Left Retreating in Europe

Left-leaning parties across Europe are losing electoral support and are likely to falter in the U.K., Spain, France, Germany, and Italy. This may be the beginning of a backlash against liberal policies which may still have implications for the U.S.

Obama vs. the Americans, Flight 93 Memorial for 9/11 Families

More analysis is available for a story I reported on earlier, Obama stood steadfastly against the Americans who sought relief as victims on 9/11. Obama has supported his Saudi handlers against the Americans.

Two Great Presidents Speak at D-Day Site

Ronald Reagan speaks at the D-Day site.

Muslim Jihadist Protests Against American Memorial at Site of Slain Soldier in Arkansas

A Muslim terrorist killed an American soldier at this same site; thereafter, a Jihadist showed up to acclaim Islam as "the religion of peace."

These occurrences appear to be staged events provoking an attack. Consider for example that the Department of Justice, and Obama has stated publicly, that it is the duty of Federal government and the office of the president to defend jihadist causes.

Obama stated:

"I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. . . . That's why the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it."

An incident such as the one in Arkansas seems ripe for exploitation by an overzealous government as in the present regime. The incident seems to be an obvious Reichstag fire opportunity. On 30 January 1933 the Weimar Republic President Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolph Hitler Chancellor as the fateful transition to dictatorship in Germany begins. On 28 February 1933 President Hindenburg and Chancellor Hitler invoke Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which permits the suspension of civil liberties in time of national emergency. This Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State abrogates the following constitutional protections:

* Free expression of opinion
* Freedom of the press
* Right of assembly and association
* Right to privacy of postal and electronic communications
* Protection against unlawful searches and seizures
* Individual property rights
* States' right of self-government

A supplemental decree creates the SA (Storm Troops) and SS (Special Security) Federal police agencies. The evidence is unclear as to who is actually responsible for the Reichstag Fire: Marinus van der Lubbe, an incompetent Dutch Communist, acting alone--a Communist plot--or a cynical ploy by the Nazis themselves in order to create an incident. There is historical evidence that points to Nazis involvement in the Fire.

But regardless of who actually planned and executed the fire, it is clear that the Nazis immediately took advantage of the situation in order to advance their cause at the expense of civil rights. The Decree enabled the Nazis to ruthlessly suppress opposition in the upcoming election.

On 5 March 1933 national elections provided the Nazis a 44% plurality in the Reichstag. Herman Göring [who later played a central role in the Nazi government and war effort] declares that there is no further need for State governments.

Over the next few weeks, each of the lawful Weimar State governments falls to the same ruse:

* Local Nazi organizations instigate disorder;
* The disorder is quelled by replacing the elected state government by appointed Nazi Reich Commissioners.

On 24 March 1933 the Reichstag passes the Law for Terminating the Suffering of People and Nation, also known as the Enabling Law, essentially granting Adolph Hitler dictatorial power.

The events in 1933 can be summarized as follows:

* While it is not clear whether the Nazis intentionally set the Reichstag fire in order to create a national crisis, or whether the Nazis simply were opportunistic, the event was used as justification for a sharp curtailment in constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties.
* The Nazis took advantage of the additional Federal police powers to suppress opponents.
* It is clear that in other situations, the Nazis did use the tactic of creating a "law and order" crisis so that they could provide a solution which further eroded civil liberties and entrenched their power.
* The central point to grasp is that a democracy can be destroyed by creating a law-and-order crisis and offering as a 'solution' the abdication of civil liberties and state's rights to a powerful but unaccountable central authority.

The equivalent of the Reichstag Fire is unfolding. The federal government has sided with Islam to actively promote its practice. The staged events appear designed to provoke a reaction amongst the American people. The Federal government would then seem duty-bound to intervene during an staged emergency granting extensive powers at the highest and most coercive level of government.

In the contemporary Arkansas incident some background is helpful to understand the situation.

