Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.
The Elect as Elect now proposes public works including a likely:
budget deficit that will come in at 1 Trillion or 1.5 Trillion dollars.
Analogous to the public works of Eisenhower with the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956, which led to the construction of 42,795 miles of roads, the government concluded that the total cost came to $128.9 billion, with the federal government paying $114.3 billion and the states picking up the rest.
I do not suppose anyone noticed that we are not currently undergoing the economic growth that we enjoyed under an Eisenhower administration. The deficit will simply be passed on to a less prosperous next generation.
The Elect has promised not to light up in the smoke-free White House. Does this mean he will release his medical records? I would not assume a middle-aged smoker would be in good health. "There are times where I've fallen off the wagon," he stated on Meet the Press, but the substantive issue, which people have the right to know, is what his actual health involves. But, to date, no records are scheduled to be released. We are expected to accept, on faith, that all is well. The Elect added during the campaign: "But I figure, seeing as I'm running for president, I need to cut myself a little slack," he said.
"I've done a terrific job, under the circumstances, of making myself much healthier," which implies that something relating to his health may be less than well.
The Elect told the magazine Men's Health in an interview for its November issue that he wished he had more time for staying fit and that he still occasionally smoked a cigarette. This is another indication that health is a concern.
Although no one should be shocked with the atrocious failures of the CIA, the length, depth, and outrageous incompetence of CIA is startlingly in this work nonetheless. There were few successes and consistent failings of a revolving door of directors and an inability of both Republicans and Democratic presidents to grasp the essential importance of protecting Americans from attack. Most notably with 9/11, but in case after case, CIA could not provide verifiable intelligence about American's enemies and they failed in their mission to protect America.
The author is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times which in itself commends itself to be read. The Weiner volume updates the gap left by the now dated works of John Ranelagh (The Agency, 1986) and Christopher Andrew (For the President’s Eyes Only, 1995) regarding CIA history.
As Weiner relates it, the title phrase “legacy of ashes” comes from a critical remark President Dwight D. Eisenhower uttered near the end of his administration when, Weiner tells us, Ike finally blew up at Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Allen Dulles and the failings of CIA generally, and more particularly at Dulles’s resistance to recommendations for intelligence reform from the president’s board of consultants.
“A great deal has been accomplished,” Dulles insisted to the president at the final gatherings of Eisenhower’s National Security Council. Everything is well in hand, he said. I have fixed the clandestine service. American intelligence has never been more agile and adept. Coordination and cooperation are better than they have ever been. The proposals of the president’s intelligence board were preposterous, he said, they were madness, they were illegal. I am responsible under the law for intelligence coordination, he reminded the president. I cannot delegate that responsibility. Without my leadership, he said, American intelligence would be a “body floating in thin air.”
At the last, Dwight Eisenhower exploded in anger and frustration. “The structure of our intelligence organization is faulty,” he told Dulles. It makes no sense, it has to be reorganized, and we should have done it long ago. Nothing had changed since Pearl Harbor. “I have suffered an eight-year defeat on this,” said the president of the United States. He said he would “leave a legacy of ashes” to his successor (p. 166).
Weiner takes license with factual data since the interaction, as presumed here, did not take place as reported.
An examination of the source documents shows that:
* Dulles made his remarks (“body floating in thin air”) at a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) on 12 January 1961, and he was speaking against a Defense Department proposal to separate the position of DCI from the management of CIA.
* Eisenhower’s supposed retort (“eight-year defeat…legacy of ashes”) occurred a week earlier, at the 5 January NSC meeting, and had nothing to do with CIA. Eisenhower was expressing frustration at what he considered his major failing regarding intelligence—his inability to reform and streamline military intelligence.
* Far from criticizing Dulles and CIA, Eisenhower at both meetings affirmed the Agency’s central role in the collection and correlation of strategic intelligence while criticizing the redundancy and expense of having four separate military intelligence agencies.
* The words “preposterous” and “madness” are nowhere to be found in the record of Dulles’s remarks on proposals to reform intelligence (Memoranda of Discussions at the 473rd Meeting (5 January 1961) and the 474th Meeting (12 January 1961) of the National Security Council; documents 80 and 84, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963: Volume XXV (2001). See also document 79, a record of 3 January meeting of Eisenhower, National Security Advisor Gordon Gray, and General Andrew Goodpaster).
The central concern of Weiner is of course to compare CIA performance against other intelligence agencies. The intelligence services that are often judged to be superior to CIA—the Israeli Mossad, the Cuban DGI, the East German Stasi, and even the British SIS—are far more limited in focus and scope. However, the real problem are the abundant mistakes and difficulties that a democracy has when engaged in covert operations. The most notable point of comparison in terms of performance from superior agencies, with the exception of the SIS of course, is that CIA originates from a democratic nation. They are at a disadvantage in the dark world of covert operations. The problem is acute in that CIA from the beginning was charged with worldwide coverage in all intelligence areas, something no other service, except perhaps the Soviet KGB, was required to do. As has been pointed out many times, `it is a rough neighborhood.' But perhaps more to the point, when you read alleged success stories and self-serving memoirs, such as George Tenet's about his tenure as head of CIA, he pointedly acclaims successes of other agencies, as a way of complimenting his our actions of course. This is a roundabout way of suggesting that other intelligence agencies are more effective than CIA.
In regards to CIA origins, Weiner is forced by his own premise of CIA incompetence to assert the incredible: that Harry Truman didn’t know what was going on in his own administration regarding Cold War covert activities.
Yet publicly available documents, which Weiner seems to be unaware of or ignores, make an overwhelming case that President Truman was informed frequently of NSC and other policy discussions on covert operations and CIA’s role in them. In Michael Warner, ed., CIA Cold War Records: The CIA Under Harry Truman (CIA History Staff, 1994) is a memo from the DCI dated 23 April 1952 to the NSC about CIA activities. It includes (pages 459–60) a discussion of “cold war covert activities, including guerrilla warfare.” The document is marked “Included in the President’s Book.”
Weiner might also have read Hayden Peake, “Harry S. Truman on CIA Covert Activities,” in Studies in Intelligence 25, No. 1 (1981). Peake demonstrates that, Truman’s stated opposition to Eisenhower- and Kennedy-era covert operations notwithstanding, CIA officials of the late 1940s and early 1950s considered Truman to have been intimately involved in the development of CIA’s covert mission.
Weiner might also have examined more closely the holdings of the Truman Library, where he would have been able to see a progress report sent by DCI Souers to the president in June 1946 on “planning for psychological warfare” on the part of the Central Intelligence Group; he might also have taken note of the NSC memorandums for the president summarizing NSC discussions of 20 May and 3 June 1948 concerning psychological and political warfare, also in the Truman Library, President’s Secretary’s files.
