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4063706084?profile=original

The Muslims are coming… the Muslims are coming!  

One if by land and two if by sea.

Okay.. it probably won’t be by land.. but, they are coming!

by,  Sharona Schwartz

The Obama administration is considering resettling some refugees who have escaped war-torn Syria in the United States, a development first reported by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday and later confirmed by the State Department.

According to the Times, the resettlement of the refugees would be “part of an international effort that could bring thousands of Syrians to American cities and towns.”

The Times reports [emphasis added]:

A resettlement plan under discussion in Washington and other capitals is aimed at relieving pressure on Middle Eastern countries straining to support 1.6 million refugees, as well as assisting hard-hit Syrian families.

The State Department is “ready to consider the idea,” an official from the department said, if the administration receives a formal request from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, which is the usual procedure.

The United States usually accepts about half the refugees that the U.N. agency proposes for resettlement. California has historically taken the largest share, but Illinois, Florida,Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia are also popular destinations.

continue reading here...

http://shariaunveiled.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/massive-influx-of-islamic-immigration-into-u-s-projected-as-obama-considers-syrian-refugees/

Read more…

4063706124?profile=original

by, Schuyler Montague

A video has been released by the FSA (Free Syrian Army) Rebels in which they clearly make direct threats of a release of both chemical and biological agents against the people of Syria who support Bashar al-Assad.

In this video, FSA Rebels are  in a laboratory stocked with chemicals that are labeled as being produced by a Turkish company named Tekkim http://www.tekkim.com.tr .  Just a couple weeks ago, a group of men were apprehended transporting 2 kilos of weapons grade Sarin gas en route to Syria from Turkey.  These men were from al-Nusra Terrorist organization which is allied with the FSA Rebels.  Just a few of the chemicals seen in this video are:   Potassium Permanganate, Potassium Nitrate, Potassium Chlorate, Sodium Nitrite, Acetone and Hydrochloric Acid.

continue reading here and see this amazing video...

 http://shariaunveiled.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/classified-release-fsa-rebels-threaten-a-chemical-genocide-against-the-syrian-people/

Read more…

By Oscar Y. Harward

 

30 Senate RINO Republicans joined all Senate Democrats and President Obama to ‘add’ an additional ‘$6.38 Trillion’ onto our National Debt.  Where will the ‘$6.38 Trillion’ come from?  Who will RINO Republicans and Senate Democrats blame for this additional ‘$6.38 Trillion’ onto our National Debt?

 

How will 30 RINO Republicans and all Senate Democrats justify their vote to ‘increase our National Debt’ for an additional $6.38 Trillion, as ticketed by the CBO, to cover their votes on S. 744 of ‘inviting’ some 11 million ‘illegal’ Latinos for USA ‘citizenship’?

 

30 ‘RINO’ Republicans voted to ‘invite’ ‘citizenship’ to some 11 million ‘illegal’ Latinos at a cost of an additional $6.38 Trillion on an additional National Debt; Alexander (R-TN), Ayotte (R-NH), Blunt (R-MO), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Chiesa (R-NJ), Coats (R-IN), Coburn (R-OK), Collins (R-ME), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Fischer (R-NE), Flake (R-AZ), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Hatch (R-UT), Heller (R-NV), Hoeven (R-ND), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Johnson (R-WI), McConnell (R-KY), Moran (R-KS), Murkowski (R-AK), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Rubio (R-FL), Thune (R-SD), Toomey (R-PA), and Wicker (R-MS)

 

Only 15 ‘Conservative’ Republicans voted to ‘deny’ ‘citizenship’ to some 11 million ‘illegal’ Latinos at a cost of an additional $6.38 Trillion onto our National Debt; Barrasso (R-WY), Boozman (R-AR), Cochran (R-MS), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Enzi (R-WY), Inhofe (R-OK), Kirk (R-IL), Lee (R-UT), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Scott (R-SC), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), and Vitter (R-LA) voted to save our USA from Trillions of Dollars more National Debt.

Read more…

Senators, et al - Immigration

Senator or Congressman

Immigration Reform…. YOU MUST! LISTEN UP

Do we need it?………..DEBATABLE

Have you ever heard of enforcing existing law?

 

ANY new Bill amounts to trashing existing law…. Capiece?

Numero Uno = Enforce Existing LAW….y’all do understand LAW, eh?

 

Regardless, you will do what you do………….so,

  • NO Immigration Bill WITHOUT Border Protection up front , #1
    • NOTHING else till ..
    •  
    • No Immigration Bill WITHOUT 100% E-Verify #2
    • No Immigration Bill without STIFF E-Verify violator punishment
    • …. Finally, NO GIVEAWAY of MY hard earned tax$$$ as Food Stamps/Rent/Medical/etc
      • My ancestors and I EARNED our benefits…so should ALL others

VOTE NO in the Senate

VOTE NO in the House

Until/Unless we have a bill that “Preserves and Protects America” , YOU are violating your Oath of Office

…..in case you might obfuscate that, re-read the bullets above Border Protection, E-Verify…Capiece?

Violation of Oath is a crime, agreed?

Read more…

Will YOU Defend America

Will YOU defend America?

There is a preponderance of evidence that America is under attack; and losing.

Those responsible for protecting America are not meeting their duty.

Specifically, The President(?), Senators, Representatives, Governors, …..etc. ,,,,,

Has it come down to YOU, the Citizen?

 = = = = =

Over three years ago, purported citizen Barack Obama raised his right hand while swearing to uphold the United States Constitution. Along with him 100 senators and 435 representatives in Congress swore on the Bible to “defend and protect” America as a sovereign nation and to uphold the rule of law in America.

They did not and they are not.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Wooldridge/frosty769.htm

 = = = = =

= = = = =

Every delegated authority implies a trust; responsibility follows as the shadow does its substance. But where there is no responsibility, authority is no longer a trust, but an act of usurpation. And every act of usurpation is either an act of TREASON, or an act of WARFARE.

http://www.barefootsworld.net/treason_by_public_officials.html

 = = = = =

 

 = = = = = =

That means that everyone, repeat EVERYONE, who is sworn to the Constitution, regardless of rank, position, title, or office, has the obligation to take every action within their power and capability to restore our Constitution to its rightful status for a FREE people – lest they themselves be charged with Obstruction of Justice, or as co-conspirators in the act of Treason.

http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/peace_freedom/patriots_and_protesters/news.php?q=1262114905

 = = = = = =

 

= = = = =

Obama accomplishes de-facto repeal of 1st Amendment……………..

 

President Obama has said the outrage over the federal government’s decision to monitor citizens’ phone activity is all “hype.” …. Look for a separate post on this!

He might want to share his opinion with the U.S. Air Force, which is ordering members of the service not to look at news stories about it.

WND has received an unclassified NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that warns airmen not to look at news stories related to the data-mining scandal.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/military-told-not-to-read-obama-scandal-news/

 = = = = = =

 

HAVE I MADE MY POINT?

 

 

 

 

Here are examples…………..long in detail, but summarized in this table

 

 

Item/Issue

Description

Took/ Failed/ Blocked Action

Benghazi

Dispatch Defenses

Failed

Benghazi

Demand FULL Accounting

Blocked

Benghazi

Lies to cover illegal gun sale

Took/Encouraged/Blocked

Benghazi

Obstruction of Justice

Took

Punish your Enemies

Political Attack on Constitution

Took

IRS Tragedy

Political Attack on Constitution

Took /Encouraged

IRS Tragedy

Illegal Release of Private Info

Failed

Phone Surveillance

For Election Programming

Encouraged/Failed to Stop

Spies on News Organizations

4th Amend Violation

Encouraged/Failed to Stop

Spies on Citizens – Phones/EMails

4th Amend Violation

Encouraged/Failed to Stop

Obamacare/IRS Spies

4th Amend Violation

The Gang leader

Boston Marathon

Failed to Protect

FAILED - Russian warnings/phone taps

Lies, Lies. More Lies

ALL of Gang Obama

Took/Encouraged

Fast and Furious

Failed to Protect

Failed to STOP/Purge

Muslim Brotherhood

Members in Administration

Took/Encouraged

 

 

 

 

Details follow………………………………..

 = = = = = = = = =

Obama actively engaged in actions that constitute violation of his oath to preserve and protect our Constitution…along with Senators and Representatives who FAILED Their Oath also by FAILING TO TAKE ACTION….they became Accomplices!

Punish your Enemies

….. “punish your enemies”…entails a lie; and a culture of punishment

… “Those aren’t the kinds of folks who represent our core American values.”

..if that is not an outright lie, it is at least seriously misleading…. And NOT preserving and protecting

 

 

BENGHAZI

He has also FAILED to take required action to preserve and protect our Constitution

He FAILED to invoke American defenses to protect America in Benghazi..look for  a separate post

He failed to DEMAND full accounting for his Failure

…in the infamous words of his bought and paid for Sec of State……

What difference did it make…………

What difference did it make if Hillary denied stronger security assets

What difference did it make if the job might be difficult?

He OBSTRUCTED Justice….specifically BLOCKED Constitutional Process by moving Susan Rice to a sheltered job.

Apppointed Susan Rice to a “Protected” position

Obama FAILED to preserve and protect in Benghazi

 

The IRS tragedy

Obama FAILED to preserve and protect our Constitution

…after his culture of “punish your enemies” led to violations of our Constitution by the IRS

including release of Private Info to political Foes, a de facto CRIME

…. When he FAILED to DEMAND a clean sweep and accountability in the Treasury/IRS

 

 

OBAMA SCANDALS/LIES EVERYWHERE, MORE SCANDALS THAN THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION AND ALL HAVE A COMMON THREAD; THEY DECEIVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND PUNISH THE ADMINISTRATIONS ENEMIES. ARE WE HEADED TOWARD A POLICE STATE?

  1. 1.       Benghazi: Obama’s Administration lies about Benghazi to protect an illegal gun sale

and protects his re-election.  http://pages.townhall.com/campaign/benghazi/rc/GA  http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/benghazi-scandal-grows_722032.html

  1. 2.       Wins Election with use of Electronic programming and patterning of voters. Is this tied to the phone surveillance of Americans? http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/tech/web/obama-campaign-tech-team
  2. 3.       Spies on News Organizations and Reporters by gathering information on their phone calls, their families and others. Spies on Fox news their primary news enemy and the AP.  http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-admin-spied-fox-news-reporter-james-rosen-134204299.html
  3. 4.       Is Government too big and intrusive when it is responsible for the surveillance of the American people; checking 3 billion phone calls per day and surveying the emails of millions? Should the Federal Government be reduced in size by at least 30%? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/08/nsa-leaks-investigation_n_3409590.html?icid=maing-grid10%7Chtmlws-sb-bb%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D325800  
  4. 5.       Adding 16500 new IRS agents to provide surveillance of all Americans health care when the new ObamaCare health care starts in October. Why do we need to be watched again by the IRS?  Will you be punished if you do not support the Obama Administration?  http://libertycounsel.com/2013/05/americans-waking-up-to-obamacares-grim-reality/ 
  5. 6.       Boston Marathon Terrorist attack, why was it allowed to happen when the Obama administration had been warned by the Russians? And they are monitoring all the phone calls and reading emails, watching credit cards, plane tickets and other items?  http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/09/nation/la-na-boston-threat-20130510
  6. 7.       Lies, Lies, and More Lies during the election and ongoing since the first election. May tell a different story in the same week. Why does he tell lies continually, is there something wrong with him or does he tell each group of people the story he wants them to hear. When in California tell them a liberal story and when in Iowa tell them something they will believe. http://obamalies.net/ 
  7. 8.       Fast and Furious, the Obama Administration and Eric Holder directed the selling of automatic weapons to the Mexican Drug lords and killers. A Border Patrol officer was killed with one of the weapons and hundreds of civilians were killed. The weapons are still in use by the drug Cartel and are still killing innocent people, police and government officials. The truth of this operation has never been exposed because the Administration refuses to hand over the information. Is someone in our government supporting drug smuggling to receive campaign donations? Is there a reason the administration will not secure the border and has released illegal immigrant Criminals?  http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15533-obama-s-fast-and-furious-gun-running-scandal-grows     
  8. 9.       Is it true that Obama has Muslim Brotherhood members in his Administration? How many and where are they and why does he allow it?  http://www.mediaite.com/online/gop-rep-gohmert-obama-admin-full-of-muslim-brotherhood-members-who-reject-war-with-radical-islam/  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/26/louie-gohmert-muslim-brotherhood_n_3162677.html
  9. 10.   Hundreds of lies on a daily basis, why not allow the truth on Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Surveillance of News organizations, IRS Punishing the Tea Party and other Conservative organizations that fund the enemies of the Obama Administration, will not turn over evidence in investigations of the illegal acts, will not enforce immigration and other laws where the administration will benefit if the law is not enforced, turns loose illegal immigrant criminals, gives misleading information to news programs, and other acts to punish their enemies. Is there a pattern to all these acts?  https://poll.personalliberty.com/Poll.aspx/trust-obama-2013?SC=P22892205

 

 

In Summary

  • Obama is personally guilty of violating his Oath of Office… a MAJOR CRIME
  • So are his “Gang of Appointees” plus Senators/Congressmen who failed to take action; thereby violating their oath… on down thru Governors, Mayors, etc

WILL YOU DEFEND AMERICA?

 

Let me know what YOU propose to do ………………

Thank You.

 

 

 

 

Read more…

4063705832?profile=originalPresident Barack Obama's –– who promised to have, and claims to be, the most transparent administration in history –– “political appointees are using secret government email accounts to conduct official business,” The Associated Press found. This ranges across several government agencies, including the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), the Labor Department (DOL) as well as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 

Just after the release of this information, Kathleen Sebelius came under fire about her emails, of which the AP published as KGS2@hhs.gov with her public email address of Kathleen.Sebelius@hhs.gov. When confronted by Fox News about the report, Sebelius denied any secrecy, “There is no secret email account, there’s a public email and a private email, and they’re all FOIABle, they’re all available.”

 

As the denials pile up, the White House shifts the blame, citing it as a practice used by previous administrations. However, the scale and scope across the government and this administration remains a mystery, because transparency is nil: “Most federal agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) more than three months ago,” noted Fox News. According to the AP report last week, they are waiting for at least ten agencies to respond, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture, of which "all have said they are working on a response to the AP.”

 

Former EPA Head Lisa Jackson’s Alter Ego, the Fictitious “Richard Windsor,” Wins Awards

 

This is just the latest in a slew of government officials that we can confirm who have been using suspect email practices, which adds to the lack of transparency within the Obama White House. As you may recall Lisa Jackson, the former head of the EPA –– chosen by Obama in 2009 –– used an “alter ego” as her email account to conduct government business.

