spending liberal.
Indeed, the Times itself made the point, favorably, in a column by David Leonhardt on the February 27 front page:
The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters.
Liberal blogger Greg Sargent at the Plum Line blog wondered what the Times was thinking when it asked Obama if he was a socialist and noted the paper was taking fire from the left for it. Sargent got a tart response from Times reporter Peter Baker (for background, the Plum Line is hosted on whorunsgov.com, a product of the Washington Post, which owns Newsweek). Sargent:
I emailed a Times political editor to ask what the rationale behind the question was and got back the following from Baker, the Times reporter:
The goal of the question was to get at the same issue your sister publication, Newsweek, was addressing with its recent cover story, “We Are All Socialists Now.”
The point is not the label, per se, but the question of whether the times and the solutions under consideration represent some sort of paradigm shift in our national thinking about the role of government in society. In a moment of taxpayer bank bailouts and shifting tax burden proposals and exploding deficits and expansive health care and energy plans, what is the future of American-style capitalism?
We were also interested in exploring how a new president defines his political philosophy, something that has been the subject of intense debate. We wanted to draw him out on all of that and I think his answers, both in the interview itself and the follow-up phone call, were interesting and important.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Carlos the Jackal to Obama: Help me find terrorist pal
Carlos the Jackal to Obama: Help me find terrorist pal: "Carlos the Jackal to Obama:
Help me find terrorist pal"
Help me find terrorist pal"
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