He misses other important evidence of Truman’s knowledge of such activity, such as the Acting DCI’s 16 January 1951 report to the NSC on “Responsibilities of CIA (OPC) with Respect to Guerrilla Warfare.” Weiner does cite the 23 October 1951 NSC report on “Scope and Pace of Covert Operations,” but he misses the significance of this document’s presence in the files of Truman’s secretary—unless Weiner is implying that she was in on the aforementioned conspiracy to keep him in the dark.
During the Eisenhower administration, CIA began their mission to provide actionable intelligence about American enemies to a succession of presidents. Eisenhower handled CIA by looking the other way. CIA should act but not to let Eisenhower know what manner of nefarious activities CIA did.
Allen Dulles freely admitted to Eisenhower that CIA had no sources in the Kremlin, that its Soviet estimates relied more on speculation and “the logic of the situation” than on hard evidence, and that the Agency could not reliably warn of a sudden Soviet attack (pp. 73–75). This goes to the heart of Weiner's import; CIA failed to penetrate and discover the intentions of American's enemies.
Weiner chronicles the chaos of the early days of CIA espionage and covert action, particularly when the Office of Strategic Operations and Office of Policy Coordination were separate entities with separate stations in the field and competing programs (p. 33).
Weiner notes with some alarm that ethnic agent teams were sent into action and few--about 25%--were ever heard from again. These ethnic agents were nationalists, willing to risk their lives against the Soviets in their homeland without US help, and we were willing to take the chance that sending them might yield good intelligence or otherwise harm our adversaries. By contrast, in the more recent case of the Chinese Muslim Uighers for example, they will simply be dispatched without mission or recruitment, insofar as we know, out of Guatanomo. The same low risk-possible moderate to high return because of their actions is not apparently considered today.
Successes pale in comparison with the failures of CIA. In 1948 CIA accurately assessed the chance for war with the Soviets as nil which was a positive accomplishment but the accurate Agency predictions of genocide in Rwanda in 1994 hardly compares as something which impacts the security of Americans.
One of most notable failures and the most memorable is an episode in Guatemala in 1994, when the CIA chief of station confronted the American ambassador, Marilyn McAfee, with intelligence, as she recalled, that "I was having a lesbian affair with my secretary, whose name was Carol Murphy." The CIA's friends in the Guatemalan military had bugged McAfee's bedroom, Weiner reports, and "recorded her cooing endearments to Murphy. They spread the word that the ambassador was a lesbian." The CIA's "Murphy memo" was widely distributed in Washington. There was only one problem: the ambassador was married, not gay, and not sleeping with her secretary. " 'Murphy' was the name of her two-year-old black standard poodle. The bug in her bedroom had recorded her petting her dog."
Weiner portrays the development of the U-2 spy plane, mostly as a result of the fact that CIA could not develop human assets inside the USSR. However, if we had only developed “a bigger picture of life inside the Soviet Union” that revealed the Russians “were unable to produce the necessities of life” (p. 114), we would not have had to create the unprecedented capability to take pictures of Soviet military power from 70,000 feet. A better insight into Soviet life would have revealed that a formidable and genuinely threatening military machine was a chimera. Satellite imagery helped keep the Cold War cold. This is significant.
Other successes include the successful covert support of democracy in Italy in 1948. The Berlin Tunnel operation gets a note, and the story of CIA’s first major Soviet spy, Pyotr Popov, is buried in a footnote. The Agency understood the 1967 Mideast war and was attributable to the rigorous analytic work that was behind the judgment.
A key point that could be an overwhelming success is whether CIA identified the collapse of the Soviet Union. Weiner also repeats the canard that CIA missed the decline of the USSR, something that was obvious to everyone in the world but the Agency. He does not discuss several important sources that have refuted this claim: the work of Bruce Berkowitz, Douglas MacEachin, Robert Gates, and the Case Program of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. CIA analysts warned of the USSR’s socio-economic troubles from the late 1970s on.
Another mistake is the common misconception is to dismiss Ronald Reagan as someone who came to the presidency knowing “little more about the CIA than what he had learned at the movies” (p. 375). This is a wrong-headed view of a president who in 1975 had served on the Rockefeller Commission investigating intelligence activities and who had drafted for his own delivery, from 1975 to 1978, radio addresses on national security matters that included cogent discussions about CIA and intelligence issues. In addition, a large number of Reagan’s letters and essays has emerged that dispel Weiner’s notion.
A recent, really critical situation to consider is the infamous “sixteen words” President Bush used in the 2003 State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein’s alleged efforts to purchase uranium in Africa. Weiner, claiming that Bush was making “CIA’s case,” omits mention of the attribution of the information to British intelligence. Moreover, George Tenet’s recent memoir makes it clear that the Agency had removed the assertion from previous speeches and simply had failed to do so for the State of the Union. CIA, in fact, did not support that statement.
There are errors of fact in Legacy of Ashes. Following is a short list:
* OSS was not “barred from seeing the most important intercepted communications” during World War II (p. 5); few in any organization could view ULTRA intercepts, but within OSS the X-2 counterintelligence branch had access. * The distinction between the espionage and covert action missions did not emerge in the postwar period (p. 11) but years earlier was already part of the organizing principle of OSS; the Secret Intelligence branch handled what would later be called HUMINT, and various other branches were responsible for paramilitary and other covert activity. * The 1949 CIA Act did not provide the Agency with the legal authority to conduct covert action (p. 40)—that legislation concerned DCI authorities regarding personnel, secrecy, and unvouchered funds (which certainly helped operations remain covert); the Agency construed its covert action authority from admittedly vague language in the 1947 National Security Act and from Executive Orders. * Weiner obviously read (and quotes from) my Studies in Intelligence article on the ill-fated flight of Jack Downey and Dick Fecteau in 1952, yet he misrepresented a flight to pick up documents as a mission to “rescue” agents who had radioed for help (p. 60). * The reference to a “CIA colonel” (p. 88) is odd; the KGB had colonels, but CIA never had military ranks—though it has employed military officers. * Weiner also errs when he says that the current director, Michael Hayden (p. 510), is the first active-duty military officer to lead the Agency since the early 1950s—that was Admiral Stansfield Turner (1977). * Weiner says that the 1950s-era program to encourage Soviet walk-ins outside the USSR, REDCAP, was not effective and had no significant successes by 1956 (p. 124). He forgets the two Peters, Pyotr Deriabin and Pyotr Popov, both of whom were immensely important assets. * The idea that the “Islamic warriors” CIA supported in Afghanistan would later turn on the United States (p. xv) fails to make the basic distinction between the Afghan mujahedin, whom the Agency supported, and Arabs who went to Afghanistan in the 1980s—whom CIA did not support. * John McCone was never a deputy secretary of defense (p. 180) and did not, as DCI, begin mass firings (p. 188).