The Muslim, Abdulhakim Muhammad, accused of killing an Army private never suffered torture or beatings while jailed on an immigration violation in Yemen, an official Embassy spokesman Mohammed Albasha stated. Muhammad became a terrorist after converting to Islam in the wake of 9/11. He pleaded not guilty to a capital murder charge in the death Monday of Pvt. William Long. Another soldier, Pvt. Quinton I. Ezeagwula, was wounded in the shooting. Muhammad, born Carlos Bledsoe, traveled to Yemen in September 2007 and taught English in the port city of Aden with the British Council for about two months, Albasha said. Muhammad then traveled to San'a, the country's capital, and taught English classes while attending Arabic courses with a group known as The City Institute, the spokesman said. Yemeni police arrested Muhammad on Nov. 14 for overstaying his visa and living illegally in the Middle Eastern nation, Albasha said. He was deported Jan. 29 to the U.S. A law enforcement official previously told the AP that Muhammad was arrested and jailed for using a Somali passport. Muhammad had such a passport at the time of his arrest, but said it was only to remain in the country with his wife. Yemen is a lawless and impoverished nation on the tip of the Arabian peninsula, is the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden's family. It was the scene of one of al-Qaida's most dramatic pre-9/11 attacks, the 2000 suicide bombing of the destroyer USS Cole off the Aden coast that killed 17 American sailors. Muhammed's attorney has disputed supposed Internet search records seized on a computer at Muhammad's Little Rock apartment, saying other people had accessed the secondhand computer. An FBI-Homeland Security intelligence assessment document obtained by the AP after the shooting suggested Muhammad may have considered targeting other locations, including Jewish and Christian sites. The FBI said he "conducted Internet searches related to different locations in several U.S. cities" including Atlanta, Little Rock, Louisville, Ky., Memphis, Tenn., New York, and Philadelphia. Material seized from Muhammad's truck and apartment this week included guns, ammunition, and Molotov cocktails.

I included a second version of the Jihadist video which is shorter but the distracting commentary is not included.

Chrysler "Smart Power"

Newsweek: Obama is "Sort of God."

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas while speaking of Obama’s concession speech described it as: "I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God."

Here is a transcript of the relevant portion of the exchange:

5:15PM SEGMENT:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Tomorrow on the 65th anniversary of D-day, President Obama has a tough pair of acts to follow. His own speech yesterday and one given a quarter century ago. I remember getting up that morning in 1984 to catch President Reagan at Normandy. It was a real ‘Morning in America’ speech. I believe that Reagan’s ability to connect to World War II was a reason for his enormous popularity in this country. Here he was on the bluffs of France saying something very good about America, how we liberated Europe. That's the heart of it, really. The reason Reagan was popular, Roosevelt was popular, Jack Kennedy was popular, and Barack Obama is popular. Don't tear us down. Don't make us feel like victims or the angry guys or the worried guys. Make us feel American. I think the President's speech yesterday was the reason we Americans elected him. It was grand. It was positive. Hopeful. It said to the world, if you're a good guy, you've got nothing to fear from us. If you’ve got national aspirations, if you want to be respected as a people, if you want to be treated as an equal people in the world, we're on your side. If you're an aggressor, if you want to hold down other people, if you're driven by a predatory ideology, if you're out to hurt this country, look out. We Americans are that rattlesnake on that first flag, ‘Don't tread on me.’ But what I liked about the President's speech in Cairo was that it showed a complete humility. What he did was rob from the enemy, those who want to destroy us, their main case, the belief that only by extremism can the East reach equality of dignity with the West. The question now is whether the President we elected and spoke for us so grandly yesterday can carry out the great vision he gave us and to the world. If he can, he'll be honoring what happened on D-day 65 years ago tomorrow. He will be delivering the world once again from evil. Evan Thomas is editor at large for Newsweek magazine. Evan, you remember '84. It wasn't 100 years ago. Reagan and World War II and the sense of us as the good guys in the world, how are we doing?

EVAN THOMAS: Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama’s had, really, a different task We're seen too often as the bad guys. And he – he has a very different job from – Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something – I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God. He’s-

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

THOMAS: He's going to bring all different sides together. It's a very different-

MATTHEWS: Can he – well, here’s Ronald Reagan. Let's take a look, a little Friday night nostalgia. Here he is speaking about peace and reconciliation at Normandy back 25 years ago. Let's listen.

RONALD REAGAN: But we try always to be prepared for peace, prepared to deter aggression, prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms, and, yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union so together we can lessen the risks of war now and forever.

MATTHEWS: Let's talk about the difference. He was talking about the evil empire, trying to reconcile with the people of Russia and the Soviet Union, but not the country. Barack Obama the other day was saying, yesterday, that we don't have an enemy out there per se. We have people who choose extremism, but Islam’s not our enemy. That's not the evil empire.

THOMAS: But Reagan did it with a very – for the first term it was a clenched fist. I mean, we ramped up the cold war before we ramped it down. We built up our military. We – all of this D-day stuff was about war. That was about fighting.

MATTHEWS: Right.

THOMAS: Reconciliation only after the fighting. That's not – Obama’s not doing that. Obama – we've had our fighting. Obama is trying to sort of tamper everything down. He doesn't even use the word terror. He uses extremism. He's all about let us reason together. I think he has a much tougher job, frankly, because-

MATTHEWS: What's his shtick? Reagan had the United States arms race, winning the arms race. And we had the threat of high frontier, we were going to beat the Soviets at technology.