 

In the fall of 2012 the name “Richard Windsor” triggered an environmental alarm –– what POLITICO called “an inadvertent ruckus for an agency already under fire from conservatives.” It “spawned a host of accusatory news reports and questions from lawmakers, all of them implying that Jackson was trying to dodge congressional oversight and public records laws by using a private email account under a fake name.”

 

A fake person, whom by the way, the White House knew about since at least February 2010, and now we learn "he" won several EPA awards.  The National Review divulged, "Documents released by the agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that, for three years, the EPA certified Windsor as a "scholar of ethical behavior." The agency also documented the nonexistent Windsor’s completion of training courses in the management of e-mail records, cyber-security awareness, and what appears to be a counter-terror initiative that urges federal employees to report suspicious activity."

 

Needless to say, refutation is the usual response by the Obama administration in any wrongdoing (whether alleged or factual), and in some cases selective amnesia is their method of deflection. In this case, the EPA claimed that Jackson’s public account, jackson.lisap@epa.gov, was inundated with “1.5 million emails in fiscal year 2012.” Adding to their justification, “EPA administrators have been assigned two official, government-issued email accounts: a public account and an internal account,” EPA said in a statement to POLITICO back in November 2012. “The email address for the public account is posted on EPA's website and is used by hundreds of thousands of Americans to send messages to the administrator. The internal account is an everyday, working email account of the administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials.”

In the midst of this heated environment, Ms. Jackson resigned in December 2012 (and now works for Apple), and by January it became clear that the EPA email scandal was worse than most had originally thought. Brietbart.com put it best, "We’re not talking about some alias to be used for personal correspondence but a totally false identity in whose name official business was allegedly conducted created specifically to avoid federal record-keeping and disclosure requirements. And none of this would ever have been uncovered were it not for the courage of a still anonymous whistleblower and the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) Christopher Horner, an attorney with the legal smarts and experience needed to unravel it all."

 

As early as April 2012, the EPA Intel came to light by Mr. Horner, who is also the author of The Liberal War on Transparency, "research for which uncovered a climate of deceit and obstruction at EPA." Eventually it sparked congressional inquiries, an inspector general investigation as well as a federal court order for the EPA to turn over “the first installment of some 12,000 secret, previously undisclosed emails.”

 

In January 2013, the EPA provided emails all right, but none that included Jackson’s alias. The next two batches released in February and March of this year were no better, as one set was “heavily redacted” and the other turned out to be a partial document dump. NOTE: a very incriminating timeline regarding EPA's "Richard Windsor" Email Scandal can be found at CEI, yet here we are over a year later, and we're no more closer to the truth.

 

Jackson, a "friend" of former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones (both far-left radical environmentalists), promised “environmental justice” and referred to this government agency as “Obama’s EPA” –– an agency whereas the president gave the largest budget in EPA history at the tune of $10.5 billion taxpayer-dollars, as well as a tremendous amount of "ECO power," of which the EPA has abused.

 

Nevertheless, what’s key here is that Jackson's fictitious email wasn’t used for recipe swapping or recycling tips. From what I gather, "Richard Windsor was used to conduct official business with environmental pressure groups, other special interests, and top staffers." The Daily Caller News Foundation also reported, "the Windsor account had also been used to correspond with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack — who was using a secret account of his own — and outside environmental groups." Additionally, there was another EPA official who used a private email account to correspond with environmental groups in an attempt to "shield communications with environmental activists from public disclosure," documented The Daily Caller in January.

 

Evidence also emerged and was reported by Human Events in December 2012 which stated, “the existence of 12,000 emails (those court order ones) had either addressed to or authored by “'Richard Windsor'” included one of four key words submitted by Horner for a search –– coal, climate, endanger and MACT, a mercury rule expected to have a devastating impact on the coal industry and coal-fired electricity plants and raise rates for consumers."

 

Jackson was also in charge of other important issues like how to control so-called greenhouses gases, setting fuel standards for automobiles and approving an ethanol-based fuel. We also know that Jackson and the power allotted the EPA, (oops Obama's EPA), who is strongly aligned with President Obama's expensive and ongoing left-wing "climate change" agenda, was used to circumvent Congressional approval. For example, in 2009, the Obama administration was “unable to sell cap-and-trade as a job creator,” knowing that Americans see it as a job killer and a costly energy tax. So in December 2009, the Obama administration decided to go through the EPA to move their climate agenda via the Clean Air Act, ruling that “greenhouse gases threaten public health and the environment” and six key greenhouse gases were listed, including carbon dioxide (C02), opening the “regulation door” to carbon emissions from automobiles, power plants, and other sources.

 

EPA: Out with the “Richard Windsor” and in with "Obama's Green Quarterback," Holding the "Lack of Transparency" Football 

 

“Richard Windsor” may be off the team –– awards and all –– but as of late, Chris Horner has gone after EPA senior official, Gina McCarthy, who runs the EPA’s clean air division and in March was nominated by the president to replace outgoing chief Lisa Jackson. 

 

The charge: CEI filed a lawsuit that “alleges EPA has not provided the records or a substantive response to a late April Freedom of Information Act request, which covers dates McCarthy testified between 2009 and 2012.”

 

The Hill reported on this story at the end of May, of which the CEI alleged, “McCarthy regularly used text messaging as an alternative to email for work-related communications.” Not to mention McCarthy was apparently warned by a senior EPA official to “cease using that function on her PDA, due to concerns about the propriety of her texting about Members of Congress specifically on days when she testified before either the House or Senate.”

 

However, McCarthy, in April 2013 told Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee who was vetting her nomination, “I do not conduct business through personal email.” McCarthy is also on the record as stating that she doesn’t conduct business over instant messaging, either: “One good thing about being 58 is I don’t know how to use them,” McCarthy said. “I have never used an IM. I don’t know how.”

 

Widely known as Obama’s “green quarterback,” McCarthy hit some roadblocks on her way to head the EPA, including a boycott by senate Republican members of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, because she had refused to answer their questions about transparency in the agency. Needless to say, a week later (May 16) McCarthy was approved by the Senate committee, and as reported by the Washington Post, this was "after what Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) described as significant steps forward on transparency issues important to the GOP."

 

Is there confusion on texting vs. instant messages? Or maybe McCarthy has since learned how to IM. I don't know, but we'll keep tabs on this part of the EPA scandal, because as of this month, McCarthy's path forward to heading the EPA remains murky, as does the transparency within this agency and many others.

 

 

July 2012 House Oversight Hearing Revealed Shady Email Practices by Former DOE Loan Advisor Jonathan Silver

 

I'd love to compare notes with Chris Horner on the Green Corruption scandal, because according to Human Events, Horner also acknowledged that fourteen separate private email accounts helped solidify the Solyndra green energy deal that costs taxpayers over $500 million. The Solyndra Saga was just the beginning of President Obama's clean-energy failures (billions wasted) and crony capitalism run amok, of which I've been tracking for some time. I recently tallied 25 taxpayer-backed green energy firms that have gone bankrupt, and with an equal amount troubled.

 

Last summer I was one of the few that took issue with the fact that the former Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Advisor, Jonathan Silver, during his time at the DOE, participated in extremely shady email practices that included helping his “friends” get DOE loans, of which I discovered when viewing the July 18th Oversight hearing as well as chronicling the green corruption suspects since 2010.

 

A scandal that also comprises of internal DOE email correspondences (some from whistleblowers) going as far back as the passing of President Obama's 2009 trillion-dollar stimulus package, of which last fall we busted open the Energy Department's "Den of Deception," proving coercion, corruption, cronyism, and cover ups.

 

What astonished me was that Silver used his personal email account to “handle” DOE business, where he would forward emails from his DOE account to his personal email, and then respond from his personal email account. Now, Mr. Silver reasoned that it was out of “convenience,” however; this practice clearly violates the Federal Records Act of 1950 (at least the spirit of the law). Worse, these particular Obama appointees don't have an issue with lying to Congress while under oath, and have gone unpunished –– as is the case of Mr. Silver.

 

When questioned by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) at the July 18th hearing on how pervasive this practice was; Silver responded with, “Not terribly,” then followed, “I received tens of thousands of emails while I was in the program.” Congressman Gowdy then inquired about the percentage. Silver stated, “I don’t know the answer to that…”

 

During his testimony, Silver asserted that he had turned over all of his DOE correspondences (government documents), but as usual, it was only after the House Oversight Committee demanded them. During this hearing we also discover that the Obama administration had attempted to block their "legitimate discovery" in this particular case (as they stonewalled on most of the DOE inquiries led by the House Oversight). In fact the DOE specifically tried to prevent them from getting these documents, of which Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa's (R-CA) explained, "asking Mr. Silver’s attorney –– ordering him effectively –– to deliver the documents to them so they could limit and redact them, so they could decide what Congress was entitled to."

 

Obviously, the DOE was obstructing transparency, but still, this left me with many critical questions. Why did Silver handle DOE business in this fashion –– convenience or concealment? Is g-mail better than DOE e-mail? Did he forget his DOE password? I don’t know.

 

But what we do know is that this flies in the face of an administration that promised and promotes “unprecedented levels of transparency” and openness...

 

 

A day after the July 18th hearing, Chairman Issa appeared on Fox News, and summed up a few key points that he had sternly addressed during the hearing. When asked about Abound (another taxpayer-funded failure accompanied by its share of cronyism and corruption), here is what Issa had to say, “Thanks for covering yet another failed solar project –– one that again went outside the bounds and the rules for making the loan, and the American people are paying for it.”

 

Issa went on, “I think the most important thing that we saw was the discovery of Jonathan Silver and his various other Department of Energy employees deliberately producing an outside web of private emails in which they exchanged documents, strategized on how to get these loans approved, and so on…”

 

What do you think they are doing? Issa was asked

 

Issa’s answer, “I say it was pretty transparent, they’re being opaque…by circumventing these systems, they’re taking things out of what is statutorily required to be there…”

 

In closing...

Yep, the Obama administration is circumventing not only our Constitution, but evading government systems that were put into place to protect the American people against tyranny and enforce transparency while ensuring we have the proper mechanisms to keep our government accountable, which encompasses our elected officials, political appointees and their staff.

 

It's alarming the number of scandals plaguing the Obama White House, from Fast and Furious to Green Corruption (the DOE, DOI and EPA) to top officials engaging in shady email practices. Eventually we were faced with the Benghazi cover-up, the IRS political profiling, and the DOJ's chilling media meddling.

 

The most current and unprecedented controversy impacts every American, no matter what side of the political isle you're on, and our right to privacy. I'm referring the secret court order that allows the NSA to collect the metadata of Americans' phone calls for months at a time as well as operation PRISM –– justified by, yet goes beyond national security –– which began under President Bush in the wake of 9/11 and continued with the Obama administration.

 

However, Glenn Greenwald, a reporter for the British newspaper The Guardian and the one who broke "the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history," firmly warned that the Obama administration "has taken a warped and distorted view of the PATRIOT Act [now on steroids]," which I find horrifying, only to surmise that instead of a "war on terror," it has morphed into a "war on freedom."

 

While some of these scandals are deadly and disgraceful, others shed light on the political favoritism that runs across many government agencies, and now we search and find that many of these same agencies and others conduct government business in secret.

 

Worse, if it wasn't for watchdog groups like Chris Horner's, whistleblowers, a handful of media doing their job, Congressional oversight, and citizens speaking out, we wouldn't know about this raging "secret" email scandal running wild within the Obama administration. In fact we'd be in the dark about most of what our government is up to, which is a sad indictment of where we are as Country: a government that is too big, too expensive, and too intrusive, and as of late, has become too corrupt, abusive and secretive.

 

Even those on the Left had to cede, including President Obama's former campaign advisor, David Axelrod, whereas in an attempt to shield Obama from the IRS scandal had this to say, "How could Obama know what his underlings were doing when the government’s so big?"

 

While this statement makes the case for smaller government even bigger, more insightful words came out of Becky Gerritson's testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, whose Tea Party group was one of those targeted by the IRS abuse, "...And I’m telling my government that you’ve forgotten your place...”

 

In fact our government has it all backwards: instead of punishing government officials and employees for their proven misdeeds, abuses, and crimes, they crucify brave whistleblowers. No matter what side is in power, "we the people" should raise up along side the Becky's of our nation, and remind our government that America was founded and formed "with a government of the people, by the people, for the people."

 

We must stand firm, and demand punishment for those that abuse their power, and ensure that unwarranted and illegal secrecy STOPS, because there is a reason people do things in secret –– they usually have something to hide, and you never know, tyranny may be "lurking just around the corner"...

 

Two Women (one citizen & one energy columnist) join forces on One Mission: to expose one chunk of this Green Corruption scandal at a time.

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If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound? If the Obama Administration breaks the law at will, lies to the American people, uses every government agency at it's disposal to punish it's conservative/Republican enemies and no one does anything about it, does it make a sound? Yes it does resulting in devastating consequences for the American people.

Despite a trifecta of scandals, Obama and company continue to stonewall, lie or refuse to answer questions; in essence, giving Congress and the American people the finger. Pundits are shocked and taken-aback by the unprecedented arrogance of the Obama Administration.

Such pundits are a bit late coming to the dance as we in the Tea Party have been well aware of the lawlessness and arrogance of this bunch of thugs from Chicago for years. Have these surprised pundits forgotten Obama's unprecedented overreaches into the private sector – nationalizing General Motors; bullying banks; ignoring the ruling of federal judges, trashing the Constitution and more?

Still, pundits are missing the much greater horrifying picture. My fellow Americans we are in deep, deep trouble. The cold reality is that until someone steps forward in real opposition to Obama governing according to his will while ignoring all the laws, checks and balances, we are defenseless expendable supplicants of a tyrannical dictator.

Remarkably, the mainstream media is complaisant with Obama acting like our king rather than our president because he is liberal, black and his presidency is historic. Obama's agenda fits neatly with the mainstream media's socialist/progressive agenda. So they are elated to have a Teflon liberal black guy in the White House furthering their cause.

Speaking of expendable supplicants, let us not forget Ambassador Chris Stevens, Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty and Sean Smith who lost their lives left to die in our consulate in Benghazi.

The Obama Administration is emboldened to do whatever it pleases; bully conservative groups and individuals – secretly invade our privacy, target reporters and thumb it's nose when they get caught – all without any “real” political push-back or consequences. We the American people are in deep excrement.

Ponder that folks. As long as the mainstream media provides cover for Obama and keeps his poll numbers high by making sure no bad news is linked to Obama (Limbaugh Theorem), our president is empowered to function as a supreme ruler, free to do whatever he pleases to us. Dear God help us!

Obama is the first black president. Okay, I get it. But Obama's black skin nor protecting his legacy should award him Imperial Dictator status, trumping the best interest of the American people.

4063705681?profile=originalThe Republican party desperately needs leadership – someone not just willing to say “no” to Obama's tyranny. We need someone who will walk tall and passionately proclaim, “H - - No!”