In Weiner's view the CIA never performed up to snuff. He paints a critical portrait of an agency run by Ivy League incompetents, "old Grotonians" who lied to presidents -- an agency that, more often than not, failed to foresee major world events, violated human rights, spied on Americans, plotted assassinations of foreign leaders, and put so much of its energy and resources into bungled covert operations that it failed in its core mission of collecting and analyzing information.
The success of CIA have to be taken with a grain of salt. CIA had overthrown the legally elected government of Guatemala, a covert operation long touted as one of the intelligence agency's grand "successes." It was even called Operation Success. Guatemala was made safe for United Fruit -- talk about banana republics -- but not for democracy. A series of military dictators followed the CIA coup, with death squads and repression in which perhaps 200,000 Guatemalans perished.
The question of how CIA relates to democracy is acute. Weiner states that CIA director Richard Helms opposed Richard Nixon in regards to the Watergate cover-up. Not so. In an odd footnote, Weiner says Helms "complied with the president's order to go along with the cover-up for sixteen days at most." But the author, who quotes extensively from dozens of CIA documents, curiously makes no mention of the damning memo that Helms wrote to his deputy, Vernon Walters, on June 28, 1972, about the FBI investigation of the break-in: "We still adhere to the request that they confine themselves to the personalities already arrested or directly under suspicion and that they desist from expanding this investigation into other areas which may well, eventually, run afoul of our operations." It was a bald-faced lie, exactly what the White House was demanding that Helms tell the FBI.
Of course, the most critical point is the CIA quandry. How do we proceed without clear direction of the president and what do we do to serve a democracy in undemocratic ways. John Hamre, former deputy secretary of defense and president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington states: "It is an organization that thrives through deception. How do you manage an organization like that?" Weiner notes: "How do you run a secret intelligence service in an open democracy? How do you serve the truth by lying? How do you spread democracy by deceit?" (p. 501). We are left with the paradox that is CIA.
Economist and business manager Phil Mullan says don't blame China. Mullan says China has been keeping the US afloat, but text book economics says rich countries are supposed to support poor countries not the other way around.
Mullan says "America is the most indebted country in the world," but "presumes to be the world's economic leader," and has an economy based on "fictitious capital values."
Phil Mullan, economist and business manager, says the credit crisis isn't simply an economic recession but a reflection of a weakened economic policy.
Mullan says what makes it worse is economic authorities have been consistently behind the curve. Mullan claims "We've lived with an economic paradigm of there is no alternative to the market.
Economist and business manager Phil Mullan says economic markets in the west have been hollowed out.
Economic growth has appeared to look good, but what is the quality of this growth? Mullan asserts economic activity in the west revolves around retail, property, and public spending, while taking advantage of manufacturers in the East.
Investment banker Michael Savage says that the crisis isn't a result of banks lending more money that they have but of other economies such as China and East Asian oil producers pumping money into Western economies.
Savage says, "I'd point the finger at the Chinese working class." "The Chinese should consume more, thats the way out of the crisis."
The Fox News/Opinion Data exit polling showed that the vote cast by people under 30 held steady at 11% percent, the same level the organization's 2004 exit polls had found. Edison Media Research/Mitofsky International found a higher proportion of the vote cast by 18-29 year olds--18%--but, by the same methodology, the firm found the 2004 voter base was 17 percent composed of people in that age cohort. The fact is that neither polling firm found any real increase from the levels they found four years ago.
The myth of the small donor is even more instructive. Fred Lucas, CNSNews.com, reports that the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) found that only 26% of the donors to Obama's campaign gave $200 or less, compared to 25% for Bush's campaign in 2004. Most of the money raised came from the fat cats. CFI found that he got 80% more money from large donors (over $1,000) than from those who gave less than $200.
Busta Rhymes' new single, "Arab Money," has proven to be controversial. Galaxy FM suspended a DJ over the single. The title is claimed to be offensive and racist while the rapper is accused of mixing up elements of the Koran, but this is hardly the first time the Koran was mixed in a pop song. Busta has just joined Salman Rushdie, Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders, he is in good company.
Edwin Vieira, Jr., PhD, J.D. discusses the original intent and living document interpretations of the Constitution of the United States of America. While considering Vieira's comments, he provides reliable guidance to interpreting the Constitution today.
Ex-KGB agent and defector, Yuri Bezmenov, in an interview of 1984, describes the perfect ‘demoralization’ of the populace which then paves the way for ‘destabilization’ of a country in the foreign affairs, national security, and economic arenas.
“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”
One of the most effective uses of the con is to hide in plain site or to get your mark to look left when you should be looking right. Also, I learned from the monster, LBJ, that bad news or disinformation breaks on a Saturday when news is slow and sure enough, it broke again today in the Shinseki appointment. CNN took pains to point out in that story that he was born in Hawaii, just like The Elect. The idea is to plant the Hawaii birth more firmly in people's heads, to get them looking where it does not matter. And, due to the research and SCOTUS filing by Leo Donofrio, he points out that President Chester Arthur concealed that he was a British Subject at birth, thus disqualifying him from the presidency. He covered it up so that he could be president.
First, we will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won't just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.
Second, we will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We'll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and well set a simple rule - use it or lose it. If a state doesn't act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they'll lose the money.
Third, my economic recovery plan will launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen. We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms. Because to help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.
As we renew our schools and highways, well also renew our information superhighway. It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they'll get that chance when I'm President - because that's how well strengthen America's competitiveness in the world.
In addition to connecting our libraries and schools to the Internet, we must also ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the Internet. That is why the economic recovery plan I'm proposing will help modernize our health care system - and that won't just save jobs, it will save lives. We will make sure that every doctor's office and hospital in this country is using cutting edge technology and electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help save billions of dollars each year.
The Elect will save billions of dollars by replacing heating systems, changing light bulbs, and he will be a life saver.
The economic road to recovery includes the creation of jobs including:
1. heating system replacer; 2. light bulb installer; 3. road and bridge construction worker; 4. school construction worker; 5. Internet installer for schools and hospitals.
I did not want to quote The Elect out of context but this is what he said, he will be saving billions of dollars and he is a life-saver.
"We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won't just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work."
Where exactly do you purchase those billion dollar light bulbs? And, I take it Americans will now be working as light bulb changers and heating system replacers.
I am pleased to see that The Elect has thought through and developed a rock solid economic recovery plan.
The Elect announced his--no change--plan to fix the economy:
"There are no quick or easy fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making, and it's likely to get worse before it gets better. But now is the time to respond with urgent resolve to put people back to work and get our economy moving again. At the same time, this painful crisis also provides us with an opportunity to transform our economy to improve the lives of ordinary people by rebuilding roads and modernizing schools for our children, investing in clean energy solutions to break our dependence on imported oil, and making an early down payment on the long-term reforms that will grow and strengthen our economy for all Americans for years to come."
Has it not become obvious that he has no idea what to do? A future working on roads is not what young people have been dreaming to do as part of the American dream.
