All Posts (32576)
"The devil made me do it!" - Flip Wilson
Mankind has been blaming their immoral actions on something, or someone else, since the dawn of its existence. Man does not need any sort of demon to be evil. From the moment Cain slew his brother Abel man has been slaying each other. Eventually it became entire nations at war. The only real difference between then and now is that mankind has developed very nasty and swift ways to destroy entire cultures, and even entire land masses, at a time.
Because of man's most selfish and violent ways throughout history, I do not believe that the notion of a "nwo" will ever be completely successful - for the long term. Man can't even run a mere nation thru peace. The very predatorial nature of evil men only assures their self destruction. Sadly, many innocent children and gullible adults will perish in the process as well.
The Bible describes the number of those that will be killed around the world as a third of the population. Right now that number is approx 2.33 billion people. Under today's census, that would be the equivalent of wiping out every living being from Canada to the southern tip of South America (approx 889m) -- almost THREE times over!
The Devil only tempts man. God gave man Free Will. Thus, man makes the final choice. Imo, only Divine Intervention will truly Save mankind from HIMSELF.
Luis
"The devil made me do it!" - Flip Wilson
Mankind has been blaming their immoral actions on something, or someone else, since the dawn of its existence. Man does not need any sort of demon to be evil. From the moment Cain slew his brother Abel man has been slaying each other. Eventually it became entire nations at war. The only real difference between then and now is that mankind has developed very nasty and swift ways to destroy entire cultures, and even entire land masses, at a time.
Because of man's most selfish and violent ways throughout history, I do not believe that the notion of a "nwo" will ever be completely successful - for the long term. Man can't even run a mere nation thru peace. The very predatorial nature of evil men only assures their self destruction. Sadly, many innocent children and gullible adults will perish in the process as well.
The Bible describes the number of those that will be killed around the world as a third of the population. Right now that number is approx 2.33 billion people. Under today's census, that would be the equivalent of wiping out every living being from Canada to the southern tip of South America (approx 889m) -- almost THREE times over!
The Devil only tempts man. God gave man Free Will. Thus, man makes the final choice. Imo, only Divine Intervention will truly Save mankind from HIMSELF.
Luis
In 2013, Tx Senator Ted Cruz held a filibuster calling for defunding Obamacare. Which is what the GOP leadership, as well as others in the party, had campaigned on. Both the dems and fellow members of the GOP, criticized and mocked Cruz for it. Reid's response was to shutdown merely 17% of the federal govt; or the non-essential employees. Their time off was FULLY paid as a leave of absence. The GOP and the even Fox News, blamed the NON-govt shutdown on the Tx Senator. Despite the FACT that Reid's tactic had NO repercussions whatsoever, and the FACT that the Rs won in even BIGGER landslides than 2010, Senator Cruz pretty much became a toxic personna-non-grata among his very own in DC. Needless to say, Reid and Obama got their way. Obamacare was funded.
In 2015, Ky Senator Rand Paul held a filibuster denouncing the Debt Ceiling deal between the GOP and the Barrack Obama. Yet again both the dems and the GOP majority criticized and ridiculed Sen Rand Paul for it. And, because of the lack of support...or should I say lack of a SPINE...from fellow Rs, it got nowhere fast. Once again, the R "majority" caved in to the democrat "minority"; and the Debt Ceiling was raised. The Debt has now reached approx $19T.
JUNE 15, 2016
On this date Senate "Minority" Leader Harry Reid ended his filibuster that called for a vote ontwo gun-control measurestwo gun-control measures. NO ONE either on the left or the right made any sorts of criticizism, let alone mock him, in the least. They all stood united. Never putting the FOCUS back on the FACT that the mass murders were acts of Islamic terror and not a platform for legislation that would do NOTHING to even deter the mass shootings that occur EVERY DAY in cities like Chicago.
This is very disturbing, when we consider what was the INTENTION behind FAST & FURIOUS. Which, like the Black Panther investigation of 2009, it was swiftly shutdown by the Obama admn. Never to be spoken about again.
Remember Jonathan Gruber—the architect of Obamacare? It is no longer just a rumor that Gruber, as well as the ENTIRE Obama admn, LIED about their very intentions with, and the very content of, the almost 3,000 page Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
And, what about the FARSE behind "climate change" / global warming? They are being sold under the innocent labels as Cap And Trade and the Copenhagen Accord (Treaty). Exactly like w/ Obamacare, the left is attempting to hide MORE oppressive and job-killing laws and regulations within the language of such laws. Which means that they would also consist of thousands of pages - that will have absolutely NOTHING to do w/ "global warming" at all; but further denial and removal of our Natural Rights of Freedom and Liberty. Five days prior to the 2008 prez election, Barrack Hussein Obama called it the "Fundamental Transformation" of the United States of America. And the GOP has been rolling over w/ them since day one!
With everything that I have presented above, can anyone honestly accuse me of being paranoid or some conspiracy nutjob? The gun laws that filthy Harry Reid filibustered over was in no way a mere shot-from-the-hip. No-no! Just like Cap And Trade and Obamacare - these gun laws that the dems so feverishly want to pass had been cooked up YEARS ago! And, because of Operation FAST & FURIOUS, which was COMPLETELY set up by the Obama admn, I have NO doubt whatsoever that Obama's federal govt was totally AWARE of what the Islamic terrorist, Omar Saddiqui Mateen, fully intended to do.
This attack, which occurred just months before the most pivotal prez election in US history, and during a time where the most complicit and docile GOP members are found together at this point in time, is exactly what the radically far left in DC was patiently waiting for decades now. Make no mistake. Whatever these "gun laws" will be - they will likely consist of THOUSANDS of pages, which, of course, they'd have to pass FIRST, and in a hurry, before WE, the people, can ever "know" what's in it! By then, just like Obamacare, it will be too late.
Luis
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by AMBASSADOR HENRY F. COOPER
by Bassam Tawil
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For my adult years, I have considered myself an informed person. I have never claimed perfection nor do I believe I am the smartest person around. Indeed there are those who are far more intelligent than I am.
I own and have built websites. I know how to work several systems on my computer. I am not a computer whiz but I’m better than some and worse than others. I have had a computer crash on me and knew all was not lost because my hard-drive was still intact.