America needs a politician with backbone and fortitude willing to endure being called racist by Obama's subservient mainstream media; someone unafraid of being targeted by the IRS; someone willing to be hated by clueless poll participants; someone willing to endure EPA persecution if they're a business owner; someone willing to endure their phone and email privacy illegally violated and someone willing to endure attempts to criminalize their opposition to Obama's agenda.

Under Obama's IRS controlled health care, any politician daring to oppose Obama's agenda will more than likely suffer delays and denial of medical care for their family and themselves. Suddenly, their conservative Republican mom finds herself at the bottom of the list for that kidney.

Yes, it is going to take a politician with incredible stones to challenge the great all-powerful beast, the Obama Administration.

I am confident that such a hero will step forward. Between you and me, I am keeping an eye on Rep. Trey Gowdy, House Oversight & Government Reform Committee. I

As the kids would say, Obama's arrogance is “off the chain” (my attempt to sound cool). Most people caught lying or with their pants down, back off. When caught red handed, Obama pokes his finger in our eye.

For example: It has been exposed that the Administration sent Susan Rice out to lie about Benghazi on five national TV shows. In response to getting caught, Obama promoted Rice. Lois Lerner was caught using the IRS to bully, intimidate and suppress the conservative vote in the 2012 presidential election. Obama promoted Lerner. The latest in his growing list of offenses and scandals, Eric Holder was caught lying about targeting reporter James Rosen.

Naïve pundits say, “Eric Holder is toast. He has to go.” My reply is, “Holder ain't goin' nowhere. You guys still do not get it. Holder is black and liberal and Obama is arrogant beyond belief with the media in his back pocket.” Obama recently stated that he is behind Holder 100 percent.

Folks, do you see the horror of what we are dealing with in America today? We have an Administration free to rule as it pleases with no one, I repeat no one, really holding it's feet to the fire. Will, someone please throw this out-of-control administration across their knee, spank it's butt and say, “No!”

Meanwhile, I heard someone say on TV in response to Holder's stonewalling and lying, “Holder risks another contempt of congress filed against him.” I am sure Holder is quaking in his boots.

Lloyd Marcus, Proud Unhyphenated American
Chairman, Conservative Campaign Committee
LloydMarcus.com

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Recall Senator Feinstein

I was sick to find out about the patriot act making it legal to violate every citizen's privacy. Senator Feinstein approved it which I believe violates her oath to defend our constitution. This violation of privacy violates our Constitution. Also, She drafted the bill trying to violate our 2nd Amendment. These are very huge violations of the U.S. constitution which she is sworn to uphold and protect. So, I was wanting to see how many of our california chapter is willing to participate in getting her recalled. Helping with petitions, etc. We will send a very big message to our representatives to uphold our constitution. Please let me know if your able. thank you.

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AMERICAN DIVORCE AGREEMENT

DIVORCE AGREEMENT - THIS IS SO INCREDIBLY WELL PUT AND I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT'S BY A YOUNG PERSON, A STUDENT!!! WHATEVER HE RUNS FOR, I'LL VOTE FOR HIM.

  Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:


  We have stuck together since the late 1950's for the sake of the kids, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course.
  Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.
  HERE IS OUR SEPARATION AGREEMENT:
  --Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
  --We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them.
  --You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.
  --Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.
  --We'll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and the coal mines, and you can go with wind, solar and biodiesel.
  --You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell. You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.
  --We'll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.
  --You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless, homeboys, hippies, druggies and illegal aliens.
  --We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks.
  --We'll keep Bill O'Reilly, and Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood .
  --You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places
that threaten us.
  --You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.
  --We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.
  --You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.
  --We'll keep the SUV's, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Volt and Leaf you can find.
  --You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors.
  --We'll keep "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "The National anthem."
  --I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute "Imagine", "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", "Kum Ba Ya" or "We Are the World".
  --We'll practice trickle-down economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.
  --Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.
  Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you might think about which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.


  Sincerely, John J. Wall, Law Student and an American


  P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin & Charlie Sheen, Barbara Streisand, & ( Hanoi ) Jane Fonda with you and you won't have to press 1 for English when you call our country.

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The gang of 8 & cohorts are ready to give 11 million criminal invaders amnesty at a cost of $1.5 to $2.7 trillion per year to citizens!   That’s roughly what is already embedded in our economy right now!   The gang doesn’t know how many are here, where they are, lie about the cost, and refuse to mention around 25.8 million citizens who might want to be employed.   Calling criminal invaders “undocumented workers” doesn’t change the facts that they criminally entered the country, criminally remain every day, are criminally employed in criminal jobs (no tax etc.), criminally pay no taxes, criminally take citizens’ public resources… simply saying it’s serial crime!   The executive-legislative-DOJ areas of government invite, aid, and abet this corruption by violating oath of office, Constitution, and law!     The issue is CRIME, NOT RACE!    We borrow roughly $1.5 trillion/yr that we can’t repay, while countless millions of every race citizen live in progressive hell holes worse than Afghanistan, TODAY.

Bottom line "jobless American" loses $37,096 cash pay, government loses $100,294 (tax revenue plus 2 subsidies), & the US economy takes a $137,391 hit for every illegal… assuming there is only 11 million.     That's up to $1.5 trillion @ 11 million to $2.7 trillion if 20 million!   That’s $69 to $124 Trillion over a 46 year work life!

Remember!!!   Illegals take home $12,480 (40 hr @ $6 cash (same as $8 pre tax)) plus $36,545 from various government & other related government subsidies ($402 BILLION/11 MILLION) for a total $49,025.     An average BLS citizen takes home $37,096 after $12,365 employee taxes & regulations – That’s $11,929 less than the alien takes home!      The criminal alien’s criminal employer doesn't pay employer wage taxes.     Government pays the $36,545  illegal alien subsidy plus subsidies for jobless citizens at the same $36,545 (?).

Don't understand the jobless numbers???  December 2012 was 12.506 million "unemployed", 6.434 wanting a job, 6.896 disappearing workforce (1997 through 2008 workforce to population 66.54% vs 2012 @ 63.70%), sets maximum unemployed @ 25.839 million (16.7%)!

If 154.975 "working" 40 hours full time instead of 34.4 (BLS) adds 25.228 million (16.3%) more jobs lost, then joblessness potential is 51,067 (33%).    Obamacare scare is throwing millions into the part-time unemployment.

This country is being divided and conquered from within by deception and sedition.    The Constitution as written and its core law will heal and reunite if enforced!    That won’t happen until a good dose of truth and consequences is injected into the legislature.    Let them be known by  what they are!

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April 2013 ....... Religion and Public Life in America by R.R. Reno (Editor, First Things)4063705156?profile=original

R. R. RENO is the editor of First Things, a journal of religion in public life. He received his B.A. from Haverford College and his Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University, and taught theology and ethics at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, for 20 years. He is the author of Fighting the Noonday Devil, Sanctified Vision, and a commentary on the Book of Genesis, as well as a number of other books and essays.
The following is adapted from a speech delivered on February 20, 2013, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Bonita Springs, Florida.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY is being redefined in America, or at least many would like it to be. Our secular establishment wants to reduce the autonomy of religious institutions and limit the influence of faith in the public square. The reason is not hard to grasp. In America, “religion” largely means Christianity, and today our secular culture views orthodox Christian churches as troublesome, retrograde, and reactionary forces. They’re seen as anti-science, anti-gay, and anti-women—which is to say anti-progress as the Left defines progress. Not surprisingly, then, the Left believes society will be best served if Christians are limited in their influence on public life. And in the short run this view is likely to succeed. There will be many arguments urging Christians to keep their religion strictly religious rather than “political.” And there won’t just be arguments; there will be laws as well. We’re in the midst of climate change—one that’s getting colder and colder toward religion.

Recent court cases and controversies suggest trends unfriendly to religion in public life. In 2005, a former teacher at Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Redford, Michigan, filed an employment lawsuit claiming discrimination based on disability. The school fired her for violating St. Paul’s teaching that Christians should not bring their disputes before secular judges. The subsequent lawsuit revolved around the question of whether a religious school could invoke a religious principle to justify firing an employee. The school said it could, drawing on a legal doctrine known as the ministerial exception, which allows religious institutions wide latitude in hiring and firing their religious leaders. It’s in the nature of legal arguments to be complex and multi-layered, but in this case the Obama administration’s lawyers made a shockingly blunt argument: Their brief claimed that there should be no ministerial exception.

The Supreme Court rejected this argument in a unanimous 9-0 vote. But it’s telling nonetheless that lawyers in the Justice Department wanted to eliminate this exception. Their argument was straightforward: Government needs to have broad powers to address the problem of discrimination—in this case disability—as well as other injustices. Conceding too much to religious institutions limits those powers. Why should the theological doctrines of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, or of any other church, trump the legal doctrines of the United States when the important principle of non-discrimination is at stake? It is an arresting question, to say the least—especially when we remember that the Left is currently pushing to add gay marriage to the list of civil rights.

Concerns about the autonomy of religious institutions are also at work in the Obama administration’s tussle with the Catholic Church and her religious allies over the mandate to provide free contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. After the initial public outcry, the administration announced a supposed compromise, which has been recently revised and re-proposed. The Obama administration allows that churches and organizations directly under the control of those churches are religious employers and can opt out of the morally controversial coverage. But religious colleges and charities are not and cannot. To them, the administration offers a so-called accommodation.

The details are complex, but a recent statement issued by Cardinal Dolan of New York identifies the key issue: Who counts as a religious employer? It’s a question closely related to the issue in the Hosanna-Tabor case, which asks who counts as a religious employee. Once again the Obama administration seeks a narrow definition, “accommodating” others in an act of lèse majesté, as it were. The Catholic Church and her allies want a broad definition that includes Catholic health care, Catholic universities, and Catholic charities. The Church knows that it cannot count on accommodations—after all, when various states such as Illinois passed laws allowing gay adoptions, they did not “accommodate” Catholic charities, but instead demanded compliance with principles of non-discrimination, forcing the Church to shut down her adoption agencies in those jurisdictions.

Cardinal Dolan’s statement went still further. For-profit companies are not religious in the way that Notre Dame University is religious. Nonetheless, the religious beliefs of those who own and run businesses in America should be accorded some protection. This idea the Obama administration flatly rejects. By their progressive way of thinking, economic life should be under the full and unlimited control of the federal government.

Religious liberty is undermined in a third and different way as well. For a long time, political theorists like John Rawls have argued that our laws must be based on so-called public reason, which is in fact an ambiguous, ill-defined concept that gives privileged status to liberalism. In 2010, Federal District Court Judge Vaughn Walker overturned Proposition 8—the ballot measure that reversed the California Supreme Court’s 2006 decision that homosexuals have a right to marry—citing the lack of a rational basis for thinking that only men and women can marry. “The evidence shows conclusively,” he wrote, “that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples.” He continues by observing that many supporters of Proposition 8 were motivated by their religious convictions, which—following Rawls—he presumes should not be allowed to govern public law.

This line of thinking is not unique to Judge Walker. The influence of Rawls has been extensive, leading to restrictions on the use of religious reasons or even religiously-influenced reasons in public debate. In striking down Texas sodomy laws, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that moral censure of homosexuality has “been shaped by religious beliefs.” The idea seems to be that moral views historically supported by religion—which of course means all moral views other than modern secular ones—are constitutionally suspect.

Here we come to the unifying feature of contemporary challenges to religious freedom—the desire to limit the influence of religion over public life. In the world envisioned by Obama administration lawyers, churches will have freedom as “houses of worship,” but unless they accept the secular consensus they can’t inspire their adherents to form institutions to educate and serve society in accordance with the principles of their faith. Under a legal regime influenced by the concept of public reason, religious people are free to speak—but when their voices contradict the secular consensus, they’re not allowed into our legislative chambers or courtrooms.

Thus our present clashes over religious liberty. The Constitution protects religious liberty in two ways. First, it prohibits laws establishing a religion. This prevents the dominant religion from using the political power of majority rule to privilege its own doctrines to the disadvantage of others. Second, it prohibits laws that limit the free exercise of religion. What we’re seeing today is a secular liberalism that wants to expand the prohibition of establishment to silence articulate religious voices and disenfranchise religiously motivated voters, and at the same time to narrow the scope of free exercise so that the new secular morality can reign over American society unimpeded.

Rise of the Nones This shift in legal thinking on the Left reflects underlying religious trends. As the religious character of our society changes, so do our assumptions about religious freedom. The main change has been the rise of the Nones. In the 1950s, around three percent of Americans checked the “none” box when asked about their religious affiliation. That number has grown, especially in the last decade, to 20 percent of the population. And Nones are heavily represented in elite culture. A great deal of higher education is dominated by Nones, as are important cultural institutions, the media, and Hollywood. They are conscious of their power, and they feel the momentum of their growth.

At the same time, the number of Americans who say they go to church every week has remained strikingly constant over the last 50 years, at around 35 percent. Sociologists of religion think this self-reported number is higher than the actual one, which may be closer to 25 percent. In any event, the social reality is the same. As the Nones have emerged as a significant cohort, the committed core of religious people has not declined and in fact has become unified and increasingly battle tested. Protestants and Catholics alike know they’re up against an often hostile secular culture—and although a far smaller portion of the population, the same holds for Jews and Muslims as well.

These two trends—the rise of the Nones and the consolidation of the committed core of believers—have led to friction in public life. The Nones and religious Americans collide culturally and politically, not just theologically.

For a long time, the press has reported on the influence of religious voters, especially Evangelicals. Polling data shows that religiosity has become increasingly reliable as a predictor of political loyalties. But what’s far less commonly reported is that this goes both ways. In their recent book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, Robert Putnam and William Campbell focused on the practice of saying grace before meals as an indication of religious commitment and found a striking correlation. Seventy percent of those who never say grace before meals identify as Democrats, compared to slightly more than 20 percent who identify as Republicans. Nones are extremely ideological. Meanwhile, among those who say grace daily, 40 percent identify as Democrats and 50 percent as Republicans. Religious people are more diverse, but they trend to the political right, and the more religious they are the more likely they are to vote Republican.

Other data also suggests a growing divide between the irreligious and religious. A recent Pew study confirms that Nones are the single most ideologically committed cohort of white Americans, rivaled only by Evangelical Protestants. They overwhelmingly support abortion and gay marriage. Seventy-five percent of them voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and they played a decisive role in his victory in 2012. In Ohio, Obama lost the Protestant vote by three percent and the Catholic vote by eleven percent—and both numbers rise if we isolate Protestants and Catholics who say they go to church every week. But he won the Nones, who make up 12 percent of the electorate in Ohio, by an astounding 47 percent.

I think it’s fair to say that Obama ran a values campaign last fall that gambled that the Nones would cast the decisive votes. For the first time in American political history, the winning party deliberately attacked religion. Its national convention famously struck God from the platform, only to have it restored by anxious party leaders in a comical session characterized by the kind of frivolity that comes when people recognize that it doesn’t really matter. Democratic talking points included the “war on women” and other well-crafted slogans that rallied their base, the Nones, who at 24 percent of all Democrat and Democratic-leaning voters have become the single largest identifiable cohort in the liberal coalition.