THOMAS: I don't think he has – his shtick is he's the teacher. He's the teacher. He is going to say, ‘now, children, stop fighting and quarreling with each other.’ And he has a kind of a moral authority that he – he can – he can do that-

MATTHEWS: If there's a world election between him and Osama Bin Laden, he's running a good campaign.

THOMAS: Yes, he is.

Krauthammer Explains How Obama’s Cairo Speech Emboldens U.S. Enemies

What If? by Ron Paul

The National Debt Road Trip

How do the Obama deficits compare with past presidents? And how did the national debt get so big anyway. This video tries to answer those questions by looking at the debt as a road trip and seeing how fast different administrations have been traveling.

The National Debt Road Trip – Debt-To-GDP
May 21, 2009

I’ve gotten a number of people asking some permutation of the following question:

“Why don’t you give the national debt as a percentage of the GDP as a whole? Isn’t that more meaningful/relevant?”

My answer the the latter question is “Yes and no.”

The answer is “Yes”… in the sense that if you made $50,000 per year and you had $80,000 in debt, you’re more screwed than if you make $100,000 per year and you have $80,000 in debt.

But the answer is “No” for the purposes of making a visualization for the following reasons.

First, I didn’t frame the debt in that way is because it fundamentally hides some really important things that shouldn’t be hidden. I’ll go ahead and give the game away… I’m in the business of communicating numbers clearly. And using the debt-to-GDP ration feels too much like trying to hide the real meaning of the numbers.

It feels like a car salesman who refuses to talk about the raw numbers of the car you’re buying because when he talks about monthly payments, it’s easier to screw you. Because, really, what’s the difference between $287.87 per month and $359.60? It’s not that much, is it? And if you’re already spending $300, you might as well spend $350, right?

In the same way, talking about the debt in a percentage manner is hiding the true cost. So we increase the debt-to-GDP by 2.2%… big deal, right?

But that 2.2% is the same amount as everyone in the state of Washington makes in a year. Every. Single. Person. Go look at a Google street view of Seattle and try to count how many people live in a high-rise apartment building. Take a stroll down some of the swankier neighborhoods. Look at the obscenely expensive houses that line the bay. Everything every one of those people makes in a year. The more thought you apply to the real meaning of the number, the more you see that, while 2.2% might be an accurate number to describe an increase, it doesn’t even begin to communicate the scope.

That’s the first reason I didn’t use debt-to-GDP… becuase it violates the core principle of what I’m trying to do: give a clear understanding of the scope of the issue. When people use it, it feels like they’re looking around for the best possible way to represent the problem so that it doesn’t feel as big as it is.

Make no mistake, the problem is huge. Huge in a way almost none of us understand because our brains don’t process that kind of huge very well.

There are other problems with framing the issue this way too. One is that comparing the federal debt to the GDP is something of a misnomer because the government doesn’t own the GDP. The GDP is “owned” in part by everyone in the country. And all those people and business have their own debt (mortgages, credit card debt, student loans, business loans).

Quick, off-the-cuff example using very rough numbers: Sam makes $100,000 per year, but he spending $150,000 per year. As if that weren’t bad enough, he is $500,000 in debt already. But he tells himself it’s not a big deal because his kid is in college and that will only last a couple years and, besides, he has a business protecting houses and mowing yards for a living and if you combine everything his clients make in a year, it comes out to be almost $750,000 per year.

So if you look at how much he owes compared to how much his clients make, it’s only about 70%. And if his clients make $1,000,000 next year, he could owe $666,000 and there would be no change whatsoever in his “how-much-I-owe to how-much-my-clients-make” ratio. No problem!

Except that Sam’s clients are probably a little nervous about Sam comparing the truly absurd scope of his debt to the amount of money they make every year. Shouldn’t he be comparing his debt to the money he makes every year?

I could go on at length, and perhaps I’ll make a visualization about this, but right now I’ve got to work the day job

.

The National Debt Road Trip – Complaint 1
May 16, 2009

I had a commenter for the National Debt Road Trip call BS on some of my numbers, so I wanted to run some sample numbers to make sure that I’m being as transparent as possible.

Complaint: “Obama’s projected to add about 9 trillion. That isn’t three times as much as Bush’s nearly 5 trillion.”