No one really likes the IRS but we have tolerated them as a part of our lives. One email getting lost can cause concern but thousands of emails being ‘lost’ is be unheard of. A big organization, such as the IRS, would have back-up systems. I have a back-up system. It’s not unusual to have one and it was not difficult to install.
Lois Lerner said she deleted emails, then recycled her hard-drive? Who does that unless they are hiding something? Lois Lerner was never held accountable.
How does the government and its associates believe that they can just tell the people and investigative committees that they deleted emails? Are there still people out there without basic knowledge of this? Okay, maybe a few who do not understand that an organization as big as the Internal Revenue Service cannot just delete emails without a back-up system or hard-drive to retrieve them. This would be illegal, in my opinion.
A House committee voted on Wednesday to censure IRS Commissioner John Koskinem. They said he failed to provide information demanded by Congress and lied under oath. Allegations were made the IRS targeted tea party groups that had applied for tax-exempt status.
In this country, destroying potential damaging evidence is an illegal act. No one is being punished but I suppose someone will get thrown under the bus and then probably receive a bonus of sorts while they fade into oblivion.
For this country to have fallen into such depraved government who allow lawlessness to exist while the people of this nation are prosecuted in a court of law, if they are part of a crime, disgusts me.
Daveda Gruber
"Secretary liar-Clinton has been seeing this kind of thing for a long time," an ex-military-intelligence operative told National Review. "If she is competent to handle major decisions, if she is the highly capable person she claims to be, she would know what all this material was, without having some label stating it was secret. If, on the other hand, someone could put reports in front of her describing these various things, again and again, without the appropriate labels, and she was not smart enough to recognize that this material was from classified sources, then she isn't competent to be the president, or a departmental secretary. Or, of course, this is all lies. There are no other options."
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by John Grady
by Megan Eckstein
{usni.org} ~ Ground forces from 13 nations are rehearsing in Latvia and Estonia amassing a large-scale force for a future crisis... from loading prepositioned equipment from caves in Norway onto a ship, to organizing the force in theater, to launching an assault. The 13 NATO countries participating in the annual Saber Strike 16 exercise – including both Army and Marine Corps forces from the United States – will include both the command and control side of planning a multinational strike as well as live-fire assaults. This collective capability to move and conduct operations together is important for regional security and proves the importance and the effectiveness of the U.S./NATO alliance, according to several Marines. “Operation Saber Strike has been a massive logistical undertaking... https://news.usni.org/2016/06/13/marines_saber_strike_16?utm_source=USNI+News&utm_campaign=1f0069de8c-USNI_NEWS_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0dd4a1450b-1f0069de8c-231491269&mc_cid=1f0069de8c&mc_eid=3999f18767
by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD
by PETE HOEKSTRA
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From the perspective of both substance and style, the contrast between the two events couldn’t have been more striking.
France hosted yet another anti-Israel diplomatic pile-on. Hollande had hoped to show that France was stepping into the void left by the US’s abandonment of its position as world leader. But all the confab served to do was show how irrational and self-destructive France – and Western Europe – has become.
Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives were present at the conference which aimed to dictate Israel’s final borders. Their absence made the event seem like a throwback to the era of European colonialism. It was as if Hollande wanted to reenact France’s glory days in Syria and Algeria. In his opening remarks, Hollande recycled the tired claim that the way to defeat jihad is by forcing Israel to give Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Islamic terrorists. The document the French Foreign Ministry circulated among participants ahead of the conference recommended setting a timetable for forcing Israel to give the PLO Judea, Samaria and large swaths of Jerusalem, for the benefit of global security.
The French planned their event before the mobs in Ramallah, Hebron, Jerusalem and Gaza publicly celebrated the cold-blooded massacre of Israeli diners at Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market on Wednesday night. But the latest massacre wasn’t necessary to show the absurdity of France’s plan to defeat jihad by empowering jihadists at Israel’s expense.
After all, Israel surrendered Gaza to the Palestinians 11 years ago. Far from ameliorating the problem of jihad – in Europe and throughout the world – the scourge of Islamic war has grown geometrically in the past decade.
France’s own recent experience shows that Hollande’s “peace” plan was a delusional.
In 2000, Muslims comprised 10 percent of the population of France.
That year, the state-owned France 2 television network invented the contemporary blood libel of Jews as baby killers with the release and dissemination of its deceptive film which purported to show IDF troops deliberately murdering Muhammad al-Dura.
The Dura libel unleashed the forces of Islamic Jew-hatred in France and throughout Europe. It paved the way for the rise in anti-Jewish violence unseen since the Holocaust. This violence in turn is causing the current exodus of Jews from France and from Western Europe as a whole.
But assaulting Jews didn’t satisfy the jihadists.
As last year’s events made clear, the state authorities’ desire to deflect Islamic extremism onto Jews – in Israel and in France – backfired.
Fifteen years after the Dura blood libel, Muslims now comprise at least 15% of France’s population, and 40% of the population of Marseilles.
And today, the same extremists who have terrorized France’s Jews for a decade and a half, have turned their guns on French society as a whole.
Last year’s Islamic killing spree, from Charlie Hebdo and Super Cacher to Bataclan made clear that as far as the jihadists are concerned, the French Jew-baiters are no different than the Jews.
Even worse, with their hatred legitimized by the Jew-baiters, France’s jihadists feel they have license to direct their rage and guns in whatever direction they choose.
If this weren’t bad enough for the likes of Hollande, despite the elites’ attempt to blame Israel for the rise of jihadist forces in France, the native French see what has happened.
Squeezed between political leaders who pretend the problem is Israel and Islamic radicals who deprive them of the freedom to live as they please without fear, public sentiment in Europe is increasingly desperate, and angry. Rather than address their concerns, Hollande and his fellow elites have sought to repress them.
Consider the case of Brigitte Bardot. The mid-20th-century French sexpot and national icon has been convicted six times in recent years for “inciting hatred.” Her crime? Bardo has written angry books and articles about what she refers to as an “Islamic invasion” that imperils the French way of life.
Rather than recognize that their own people can’t stand their games anymore, and aren’t buying their attempts to blame Israel for the rise of jihadist forces in France, Hollande’s “peace” conference was proof that he and his colleagues have chosen to double down on their anti-Israel scapegoating.