This presents the deepest threat to religious liberty today. It’s not good when the most numerous and powerful constituency in the Democratic Party has no time for religion. This is all the more true when its ideology has the effect of encouraging the rest of the party to view religion—especially Christianity—as the enemy; and when law professors provide reasons why the Constitution doesn’t protect religious people.

Religious Liberty Under the Gun From the end of the Civil War until the 1960s, the wealthiest, best educated, and most powerful Americans remained largely loyal to Christianity. That’s changed. There were warning signs. William F. Buckley, Jr. chronicled how Yale in the early ’50s could no longer support even the bland religiosity of liberal Protestantism. Today, Yale and other elite institutions can be relied upon to provide anti-Christian propaganda. Stephen Pinker and Stephen Greenblatt at Harvard publish books that show how Christianity pretty much ruins everything, as Christopher Hitchens put it so bluntly. The major presses publish book after book by scholars like Elaine Pagels at Princeton, who argues that Christianity is for the most part an invention of power hungry bishops who suppressed the genuine diversity and spiritual richness of early followers of Jesus.

One can dispute the accuracy of the books, articles, and lectures of these and other authors. This is necessary, but unlikely to be effective. Experts savaged Greenblatt’s book on Lucretius, The Swerve, but it won the National Book Award for non-fiction. That’s not an accident. Greenblatt and others at elite universities are serving an important ideological purpose by using their academic authority to discredit Christianity, whose adherents are obstacles not only to abortion and gay rights, but to medical research unrestricted by moral concerns about the use of fetal tissue, to new reproductive technologies, to doctor-assisted suicide, and in general to liquefying traditional moral limits so that they can be reconstructed according to the desires of the Nones. Books by these elite academics reassure the Nones and their fellow travelers that they are not opposed to anything good or even respectable, but rather to historic forms of oppression, ignorance, and prejudice.

I cannot overstate the importance of these ideological attacks on Christianity. Our Constitution accords us rights, and the courts cannot void these rights willy-nilly. But history shows that the Constitution is a plastic document. When our elite culture thinks something is bad for society as a whole, judges find ways to suppress it. The First Amendment offered no protection to Bob Jones University, which lost its tax-exempt status because of a policy that prohibited inter-racial dating. As the Supreme Court majority in 1983 wrote in that case: “Government has a fundamental, overriding interest in eradicating racial discrimination in education . . . which substantially outweighs whatever burden denial of tax benefits places on [the University’s] exercise of their religious beliefs.”

In recent years the Supreme Court has been largely solicitous of religious freedom, sensing perhaps that our cultural conflicts over religion and morality need to be kept within bounds. But the law professors are preparing the way for changes. Martha Nussbaum, who teaches at the University of Chicago Law School, has opined that the colleges and universities run by Catholic religious orders that require their presidents or other leaders to be members of the order should lose their tax exempt status, because they discriminate against women. She allows that current interpretations of the First Amendment don’t support her view, but that’s not much comfort. All Nussbaum is doing is applying the logic of the Bob Jones case to the feminist project of eradicating discrimination based on sex.

Former Georgetown law professor Chai Feldblum—who is also a current Obama appointee to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—has written about the coming conflicts between gay rights and religious liberty. With an admirable frankness she admits, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.” Again, the Bob Jones case is in the background, as are other aspects of civil rights law designed to stamp out racial discrimination. For someone like Feldblum, when religious individuals and institutions don’t conform to the new consensus about sexual morality, their freedoms should be limited.

It is precisely the possibilities evoked by Nussbaum and Feldblum that now motivate the Obama administration’s intransigence about allowing places like Notre Dame to be classified as religious employers. In the Bob Jones case, the justices were very careful to stipulate that “churches or other purely religious institutions” remain protected by the First Amendment’s principle of free exercise. By “accommodating” rather than counting Notre Dame and other educational and charitable organizations as religious employers, secular liberalism can target them in the future, as they have done to Catholic adoption agencies that won’t place children with homosexual couples.

A recent book by University of Chicago professor of philosophy and law Brian Leiter outlines what I believe will become the theoretical consensus that does away with religious liberty in spirit if not in letter. “There is no principled reason,” he writes, “for legal or constitutional regimes to single out religion for protection.” Leiter describes religious belief as a uniquely bad combination of moral fervor and mental blindness, serving no public good that justifies special protection. More significantly—and this is Leiter’s main thesis—it is patently unfair to afford religion such protection. Why should a Catholic or a Baptist have a special right while Peter Singer, a committed utilitarian, does not? Evoking the principle of fairness, Leiter argues that everybody’s conscience should be accorded the same legal protections. Thus he proposes to replace religious liberty with a plenary “liberty of conscience.”

Leiter’s argument is libertarian. He wants to get the government out of the business of deciding whose conscience is worth protecting. This mentality seems to expand freedom, but that’s an illusion. In practice it will lead to diminished freedom, as is always the case with any thoroughgoing libertarianism.

Let me give an example. The urban high school my son attended strictly prohibits hats and headgear. It does so in order to keep gang-related symbols and regalia out of the school. However, the school recognizes a special right of religious freedom, and my son, whose mother is Jewish and who was raised as a Jew, was permitted to wear a yarmulke. Leiter’s argument prohibits this special right, but his alternative is unworkable. The gang members could claim that their deep commitments of loyalty to each other create a conscientious duty to wear gang regalia. If everybody’s conscience must be respected, then nobody’s will be, for order and safety must be preserved.

* * *

The Arabic word dhimmi means non-Muslim. Under Muslim rule, non-Muslims were allowed to survive only insofar as they accepted Muslim dominance. Our times are not those times, and the secularism of the Nones is not Islam. Nevertheless, I think many powerful forces in America would like to impose a soft but real dhimmitude. The liberal and libertarian Nones will quarrel, as do the Shi’a and Sunni, but they will, I think, largely unify against the public influence of religion.

What can be done to prevent them from succeeding?

First and most obvious—defend religious liberty in the courts. Although I have depicted deep cultural pressures that work against religious liberty, we live in a society governed by the rule of law. Precedent matters, and good lawyering can make a substantive difference.

Second—fight against the emerging legal theories that threaten to undermine religious liberty. This is a battle to be carried out in the law schools and among political theorists. For decades, legal activists on the Left have been subsidized by legal clinics and special programs run in law schools. Defenders of religious liberty need to push back.

Third—fight the cultural battle. Legal theory flexes and bends in accord with the dominant consensus. This Brian Leiter knows, which is why he does not much worry about the current state of constitutional law. He goes directly to the underlying issues, which concern the role of religion in public life.

We must meet the challenge by showing that religion is indeed special. Religious people are the most likely Americans to be involved in civic life, and the most generous in their charitable contributions. This needs to be highlighted again and again. Moreover, we need to draw a contrast with the Nones, who tend to outsource their civic responsibilities and charitable obligations to government in the form of expanded government programs and higher taxes.

There is another, deeper argument that must be made in defense of religion: It is the most secure guarantee of freedom. America’s Founders, some of them Christian and others not, agreed as a matter of principle that the law of God trumps the law of men. This has obvious political implications: The Declaration of Independence appeals to the unalienable rights given by our Creator that cannot be overridden or taken away. In this sense, religion is especially beneficial. As Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI both emphasized, it gives transcendent substance to the rights of man that limit government. Put somewhat differently, religion gives us a place to stand outside politics, and without it we’re vulnerable to a system in which the state defines everything, which is the essence of tyranny. This is why gay marriage, which is sold as an expansion of freedom, is in fact a profound threat to liberty.

Finally, we must not accept a mentality of dhimmitude. The church, synagogue, and mosque have a tremendous solidity born of a communion of wills fused together in obedience to God. This gives people of faith the ability to fight with white fury for what they perceive to be a divine cause, which is of course a great force for righteousness—but also a dangerous threat to social peace, as early modern Europe knew only too well.

In conclusion, I want to focus not on fury but on the remarkable capacity for communities of faith to endure. My wife’s ancestors lived for generations in the contested borderlands of Poland and Russia. As Jews they were tremendously vulnerable, and yet through their children and their children’s children they endured in spite of discrimination, violence, and attempted genocide. Where now, I ask, are the Russian and Polish aristocrats who dominated them for centuries? Where now is the Thousand Year Reich? Where now is the Soviet worker’s paradise? They have gone to dust. The Torah is still read in the synagogue.

The same holds for Christianity. The Church did not need constitutional protections in order to take root in a hostile pagan culture two thousand years ago.

Right now the Nones seem to have the upper hand in America. But what seems powerful is not always so. If I had to bet on Harvard or the Catholic Church, Yale or the Mennonites in Goshen, Indiana, the New York Times or yeshivas in Brooklyn, I wouldn’t hesitate. Over the long haul, religious faith has proven itself the most powerful and enduring force in human history.


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Copyright © 2011 Hillsdale College. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the following credit line is used: “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” SUBSCRIPTION FREE UPON REQUEST. ISSN 0277-8432. Imprimis trademark registered in U.S. Patent and Trade Office #1563325.

   

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A Tribute to Margaret Thatcher

Larry P. Arnn President, Hillsdale College

The following is adapted from remarks delivered at a ceremony in honor of Margaret Thatcher sponsored by the Hillsdale chapter of Young Americans for Freedom on April 22, 2013.

Margaret Thatcher was born in 1925, in October. Her father was a grocer. She was born in Lincolnshire, in the middle of England. She studied chemistry at Oxford. In 1959 she got elected to Parliament for Finchley, which she represented until she retired from the House of Commons in 1992. She’s one of the great prime ministers in British history, and one of the longest serving, at least in continuous times.

I happened to live in England when Mrs. Thatcher’s party won the 1979 election and she became prime minister— the first woman to do so. It was better than watching sports on television. There was nothing like it. Every day she would do something big, and every day she would not apologize for it, even when reporters would press her. You just never saw anyone so direct or clear of speech.

Mrs. Thatcher faced a situation in Britain that was devastating, much like the situation we have today in our own country. What she did was to make plain that situation and to place great faith in the people of her country, and then when they were asked to choose, they chose for her over and over again. Indeed, she never lost an election after she won the first one. She only lost her job as prime minister because her party got tired of her. They were not as strong as she was and they threw her out, and she left very nobly.

I’ll tell you two quick stories about her. The first concerns a coal strike led by a very left wing man named Arthur Scargill, who was the head of the coal miners union. That union was powerful because people got their heat from coal, and if the union didn’t mine coal in the winter, people got cold.

The major political party opposed to Mrs. Thatcher’s Conservative party, the Labor party, was basically controlled at that time in its governing structure by the labor unions, and the worst and most aggressive of them was the coal miners. So the Prime Minister stood largely alone, and great powers were arrayed against her. And what she did was store up a bunch of coal to get ready for a strike because she knew Mr. Scargill was going to call one, and he did call one. The coal mining regions of the country had thousands of people picketing, and parts of the country basically ceased to function.

This had happened many times in the past, and the government had capitulated. But this time there was Mrs. Thatcher at the head of the government, and there was something called the Battle of Orgreave, in which five thousand miners clashed with five thousand policemen. The policemen triumphed, and there were over 100 casualties. That was a battle for the soul of the country, and the Prime Minister was very clear about it. She explained that the stakes were enormous and that the government was going to stand up for the country. There was no wiggle in her. She didn’t budge. And what happened was that a large part of the membership of the miners union broke off, formed their own union, and made a deal that was in their interest but was not what Scargill had demanded. So Mrs. Thatcher basically broke that strike, and she broke that kind of unionism. The other kind—the kind where people act under laws that are fair, and where unions don’t take over parts of the country or the property of others—that kind of unionism thrives in Britain today. And so far there has not been an effort to bring back  the destructive kind.

My second story concerns terrorism. You probably know that Mrs. Thatcher was almost killed when IRA terrorists put a bomb in her hotel during the annual Conservative Party Conference in 1984. They checked into that hotel months in advance and planted an explosive device set to go off near where the Prime Minister slept. It did go off, and it killed five people, but Mrs. Thatcher was working late and her life was spared.

IRA terrorists had previously killed one of her best friends, a man named Airey Neave, a distinguished soldier in World War II and one of the few men to escape the German POW camp at Colditz. He was very close to Mrs. Thatcher, and he was the Shadow Secretary for Northern Ireland. Shortly before she became prime minister, the terrorists placed a bomb in Neave’s car set to explode when the car was at a certain angle coming out of the parking lot underneath the House of Commons, and Airey Neave was killed, having survived the Nazis.

So Margaret Thatcher had strong reasons to oppose terrorism. And when it happened that several IRA terrorists, the key one being a man named Bobby Sands, went on a hunger strike in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland—they were demanding to be classified as political prisoners rather than as criminals—she stood firm as they starved themselves to death. Over and over, she stated her position forthrightly: “Crime is crime is crime. It is not political. It is crime.” And what that meant was that those terrorists had chosen the wrong time to go on a hunger strike.

I’ll tell you what I think all that means. I’ve thought about this most of my adult life, and much of what I think about it is informed by having watched Mrs. Thatcher. We live in an age when a new kind of government has been invented, and it’s not so much that it has different aims, although it does have many different aims, but that it proceeds by a different method—through rules made by so-called experts, who gather the forces of government over themselves.

There’s an agency that has been created recently in the United States, and that agency does not get its budget from the Congress of the United States, but from a percentage of the revenues of the Federal Reserve, which gets its revenues as a government monopoly bank. This new agency has regulatory power that may affect us as a college and will certainly affect each of us as individuals. And Congress is forbidden to hold hearings on the budget of that agency, and that agency routinely refuses inquiries from Congress about its operations. That means it is sealed off from popular control. And the weight and scale of the government run by this new method means that there’s some chance that the government is going to overwhelm the society. That is the very abnegation of liberal politics—liberal in the sense of a free people managing those who govern them because human beings are born equal, with equal rights.

The greatest defender and servant of this principle of liberal government that I have seen in my lifetime is Margaret Thatcher, and I pray that we will see the likes of her again, because the battle over this kind of government is upon us again. For making clear that the right way of government is to operate under a constitution, and under the control of free people, and for fighting for constitutionalism more effectively than anyone in our time, we today remember Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven.


Copyright © 2013 Hillsdale College. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the following credit line is used: “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” SUBSCRIPTION FREE UPON REQUEST. ISSN 0277-8432. Imprimis trademark registered in U.S. Patent and Trade Office #1563325.