The agreement sets 30 June 2009, as the deadline for U.S. combat troops to withdraw from all Iraqi cities and towns; the date for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq is 31 December 2011.
Pay no attention to that man behind the podium, there is no "Office of the President-Elect" in the United States Constitution; furthermore, the Electoral College has not met yet so there is no President Elect just yet.
Is this the same signature appearing on each document? Some people consider what look like The Elect's signatures, on different documents, and have questioned whether it is from the same hand. For example, people have questioned one from an allegedly counterfeit Selective Service Registration and the other is from his Statement of Candidacy. Has anyone compared the signatures?
The Elect has no paper trail for the past 48 years. There is no documentation, records, or paper trail.
List of possible documentation:
Original, vault copy birth certificate: not released. Certificate of Live Birth: released but counterfeited. Obama/Dunham marriage license: not released. Soetoro/Dunham marriage license: not released. Soetoro adoption records: not released. Fransiskus Assisi School: school application released stating religion: "Islam." Punahou School records: not released. Selective Service Registration: released but counterfeited. Occidental College records: not released. Passport (Pakistan): not released. Columbia College records: not released. Columbia thesis: not released. Harvard College records: not released. Harvard Law Review articles: likely none but perhaps one unsigned has been found. Baptism certificate: none. Medical records: not released. Illinois State Senate records: none. Illinois State Senate schedule: lost. Law practice client list: not released. University of Chicago scholarly articles: none.
The Elect received nearly $750 million dollars during the campaign. That is more than twice what McCain raised and it's more than what Bush and Kerry combined managed to snag during 2004. The Elect opted out of taking public funds which made him the first candidate for president to opt out of public financing since the system was created in the 1970s to counter the effect of buying the election.
As Governor Bill Richardson stated at the Democratic National Convention in Denver Colorado on 1 September 2008: "Barack Obama is an immigrant...he is one of us...." I do not think it can be much clearer. The U.S. favors an immigrant as President.
In April 2008, a resolution was proposed to the U.S. Senate, recognizing John McCain as a "natural born citizen." Now what is odd about this resolution is that it was introduced by the opposition party, Democrats, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The bill was co-sponsored by whom? It was co-sponsored by political opponents, nominees, The Elect, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.
Their sponsorship, in the midst of a contentious campaign, is to say the least odd. Why were they so interested in the subject of "natural born citizen?"
At the time, McCain was obviously their primary opponent as he turned out to be during the Fall campaign.
In any case, Senate Resolution 511 was passed on 30 April 2008 as a non-binding resolution. S.R. 511. S.R. 511 is not a law, but rather, a unanimous opinion. Obama and Clinton were determined to demonstrate that McCain qualifies as a natural born citizen.
The respective candidates addressed the question that The Elect, Obama, did not want to face directly. Are you, yourself, a natural born citizen? Obama has failed to produce documentation that he is a natural born citizen of the United States. He attempted to defer questions about his origins by deflecting doubts about McCain. McCain agreed with the arrangement so no one would be inclined to doubt the citizenship about a person who clearly loves this country and was willing to fight and suffer as a prisoner of war as he did for five and a half years.
We await definitive proof or the Supreme Court Justices will decide. Or, The Elect could simply produce a $14.00 authentic birth certificate, or his student records, or a passport before he entered the Senate, or health records stating his natural born status at birth, or any simple and easily produced documentation. So, far, no records have been transparent, only expensive legal defenses and claims of how transparent his administration will be. So far, this is not so.
Cf. S.R. 511:
Co-sponsors
o Sen. Hillary Clinton [D, NY] o Sen. Barack Obama [D, Ill]
Committees
Introduced result Voted on by Senate April 10, 2008 April 30, 2008
All Bill Actions
* Passed by Unanimous Consent in the Senate on Apr 30, 2008. Resolution agreed to in Senate without amendment and with a preamble by Unanimous Consent. * Apr 24, 2008: Committee on the Judiciary. Date of scheduled consideration. SD-226. 10:00 a.m. * Apr 24, 2008: Committee on the Judiciary. Ordered to be reported without amendment favorably. * Added to calendar on Apr 24, 2008: Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. Calendar No. 715.. * Added to calendar on Apr 24, 2008: Committee on the Judiciary. Ordered to be reported without amendment favorably.. * Apr 24, 2008: Committee on the Judiciary. Reported by Senator Leahy without amendment and with a preamble. Without written report. * Apr 10, 2008: Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. * Introduced on Apr 10, 2008.
"No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time."
Although the language is difficult it really simply means that a lawmaker cannot fill a position if the salary for that position has increased during their term in office. It looks like Hillary can not be Secretery of State, or, is there a way that she still could be?
This constitutional issue, Hillary's, has gotten in the mainstream media although questions of whether The Elect is a natural born citizen or not has remained in the blogsphere.
When the question of compensation has happened before in the recent past lawmakers simply made an end around.
Ohio Senator William Saxbe was named President Nixon's attorney general in 1974 and again when Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen became President Clinton's Treasury secretary in 1993.
Congress voted a lower salary, or the candidate simply accepted a lower salary, it is not as if she needs the money anyway. The third is the most likely route, no one has the standing, or the right, to sue to stop her from being secretary of state.
The last is the most troubling for an administration touting transparency as their motiff.
CNN issued the results of a survery which reported that tuition and fees, adjusted for inflation, rose 439% from 1982 to 2007; moreover, public policy and education received an "F" in affordability in 49 states, California received a "C."
Dr. Orly Taitz has files a natural born citizen suit in California Supreme Court: the Docket number is S16869, Lightfoot v. Bowen. This is a “Petition for Extraordinary Writ of Mandamus for Stay.” The California Court will either issue an emergency stay of the voting of the electors, or decline to hear the case because it is a federal issue.
The BBC ran an interesting story about Iranian reaction to The Elect's victory. One blogger, cartoonist and blogger Nikahang Kosar who now lives in Canada, likened Obama to the reformist Mohammad Khatami in Iran. Obama's promise of 'change' reminds many Iranians of their own optimism when they elected the reformist Mohammad Khatami as president in 1997. This reflects the disillusionment Khatami's supporters felt when his attempts at reform were blocked by Iran's Islamic hardliners.
Likewise, Tehran journalist Ehsan Taqaddosi echoes this feeling, writing on demokracy.blogfa.com states: "Khatami was our Obama."
And, a third Iranian, Ehsan Taqaddosi, fears Obama cannot deliver what he promises.
Like Obama, Khatami was a pleasant talker and he introduced concepts such as the rule of the people and democracy into our political literature. But what happened in practice?
Nothing changed... Everyone says that Obama will be the same as his predecessors and in practice he may only be able to create a short, sharp shock.
Khatami also created a short, sharp shock and at the end of his tenure, we didn't witness any of the enthusiasm and determination which existed during the initial years of his government's rule.
The Iranian comments were originally in Farsi and translated by BBC Monitoring.
Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation has notified the state of California that a dead woman is listed as an official elector. Kreep stated:
"In the 28th Congressional District (Congressman Howard Berman), situated in Los Angeles County, Ilene Huber is listed as the presidential elector designated in that district. However, as shown in the attached certified statement of Dean C. Logan, registrar-recorder/county clerk of the county of Los Angeles, state of California, there is no Ilene Huber listed as a registered voter in the County of Los Angeles. A statewide search of public records has revealed only one Ilene Huber in the state of California, and she is deceased-a copy of her certificate of death is attached hereto as well."
The Philip J. Berg petition for writ of certiorari from The Elect was ignored by him and the Democratic National Committee. The Elect has not produced a legitimate, original birth certificate. Berg is now filing a motion to stop Obama from taking office in January. Berg is asking the SCOTUS to stop state certification of electors to keep the Electoral College from meeting 15 December and casting votes for Obama. He is also seeking to postpone the official vote count Jan. 6 until the court reaches a decision on his appeal.
The Donofrio situation can be summarized but there are more as well.
SCOTUS updates today include the Cort Wrotnowski situation, an emergency application. Wrotnowski's Docket now shows that the renewed application to Justice Scalia is dated Nov. 29. That’s the date Cort express mailed the original papers.
The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 according to Pentagon officials. The justification for the combat troops is said to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe.
There are, and should be, strenuous opponents to this plan from both the left, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the right, the libertarian Cato Institute. Both ends of the political spectrum should be alarmed by this unwarranted expansion of executive authority.
The Constitution was written with the intention of having civilians in control of the military, not the other way around. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 12 placed a two-year limit on spending for the army as a measure to insure civilian control of the military.
This tradition persisted throughout American history.
Any new law alters the two-centuries-old Insurrection Act, which Congress passed in 1807 to limit the president’s power to deploy troops within the United States. That law has long allowed the president to mobilize troops only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”
Along these lines, the Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 16, 1878 after the end of Reconstruction. The Act prohibits the federal uniformed services (the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces except when they are impressed into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) in the former Confederate states.
The National Defense Act of 1916 made each State's militia (volunteer army) a part of the National Guard. Each State's National Guard is under the command of that State's governor; but Congress has given the President the power to call those units into federal service under exceptional circumstances, such as during the Los Angeles riots in 1992, when necessary (Article 1, Section 8, Clauses 15 and 16). I also read the 3rd Amendment, the quartering of troops amongst civilians, as another indication that the Founders were wary about having combat troops amongst the general populace. The U.S. has had a long-standing tradition of being wary of the use of standing armies to keep the peace.
The unprecedented nature of the 20,000 troops combat troops should be clear. Troops returning from urban warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan are being re-deployed in America.
The question is why?
There is no insurrection currently and the National Guard along with law enforcement agencies have traditionally provided security. Why does the U.S. government feel compelled to place so many combat troops in the general population?
Domestic deployment appears to be an expansion in presidential and military authority. Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of "a creeping militarization" of homeland security.
The troops are here already. The first reaction force is built around the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team, which returned in April after 15 months in Iraq. The team includes operations, aviation and medical task forces that are to be ready to deploy at home or overseas within 48 hours, with units specializing in chemical decontamination, bomb disposal, emergency care and logistics. The troops are on a one-year domestic mission.
Although some Pentagon leaders initially expected to build the next two response units around combat teams, they are likely to be drawn mainly from reserves and the National Guard, such as the 218th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade from South Carolina, which returned in May after more than a year in Afghanistan.
Since 1 October 2008, the US Army announced that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command (NORTHCOM), as an on-call federal response force for natural or man-made emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.
This marks the first time an active U.S. Army unit will be given a dedicated assignment to NORTHCOM, where it is stated they may be "called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive (CBRNE) attack." These soldiers will also learn how to use non-lethal weapons designed to "subdue unruly or dangerous individuals" without killing them, and also includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and beanbag bullets. However, the "non-lethal crowd control package [...] is intended for use on deployments to the war zone, not in the U.S.
Uh huh.
Even government officials are noting the extreme measures. Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response--a nearly sevenfold increase in five years--"would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable," stated Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense. Even McHale stated that this was "a fundamental change in military culture."
The Pentagon's plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready for emergency response by September 2011. The first 4,700-person unit, built around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was available as of Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the U.S. Northern Command.
If funding continues, two additional teams will join nearly 80 smaller National Guard and reserve units made up of about 6,000 troops in supporting local and state officials nationwide. All would be trained to respond to a domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive attack, or CBRNE event, as the military calls it.
Military preparations for a domestic weapon-of-mass-destruction attack have been underway since at least 1996, when the Marine Corps activated a 350-member chemical and biological incident response force and later based it in Indian Head, Md., a Washington suburb. Such efforts accelerated after the Sept. 11 attacks, and at the time Iraq was invaded in 2003, a Pentagon joint task force drew on 3,000 civil support personnel across the United States.
In 2005, a new Pentagon homeland defense strategy emphasized "preparing for multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents."
In late 2007, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England signed a directive approving more than $556 million over five years to set up the three response teams, known as CBRNE Consequence Management Response Forces.
Last month, McHale said, authorities agreed to begin a $1.8 million pilot project funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency through which civilian authorities in five states could tap military planners to develop disaster response plans. Hawaii, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Washington and West Virginia will each focus on a particular threat--pandemic flu, a terrorist attack, hurricane, earthquake and catastrophic chemical release, respectively.
Last Monday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, seemingly now retained by The Elect, ordered defense officials to review whether the military, Guard and reserves can respond adequately to domestic disasters.Gates ordered defense officials to review whether the military, Guard and reserves can respond adequately to domestic disasters.
Gates gave commanders 25 days to propose changes and cost estimates. He cited the work of a congressionally chartered commission, which concluded in January that the Guard and reserve forces are not ready and that they lack equipment and training.
Bert B. Tussing, director of homeland defense and security issues at the U.S. Army War College's Center for Strategic Leadership, said the new Pentagon approach "breaks the mold" by assigning an active-duty combat brigade to the Northern Command for the first time.
Is it happening to America?
"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland."
GPS works by using the 29 satellites orbiting the Earth 12,000 miles up. Five of them are redundant. The U.S. military began launching them in 1978, and it took until 1994 to get the required 24 in orbit which was enough to calculate a position anywhere in the world. These 2,000- to 4,000-pound satellites are 17 feet wide. They traverse six separate orbits with each orbit having four satellites chasing one another.
The satellites are positioned so that any ground-based GPS receiver can always receive data from at least four of them. A master control station in Colorado Springs and five unstaffed monitor stations around the world track each satellite's orbit precisely. The controls are correcting in that if a satellite is out of position, they command its booster rockets to nudge it back on track.