With a tailwind from anti-Israel activists posing as journalists, Hollande believed that the conference could elevate him, and hide from French voters his failure to defend his country.
The Washington Post’s editorial board joined him in this delusion. In an editorial published in the lead-up to his conference, the newspaper argued that the anti-Israel conference should serve as the opening salvo of an escalating diplomatic war against the Jewish state. The culmination of that war, the paper said, should be an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council in the final days of Barack nObama’s presidency.
But if this is what the West’s renewed war against Israel looks like, then Israel has little reason for concern.
In the event, even Hollande’s accessories – the 29 foreign ministers including Secretary of State John hanoi-Kerry, who attended his meeting – couldn’t maintain the fiction that scapegoating Israel would secure them. In the conference’s closing statement, the most they could muster was a weak condemnation of Jewish construction on the one hand and Palestinian terrorism on the other, coupled with a call for direct negotiations between Israel and the PLO .
If this is the best they could do then it is clear that even if they do pass an anti-Israel Security Council resolution as nObama packs his bags, given the realities on the ground, the resolution will be written on water.
And if Hollande’s failed conference wasn’t humiliating enough, Netanyahu’s trip to Moscow reinforced his humiliation, and demonstrated that Europe’s embrace of anti-Semitism has done nothing for its international stature.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu arrived in Moscow for his fourth meeting with Vladimir Putin in the past six months. Unlike their other meetings, this week’s visit was both ceremonial and substantive.
Moscow and Jerusalem celebrated the 25th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic ties between Israel and the Soviet Union, which Moscow cut off after the 1967 Six Day War.
Putin lavished the honors befitting a major ally on Netanyahu. In so doing, Putin showed that Israel is anything but isolated, and far from dependent on the goodwill of European basket cases.
Europe and the American Left have seized on Palestinian grievances against Israel as proof that the solution to jihad is anti-Semitism. They have made Israel-bashing the centerpiece of their foreign policy.
In contrast, under Putin, Russia has chosen to base its foreign policy – and its bid to replace the US as the chief power broker in the Middle East – on reality.
As a result, during his meetings with Netanyahu, the Palestinians were given the attention that they deserve, as a minor nuisance.
After paying lip service to the mordant “peace process,” Putin and Netanyahu got down to business. They discussed everything from Iran’s rise in Syria to Israel’s gas industry to free trade to the approaching rapprochement between Israel and Turkey.
The distinction between the business of real statecraft for a real world as practiced by Netanyahu and Putin, and the imaginary statecraft practiced by the French and their guests, is jarring.
Putin is determined to emerge strengthened from the chaos now engulfing the Middle East, and through it, the world as a whole. As a consequence, he is embracing Israel as an ally and a trading partner.
Westerners, whose strategy for surviving the chaos is to turn a blind eye to the dangers, are targeting Israel with unwarranted and self-destructive diplomatic assaults and escalating economic warfare.
This brings us to the US – whose abandonment of its traditional role as the dominant superpower in the Middle East facilitated Russia’s rise to power.
In the twilight of the nObama era, the US is steeped in an identity crisis. The Democratic Party has been radicalized. The Republican Party is in disarray as the forces of populism and prejudice have been unleashed by Donald liar-Trump’s unforeseen rise.
Under the circumstances, and given that the disastrous legacy of nObama’s foreign policy, it is hard to see the US restoring its global leadership in the near future.
Given the intensity of Netanyahu’s discussions with Putin since the Russian leader deployed his military forces to Syria last year, many wonder if a major realignment is in the cards for Israel.
When asked about the prospect of replacing the US with Russia as Israel’s superpower patron, Netanyahu rejected the notion. He explained simply that the US is irreplaceable.
He is right. And not merely because Russia cannot supply spare parts to Israel’s F-16s.
Unlike Britain, which was seamlessly replaced by the US as the leader of the free world in the aftermath of World War II, the US has no clear successor. Moreover, despite its self-destructive tendencies, the US remains the world’s biggest economy and most powerful nation. The significance of America’s loss of the will to lead the world is not that the US will disappear. Rather, it will share the stage with other, rising, powers.
For Israel, this means that while maintaining the US as its primary strategic partner, Israel cannot continue to place all of its eggs in America’s basket. As Netanyahu is doing with Putin as well as with China and India, recognizing America’s new limitations, Israel must diminish its dependence on Washington, while developing noncompeting alliances with other powers, based on shared interests.
What Israel’s attractiveness to other world powers makes clear is that as America’s power wanes, Israel needn’t and oughtn’t seek to replace it with another superpower patron. Israel today is fully capable of fending for itself.
Putin courts Netanyahu because Israel is strong. And the stronger it is, the more leaders will beat a path to our door.
The failure of France’s “peace” conference, on the one hand, and the success of Netanyahu’s fourth visit to Moscow on the other hand, were poetic bookends of the week because they were a vivid exposition of Israel’s true diplomatic and strategic position today. Israel is neither weak nor isolated.
It is embraced by the rising powers. And the waning ones that scapegoat the Jewish state are leading their countries into economic and cultural decline and security chaos.
Who Is The Enemy?
"Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”- Saul Alinsky, Rule #4
Can you hear the loathing; the echoes from the left?
> Barrack Hussein Obama was an instructor that taught students about Saul Alinsky during his stint at the University of Chicago.
> Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her thesis on their mutual idol, Saul Alinsky, as well.
> Alinsky had dedicated his infamous book, The Rules For Radicals, to Lucifer (aka the Devil and Satan) - who Alinsky himself admired.
The target, or focus, of the Obama adnb's narrative...which includes John Kerry and Hillary Clinton has been the Second Amendment. Denying law abiding American Citizens our Right to bear arms. At every turn Obama and Hillary have consistently deflected from the FACTS of every single act of terrorism by Islamists. Never getting distracted, or veering from, their focus, or their agenda.
Rule #11: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame."
When they find it difficult to deflect from terrorist events they simply make it a part of their narrative. Where the horrid acts by ISIS / Al Qaeda, The Muslim Brotherhood, Hammas and the rest of them, [what] is that the ENTIRE Obama admn (present and past) and the entire liberal media have blamed the kidmappimgs, rapes, and murterous bloodshed on? That's right: GLOBAL WARMING (aka "climate change" ) What did Obama and Hillary blame on for the attack and murders at BENGHAZI? A "video"!