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4063705274?profile=originalThe Miracle of Freedom by U.S. Senator Ted Cruz

In 2012, Ted Cruz was elected as the 34th U.S. Senator from Texas. Prior to that, he served for five years as Solicitor General of Texas and was for five years a partner at one of the nation’s largest law firms. He has authored more than 80 U.S. Supreme Court briefs and argued 43 oral arguments, including nine before the U.S. Supreme Court. He has also served as Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission and as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. Senator Cruz graduated with honors from Princeton University and with high honors from Harvard Law School, and served as a law clerk to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist.
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College’s 161st Commencement, held in the College’s Biermann Athletic Center on May 11, 2013.

Today is a day of celebration. For you graduates, it’s a day to celebrate your hard work, your commitment, time, energy, passion, and prayers that you have put in to graduate from Hillsdale College. It’s also a day to celebrate the sacrifice and dedication your family has put in to get you here. I am honored to join you today—but let me say I fully recognize that the most forgettable part of this important day is going to be the politician delivering your commencement speech.

This morning I had the opportunity to tour your wonderful campus, and one of the highlights for me was the statue of Margaret Thatcher. I understand that when the statue was unveiled, she sent a letter of praise that read: “Hillsdale College symbolizes everything that is good and true in America. You uphold the principles and cherish the values which have made your country a beacon of hope.” I couldn’t agree more.

There are commencements being held on campuses all over the country this spring, but this one is different. Hillsdale, it is known across the country, is in a class by itself. Those graduating from other colleges are being told to go out and make something of themselves. But for the men and women receiving their degrees here today, expectations are higher. Because of the education you received here, you are uniquely prepared to provide desperately needed, principled leadership to your families, your churches, your communities, your country, and your fellow man. While other graduates have been exposed to college courses such as “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame,” you have been grounded in an understanding of our Constitution and of the freedom it was designed to preserve.

* * *

Last month the world lost Baroness Thatcher, and in her honor I’d like to spend a few minutes discussing with you the miracle of freedom.

In the history of mankind, freedom has been the exception. Governed by kings and queens, human beings were told that power starts at the top and flows down; that their rights emanate from a monarch and may be taken away at the monarch’s whim. The British began a revolution against this way of thinking in a meadow called Runnymede in 1215. It was embodied in the Magna Carta, which read: “To all free men of our kingdom we have also granted, for us and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written out below, to have and to keep for them and their heirs . . . .” That revolution reached full flower in Philadelphia in 1787, in a Constitution that began from two radical premises.

The first is that our rights come not from kings or queens—or even from presidents—but from God. As the Declaration of Independence put it, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Second, in the Constitution, America’s Founders inverted the understanding of sovereignty. Power comes not from the top down, but up, from “We the People,” and governing authority for those in political office is limited to set periods subject to elections. As James Madison explained in Federalist 51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary . . . .  In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Even from my short time in elected office, I can assure you there are no angels in Washington, D.C. And that is why Thomas Jefferson said the “chains of the Constitution” should bind the mischief of government. Only when government is limited are rights protected, the rule of law honored, and freedom allowed to flourish.

You who are graduating from Hillsdale are familiar with these ideas. As the late conservative writer and educator Russell Kirk observed, “Hillsdale does not subscribe to the notion that all books published before 1900 are obsolete. Against all odds, the College speaks up—as it did during the nineteenth century—for ‘permanent things.’ ” And with those as our foundation, what has freedom wrought?

* * *

Simply put, the American free market system is the greatest engine for prosperity and opportunity that the world has ever seen. Freedom works. No other nation on Earth has allowed so many millions to come with nothing and achieve so much. In the centuries before the American Revolution, the average human lived on between one and three dollars a day, no matter whether one lived in Europe, Asia, Africa, or North or South America. But from that point on—from the beginning of the American experiment—for the first time in human history, per capita income in a few countries began to grow rapidly, and nowhere more so than in the United States.

Over the last two centuries, U.S. growth rates have far outpaced growth rates throughout the world, producing per capita incomes about six times greater than the world average and 50 percent higher than those in Europe. Put another way, the United States holds 4.5 percent of the world’s population, and produces a staggering 22 percent of the world’s output—a fraction that has remained stable for two decades, despite growing competition from around the world.

This predominance isn’t new. The late British economist Angus Maddison observed that American per capita income was already the highest in the world in the 1830s. This is a result of America’s economic freedom, which enables entrepreneurs and small businesses to flourish.

Today the U.S. dollar is the international reserve currency. English is the world’s standard language for commerce. The strength of our economy allows us to maintain the mightiest military in the world. And U.S. culture—film, TV, the Internet—is preeminent in the world (although for many of our TV shows and movies, perhaps we owe the world an apology). A disproportionate number of the world’s great inventions in medicine, pharmaceuticals, electronics, the Internet, and other technology come from America, improving, expanding, and saving lives. America was where the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, and the iPhone were invented. Americans were the first to walk on the moon.

But most importantly, freedom produces opportunity. And I would encourage each of you to embrace what I call opportunity conservatism, which means that we should look at and judge every proposed domestic policy with a laser focus on how it impacts the least among us—how it helps the most vulnerable Americans climb the economic ladder.

The political left in our country seeks to reach down the hand of government and move people up the economic ladder. This attempt is almost always driven by noble intentions. And yet it never, ever works. Conservatives, in contrast, understand from experience that the only way to help people climb the economic ladder is to provide them the opportunity to pull themselves up one rung at a time.

As President Reagan said, “How can we love our country and not love our countrymen, and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunity to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?”

Historically, our nation has enjoyed remarkable economic mobility. About 60 percent of the households that were in the lowest income quintile in 1999 were in a higher quintile ten years later. During the same decade, almost 40 percent of the richest households fell to a lower quintile. This is a nation where you can rise or fall. It is a nation where you can climb the economic ladder based not on who you are born to, or what class you are born into, but based on your talents, your passion, your perseverance, and the content of your character.

Economic freedom and the prosperity it generates reduce poverty like nothing else. Studies consistently confirm that countries with higher levels of economic freedom have poverty levels as much as 75 percent lower than countries that are less free.

Thanks to America’s free market system, the average poor American has more living space than the typical non‑poor person in Sweden, France, or the United Kingdom. In 1970, the year I was born, only 36 percent of the U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning. Today, 80 percent of poor households in America have air conditioning; and 96 percent of poor parents say that their children were never hungry at any time in the preceding year because they could not afford food.

Now, of course, there is still need in America and throughout the world, and all of us should act to help our fellow man. But more and more government is not the way to do this. To insist otherwise is to ignore the fact that all major European nations have higher levels of public spending than the United States, and that all of them are poorer.

Nor are human beings happiest when they’re taken care of by the state. Indeed, areas under the yoke of dependency on government are among the least joyous parts of our society. The story of Julia that we saw depicted in last year’s election—the story of cradle-to-grave dependency on government—is not an attractive utopia. Men and women flourish, instead, when afforded the equal opportunity to work and create and accomplish.

I remember some time ago when former Texas Senator Phil Gramm was participating in a Senate hearing on socialized medicine, and the witness there explained that government would best take care of people. Senator Gramm gently demurred and said, “I care more about my family than anyone else does.” And this wide-eyed witness said, “Oh no, Senator. I care as much about your children.” Senator Gramm smiled and said, “Really? What are their names?”

* * *

It is precisely because economic freedom and opportunity outperform centralized planning and regulation that so many millions have risked everything for a chance at the American dream.

Fifty-five years ago, my father fled Cuba, where he had been imprisoned and tortured—including having his teeth kicked out—as a teenager. Today my father is a pastor in Dallas. When he landed in Austin, Texas, in 1957, he was 18. He couldn’t speak a word of English. He had $100 sewn into his underwear. He went and got a job washing dishes and made 50 cents an hour. He worked seven days a week and paid his way through the University of Texas, and then he got a job, and then he went on to start a small business.

Now imagine if, at that time, the minimum wage had been two dollars an hour. He might never have had the opportunity to get that dishwashing job and work his way through school and work his way up from there. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve thanked God that some well-meaning liberal didn’t greet him when he landed in Austin and put his arm around him and say: “Let me take care of you. Let me make you dependent on government. Let me sap your self-respect—and by the way, don’t bother learning English.”

When I was a kid, my father used to say to me: “When we faced oppression in Cuba, I had a place to flee to. If we lose our freedom here, where do we go?” For my entire life, my dad has been my hero. But what I find most incredible about his story is how commonplace it is. Every one of us here today has a story like that. We could line up at this podium and each of us tell the story of our parents or grandparents or our great, great, great grandparents. We are all children of those who risked everything for liberty. That’s the DNA of what it means to be an American—to value freedom and opportunity above all.

In 1976, Margaret Thatcher delivered her “Britain Awake” speech. In it, she said: “There are moments in our history when we have to make a fundamental choice. This is one such moment, a moment when our choice will determine the life or death of our kind of society and the future of our children. Let’s ensure that our children will have cause to rejoice that we did not forsake their freedom.”

If we don’t fight to preserve our liberty, we will lose it. The men and women graduating here today, blessed with a world-class liberal arts education and a Hillsdale love of learning, are perfectly situated to lead the fight, to tell and retell the story of the miracle of freedom to so many Americans—so many young Americans in particular—who’ve never heard that story from the media, or in their schools, and certainly not from Hollywood.

Mrs. Thatcher continued: “Of course, this places a burden on us, but it is one that we must be willing to bear if we want our freedom to survive.”

Throughout history, we have carried the torch for freedom. At Hillsdale, you have been prepared to continue to do so, that together we may ensure that America remains a shining city on a hill, a beacon to the world of hope and freedom and opportunity.

Thank you and God bless you.

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Please join Hillsdale College for our next Kirby Center lecture:
"Political Power and the Media:

Upholding the Constitution,

Informing Citizens"

Brian Lamb
Founder and Executive Chairman, C-SPAN
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Lunch will be provided.
Brian Lamb is the founder, executive chairman, and former chief executive officer of C-SPAN. Born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, he earned a degree from Purdue University before joining the United States Navy. After various jobs in the communications field, including a stint in the Pentagon public affairs office during the Vietnam War, he founded the non-profit channel in 1979. Lamb has conducted over 1,000 interviews in his lifetime, starting in high school and continuing on C-SPAN programs, such as Booknotes and Q&A. He has compiled multiple books from his work on Booknotes, including Booknotes: On American Character. Please register at https://kirbycenter.hillsdale.edu/pages/events/june-2013-kcls 
to attend this event in person.
The video of the lecture will be posted online following the event.

Funding for this month's Kirby Center Lecture Series has been provided by Hillsdale College alumni Chris and Sarah Chocola.

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Foreign policy "golden rules

1.International treaties have to be negotiated by diplomats prior to endorsement by  presidents.

2. The information gathered by spies plays an increasingly role in diplomacy (arms-control treaties would be impossible without the power of reconnaissance satellites and agents to monitor compliance).

3. If you start war, it doesn’t mean you failed diplomacy , it means military decision is much more profitable.

4. Make it clear to foreign leaders right away whether you are or you are not going to follow the previous President’s foreign policy (after consultations with big business). If you are not going to follow it, design a doctrine of your own (it’s a strategy that is the recognized approach or policy of the US government.

5. National security is your top priority and is the “king’s job” because actually you have no domestic political obstacles to your foreign policy (if it’s a question of war), so you are a chief decision maker there. (The CIA Director has to be excluded from this process — you don’t need him. Besides, the CIA even today, no matter how hard I tried to educate the Agency, remains the worst of the worst and is not to be reformed — it has to be abolished. We have to transfer political intelligence functions to Pentagon. National security is designed to protect the United States and the vital interests (investments) of big business and to promote American values in a world of rivals, and the CIA, through all 60 years of its history, has proved to be absolutely unsuitable for the job).

6. Any country has to be involved in the sphere of our strategic interests if it has a strategic geographic position, significant sources of raw materials, a well-developed transportation system, or could be used as a military base. The strategic policy of any country rotates around the USA and if not — that means a certain President is waiting for greater incentives to come on board. Against target countries, don’t hesitate to use the strategies of pre-emptive war, post-war (post-crisis) reconstruction, and nation building (which means erasing national identity and supplanting it by liberal values).

 With China’s growth , the Cold War is back with a vengeance, so we are back to secret deals based on spheres of influence — but that’s a temporary strategy.

7. You can’t always do what you want without help -  you are dependent on other world leaders, Congressional positions and international public opinion. Ask the Senate to help you sometimes - believe me, they’ll be happy and proud to do so.

8. Create super-profitable conditions for big business by political penetration worldwide. Big money men start investing abroad when they find a safe environment — law and order. The more they invest the more political power they get (international corporations is the most important element of  international system ; the other two are governments and non-governmental organizations).

9. Use big investors to ruin other national economies and governments by withdrawing finances when the economic situation is worsening. As soon as the country opens its financial markets, it increases its dependence on global economic processes that it cannot control; and a financial crisis can easily be staged. Conversely, other countries’ access to the US markets is a powerful economic and political tool.

10. Make the US markets the most attractive for investors by provoking unstable situations in other countries and regions.

11. Send troops or work through military intelligence (not the CIA) to wherever you perceive a threat to the US investments.

12. Use pressure everywhere — strategic nuclear missiles are still the most powerful blackmail tool. Remember, if you are dealing with Russia or China, they will look not only for agreement, but for advantages.

13. Use “personal diplomacy” — phone calls to foreign leaders (every planned phone call has to go through the National Security Adviser and be well prepared, like a serious negotiation). Most important are phone calls to our allies — NATO members. Don’t forget to wish happy birthday to the leaders in person!

14. Use “informal diplomacy” – recruit politicians in other nations who might be able to give informal access to a country’s leadership. In some situations, such as between USA  and China diplomacy is done through semi-formal channels using  interlocutors such as  academic members or think tanks. This occurs in situations when presidents wish to express intentions or to suggest methods of resolving a diplomatic situation, but do not wish to express a formal position.

15. Don’t hesitate to use summits  as a tool, because:

-if you meet a foreign leader in person, you can reduce tensions and clarify national interests.

-personal relationship may lead to improved relations between nations.

-summits allow you to focus national attention on specific issues.

-presidents engaging in personal diplomacy are much more capable than career diplomatic bureaucrats of understanding the domestic policy consequences of diplomatic actions.

-summit negotiations can yield quick results, since discussions are between leaders with the power of decision rather than between representatives who must receive instructions, make reports and rely new proposals.

-diplomatic impasses may be overcome at summits by shifts in policy that only top leaders are empowered to make.

-if presidents desire an international forum for their diplomatic policies, a summit meeting can provide one.

-successful summits can enhance the image of the President and the United States

16. If you’re ready to fight for national interests, forget about human rights — you can always blame infractions on the other side.

17. Isolation is the greatest enemy to information.

18. There’s no sense in applying sanctions if big business isn’t interested.

19. Economic and hence, political progress for any country affects the USA through economic competition that threatens the market and jobs.

20. Any initiative is risky if it’s about unstable region, but you lose popularity fast if you are perceived as indecisive or weak in foreign policy.