Using a 50-watt radio transmitter each orbiting GPS satellite continuously broadcasts signals containing a pseudorandom code that provides its identity and position and the time maintained by an atomic clock. An accurate data location requires at least three satellites and incrementally four is much better, and six or seven provide even more accurate results. A GPS receiver uses relatively simple geometric calculations to determine its own latitude, longitude, and altitude. By comparing successive readings as compared with time, it can also calculate ground speed and direction.
Errors persist since many people have noticed that GPS data is never totally accurate. Radio waves travel at the speed of light or 186,000 miles/second. And in a vacuum, the Earth's atmosphere slows waves down. Further delays occur when signals bounce off intervening obstacles such as buildings, elevated geography, and trees. Until 2000, the public GPS was purposely made less accurate because GPS was originally designed for military use and the U.S. government didn't want enemy forces to possess better position information. Thus, the U.S. military introduced deliberate errors into the system. This process resulted in GPS calculations that could be off by 100 meters.
Differential GPS (DGPS) now corrects for measurement errors by comparing the GPS positions recorded at designated reference stations with the accurately known positions (determined through careful surveys) of those stations. The improved calculations result in accuracy within a yard or two.
As the recent Barbara Walter's interview illustrated, The Elect has a discernable spasm under his right eye. As the middle-aged smoker that he is, it would have been fortuitous if he had released his medical records so that the American people would know what his health problems are. However, the tic is an indication that the stress of the transition has begun to wear on him.
The Elect is leading the U.S. down a treacherous foreign policy path by deciding on Clinton. As the U.S. unipolar strength is receding the international world is transitioning to a multipolar situation per the NIC. Foreign policy will be dysfunctionally multilateralist as the U.S. is now committed to international interests. This provides a vulnerability to foreign entities who may inject their agenda into U.S. national interests. This increasing dependency is a high risk strategy for the American people. Clinton will only be able to obtain international agreements without validating the assumptions of U.S. recovery and linking U.S. national interests. International interests will begin to predominate foreign policy discussions and will likely end up controlling our economy and negatively impacting our national security. Russia has forged such an agreement with Europe because of its energy intimidation. Russia has already begun to move in Venuzuela.
In addition, the U.S. foreign policy will not recover from it's original economic status using The Elect's domestic recovery plan involving the building of bridges, roads, the renovation of schools, and promoting green energy. The Elect will need to discover that government projects do not create revenue, they deplete it.
Another site, Atlas Shrugs, has updated information although they too have been censored, by Google. After breaking information on the site, and readers questioned Google, hits dropped to zero.
Google employees donated quite a bit to The Elect's campaign: $487,355.
Finally, Google CEO Eric Schmidt might well be occupying the newly-formed tech adviser position to The Elect. Obama created this position just shortly before visiting the Google headquarters during his campaign.
Atlas was helpful for me as well; I found out that Google censored my site but ensuring that my blog does not appear in searches.
There is a service called, Google Ranking Diagnostics, that helps bloggers self-diagnose their website.
The self-diagnosing revealed that Google has applied a non-searching feature:
"Please note that this page is using NOINDEX, NOARCHIVE, NOFOLLOW to prevent it from being indexed."
There is no violation of the Terms of Service, the usual explanation for censoring, it is simply political.
The Hillbuzz site has updated information that includes an open letter to The Elect that will run in Chicago.
The Freedom March site features interviews with the principals.
A number of factual errors exist Pete Williams' article but at least it is a signal that the mainstream media is picking up the question of The Elect's ineligibility to be president since he is not a natural born citizen.
This is a well-written brief review of the accepted textual problems found in the New Testament. The book was written to assist laypeople in their understanding of how the textual tradition of the NT has been modified over time. None of it is really controversial yet as Ehrman explains there are no books which attempt to explain academic pursuits in regards to the reliability of the NT text. He explains that as a devout young person he innocently believed that the words of the text were inerrant however as an academic he began to understand that we did not have the actual words of Scripture. His academic interests led him to more fully understand the complexity of the transmission and he faithfully surveys the history of scholarship regarding the textual tradition. Along the way he demonstrates how specific Scriptural passages are not well attested, or have been modified for theological reasons or for the sake of clarity.
Who is it that is trying to amend the natural born citizen requirement? Sarah P. Herlihy is advocating an amendment because the requirement is seen as an obstacle to globalization. Ms. Herlihy is employed by Kirkland & Ellis LLP. The law firm is based in Chicago. Indeed, one of the partners, Bruce I. Ettelson, P.C., is a Member of finance committees of U.S. Senators Barack Obama and Richard Durbin (temID=7845, viewed towards the bottom of the page). In addition, Jack S. Levin, P.C., is another partner who was presented the "Illinois Venture Capital Association's lifetime achievement award for service to the private equity/venture capital community" by none other than The Elect.
The audio of a telephone conversation with Sarah Hussein Obama, with the transcript following along with the audio, where she says she was there when Obama was born, is available to hear.
The introduction and the full tape is available as well.
In an interview in 1995, The Elect seemed to make little sense while he was working out his salvation and divided America into groups. Some will have things taken away, and others will be given things: redistribution.
"Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost," Obama said. "It comes from me. That's my job, is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going, and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing."
In his consistent double-talk the Elect Messiah tapped more no-change appointments, as he has reliably done, in appointing more old Washington cronies-—former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, as a top economic adviser-—and he is prepared to name his former rival, Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state next week.
Promising change, The Elect has raised questions about how much he can deliver on that promise given the long list of beltway insiders he's named, or signaled that he will name, to run his government. This is business as usual:
—Former Clinton White House adviser Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff.
—Former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers as chairman of the National Economic Council .
—Former Clinton lawyer Greg Craig as White House counsel.
—Former Treasury Department official and current New York Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary.
—Former Clinton Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder as attorney general.
Others may not have been in the Clinton administration but offer the same Washington cronyism. Volcker was Federal Reserve Chairman during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Tom Daschle, The Elect's apparent choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, is a former Senate majority leader who voted to commit troops to Iraq.
Consider this nonsenical comment: The Elect noted that Volcker "hasn't been in Washington for quite some time. And that's part of the reason he can provide a fresh perspective." I see; if he leaves for a while he comes back with fresh ideas. That makes no sense whatsoever.
The Elect stated: "The last Democratic administration that we had was the Clinton administration. And so it would be surprising if I selected a Treasury secretary who had had no connection with the last Democratic administration. Because that would mean that the person had no experience in Washington whatsoever." The lack of experience sounds like The Elect himself. The lack of qualifications did not stop him from running.
The Elect stressed that, "what we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking." Right, ok, that is exactly what his opponent offered.
"What we don't want to do is get caught up in a spiral where people pull back from the economy, businesses then pull back, jobs are reduced and we get into a downward spiral." Right, he might as well say the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Wait, that is what his opponent said as well.
This is a guy who is a total puff piece. He has nothing of substance to say.