On top of these atrocities, our economy is a wreck. Yet, Obama and Hillary's FRIENDS on Wall Street are making a fortune doing the very things that sent Bernie Madoff to PRISON for! Thus, their talking points have been lagging. So, how do they vamp it up again?
Rule #8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
To keep their far left base raemped up, what was their latest move? TRANSGENDER bathrooms in businesses - w/ the main focus on SCHOOLS. Where Barrack Obama threatened to deny federal funding to those states that will not comply. Already there have been cases of children being attacked by MEN in women's restrooms.
But, then again, another infamous Alinsky expression is: "The ends justify the means".
Obama's DoJ and IRS have had their sights on TEA / Conservative and judeo-christian individuals and groups. Social media websites, like Facebook and Twitter, have been filtering out articles, comments and Tweets posted by anyone, including specific news sites, from their boards. Yet, the FBI and DHS [allowed] Islamic terrorists like Nidal Hasan and Omar Mateen to gain LEGAL access to guns! At airports old white senior citizens in wheelchairs and small white children, are "randomly chosen" to endure the humiliation of a security screening.
So, in the democrats' America, terrorists, and people w/ radical Islamic sympathy, are the "victims". The American people are the "enemy" that must be restrained, and even incarcerated - if they so much as even practice their First Amendment right to express OPPOSING views. To quote Obama:
"THIS IS NOT WHO WE ARE"!
The enemy is in power, folks. And they side w/ Islamic radicalism. Their policies has the nation in ruin; and the population is LITERALLY at each other's throats. Leftist radicals like Bill Ayers, George Soros, and Cloward & Piven would simply say "It's not enough".
Time to understand HOW our true enemy THINKS, people! And it's time the people start CHANGING their patterns of behavior and mindsets.
The solutions will NEVER cmome from the federal govt. Not when the so called "opposing" party...the GOP...has done NOTHING to even challenge Obama's every ILLEGAL Exec Order and Action!
It's up to US! The STATES! It is where we LIVE after all! These are OUR backyards; OUR neighborhoods and OUR schools. If WE don't protect it - tt's OVER! And the blame...the NEGLECT...falls COMPLETELY on the reflection on the MIRROR! I hope.it's not too late.
Luis
Who Is The Enemy?
"Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”- Saul Alinsky, Rule #4
Can you hear the loathing; the echoes from the left?
> Barrack Hussein Obama was an instructor that taught students about Saul Alinsky during his stint at the University of Chicago.
> Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her thesis on their mutual idol, Saul Alinsky, as well.
> Alinsky had dedicated his infamous book, The Rules For Radicals, to Lucifer (aka the Devil and Satan) - who Alinsky himself admired.
The target, or focus, of the Obama adnb's narrative...which includes John Kerry and Hillary Clinton has been the Second Amendment. Denying law abiding American Citizens our Right to bear arms. At every turn Obama and Hillary have consistently deflected from the FACTS of every single act of terrorism by Islamists. Never getting distracted, or veering from, their focus, or their agenda.
Rule #11: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame."
When they find it difficult to deflect from terrorist events they simply make it a part of their narrative. Where the horrid acts by ISIS / Al Qaeda, The Muslim Brotherhood, Hammas and the rest of them, [what] is that the ENTIRE Obama admn (present and past) and the entire liberal media have blamed the kidmappimgs, rapes, and murterous bloodshed on? That's right: GLOBAL WARMING (aka "climate change" ) What did Obama and Hillary blame on for the attack and murders at BENGHAZI? A "video"!
On top of these atrocities, our economy is a wreck. Yet, Obama and Hillary's FRIENDS on Wall Street are making a fortune doing the very things that sent Bernie Madoff to PRISON for! Thus, their talking points have been lagging. So, how do they vamp it up again?
Rule #8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
To keep their far left base raemped up, what was their latest move? TRANSGENDER bathrooms in businesses - w/ the main focus on SCHOOLS. Where Barrack Obama threatened to deny federal funding to those states that will not comply. Already there have been cases of children being attacked by MEN in women's restrooms.
But, then again, another infamous Alinsky expression is: "The ends justify the means".
Obama's DoJ and IRS have had their sights on TEA / Conservative and judeo-christian individuals and groups. Social media websites, like Facebook and Twitter, have been filtering out articles, comments and Tweets posted by anyone, including specific news sites, from their boards. Yet, the FBI and DHS [allowed] Islamic terrorists like Nidal Hasan and Omar Mateen to gain LEGAL access to guns! At airports old white senior citizens in wheelchairs and small white children, are "randomly chosen" to endure the humiliation of a security screening.
So, in the democrats' America, terrorists, and people w/ radical Islamic sympathy, are the "victims". The American people are the "enemy" that must be restrained, and even incarcerated - if they so much as even practice their First Amendment right to express OPPOSING views. To quote Obama:
"THIS IS NOT WHO WE ARE"!
The enemy is in power, folks. And they side w/ Islamic radicalism. Their policies has the nation in ruin; and the population is LITERALLY at each other's throats. Leftist radicals like Bill Ayers, George Soros, and Cloward & Piven would simply say "It's not enough".
Time to understand HOW our true enemy THINKS, people! And it's time the people start CHANGING their patterns of behavior and mindsets.
The solutions will NEVER cmome from the federal govt. Not when the so called "opposing" party...the GOP...has done NOTHING to even challenge Obama's every ILLEGAL Exec Order and Action!
It's up to US! The STATES! It is where we LIVE after all! These are OUR backyards; OUR neighborhoods and OUR schools. If WE don't protect it - tt's OVER! And the blame...the NEGLECT...falls COMPLETELY on the reflection on the MIRROR! I hope.it's not too late.
Luis
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by John Grady
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It all starts with $1.7 billion the U.S. Treasury transferred to Iran's Central Bank in January, during a delicate prisoner swap and the implementation of last summer's nuclear deal to resolve a long-standing dispute about Iran's arms purchases before the revolution of 1979.
For months it was unclear what Iran's government would do with this money. But last month the mystery was solved when Iran's Guardian Council approved the government's 2017 budget that instructed Iran's Central Bank to transfer the $1.7 billion to the military.