First of all, let’s get the numbers right. In raw unadjusted dollars, Bush increased the debt from $5.674 trillion to $10.024 trillion. That is $4.35 trillion, not five. And Obama has projected that he will increase it from $10.024 trillion to $20.004 trillion, which is $9.979 trillion… far closer to $10 trillion than to $9 trillion.

(Because I’m using the numbers from the TreasuryDirect site, I’m calculating from two months before Bush was elected (September 2000) until two months before Obama was elected (September 2008) for Bush’s data. I know that these calculations are somewhat clumsy, but I don’t think it is fair to assign Bush the debt responsibility for the Stimulus bill, which was entirely Obama’s baby.)

But still, $10 trillion is not three times $4.35 trillion. But that’s where inflation adjustment comes in. According to this inflation calculator, $5.674 trillion in 2000 dollars is the same as $7.035 trillion in 2008 dollars. This makes the inflation adjusted difference between the 2000 debt and the 2008 debt $2.94 trillion. It’s not pocket change, but it is certainly a downward revision.

I gave Obama a break by assuming that his team didn’t adjust for future inflation, so I made adjustements to his numbers, which meant cutting about $1.6 trillion off the debt leaving us with $18.4 trillion. This means he plans on increasing the debt by about $8.2 trillion (rounding down).

8.2 / 2.94 = 2.79 (the coefficient determining the speed calculation)

64 mph * 2.79 = 178.37 mph

Which is actually a shade faster than I said Obama was going.

I know most liberals aren’t going to believe this, but I really am trying to give the president the benefit of the doubt. In this video alone, I underestimated the inflation adjusted debt and I rounded everything down for him. If he doesn’t look good, it’s not my fault.

I know these kinds of posts are exceedingly boring for most people… even if I find them interesting. I’m doing them in the interest of transparency… so if someone says that my math is full of s***, they can look at this and do all the math themselves.

Reagan On Socialized Medicine, 1961

If Ronnie could ever see what has happened since his day he would be shocked. In 1961 Reagan addressed the issue of socialized medicine.

Rasmussen Reports Poll: Obama at Highest Disapproval Rating Yet

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 34% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of 0. That’s the highest level of strong disapproval and the lowest overall rating yet recorded. The trend has consistently been downward.

DOJ to Endorse Muslim Causes

Statement of Attorney General Eric Holder on Department of Justice’s Outreach and Enforcement Efforts to Protect American Muslims

Thursday, June 4, 2009

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder released the following statement relating to President Obama’s historic speech today in Cairo, Egypt:

"The President's pledge for a new beginning between the United States and the Muslim community takes root here in the Justice Department where we are committed to using criminal and civil rights laws to protect Muslim Americans. A top priority of this Justice Department is a return to robust civil rights enforcement and outreach in defending religious freedoms and other fundamental rights of all of our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the housing market, in our schools and in the voting booth.

"There are those who will continue to want to divide by fear - to pit our national security against our civil liberties - but that is a false choice. We have a solemn responsibility to protect our people while we also protect our principles."

Obama Cheat Cartoon

Growing White House ties to Google draw protest

Consumer groups naturally are objecting to the expected selection of a Google executive to a deputy CTO post.

Century 21 and Realtors Trained to Surveil?

A Colorado man was reported to the DEA by realtors; he is also a gunsmith so the government may be looking for new ways to surveil citizens.

There Are Some Photos Which Are Downright Creepy

Graphic source: Photo courtesy Gerald Herbert, AP, and Beethovenqueen

When in Georgetown, tell the Catholics to cover up their crucifixes; however, when in Cairo all the boys and girls wear the Hijab.

Federal Government Censors Questions About Obama's Long Form Birth Certificate

The White House, via the National Academy of Public Administration, began using IdeaScale.com’s Open Government Dialog web site to help gauge the public’s interest in what kinds of data should be made transparent with this Administration. The fact that scores of posts regarding the President’s eligibility were posted on the site significantly riled up others in the community, resulting in the accusation of “slimed” postings.

Editor’s note: We will not post any comments regarding Obama’s birth certificate. But we encourage your comments on how the process used to manage the Open Government Dialogue or other aspects of how the government should interact with the public online.

An “open” government dialog states that its seeks input from readers, but it censors troublesome questions and input from readers. In particular, a topic that causes difficulty for Obama: Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution.

Technology is useful to the regime but if the People are consistent and persistent with their viewpoints, the government's elite object.

Was Obama’s Selective Services Registration form Doctored?

There are more developments on Obama's Selective Services Form; it appears to have been doctored.

Remembering Tianamen Square

We would do well to pause to honor those who fought for liberty and democracy in China twenty years ago today.

Israeli Right Views Obama