The Elect traced his "very existence" to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother. Or, so he says. One problem with this account is: it is a lie.
Contrary to The Elect's claims the Kennedy family didn't fund a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama's father.
The Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960.
An Obama spokesman, Bill Burton, acknowledged that the senator spoke in error.
Although the airlift occurred before Kennedy became president, Obama said that Kennedy was involved.
What actually happened though is less dramatic. A Kenyan nationalist leader, Tom Mboya, traveled to the United States in 1959 and 1960 to persuade thousands of Americans to support his efforts to educate a new African elite.
Mboya raised money for Obama Sr.
Stephen Plotkin, an archivist at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, said a search of the records did not turn up any evidence that the Kennedys supported the airlift.
Records of the High-Value operatives incarcerated at Gitmo make for sobering reading and listening. I would hope these ne'r do wells remain sequestered and they throw away the keys. If these individuals are ever released they will continue their delayed jihad, the type of actions that Mombai is experiencing currently. I talked to an Indian employee at Subway's, he would not have released the enemy combatants at Gitmo: common sense.
Al-Shabaab, an Islamist group in Somalia, produced the first American jihadist who has been convicted. Their goal is to recruit more jihadists. The estimated number of visits for www.kataaib.net 5,037 visits is per day.
For any one who would like to protest housing jihadist sites in the U.S. the following information should be helpful.
Al-Shabaab in Somalia is Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab's website http://kataaib.net/shuhadada%2028-01-2008.html Dotster web hosting; DOTSTER INC 8100 NE Parkway Dr #300 Vancouver, WA 98662, USA Abuse: abuse@dotster.com legal@dotster.com Phone 1-360-449-5985 or 1-360-449-5900
Bing West seems to have written one of the better accounts of the Iraqi conflict.
In The Strongest Tribe, he summarizes the mistakes made by the U.S. government and the incredible turnaround worked out by the American military. Most of this story in unknown and unappreciated as the American people lost interest in the service of their sisters and brothers, and the American mainstream media failed to accurately report the news.
Bing West was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs under President Ronald Reagan. He served in the Marine infantry in Vietnam. Later, as an analyst at the RAND Corporation, he wrote the Vietnam classic The Village, that war colleges use as a primer in counterinsurgency. As a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, West has covered the war for five years. His books on Iraq - No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah and The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the United States Marines (co-authored with MajGen Ray Smith)–have won the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation’s General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award for nonfiction, the Colby Award for military nonfiction, and the Veteran of Foreign Wars Media Award. West is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; his articles appear in The New York Times, The Wall St. Journal, and other major newspapers. He appears on National Public Radio and The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.
Q: Good. The CEO of WorldNetDaily has called on the President-elect to release a birth certificate listing the hospital and names of parents. The White House believes that this would fully satisfy the constitutional requirement, don't you?
MR. FRATTO: I don't think I have anything to say on that, Lester, and I think we're going to end it right there.
Fratto did not have an answer and the briefing ended at that point.
Because of threats to his safety the actual identity of "Dr. Ron Polarik" is not revealed but he does provide a summary of analyzing The Elect's Certificate of Live Birth. He has written his research in a longer essay as well.
In what looks to be a propaganda video recently narrated by al-Qaeda leader al-Zawahiri, The Elect is mocked taunted for not being a leader like Malcolm X. Yet, he is identified as "son of a Muslim father."
The stark contrast is the side-by-side images of Obama being guided by an orthodox Jew to the Kotel in Jerusalem with the Muslim prayer of Malcolm X. al-Zawahiri appears to be chiding The Elect as a direct contrast to Malcolm juxtaposing the "house negro" and the "field negro." Al-Zawahiri seems to be alluding to the murky origins of The Elect and one that seems designed to probe The Elect's psyche.
Al-Zawahiri obviously identifies The Elect as a Muslim: "you pray the prayers of Jews and claim to be a Christian to climb the rungs of leadership in America."
Zawahiri seems to be calling on The Elect as a covert Muslim who should return to his roots and his higher calling, a black nationalist as Malcolm X.
WRIF Michigan Radio Talk Show, Mike in the Morning, asked about a marker to be put up at Obama's birthplace. The Kenyan Ambassador, His Excellency Peter Ogego, states that a marker to the birthplace of Obama is planned.
The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are discussing how to save Citigroup. One option being considered is taking some of the risky assets held by Citigroup off its balance sheet, a move that would give the company more breathing room and put it in a better position to raise capital.
In his second gaffe with foreign leaders The Elect promised Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the United States would send more aid and pay more attention to his war-torn country. Later of course, The Elect's aides declined to confirm that their discussion had included specific promises. Isn't the facade is a bit too thin, twice in a row, to separate world leaders geographically dispered? First he made promises to Poland, which were later rescinded, and now to Afghanistan as well. The Elect is promising everything to everybody privately and then denying it in public.
The Elect's shameless exploitation of the Net continues today as Obama does not allow comments, or annotations, on his YouTube statements. This is a dangerous precedent which needlessly censors democratic interactivity by participants.
The statement is a one-way message. You can not comment, interact, or object to anything presented. This is Big Brother.
Oppose this anti-Internet, anti-freedom politician by registering your objection at change.gov.
Representative Brad Sherman (D-California) reported live on C-SPAN that members of the House were told if they did not vote for the bailout bill martial law would be declared in the U.S. This bill was rammed down the throats of our Representatives and the people.
Representative Michael Burgess (R-Texas) confirmed the same point.
The Hawai'i Court blocked the release of Obama's birth certificate. Andy Martin's case was dismissed and he will most likely appeal to the next highest court. It is a strange day in this country when a person whose name and nationality is a mystery and a simple request to release an original birth certificate is ignored.
This is a simple twist of fate. Judge Bert Ayabe upheld arguments from Governor Linda Lingle's administration that Martin had no standing under state law to obtain a copy of the document. Ayabe ruled that Martin provided "insufficient evidence to indicate that the public interest supports" release of the record. Yet, state Health Department director Dr. Chiyome Fukino has stated that her office has been barraged by requests for copies of the birth certificate.
So which is it? Is there public interest or not? Inquiring minds want to know. The Hawaiian officials are doing some double-talking.
Judge Bert Ayabe, Circuit Court judge, upheld arguments from Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle's administration that Andy Martin, an attorney, had no standing under state law to obtain a copy of Obama's Hawai'i birth certificate. I understand the issue of standing but if citizens do not have standing then who does?
This is strange; once I had found all of one negative, smoking picture of Obama, I wondered how many photos like that had found themselves on the net. And, after searching a bit, I only found one more picture posted with Obama smoking. You mean to tell me that with all the paparazzi and politicos around, only two pictures have been taken during a media blitzed political campaign with a smoker, smoking? The web has nothing but positive images of Obama. As the Beatles sang, "Nothing is real, nothing to get upset about."