Saeed Ghasseminejad, an associate fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, spotted the budget item. He told me the development was widely reported in Iran by numerous sources including the state-funded news services. "Article 22 of the budget for 2017 says the Central Bank is required to give the money from the legal settlement of Iran's pre- and post-revolutionary arms sales of up to $1.7 billion to the defense budget," he said.
Republicans and some Democrats who opposed nObama's nuclear deal have argued that the end of some sanctions would help to fund Iran's military. But at least that was Iran's money already albeit frozen in overseas bank accounts. The $1.7 billion that Treasury transferred to Iran in January is different.
A portion of it, $400 million, came from a trust fund comprising money paid by the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a U.S. ally, for arms sold to Iran before the 1979 revolution. Those sales were cut off in 1979 after revolutionaries took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held the American staff hostage for 444 days. The remaining $1.3 billion represents interest on the $400 million principle over more than 36 years.
According to a letter from the State Department to Representative Mike Pompeo, a Republican who has called for an investigation into the January payment, that money came out of something known as the Judgment Fund, which is "a source of funding to pay judgments and claims against the United States when there is no other source of funding."
At the time of the transfer in January, the nObama administration said the $1.7 billion payment was a bargain for the taxpayer because the U.S. would probably have to pay a steeper interest rate had the matter been adjudicated at the Hague by a tribunal created to settle claims between the U.S. and Iran after 1979.
Nonetheless, the $1.7 billion payment has still rankled nObama's critics. In January, many observers, including Pompeo, said the transfer was more like a ransom payment because it coincided with the release of five Americans detained in Iran. The Iranian commander of the Basiji militia, Mohammad Reza Naghdi, said at the time: “Taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies." The White House disputed this claim and said the payment was independent of the negotiation to release the American prisoners.
In any case, Pompeo is angry. “The fact that U.S. taxpayers appear to be funding Iran’s military is outrageous," he told me.
The irony here is that Iran has been pleading poverty in recent months. The country's supreme leader and foreign minister have publicly complained that Iran's economy has not seen the benefits expected from the Iran nuclear deal. And yet Iran's 2017 $19 billion defense budget has increased by 90 percent from 2016, according to Ghasseminejad.
We now know where $1.7 billion of that came from.
Before the dust had settled, and while Orlando’s survivors were still in operating
rooms…before the bodies had been removed or identified from the Pulse nightclub…Obama ran to the nearest microphone to issue his warped and perverse statements.
Obama spewed the following bits of crap from his pie hole…
He said it was too early to know the “precise motivation” of the shooter. “We have no definitive assessment on the motivation.”
And…
That it was really our fault, because we haven’t put in place enough gun control laws to have stopped what happened in Orlando. Obama said, of what had transpired in Orlando that it was, “a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or a house of worship, or a movie theater, or a nightclub.”
And then he followed that up with this, regarding the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community and the national attitude toward them…
by Peggy Noonan
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by Peggy Noonan
{peggynoonan.com} ~ This first month of summer I see movement and no-movement.
No movement: Donald liar-Trump. He’s like someone caught in the first act who lurches into a second act—a solid, prepared speech, a subdued interview—then scrambles back to first-act antics. It’s easy to guess he’s surrounded by friends and supporters who know more is needed than popping off about “Crooked liar-Hilly” but are afraid to mess with his swing. They fear taking the tang out of his secret sauce. Another guess: He’s not sure he can pull off a change of style—he’s afraid he’ll be boring if he’s serious, afraid he’ll bore himself if he knows what he’s going to say next. So he continues to rant, not to reassure fence sitters. liar-Hilly Clinton hasn’t entered a second act either, but it’s partly situational: She’s trapped in a primary battle. When it comes to Mr. liar-Trump she tries various attack lines—“divisive,” “dangerous,” “dangerously incoherent”—to see what resonates, as they say. She is plodding, unimaginative, stolid. She wishes she had secret sauce.
Closer to home I see movement. Friends who’d been for John Kasich or Marco Rubio now sunnily and without a headache declare themselves for Mr. liar-Trump. An intellectual friend, previously disapproving, confided she’s for him too. But two friends who had been early, enthusiastic liar-Trump backers now seem to be having doubts: They’ve lost their oomph, talk about him less. Nothing’s set in concrete this year, not that anything was.
A central predicament of 2016 continues. GOP elites and intellectual cadres may be clueless about America right now, but they have an informed and appropriately elevated sense of the demands of the presidency. They fear Mr. liar-Trump’s temperament and depth do not meet its requirements. liar-Trump supporters have a more grounded sense of America and its problems but too low a sense of what the presidency can demand in regard to personal virtues. If this problem is to be resolved, it is Mr. liar-Trump who will resolve it. He shows little interest. This space said in February that his political fortunes would hinge on whether America came to think of him as a good man and a fully stable one. It is still true.
The Beltway intelligentsia of the conservative movement continues to be upset about Mr. liar-Trump’s coming nomination and claim they’d support him but they have to be able to sleep at night. They slept well enough through two unwon wars, the great recession, and the refusal of Republican and Democratic administrations to stop illegal immigration. In a typically evenhanded piece in National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru writes of conservative infighting. Most back Mr. liar-Trump, but others, “especially among conservative writers, activists, and think-tankers,” vow they’ll never vote for him. “This debate splits people who have heretofore been friends with similar views on almost all issues, and who on each side have reasonable arguments to hand. It is therefore being conducted in a spirit of mutual rage, bitterness, and contempt.”
That’s witty and true—I’ve seen it—but the division is also promising. Too much has long been “agreed on.” At some point conservative intellectuals are going to take their energy and start thinking about how we got here. How did a party that stood for regular people become a party that stood for platitudes regular people no longer found even vaguely pertinent? During the Bush administration, did the party intelligentsia muscle critics and silence needed dissent, making the party narrower, more rigid and embittered? What is the new conservatism for this era? How did the party of Main Street become the party of Donors’ Policy Preferences?