21. Any trip abroad has to convey a strong message.

22. Direct military intrusion indicates weakness in your foreign policy. If it’s inescapable, involve as many allies as you can.

23. Don’t touch our military bases abroad!

24. Big debts open markets. No matter what, open national markets world-wide for American big business and remember - the markets, not Presidents, rule the world.

25. Tie your allies to international economic projects and make them pay most of the expenses.

26. Never talk about money in public — talk about democracy, human rights, liberal values and disarmament — people like it.

27. Move forward — transform Americans’ national and patriotic feelings into nationalistic ones (follow the French model) to get total support of your policy (see “Mind Control”).

28. Don’t pay too much attention to the CIA - all they have to do is to support you with appropriate information to justify your strategic political decisions - and nothing else.

29. Ignore the UN - Secretary General has no real power, but you can take advantage of such a thing as the UN peace-keeping if it corresponds with your interests - the US economic costs could be minimized. Besides, UN peacekeeping can promote a spirit of international accountability in solving a certain regional problem. Don’t forget to explain your strategy to the Congress - they don’t like the UN either. On the other hand, you have to manage an international crisis, if it threatens our national interests (start with strategic planning, check national security system for the adequate response, use propaganda to get domestic and international support, consult with big business and allies, start crisis negotiations if possible, use diplomacy (see below) and force or threat of force).

30. To reach global leadership you must have enough resources, national support and a well-calculated strategy (see also “Strategic planning”). As you already know, the US budget is financed by foreign lending. When the dollar goes down in foreign exchange markets, it’s supported by foreign central banks and you’re OK as long as Japan, Saudi Arabia and Germany have an interest in propping up the American economy and do not raise the price for financing America’s debt. The worst situation would be to lose support both at home and abroad

 

 Foreign policy decision making::

- assessment  of the international and domestic political environment

- goal setting. We have multiple foreign policy goals, and we must determine which goal is effected by the international and domestic political environment

- determination of policy options

- decision making action

- implementation of chosen policy option

 

 World Domination

Securing the top position requires :

- economic domination

- military power — pre-emptive war or blackmail by war (seeking domination requires an inevitable increase in the military budget)

- a cultural and media invasion

- special operations to influence or neutralize leaders with negative attitude

Modern mechanism of world domination

1. If the country does not accept American rules of the game, we  start a "velvet" or "colored revolution.

2. We replace the government by pro-American regime.

3. If the government resists, we start the US and NATO military operation and help  the anti-government organizations to overthrow the government.

Strategies used

1.      Destabilization strategy based on terrorism - you kill political leaders and civil population, blow up government buildings and blame the opposition.

2.      Stabilization strategy - first, "terrorists" destabilize the situation in the country and then the US and NATO troops come to "stabilize' it.

3.      "New order" or a "managed chaos”  strategy - American “new world order”  through the international chaos, permanent wars, civil wars and revolutions.

My definition :  "Managed chaos” strategy - geopolitical re-division of the world by provoking riots, revolutions, civil wars and overthrowing regimes in independent from USA sovereign states to keep the U.S. world hegemony. Political, national, religious and social conflicts in target countries have to be permanent. The strategy is being covered by a "struggle against international terrorism". The operation is preceded by information war against the target regime and backed by NATO  forces if necessary (Lybia).

 Most important targets of the 21st century – Russia and China. That’s the reason we occupy Afghanistan

and have to circle China with our military bases  in Central Asia.

4.      Global energy control strategy - the US control of major oil regions and gas fields.

 

To keep America on top, we would have to prevent cooperation and coalitions between: China and Africa; Shi’ia and Sunni Muslims; Germany and France; Venezuela and Cuba. Their trade agreements and alliances will change the geopolitical situation.

In most important world regions keep the balance by supporting the country which follows the leader:

In Europe — support Britain to balance Germany. You rule Europe if you rule the Persian Gulf. You rule the world if you rule Europe, and that’s why you have to keep NATO by all means to block the military independence of Europe (Germany).

In East Asia - support Japan, Russia and Taiwan to balance China.

In South Asia support Pakistan to balance India.

In Latin America — support Argentina to balance Brazil.

 

Diplomacy

1. Use secret visits (send the National Security Adviser) if the international problem is complex and important — in this way you don’t depend on media and public opinion. Afterwards you can talk, if it was a success.

2. If presidents like to drink with each other, they are ready to deal with each other.

3. Avoid negotiating on major issues at the end of the day, when your energy is low.

4. Negotiate smart, watch your initiatives. The more you tell about your position, the less your partner will tell you about himself, and the higher price you’ll pay. Diplomacy is all about money and the essence of any negotiations is the price range.

5. Any information should be exchanged as a part of a compromise and not merely given away.

6. Always talk less than necessary. Concentrate on facts and never tell other person about feelings (or your family and medical problems). Don’t interrupt others, try  to understand what they really want and if they try to manipulate you. Also, resist giving in to interruptions until you have completed your thoughts – “Just a moment, I haven’t finished”. Use  Taleyran approximation – if it’s difficult for you to speak up, try to make just one diplomatic statement. If they press you, insist on moving this questions to experts. And use indirect language  such as “It looks like” or  “You see situation from a very special angle”.

7. No negative emotions - strong emotions indicate weak nerves. Realize that there might be other issues motivating the other person’s behavior and never take things personally.

8. Stop self-limiting behaviors, such as smiling too much, nodding too much, tilting your head or dropping your eyes in response to other person’s gaze. Speak I normal conversational volume, don’t scream and don’t  whisper, either, as you won’t be taken seriously.

9. Take a problem-solving approach to conflict, and try to see the other person as your collaborator rather than your opposition. You’d better postpone negotiations than allow them to break down.

10. Fix all questions and don’t be in a rush to answer any of them.

11. The slower you talk, the more confident you are.

12. Never ask straight questions.

13. It’s important to know what questions and when you have to ask. Start with an “invitation” question that does not need a definite answer but opens up the discussion, like: “No matter what reporters say, we’ll start negotiating for arms control.” Proceed with “intelligence gathering” questions, like: “Are you going to abide by our last agreement on the withdrawal of military forces or do we have other options?” Go to “expertise” questions, like: “It’s 5000 soldiers, right? ”

 There’s a difference between expertise and straight questions - straight question are like: “Will you sign the treaty?” and these have to be avoided because you’ll get no straight answer right away. Finish with a closing question, like: “I think that’s what we intend to sign? Next time we can start from here.” Or you can press your partner: “Let’s not lose this last opportunity, eh?”

14. Explain your negative attitude in a smart way: give half the information and continue, depending on your partner’s reaction. If you can’t accept his proposal, tell him that the experts may look into it again and come to agreement. If your partner is not a complete idiot he’ll understand his proposal is unacceptable (because the experts have already done all they could). But if he is an idiot, he’ll agree to “kill” his proposals by passing them to the experts.

You start to lose momentum if you start to defend yourself.

15. Stop (postpone) negotiations the moment you start to lose or you could end up in a total failure and that could be used by opposition back home.

16. If you bring ideology - try to win. If you bring national interests, try to find compromise. Be flexible — that’s a sign of strength, not weakness.

17. Don’t make aggressive statements for the media, no matter what.

18. Respect is half a victory, but you usually win when your partner is scared. Avoid open confrontation and respond to personal attacks with humor.

19. Watch the military experts -  they are always ready to “push” you. No arms agreement can win ratification without backing from Joint Chiefs, because Congress needs and trusts their expertise, and their disapproval is a strong tool against you in case you ignore their advice. So, think three times before you appoint Joint Chiefs.

20. Take negotiations on the trade deficit very seriously — they often take you nowhere and have zero results as your partner wants you to change your attitude to him completely as well as your international economic policy, while you expect the same favor from him. You can influence one partner but you can’t very easily influence the international system.

21. After you come back home do some positive advertising through the media — in such a way you influence other presidents and future negotiations. If the negotiations resulted in a treaty, “sell” it to the Senate for approval.

22. Negotiation no-nos:

- don’t be confused if your partner threatens you — that means he needs your cooperation. Don’t enter into negotiation right away with high demands.

- don’t touch the toughest issues first. Don’t assume — that’s a sign of weakness.

- don’t hesitate to pause or take a break.

- never say “no” to your partner’s ideas — rather, pack them up in one “package” with your proposals.

Diplomatic tricks.

Tricks in diplomacy are usually used to distract your hard working team, shift the emphasis of the negotiation in order to shape the deal on terms of your adversary or manipulate your team into closing negotiation and accept terms you don’t really like. And the tricks are:

“Leap” - your adversary is losing and starts “jumping” from one point to another

“Pile” - your adversary “piles up” problems, tries to provoke a chaotic discussion or stop negotiations

“Empty chair” - a day or two before negotiations start your adversary informs you that he’s not ready yet, trying to press you (or he wants to change location)

“Diplomatic illness” – the practice of feigning  illness to avoid participation in negotiations and at the same time to avoid giving formal offense.

“Deaf” - your adversary keeps asking questions instead of answering yours

“Provocation” — your adversary doubts your team’s professional level and your ability to negotiate

“Busy guy” — your adversary breaks negotiation for an hour or two pretending he has to do some very important business (or that he got a very important call).

“Mirror” - it’s a very interesting “programming” trick. The technology is simple: you try to “mirror” your adversary’s style and behavior, adopt a similar posture, use his gestures, and follow the speed of his speech. First, he will like it subconsciously and will be more open to you. Second, you’ll understand better his way of thinking.

“Sandwich” - pressure (often — military) — negotiations — pressure

“Show” - using certain arguments your adversary appeals to your emotions

“Circle” - a very sophisticated trick: your adversary tries to “push” his proposal in different variants and finally comes back to his initial variant, trying to convince you that’s the best choice

“Carrot and stick” - threat (blackmail) plus promises (money). The guy could  blackmail you also by demanding to set a deadline

“Student” - your adversary talks too much about the details, asking a lot of minor questions, trying to make you nervous and make mistakes

“Donkey” – your adversary  declines the offer to speak first

“Ball” - encourage your adversary if he’s looking for “global decisions” and he’ll do a lot of minor favors

“Rubber” - delay, if you can’t predict the result, and press your adversary by delaying the answer

“Last train” - you can press your adversary by an ultimatum right before negotiations are over, if he really is interested in some result. “Spice” the  ultimatum with some important reasons and give your adversary a choice of variants.

   You can also leak opposing demands to the media (be careful with this one. Do not betray diplomatic trust by talking about secret deals or demands that actually have been mentioned). You may also escalate your demands during negotiation and manipulate public opinion to line up behind your demands.

 

Diplomatic Double Talk

 

Statement                                                                          Meaning

 We are disappointed.                                                       We got nothing.

 Situation disturbs us.                                                       It’s unacceptable no matter what.

 There are still differences between                                 There are huge differences.

 our approaches to the problem . 

 We can’t accept this deal.                                               This means trouble.

 We reserve the right to use any means

to prevent further worsening of the situation.                 This means war.

 Discussion helped us to understand each     

other better.                                                                     We’ve wasted our time.

 We don’t understand your attitude.                                Stop it immediately.

 I’m trying to understand your position.                          Understand me too, idiot!

 If I’ve understood you correctly, you don’t agree.        Do you have any other option?

 We both will pay a very high price if we don’t

reach agreement.                                                             Yes, that’s a threat.

Read more…

 

How to Manage the White House

 

Be strong. Be attractive. Be logical. All you have to do during your first term is to take care of the second one.

The 2nd term’s agenda is to set your place in the world’s history.

1st  year. You have enough public support to start big initiatives.

2nd year. Develop your initiatives.

3rd year. Go, go public preparing your re-election. Presidents often lose voters during this period.

4th year. All-politics year. Try to achieve important international agreement (a treaty) for the historic record. Win re-election.

Divide your day into hours and minutes : 30% of your weekly hours go to senior White House staff, 10% — to Cabinet, 5% — to Congress members, 5% — to foreign leaders.

No matter what, even if it’s a war time, sleep one hour during the day to give your brain a break, and finish your day at 6 P.M. After 6 P.M. do not read any documents, do not take any phone calls, do not talk to anybody but family members and close friends. .And - eat whatever you want, but you must know that the more calories you have to digest, the slower you think.

Remember :

1. You are a national image (a national ideal based on pseudo-facts), a symbol of national unity, national continuity and the symbol of federal government. Leadership is the first quality Americans look for in you - they want a President who is steadfast in his convictions.

2. The power to control the federal budget is your top prerogative.

3. Whom are you going to be:

- utopist (ideas manipulator)

- manager (Government and Congress manipulator)

- challenger (reformer)

4. Any problem turns into a political one if it threatens your power.

5. Use your legal right to press the nation and illegal ones to press the world to eliminate problems.

4. Once you’re in politics, you are a hostage of your status and you must sacrifice privacy in return for power.

6. Never play alone.

7. All your decisions are risk taking ones (any decision brings a problem). You may ask advice before you make a decision, but don’t listen to anybody afterwards. You are not paid for the quantity of your work but for leadership and ultimate decision making.

8. Correct political mistakes fast  before they become political scandals. 

10. Never blame previous Presidents for the problems they left for you - that’s a sign of weakness.

11. Get rid of a  White House tradition to deal with problems only if they “knock at the door.”

 

 White House Staff tricks

1. Fight for access (influence) to President or to people with direct access (aiming to get a better position if President is re-elected).

2. Isolate government from the President.

3. Influence = relationship with the President.

4. Get a table in the West Wing. You are nobody if you are stuck in the White House basement and see the President by appointment only.

5. Before you send a document to the President, have to look at it and ask yourself if it’s too immoral or too radical.

6. Never say “no” aloud to anybody.

7. Remain anonymous with conflicts.

8. Never bring bad news to the President - let it be some idiot, not you.

9. Never say “That’s impossible,” no matter what the President is asking you to do.

10. Disappear (and find an excuse later) if the President is in a bad mood.

11. Never ague with the President if there’s somebody else present.

12. Learn how the President likes to do business (talking, giving orders, writing the documents and taking notes, managing official and non-official meetings) and his habits (food, drinks, cigarettes, favorite sport, movies, show business stars, writers, politicians; attitude to women) and try to copy him — the President has to feel comfortable with you.

13. Fight anybody who’s trying to do your job to be closer to the President.

14. Avoid taking on risky tasks controlled by the President in person (if necessary, try to “delegate” it to somebody else).

15. Avoid being associated with any failures.

16. Don’t say anything President doesn’t want to hear.

17. Use “Smith’s Principle”: if it can be understood by Congress, it’s not finished yet.

18. Write memorandums not to inform the reader, but to protect the writer.

19. No matter what subject is under discussion, employ the language of sports and war: say “breakthrough” instead of “progress” , never speak of compromise, consider “adopting a fallback position.”

20. Every public appearance in with the President is an investment in your career after the White House.

21. Minimize the number of rivals.

22. Gain independence according to how much the President needs you.

23. Before asking the President for some personal favor, make him believe he’s going to get some (political) profit out of it.