In fact, upon searching for negative images of Obama, I found more negative pictures posted of McCain and Palen. There were, of course, some posters and political
statements about Obama commenting on his politics.
Or, there were negative posters about the Democrats, or,
negative political statements about Obama,
but every image or photograph available about Obama is heroic, positive, presidential, or statesman's-like. It is as if there is a media ban on rational discussion, or ordinary discourse about Obama.
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Roberts, Ian, The Energy Glut: Climate Change and the Politics of Fatness in an Overheating World;
Rocca, Samuel, The Army of Herod the Great;
Rodgers, Nigel, A Military History of Ancient Greece: An Authoritative Account of the Politics, Armies and Wars During the Golden Age of Ancient Greece, shown in over 200 color photographs, diagrams, maps and plans;
Rodoreda, Merce, Death in Spring: A Novel;
Romerstein, Herbert and Breindel, Eric,The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors;
Ross, Dennis, Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World;
Roth, Jonathan P., Roman Warfare (Cambridge Introduction to Roman Civilization);
SC Magazine: For IT Security Professionals;
Scahill, Jeremy, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Revised and Updated];
Schama, Simon, A History of Britain, At the Edge of the World 3500 B.C. - 1603 A.D.;
Scheuer, Michael, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War On Terror;
Scheuer, Michael, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq;
Scheuer, Michael, Osama Bin Laden;
Scheuer, Michael, Through Our Enemies Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America;
Scholastic Instructor
Scholastic Parent & Child: The Joy of Family Living and Learning;
Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World As Will And Idea (Sony eReader);
Schug-Wille, Art of the Byzantine World;
Schulze, Hagen, Germany: A New History;
Schweizer, Peter, Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy---and How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them;
Scott, Sir Walter, Ivanhoe;
Seagren, Eric, Secure Your Network for Free: Using Nmap, Wireshark, Snort, Nessus, and MRTG;
Security Technology & Design: The Security Executive's Resource for Systems Integration and Convergence;
Seibel, Peter, Coders at Work;
Sekunda N., & S. Northwood, Early Roman Armies;
Seneca: Naturales Quaestiones, Books II (Loeb Classical Library No. 450);
Sewall, Sarah, The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual;
Sheppard, Ruth, Alexander the Great at War: His Army - His Battles - His Enemies;
Shinder, Jason, ed., The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later;
Sidebottom, Harry, Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction;
Sides, Hampton, Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West;
Simkins, Michael, The Roman Army from Caesar to Trajan;
Sinchak, Steve, Hacking Windows Vista;
Smith, RJ, The One: The Life and Music of James Brown;
Software Development Times: The Industry Newspaper for Software Development Managers;
Software Test Performance;
Solomon, Norman, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death;
Song, Lolan, Innovation Together: Microsoft Research Asia Academic Research Collaboration;
Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays, tr. Robert Fagles;
Sound & Vision: The Consumer Electronics Authority;
Southern, Pat, The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History;
Sri, Edward, A Biblical Walk Through the Mass: Understanding What We Say and Do In The Liturgy;
Sri, Edward, Men, Women and the Mystery of Love: Practical Insights from John Paul II's Love and Responsibility;
Stair, John Bettridge, Old Samoa; Or, Flotsam and Jetsam From the Pacific Ocean;
Starr, Chester G., The Roman Empire, 27 B.C.-A.D. 476: A Study in Survival;
Starr, John Bryan, Understanding China: A Guide to China's Economy, History, and Political Culture;
Stauffer, John, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln;
Steyn, Mark, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It;
Strassler, Robert B., The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories;
Strassler, Robert B., The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War;
Strassler, Robert B., The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika;
Strategy + Business;
Streete, Gail, Redeemed Bodies: Women Martyrs in Early Christianity;
Sullivan, James, The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved the Soul of America;
Sumner, Graham, Roman Military Clothing (1) 100 BC-AD 200;
Sumner, Graham, Roman Military Clothing (2) AD 200-400;
Suskind, Ron, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11:
Swanston, Malcolm, Mapping History Battles and Campaigns;
Swiderski, Richard M., Quicksilver: A History of the Use, Lore, and Effects of Mercury;
Swiderski, Richard M., Quicksilver: A History of the Use, Lore, and Effects of Mercury;
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels;
Syme, Ronald, The Roman Revolution;
Talley, Colin L., A History of Multiple Sclerosis;
Tawil, Camille, Brothers In Arms: The Story of al-Qa'ida and the Arab Jihadists;
Tech Briefs: Engineering Solutions for Design & Manufacturing;
Tech Net: The Microsoft Journal for IT Professionals;
Tech Partner: Gain a Competitive Edge Through Solutions Providers;
Technology & Learning: Ideas and Tools for Ed Tech Leaders;
Tenet, George, At the Center of the Storm: The CIA During America's Time of Crisis;
Thackeray, W. M., Vanity Fair;
Thompson, Derrick & William Martin, Have Guitars ... Will Travel: A Journey Through the Beat Music Scene in Northampton 1957-66;
Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina;
Trento, Joseph J., The Secret History of the CIA;
Twain, Mark, The Gilded Age: a Tale of Today;
Ungar, Craig, House of Bush House of Saud;
Unterberger, Richie, The Unreleased Beatles Music & Film;
VAR Business: Strategic Insight for Technology Integrators:
Virgil, The Aeneid
Virtualization Review: Powering the New IT Generation;
Visual Studio: Enterprise Solutions for .Net Development;
VON Magazine: Voice, Video & Vision;
Wall Street Technology: Business Innovation Powered by Technology;
Wallace, Robert, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda;
Wang, Wallace, Steal This Computer Book 4.0: What They Won’t Tell You About the Internet;
Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization;
Warren, Robert Penn, All the King's Men;
Wasik, John F., Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream;
Weber, Karl, Editor, Lincoln: A President for the Ages;
Website Magazine: The Magazine for Website Success;
Weiner, Tim, Enemies: A History of the FBI;
Weiner, Tim, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA;
West, Bing, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq;
Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence;
Wilcox, Peter, Rome's Enemies (1) Germanics and Dacians;
Wise, Terence, Armies of the Carthaginian Wars 265 - 146 BC;
Wissner-Gross, What Colleges Don't Tell You (And Other Parents Don't Want You To Know) 272 Secrets For Getting Your Kid Into the Top Schools;
Wissner-Gross, What High Schools Don't Tell You;
Wolf, Naomi, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries;
Wolf, Naomi, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot;
Woodward, Bob, Plan of Attack;
Woodward, Bob, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House;
Wright, Lawrence, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11;
Wright-Porto, Heather, Beginning Google Blogger;
Xenophon, The Anabasis of Cyrus;
Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power;
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A tax on toilet paper; I kid you not. According to the sponsor, "the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act will be financed broadly by small fees on such things as . . . products disposed of in waste water." Congress wants to tax what you do in the privacy of your bathroom.
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