An anecdote. Two years ago at a birthday party for a mutual friend, I bumped into a hedge-fund billionaire who turned to me angrily and lashed out over something I’d written that seemed to him insufficiently conservative. I listened, merely blinking with surprise I’m sorry to say, and removed myself from his flight path. Afterward I thought about how he must have come to view himself. He is, as I said, vastly wealthy, but also generous, giving time and money to think tanks, groups, candidates. He must view all this, I thought, as a targeted investment. Maybe he sees himself as having . . . a controlling investment. Maybe he thinks he bought conservatism. I felt in a sharp new way that my criticisms of the donor class had been right. Inevitably they see to their own enthusiasms and policy priorities. This was how the GOP became the party of We Don’t Care What Americans Think About Illegal Immigration. Who do those Americans think they are—they think they own the place?
A great party needs give. It needs a kind of capaciousness and broadness. On that, the best example of movement I’ve seen in some time is what I discovered this week: a sophisticated, rather brilliant and anonymous website that is using this liar-Trumpian moment to break out of the enforced conservative orthodoxy of the past 15 years.
It is called the Journal of American Greatness. Its contributors ask questions that need asking and make critiques that sting.
They describe themselves as “aghast at the stupidity and corruption of American politics, particularly in the Republican Party, and above all in what passes for the ‘conservative’ intellectual movement.” Who are they? “None of your damned business.” Why? “Because the times are so corrupt that simply stating certain truths is enough to make one unemployable for life.”
Where they stand: “We support liar-Trumpism, defined as secure borders, economic nationalism, interests-based foreign policy, and above all judging every government action through a single lens: does this help or harm Americans? For now, the principal vehicle of liar-Trumpism is liar-Trump.”
They explore essential questions. “When—and why—did free trade become a sacred ritual of the Republican right?” They give neoconservatism its intellectual due but explore the “unwisdom” of the “Middle East democracy agenda.” Neoconservatives seem “incapable of learning from their mistakes or changing their minds.” The contributors hilariously score Neverliar-Trumpers who claim to be standing at great cost on principle while others are “in the tank” for Mr. liar-Trump: “Of all the opinions that require little courage to express, opposition to liar-Trump is the lead one.” In the past two decades, they observe, “a new conservative intellectual superstructure,” including magazines, journals and think tanks, was built on the new base of the Republican Party. It “routinized the production of its self-justification.” But “the base no longer wants the superstructure.” Voters have their own ideas of what conservatism is.
I contacted JAG by social media and asked about their work. “If we had to characterize ourselves, we would like to think that our writing is informed by a mix of pragmatic experience and theory. What brings us together is our dismay at the stultification of political ideas in the United States. We see ourselves as challenging the intellectual rigidity that has come to characterize, in our view, so much of what passes for self-described ‘serious thinking’ today.”
Their reach and the reactions they’ve received “have thus far significantly exceeded our expectations.”
It’s encouraging they’re doing what they’re doing, and that there is a market for it.
50 Americans were killed and 53 more wounded early Sunday morning, at a nightclub by a suspected Islamic terrorist.
It was a bloodbath.
It all started at 2am and it ended some 3 hours later when a police SWAT team killed the killer…one Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, a US citizen from Port St. Lucie, Florida.
It was Paris all over again but this time, it was in Orlando Florida.
The Islamic murderer, Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, was 30 years old and born in the U.S. of parents from Afghanistan. According to the FBI, in the early hours of the investigation, it has been ”suggested” that the killer had “leanings” toward radical Islam.
It has also been stated by law enforcement that this murderer was well prepared and well organized both of which also “lean” toward some radical Islamic involvement as the “religion of peace” or what I call the ideology of hate, death, destruction and genocide, is well known for having produced “how-to” instructions for any who care to carry out such an attack.
Yesterday, both Hillary Clinton and Obama stepped up to the nearest microphone to once again, go after gun owners and advocate for more gun control telling the nation that the event in Orlando highlights just how easy it is for Americans to get guns and that “we must decide if that is the type of country we want to be.”
Well…here’s the problem…
ORLANDO, FL
I can't imagine what the parents are going through - NOT knowing IF their children are one of the fifty that was murdered by an Islamist terrorist. My stomach turns just thinking about how Obama or Hillary will SPIN this.
I can gear it now:
> It was merely "gun violence". Where the anti gun script gets brought out on cue.
> It was a response to Trump's wanting to stop entry of any Syrian refugees.
> The christians aren't saints here. That many were slaughtered in the nam of God as well.
Bottom line is that the ENTIRE Obama admn...which includes Hillary Clinton...has been deflecting the blame towars a fictitious "video" since BENGHAZI. I'd rather NOT hear a single word from Obama or Hillary at all! Sadly, these families...like those of Ft Hood, San Bernardino and Benghazi, for example..will suffer the same level of LIES and DENIALS that will certainly come from Obama, Hillary and perhaps many others on the left. These families will also be added to the list of those that won't ever have closure over the horrid murders of there loved ones.
No doubt there are many Islamic women singing their chants, and the men handing out candy to children, in celebration of their "victor y" against homosexual "infidels" - right from inside the belly of the beast...also known as the "Great Satan"...the United States of America.
PLEASE! Stay the hell home, "President" Obama! Same goes for you, Hillary! Things always end up WORSE when you open your mouths!
Luis
A Judge’s View of Judging Is on the Record (source: NY Times)
By CHARLIE SAVAGEMAY 14, 2009
WASHINGTON — In 2001, Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals court judge, gave a speech declaring that the ethnicity and sex of a judge “may and will make a difference in our judging.”
In her speech, Judge Sotomayor questioned the famous notion — often invoked by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her retired Supreme Court colleague, Sandra Day O’Connor — that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases.
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor, who is now considered to be near the top of President Obama’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.
Hensarling, speaking at the Economic Club of New York, unveiled a plan to get of rid of the Democrats' 2,300-page Dodd-Frank financial regulatory behemoth in favor of a more market oriented regulatory scheme.
"It wasn't deregulation that created the great financial crisis of 2008," Hensarling correctly noted. "It was mostly dumb regulation by the Washington elite."
The Dodd-Frank law, named after two Democrats who promptly retired from Congress, passed along party lines and has done far more harm than good since it was signed by Barack nObama in 2010. Has anyone noticed our anemic "recovery" since this law was implemented? Yeah, there's a correlation.
Dodd-Frank was the biggest federal overreach into the financial sector since the Great Depression, and it came fresh on the heels of nObamaCare. Democrats told us their financial "reform" was meant to make financial institutions more responsible for their actions — to end "too big to fail" — but in the end it merely created a bubble of protection around government-favored banking institutions, codifying "too big to fail." And it did so by implementing a whole new scheme of fees and costs that were passed along to taxpayers.