24. Tell the President what he can do and help him try to do it, and never tell him what he shouldn’t do.

25. Avoid giving any personal gifts to the President if you are not Chief of Staff.

Every public appearance in with the President is an investment in your career after the White House.

   There is an open power struggle between national security staff members and domestic policy staff and between those who develop new policies and initiatives versus budget staff.

 

Presidential decision making

1.      Decision making is a multiple choice process.

2. Any decision involves political risk.

3. If you can’t make a decision, you need more information.

4. Be optimistic, but remain realistic.

5. Give yourself a deadline.

6. No brainstorming chaos.

7. There are two kinds of decisions: irreversible and reversible. Better know which kind you are facing.

Here’s the process:

a) Identify the problem

b) Analyze the problem — what are the facts?

c) Evaluate options - what are the pros and cons? what can go wrong?

d) Identify choices - which alternative is the best?

e) Implement plans - what action needs to be taken?

How to Manage the Staff

Adopt a dominant management style:

1. Pyramidal, structured as hierarchy with you at the top, followed by the Chief of Staff and other key assistants. I strongly recommend this one - it insures a clear chain of command and provides precise channels of information going up and directives going down. 

2. Circular, when you are surrounded by advisers, all of whom have  equal access to the Oval Office. That  means chaos (JFK style).

All your assistants are political assistants and everyone will try to play a policy-maker. But a good thing is that all of them were not elected and are responsible to you only.

 Thus you can:

- reform your staff freely as there’s not even a word about it in the US Constitution

- interchange key figures if domestic crisis is approaching

- if you don’t agree with the staff on important issues, go to polls for back-up. (The best employee is the one you can blackmail. Besides, a very good “pusher” for your people is their deep understanding that they have to work together to help the President stay in office next term — if the President leaves, everybody leaves)

- use “the carrot and the stick”

- use “pulling by pushing” — give an important job without publicity to those who become too popular

- do as little reading as you can — you have staff for that

- do as little writing as you can — same reason

- involve yourself personally in your staff and Cabinet jobs as little as you can — same reason

-  make no minor decisions — same reason

-  send back any intelligence or other report if it’s more than one sheet of paper

 

Technology of  Mind Manipulation (MM)

 

1) Create a steadfast American collective will-power: “We want to live forever in the America we live in now” - through the media.

2) Don’t ask people to change their views and beliefs - they have only to change the object of their aggression - “Now we understand who are America's enemies! (the previous President, Republicans).

3) Get people accustomed to accept facts but believe only in the “right” comments  - any common sense has to be “switched off.” This way you create “mass artificial schizophrenia” — people lose the ability to connect statements and facts (notions) and just believe.

Besides, by extreme exaggeration of the enemy’s negative qualities you can install the national schizophrenic fear (of "international terrorism") and people have to accept you, the US President, as a savior. Plus, no matter what, repeat your major statements until people start accepting them without thinking.

4) Divide the nation into “good Americans”(patriots) and “bad Americans”(the “minority).

Make it clear : it’s much better and more comfortable to be “good” than “bad.” “We aren’t watching good Americans who support the President. The surveillance is for bad Americans and we make their lives and careers uncomfortable. We have to do that because enemies of America may be using them.” This method is called artificial social selection and its ultimate goal is a total regulation and standardization of the nation.

5) For successful MM, use the combined efforts of popular Democratic American writers, TV and radio anchors, talented publicists and columnists, business and show business celebrities, politicians. Thus, step by step you create the “industry of correct political behavior and correct American thinking.”

6) Use a combination: statement + image. It reduces the effort needed to understand your message and makes people comfortable with you.

7) Shift all popular TV shows to prime time - Americans don’t have to think about politics after they come home.

The U.S. Congress Management

 

1. A Congressional session is a waste of federal time and money — you don’t need debates because Congressional staffers can do all the technical work and they can negotiate between themselves and balance positions. Senators and Congressmen don’t even have to come to Washington — they can vote from their local offices. So these people can spend their time helping thousands of constituents.

2. The President is dependent on Congressional cooperation to carry out the executive responsibilities of the Office because Congress has to authorize government programs, establish administrative agencies to implement the problems and funds to finance them.

3. It’s important if President belongs to the party with a majority in the House and Senate. But if your party loses the majority in Congress, you have to work out new political strategy yourself. 

4. President’s prestige (popular support or political capital) affects Congressional response to his politics.

5. Influence in Congress is courted only for long periods of service; a Senator with 30 years in office (like Edward Kennedy) has considerably more power than a Senator in his first or second term.This causes the electorate to increasingly favor incumbents, as dislodging one’s Congressman or Senator after 30 years, even if the candidate or his party have become unpopular, can be viewed as hurting one’s district financially. It is often thought that a freshman would be less able to bring home federal money for his state or district.

6. For most Senators, the Senate is a platform for Presidential election campaign. Senators who openly express presidential ambitions are better able to gain media exposure and to establish careers as spokespersons for large national constituencies.

7. The first act of a newly elected Representative is to maneuver for election to the Senate. Why? First, they enjoy their position, power and money for six years non-stop. Second, there are only a hundred Senators and the publicity is much, much greater. But Representatives have a much better chance to be re-elected.

8. Congress rejects two thirds of President’s proposals.

9. Senators are always looking for a BBD (bigger, better deal) and often shift from one committee to another (a good choice is those dealing with taxes, budget, energy, commerce).

10. Bills to benefit big business move smoothly. (Congress doesn’t like the poor — they don’t contribute, sorry). To gain majority support for big business legislation members have a special trick — log rolling, when factions combine efforts.

11. Senators don’t depend on the people — they depend on the media.

12. If a Senator is blocking the President’s proposal, he wants to get the President’s attention.

13. When Senators want to bury issues , they create committees.

14. The Senate is a small structure and personal relations between Senators are extremely important.

15. Senators have no incentive to study the details of most pieces of legislation and their decision is simplified by quickly checking how key colleagues have voted or intend to vote.

16.To have power a Senator has to object: much of the Senate work is done by unanimous consent and if you object you’ll be approached for sure by some influential people including other Senators, Secretaries, President’s aides or the President himself. They’ll try to press, blackmail or buy you — and that means you’ve got a piece of the power pie.

17. Senators avoid responsibility in economic policy.

18. Congress loves the military because military contracts are very lucrative for Congressional districts.

19. Senior Senators teach “newcomers” to vote against any reform which is a threat to their stability.

20. A Senator has real influence on legislation only if he has professional staff in charge of the projects.

21. Senators are afraid to vote against a defense budget increase because then they may be accused of a lack of patriotism.

22. Republicans and Democrats are not really enemies, here, though both sides are always looking for a “traitor” or “insider” in the other camp.

23. The President  must have “insiders” in the Senate , because the other party could prepare secretly and then launch officially some investigation against you or the members of your Administration.

24. A legislator does exactly what his voters want him to do — stealing federal money from other states and districts, because for him the most important thing is numbers — polls in his state showing how many people approve his activity. His donors watch these numbers too and estimate their investment and the necessity to support re-election.

25. Every member of Congress has a so-called “split personality” — a “Hill style” while working on Capitol Hill and a “home style” while back in the state or district with the voters.

26. A Senator makes a decision only after thinking about what it means in terms of the re-election money that will come to him or to his opponents. His voting decisions depend on his party membership, constituency pressures, state and regional loyalty ideology, interest groups’ influence. His stubbornness comes from the fact that he doesn’t want to be seen by his constituents as a “rubber stamp” for President’s decisions, especially when the bill in question benefits a Senator’s state. (And the hidden problem is — you want to move fast, especially during the first year while your personal popularity is high — but for the Congress speed is not important).

27. Sooner or later every member of Congress starts playing the “pork barrel” game. It’s nothing else but a diversion of federal funds to projects and places not out of national need but to enhance a member’s chances of re-election in his district (military projects, federal buildings, highways construction projects). So be ready for a “Christmas gift” when these fellows add pork barrel amendments to appropriations bills you are about to sign. They often wait until late in each session to pass critical spending bills, which narrows your range of possible responses because a veto may not be feasible if Congress has adjourned and the funds needed to run the federal government are contained in the legislation.

28. In Congress a small percentage of bills (about 500 out of 10,000) actually become law because many bills are introduced merely to get favorable press. The strategy is especially effective if the legislation is “tied” to the headlines of the day (mass murders, natural disasters, ethnic riots etc.).

29. In the Senate it’s easier for  a minority to block the bill than for a majority to pass it: a 60-vote majority is needed to force a final vote on the bill, while only 41 votes are needed to continue debate and delay a vote.

30. The  minority can hold the majority responsible as the party in power for whatever legislation does or does not emerge from the Senate. But both parties prefer to be the party in power in the Senate - all Senate legislation begins in the committees, whose membership and chairmanship are controlled by the party in power. Besides, each chairman has power in terms of controlling the committee budgets and deciding which hearings will be held and which legislation he will allow to be released to the Senate floor for a vote. He can also “lock up the bill” in committee until it dies. Perfect!


Read more…

1997

Obama was elected the Illinois State Senator

2004

Obama was elected the US Senator.

           

                               Don’t ask Senator  Lugar

 


 4063704954?profile=original      

 

Senators Lugar and Obama in Russia

 

  "Obama" visited Russia (together with Senator R. Lugar) and met secretly his SVR (former KGB intelligence) handlers to discuss his prospectives  for the U.S. presidency. It appeared that  U.S. Senator Barack “Obama” was getting out of control and Russians  decided  to teach him a lesson. Here’s what happened. 

 Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, were detained for three hours on August 7  at an airport in Russia's city of Perm .  "We are not certain as to why or the particular activity that caused that delay," Lugar said.  He said U.S. Embassy officials informed the senators that "an official at the Foreign Ministry has issued an apology this morning."

  No one from the Russian Foreign Ministry could be reached immediately. The U.S Embassy could not immediately confirm the information. Russia's Federal Security Service , however, defended the plane's delay, saying it was because the Perm airport isn't part of an Open Skies Agreement, which allows certain planes to bypass inspections. The FSB, the agency that succeeded the Soviet-era KGB, said it could only comment on the report within a week's time. Maksim Zhalayev, deputy head of the border control service at Perm’s airport, accused the senators of refusing to follow border guards’ orders, telling Russia’s Ekho Moskvy radio that was the reason behind the delay. U.S. Embassy officials  said the flight was a U.S. military flight, and therefore should have had diplomatic status. Lugar's spokesman, Andy Fisher, said that Russian officials had initially refused to allow the plane to take off, and insisted on boarding it. "They did not. The border patrol finally got orders to let us go," Fisher said. The senators and their aides spent three days in Russia visiting sites where warheads are stored before destruction under the U.S.-funded Comprehensive Threat Reduction program.  This international scandal  could never happen without President Putin’s straight order.

 

                                Bilderberg first

June 6, 2008

Hillary and Obama were invited for the Bilderberg  Club meeting, Westfields Marriott Hotel, Chantilly, Northern Virginia. Next day, June 7 Hillary announced she's out of the race.Both Obama and Hillary tried to keep this meeting a secret. Bilderberg Club rules the world and they actually ordered Hillary Clinton to leave the presidential race. They appointed Obama the President. Henry Kissinger is the oldest permanent member of the club and a close friend of Putin, Russian president.

4063704927?profile=originalPutin and Kissinger in Moscow - deal ?

Good Russian boy

 

November 4, 2008 .Obama  won the race and became the first Russian illegal spy to be elected the U.S. President. The Congressional Research Service, a public policy arm of Congress, officially admits no one in the government ever vetted Obama's constitutional eligibility

November 18,  2008. After his victory , President "Barack Obama", the most powerful man in the world, lost sense of reality and ignored his Russian intelligence boss (Mikhail Fradkov) instructions - he had his own vision on how to rule and destroy America .Russians were not going to lose control over the White House and American President. They explained to Obama, that it's OK, but he had to work together with Bill Clinton, a "big friend of Russia" and his people. Bill Clinton was instructed what to do and in November 2008 Obama had to divide the power - he appointed Hillary Clinton the Secretary of State, Rahm Emanuel ( Clinton's Chief Political Adviser) - the White House Chief of Staff and Leon Panetta (Clinton's Chief of Staff) - CIA Director

 

October 2, 2010 . He  managed to fire Rahm Emanuel (I'll tell you why) and after that Russians humiliated him one more time - in April 28, 2011, he was forced to nominate Panetta to replace Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. Panetta would end all operations and withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq - that's another Russian intelligence order. Obama, actually, lost half of his power by giving two key Cabinet positions to Clintons team - that's how Russians punished their illegal spy for his independence.

 

  And that’s what good Russian “Obama” is doing for Russia:

1.He's destroying America - its called "socialist intervention into the US economy".

A person who wants to spend $1 trillion on health care reform  which is not a priority at all in the middle of horrible economic crisis, is either an idiot or an enemy of America with a very well calculated plan to terminate the country.  Obama did it -  in March 2010 he signed Health Care Reform legislation into law.

2.He's into immigration reform which is a socialist intervention into American society - he'll turn 12 million poor illegal Latinos into US citizens-revolutionaries. In 2012 they'll get green cards, by 2016 they'll get citizenship and bring here all their family members (grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, brides and grooms) - around 50-60 million unemployed poorly educated  people. And that will be the death of America, the end of American Constitution and the birth of a totalitarian "Obama - forever " Communist regime.

3.Rising unemployment and inflation, budget deficit at every state and city is another Obama's trick, planned by Russian intelligence - he's pushing big states like Texas, New York and California to a "boiling point" after which they might take serious steps towards independence - the beginning of America's death. USSR collapsed the same way -  now Russians through Obama want revenge.

4.While Bill Clinton saved one Russian "mole" John Deutch, Obama saved 10 (ten) Russian illegal spies, arrested by FBI in June, 2010, sending them back to Russia in 2010 without any investigation - severe blow to American national security and priceless gift to SVR, Russian intelligence. The case is very interesting because Hillary Clinton was the target  of Russian spy ring. That’s what happened.

 

 June 28, 2010

 

FBI arrested in New York, Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey 10 Russian illegal spies.All were charged as agents of a foreign government ((Russia) and were not registered with the Dept. of Justice , 5 years in jail. Also, all of them except Anna Chapman, were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, up to 20 years in jail.

In 2007-2010 Alan Patrikof, a financier, a close friend of Clintons, a sponsor Hillary Clinton's election campaigns, had business contacts with vice president of accounting firm "Morea Financial Services, Inc" (120 Broadway, #1016, New York, NY 20271, 212-608-1080) an SVR illegal Cynthia Murphy ( Lydia Gurieva). So, the whole group was working for Cynthia Murphy who was trying to get access to Hillary Clinton .

 

Philip J. Crowley, assistant press secretary to the US State Department, made right away the  statement:"There is no evidence to suggest that this spy group had U.S. Secretary of State as its principal target".