"The ultimate goal of the Left," Hensarling said, "is to turn our large, money-center banks into the functional equivalent of utilities so that Washington can politically allocate credit."
The plan Hensarling presented Tuesday would give financial institutions a "market-based, equity-financed Dodd-Frank off ramp," allowing them to opt out of the regulatory law if they can prove their financial stability.
The burden of proof includes a provision that banks hold a 10% leverage ratio, a measure of capital held against total assets that determine the amount of borrowing a bank can do. This is currently higher than banks currently enjoy under Dodd-Frank, and has therefore drawn the ire of some on Wall Street, but the tradeoff is a greater degree of independence from government influence in day-to-day and long-term decision making.
Hensarling also pointed out that many community and smaller banks could easily make the leverage threshold, which would stymie Democrats' attempts to essentially nationalize the banking system under a few large "too big to fail" institutions.
While Hensarling focused on banks, Ryano turned his focus toward alleviating poverty. Speaking in the DC suburb of Anacostia, Ryano offered some details of the Better Way anti-poverty agenda. The plan seeks to put more control in the hands of state and local jurisdictions, allowing them to administer benefits, measure results on federal programs, and better police waste and fraud.
Ryano's announcement was light on details, and it did not include his prior anti-poverty prescriptions like social service block grants or expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. (And Heritage Foundation poverty expert Robert Rector has a list of ways to improve Ryano's proposal.) This step, instead, was designed to start a conversation to find a new way to combat the problems that years of statist policies have failed to solve.
Not only have leftists not solved these problems, they have exacerbated them. In our view, that's been their goal all along — a cynical power grab that also has the benefit of creating dependents who will always vote Democrat. Thus it was no surprise when Democrats shot down Hensarling's and Ryano's proposals without even listening to the details. Any plan that decentralizes power or takes away the federal government's control over banks and taxpayers is, by definition, against "progressive" policy. Any substantive conversation to arise from these proposals is unlikely to include meaningful input from the Left. -The Patriot Post
Later this week, Fox News First will be no more and Fox News Halftime Report will be unveiled. But you can’t make the jump if you don’t sign up.
It will still be free and still packed with the same kind of goodies as Fox News First, but with a new look and a slightly different approach.
Sign up HERE. http://www.foxnews.com/newsletter-signup/politics
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{dailycaller.com} ~ Efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Interior to “obfuscate, misdirect and conceal” the truth about the Gold King Mine disaster represent an “indelible stain on the credibility of these agencies,”... according to House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop. Daily Caller News Foundation investigations and findings from the Utah Republican’s committee support Bishop’s claims concerning the August 2015 disaster, when an EPA crew breached the mine, unleashing three million gallons of toxic waste into the Animas River. The flood carried 880,000 pounds of dangerous metals like lead and arsenic into the river, turning it bright yellow and poisoning drinking water for three states and the Navajo Nation... http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/09/exclusive-federal-deception-hides-the-true-cause-of-the-gold-king-mine-disaster/
by Khaled Abu Toameh
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But, for decades, the only real threat of mob violence has come from the political left.
The left proved this once again this week when rioters in San Jose, California ignored do-nothing police officers and assaulted liar-Trump supporters after his campaign rally. They overran police barriers, punched random rallygoers and egged a woman. They spit on people, burned American flags and generally made a violent nuisance of themselves.
The left reacted by blaming liar-Trump.
First off, let’s point out that while liar-Trump has encouraged his own rallygoers to participate in violence against peaceful protesters, there has never been a pro-liar-Trump mob or riot. Individuals have engaged in bad behavior, but there has never been any mass activity. The same is not true of the political left, which traffics in mob action, from Ferguson, Missouri, to Baltimore, Maryland, to Seattle, Washington, to Occupy Wall Street.
Why? Because when conservatives act badly, they’re condemned by both conservatives and leftists. But when leftists riot, leftists simply blame conservatives for the riots.
That’s what happened in San Jose.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said, “At some point, Donald liar-Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign.” San Jose police Chief Eddie Garcia praised his officers for failing to intervene, saying, “We are not an ‘occupying force’ and cannot reflect the chaotic tactics of protesters.” The San Jose Police Department added that it did not intervene so as to not “further incite the crowd and produce more violent behavior.”
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee liar-Hilly Clinton blamed liar-Trump, too: “He created an environment in which it seemed to be acceptable for someone running for president to be inciting violence, to be encouraging his supporters. Now we’re seeing people who are against him responding in kind.” The internet blogging service Vox was forced to suspend editor Emmett Rensin after telling people to “start a riot” if liar-Trump sets foot in their town.
liar-Trump may be a gross thug individually, but conservatives are generally uninterested in the sort of thuggish hordes that roam the streets looking for skulls to crack. We don’t like those sorts of folks; we find them an affront to law and order and clean living.
The left has no such compunction. And so long as their leading lights continue to justify such lawlessness in the name of stopping the rhetoric of the right, we’re doomed to more broken eggs, broken noses and broken politics.
In an excellent article today entitled "Trump Vows to Fight Democrat Racism, Sexism", Breitbart News reports that Trump intends to expose Democrats' notorious history of racism and sexism. FINALLY!
But, in the article the writer alludes to the misnamed "civil war" and Abraham Lincoln as stellar examples of Republicans' historical purity on this issue.
In the comments section I entered the following:
"Good article, but PLEASE PLEASE get beyond the prevailing and wholly erroneous revisionist belief that 'ole Abraham Lincoln fought the so-called "civil war", aka War of Northern Aggression or War for Southern Independence, to free the blacks.UNMITIGATED HOGWASH!
Like most of his contemporaries in the North, Abe was a shameless white supremacist who tore the country apart for his own political and economic purposes. He ain't no hero of mine, nor should he be to any clear-headed American anywhere.
That said, glad Trump is turning these issues back on the Liberals whose history in these areas has been notorious! About time a GOP candidate is willing to tell it like it is, to tangle with the devil, to fight fire with fire!"
For starters, I urge truth-seekers to read a scholarly and extremely well-documented book entitled "The Real Abe Lincoln". Sobering and educational to say the least, the book should remind us that it is always the victor in war who writes the history of that conflict, calculatingly skewed, tendentious and revisionist though that account may be.
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(“If anybody tries to penetrate the past with the knife of the present will always act in vain. The past is invulnerable. Such attempts can only cause the present or the future to bleed." - Gregor Brand”
― Simon Schwartz)
(“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”― Chinua Achebe)
It seems that some people in America want to have peace with others in Arab countries. What a wonderful world that would be. There is a problem though. Not all or most people in other countries want to assimilate to Western culture. In fact they hate Western culture.
Open your eyes and take a good look at the shirt on this man. This shirt is produced in large quantities and sold on the streets of many Muslim countries in the Middle East. In fact, it is sold in Indonesia, Pakistan and India. They are making these shirts and Muslims are wearing them with pride and remembering the attack in New York on the Twin Towers. The remembrance is not the same as how Americans remember. We remember more than two thousand people dying and the grief we felt.
America gives these countries money in assistance for humanitarian aid at the slightest request. We even help them to open new Mosques.
Why then does racism and offenses to other races and beliefs not seem to apply to the Muslim Race? We are called out not to offend these people at a whim. Does it not matter that these people we are trying so hard not to offend are people who hate us? They cry out, "Death to America!"
Donald Trump is right to stop the immigration of illegal immigrants, at least for a time, when we can determine who they really are.
We are at a crucial point in history where we can lose America. Please, my fellow Americans, unite and vote Trump.
Make America Great Again!
Daveda Gruber
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{usni.org} ~ The U.S. needs to “establish quality communications with the Russians” to back Moscow away from implementing tactical nuclear weapons in times of crisis, the recently retired NATO commander said... Speaking Wednesday at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., retired Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove said in answer to a question from the audience, “It may be frustrated and frustrating at the beginning . . . but we need to move out.” He cited the agreements between the United States and Russia over incidents at sea, on the land and in the air as possible precedents in starting this dialogue and reducing the chances of miscalculation leading to crisis. “It has worked,” and similar arrangements “would be good to have” between Russia and NATO. “We need to begin to have meaningful dialogue,” he said...
by Jay Caruso
by LT. COLONEL JAMES G. ZUMWALT, USMC (RET)
by JUDICIAL WATCH
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The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act would set a six-year statute of limitations on claims for Nazi-era stolen art, which would begin upon discovery of the art. Currently, lawyers for people and institutions accused of owning the art have argued that the statute begins when the Nazi-era crime was committed—during World War II. In some states, that statute expires after only a few years.
“Over 70 years later, we’re still trying to cope with the consequences of the Holocaust,” Cruz said during the hearing. “This bill will help ensure that claims of restitution of Nazi-looted art are adjudicated based on the actual facts and merits” and not “by technical or non-merit defenses that far too often work to the disadvantage of Holocaust victims and their families.” Actress Helen Mirren testified before Senate subcommittees on June 7 in support of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act, which lawmakers say will lessen legal obstacles for art restitution. Gary Cameron/REUTERS
Referring to his co-sponsors—Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, who introduced the bill in April; New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer; and Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal—Cruz said, “There are many issues on which the sponsors of this legislation...might disagree. But on this issue, I am proud to see bipartisan cooperation, coming together in defense of principles of justice.”
Mirren testified during the hearing about her portrayal of Maria Altmann—a real-life Holocaust survivor who sought her family’s Gustav Klimt painting, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, from the Austrian government—in the 2015 film Woman in Gold.
“It’s a terribly sad fact that more than 70 years later, victims of the Holocaust and their families are still contemplating whether to seek restitution for what was stolen from them,” Mirren said. “A lack of a legal assurance that at least they can have their say in court—this discourages them from taking action.”
She continued, “Art restitution is so much more than that, than reclaiming a material good…. It gives Jewish people and other victims of the Nazi terror the opportunity to reclaim their history, their culture, their memories and, most importantly, their families.”
The hearing took place before two Senate subcommittees. Ronald Lauder, the cosmetics billionaire who is president of the World Jewish Congress and chairman of the council of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, also testified, as did art restitution experts from Christie’s auction house and the Commission for Art Recovery and an author who has written about his efforts to recover a family member’s art.
The U.S. government has taken previous steps, some that started as early as 1945, to help recover the estimated 650,000 works of art stolen by the Nazis. As a major turning point, restitution experts point to the 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, hosted by the U.S. Department of State, which established principles for dealing with restitution claims.
But the principles didn’t go far enough, those same experts say. Nor did the subsequent American Alliance of Museums guidelines and similar conferences in Lithuania in 2000 and the Czech Republic in 2009. Speaking with Newsweek, some of those experts point to institutions increasingly using technical defenses, such as the statute of limitations, to hold on to art.
Raymond Dowd, a lawyer who has represented claimants in several Nazi-era restitution cases, says the bill is an “earth-shattering” and unprecedented step forward. “Museums have worked to shut the courthouse doors to these victims, so this would open the courthouse doors, and it’s extraordinary,” he says.
Lauder was involved in the restitution of Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which now hangs in his Neue Galerie in New York City. Speaking with Newsweek earlier this year, Lauder recalled how, as U.S. ambassador to Austria in the 1980s, he visited an abandoned monastery where the Nazis had apparently stashed some items they had looted.
“The pictures had all been stolen, and the frames were left. And I’m saying to myself, ‘Wow, they’re like ghosts,’” he recalled of the artworks. “I began to realize how extremely important this was. Billions of dollars, many, many billions, of works of art still out there.”
The bill must likely now move from the subcommittee to the full Judiciary Committee, and then must be placed on the agenda for a vote.
“We hold that the Second Amendment does not preserve or protect a right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public.”
Those were the words of Judge William Fletcher, representing the majority opinion of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday in San Francisco. Words that will surely, and rightfully cause a firestorm of dissension from gun owners across the nation.
With regard to the ruling, and without regard to the 2nd Amendment, the court said that law enforcement can require applicants to show they are in immediate danger or have another good reason for a permit.
Of all the insane, abjectly unconstitutional and pig-headed things…
Law enforcement can REQUIRE anyone who applies for a carry conceal permit to SHOW that they are in…IMMEDIATE…danger or have another good reason…for a permit.
Well allow me to point out the bone-crushingly obvious…