“Daily News”, 09.30.2010 :”One of the accused Russian sleeper spies may have been trying to worm her way into Secretary of State Clinton's circle of high-powered friends. Suspect Cynthia Murphy worked at a downtown financial firm that appears to have put her in contact with Alan Patricof, a New York venture capitalist and top Democratic donor who was a finance chairman of Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.The federal complaint states that in February 2009, Murphy reported to Moscow that through work, she had met a financier who was "a personal friend" of a current cabinet official and an active political fund-raiser”

  On July 9, 2010 they were exchanged for garbage, 4 defectors convicted in Russia. On July 12 Russian leader, PM Vladimir Putin met the group which was official recognition of their merits. On October 10, 2010 , Dmitriy Medvedev, President of Russia , awarded all 10 spies with Russian orders and that means they did a very good job in America destroying its national security.

6.Obama’s pro- Russian U.S. National Security Strategy :

  “Analysts, agents and officers who protect us must have access to all relevant intelligence throughout the government”.

A very dangerous trick – just imagine Russian recruit a “mole” with access to all relevant information .

I call this a “hologram method”. If I, Russian “mole”, work for CIA as nuclear proliferation analyst, I have access to

“all relevant information” throughout US intelligence community:

Air Force Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, Coast Guard Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State  Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of the Treasury, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Marine Corps Intelligence, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency , National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency

Navy Intelligence, Office of Director of National Intelligence

  Do you understand what that means ? I’ll explain. The White House is sending requests for information or research on a certain political or economic problem, situation in Europe, Asia, etc.  A “mole’ is sending those request to Moscow and Russians calculate the US strategy, understand ? Besides, “mole” is stealing information from all above mentioned agencies. We have to stop it today – just for that deadly blow to American national security Obama has to go to jail as the enemy of state.

7.All his foreign policy actions work for Russia - withdrawal from Afghanistan, withdrawal from Iraq (that's a huge gift for Iran, Russia's best friend), anti-Israel policy (a gift for Palestinian terrorists - Russia's best friends, most of whom were trained in Soviet Union).

  Why Russia needs the pro-Russian president of America ?

Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources, the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain 25% of the world's fresh water.  Russia is energy superpower : #1 in the world in natural gas reserves, #8 in oil reserves and #2 in coal reserves.

 The sources of energy  (oil, gas, uranium, coal) are rapidly coming to an end. At the same time China, India, Brazil, Indonesia are rapidly growing.

 China ranks since 2010 as the world's 2nd largest economy after the US. It became the world's top manufacturer in 2011, surpassing the United States . China is increasing its economy (GDP, gross domestic product) by 10% a year - in 5 years there will be 1,5 China, 1,15 India, 1,5 Brazil ,1,15 Indonesia. 9 billion people on Earth with energy, food and fresh water supplies coming to an end in the next 25-40 years. That means that 500 million Europeans and 300 million Americans have to lower their standards of living - and they will not accept this ! On top of it we have the global financial and economic crisis which is actually killing America.

 The only way out - to capture resources that still remain to preserve their standards of living.

 The World War III is coming - the war between USA and China for Russia's resources. It might start in Middle East and (radical Islam against Israel) and then re-directed to Russia.

 Russian leader Putin will do everything and will pay anything to postpone the war as long as possible.

Read more…

 

Watch the microphone !

 

    To tell you the truth, I’ve finished this book on March 20, 2012, but Barack Obama “pushed”  me to add one more chapter – about the unexpected end to his KGB/SVR spy career.

   One of my professors at  Moscow Intelligence Institute said: “Mike, remember, one mistake in pronunciation and you’ll get a nice tiny bullet  in your smart head !”  Let’s see what  happened and how KGB “Barack Obama” operation almost came to its end.

 

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Barack  Obama and Russian President Dmitriy  Medvedev,

 March 26, 2012, Seoul, South Korea :  dangerous  mistake of a spy.

 

OBAMA-MEDVEDEV SECRET TALK DECODED by Mikhail Kryzhanovsky

           Seoul, March 26, 2012

 

Obama and Russian President Medvedev had a short  talk before press conference, unaware that the microphone was on.

I can decode this talk between SVR (Russian Intelligence) asset Obama and one of his handlers, Medvedev, - the other one is Vladimir Putin, Russian President-elect since 03.04.2012.

 The secret deals.

"On these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it's important for him [Putin] to give me space".  Barack Obama.

 

Explanation.

1) "...these issues can be solved".

Obama promised that America won't start war in Iran in 2012 and, for sure , it won't happen after Obama is re-elected. Obama and Medvedev reached a  secret deal on Iranian nuclear program, because Obama didn't even mention  it, it's a minor problem now.

2) "...particularly missile defense...this can be solved"

Obama and Medvedev already reached a secret deal on American missile defense in Europe - Obama will put it on hold until 2016, for the period of his future second term.

3) "It's important for him [Putin] to give me space"

Obama didn't mention Putin's name and that means that secret deals in Seoul were initiated by Putin, not

Medvedev. Obama is begging Putin to "give him space" and that means Putin is pressing Obama hard as his asset.

 

Dmitriy Medvedev: "Yes, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you..."

Explanation.

Medvedev didn't promise to stop pressure, he promised "understanding".

That means: "We understand you can't be weak on this issues now. But Putin, who's not as strong and popular in Russia as before, wants to start his presidency with international victory - missile defense in Europe is a threat to Russia and it has to be removed".

 

Barack Obama:"This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility".

Explanation.

Obama is 100% sure he's re-elected and that means Obama and Medvedev reached a secret deal on Obama's 2012 campaign financing.

"After my election I have more flexibility" means "If Russian intelligence could finance my campaign properly, I'll get the second term and you'll get whatever you want, but not before".

 

Dmitriy Medvedev:"I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir [Putin] and I stand with you".

Explanation.

1) Again, Medvedev promised "understanding" and that means that Putin will make ultimate decision on Obama's campaign financing.

2) "Transmit", "transmitter" is espionage technical jargon. Medvedev would never use it if it was a regular meeting of two presidents. He would rather say "I'll inform Putin on that"

 

 Why it happened.

1. Unlike Putin, who was a professional spy, Medvedev is just a former lawyer.

2. Obama and Medvedev lost a sense of reality, otherwise they wouldn't talk without complete privacy.

 

Read more…

KGB Operation “Barack Obama”

 

 August 4, 1961

  Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii.

If there's something very wrong with someone's birth certificate and if there's an indication that this someone used a birth certificate of a newborn child (Virginia Sunahara) who died at birth or soon after birth, we have to talk about the methods Russian intelligence (SVR, a former KGB) and its illegal espionage department. We have to talk about the  illegal spy "documentation process" - using birth certificates to get legal documents in USA - SS#, driver license, passport.

 Now, let's look Obama's biography as I see it with my 30 years of espionage experience.

Illegal spy cover story works best if it's a mix of actual and fake facts. "Obama" (let's call him John Smith) was a child of a student from Kenya who studied in Moscow and dated a Russian girl. Such kids in Russia were often unwanted by both partners and were raised and educated at a special school. Like Obama, John Smith was born in 1961 and, like him, graduated from high school in 1979. KGB paid attention to a very smart young man.  Smith was Intelligence Institute student in 1979-1981  in Moscow, not far from "Cosmos" Hotel. There are couple of buildings in the area and I got intelligence education myself in one of them back in 1987, 15 Yaroslavskaya Street, Moscow Russia).

  Then a decision was made to train him individually as illegal intelligence officer .The "dacha" (Russian for small villa) not far from Moscow, provides an ideally isolated territory for training.2-3 instructors  live there to immerse the candidate completely into his American identity and supervise him all the time. From the first day the candidate becomes accustomed to the circumstances in which he will be living and working in USA for many years. He wears American clothes, eats the food, he's thinking, acting and living like 100% American . He is supplied with newspapers and magazines, he's watching movies and TV shows. The instructors ask the candidate the most difficult questions imaginable . After a number of years of such training, the future illegal knows everything about America, espionage technology and speaks perfect English (by the way, "Obama" once made a very interesting mistake - he said "leave the Agency" instead of "lead the Agency" - watch "Barack Obama 2012 :KGB technology 2008" on YouTube. In espionage business, we say :" One mistake in pronunciation, and the enemy puts a lead dot at the end of the sentence")

    After special training candidate often goes through a  special process:

a) illegal probation period abroad. A trip abroad through intermediate countries with numerous changes of passports and cover stories, jobs, personal connections. Then he gets to the target country, stays there for another 1-2 years and goes back to his country for additional training and correction of cover story — actually, it's his first combat assignment. The most important part of this assignment is to check the reliability of the cover story and documents; the cover story has to be reinforced with new and old true facts, like short-term studies at universities or professional training courses).

b) intermediate legislation. On his way back the officer could stay in an intermediate country for another 1-2 years, make contacts with business, scientists, government employees, celebrities.

c) basic legislation. Officer comes to the target country, obtains genuine documents, gets a job which allows him to travel and talk to many people, recruit informants thus creating an illegal station).

   At the same time, in 1979-1981, Barack Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles where he became a socialist ready to transform the nation by redistributing wealth. KGB station in Washington, DC which was constantly looking for future secret sources at American  top universities and colleges, like Columbia, Yale or Harvard, got information about young socialist. They sent his picture and info to Moscow where some resemblance was discovered between a college student from Los Angeles and a future illegal spy John Smith.

    We have to investigate and prove one of  two versions of what happened next.                     

 

1981

  Obama traveled to Indonesia to visit his mother and sister Maya, and visited the families of college friends in India and Pakistan for 3 weeks. Then something happened in India, a good friend to Soviet Union and a perfect place to recruit foreigners. He was recruited and he disappeared.

  In Pakistan poor student who  was wearing "thrift store clothing" (from Obama’s “Dreams From my Father”)   managed to stay for 2 weeks and stayed  at Lahore Hilton International, was introduced to Yousa Gillani, the Central Working Committee of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) member and the future prime minister - and went bird-hunting with him.

 That's exactly what  illegal spy had to do - make business and political contacts on his way to the target country. John Smith aka Barack Obama came back to the United States - change of agents, one of regular illegal espionage methods.

Obama's father , Barack  Obama Sr., aged 46 died in a car accident in Nairobi. His mother, Ann Dunham,  lived in Indonesia and might be just avoided or ignored by her "son" (Don Johnson, Dunham co-worker, said "Obama was distancing himself from her"). Russians approached her under a "false flag" ( National Security Agency or CIA) and explained that her son had to stay abroad for a secret mission for some time. They told her that she had to be ready to accept another person as her own son. For operation like that, espionage agencies often recruit close relatives and allow them to meet their son (daughter) from time to time outside USA. Money talks, there's nothing unusual, though for Dunham the pressure and depression was too big - she died in 1995 of cancer at 52.

Time changes people, so "Obama" had to stay away from his friends and do not show up in public too much.

1981

.

He  transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science and where nobody could remember him at all, and graduated with a B.A. in 1983. 

 "Obama" declined  repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years. Wall Street Journal editorial in September 2008, titled "Obama's  Lost Years" noted that Fox News contacted  400 Obama's classmates at Columbia and found no one who even remembered him. "Mostly, my years at Columbia were an intense period of study," Obama told Columbia College Today in a 2005 alumnus interview. "I didn't socialize that much. I was like a monk".

 Perfect cover up ! Columbia has refused to release any records regarding Obama's attendance, including his application to attend, his grades, and his financial aid records, if any exist. Only one person could order Columbia to shut up - CIA Director Leon Panetta. Why ? See next part. 

 

 

1983-1985

He worked at the Business International Corporation and at the New York Public Interest Research Group. He worked in Chicago as community organizer in 1985-1988.

1987

          

I have a perfect memory and I state that I saw the man in the center of this picture in Moscow in 1987, where I’ve been trained at KGB Intelligence Institute.

 

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“Zolotoi Kolos” Hotel,Yaroslavskaya Street 15, Moscow, a secret PGU KGB Intelligence Institute facility. If you open the Moscow hotels catalog, you’ll se that this hotel has 5 buildings – 1,3,4,5,7,8 – buildings 2 and 6 “do not exist”.

Nearby I saw the man who looked like the person in the centre of the  picture above in January 1987.

 

On October, 13, 2011 a  statement appeared on Internet:  Paul Pieniezny .”The Obama who was in Russia at that time [1987 – M.K.] was not Barack Obama, but a student from Western Africa. He is still alive and well and a diplomat. I have mentioned that little fact a few times on the Fogbow. I hope he sues Mr Kryzhanovsky for every cent he earned in the extreme-right talk circuit”.

 

1988

He travelled to Europe to meet his KGB handlers and get new instructions. He had a choice - a safe variant (to make a political career in one of African countries), and a risky one of staying in America - KGB wanted him to be Martin Luther King #2 . But it appeared he could get much more which was Oval Office. It was decided he could stay in USA longer and it was a success : Illinois Senator (1997-2004) and U.S. Senator (2005-2008).

1988-1991                         

In 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. He worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. After graduating from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.

 

                                     Mafia

1992

Alexi Giannoulias

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   Vyacheslav Ivankov ("Yaponchik"), a "Godfather" of Russian mafia came to USA. In 1982 he got 14 years of jail time, was  recruited by KGB and got out of jail 5 years earlier, in 1991. He came to USA to build Russian criminal empire, penetrate American economy and political system (Mafia groups in Russia control all big banks and corporations). Victor Sergeev, a former KGB officer, was his adviser.

 He was involved in extortion, intimidation, gambling, arms sales, gasoline tax fraud, money laundering. In 1995 FBI recorded his phone call to Moscow: "The  base in America is ready"-  it was an open threat to the US national security. He was arrested , charged with extortion, got 9 years and then  deported to Russia in 2004. In 2009 he  was killed by a sniper in Moscow. Ivankov ruled 25 Russian mafia groups in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Detroit and Philadelphia. Russians always make ties to other ethnic crime groups and make deals to avoid gangster wars for territory and influence. Illinois state Russian community is big and rich (around 400,000),  that's why Chicago and good relations with the Chicago Outfit boss John DiFronzo were very important for Godfather and KGB asset Ivankov.

 I want to know Russian mafia political connections through Chicago mobsters. Why ?

 Because New York Post reported on September 5, 2007:

  "A man who has long been dogged by charges that the bank his family owns helped finance a Chicago crime figure will host a Windy City fund-raiser tonight for Sen. Barack Obama. Alexi Giannoulias, who became Illinois state treasurer last year after Obama vouched for him, has pledged to raise $100,000 for the senator's Oval Office bid. Giannoulias bankrolled Michael "Jaws" Giorango, a Chicagoan twice convicted of bookmaking and promoting prostitution. Giannoulias is so tainted by reputed mob links that several top Illinois Dems, including the state's speaker of the House and party chairman, refused to endorse him even after he won the Democratic nomination with Obama's help".

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