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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; plan</title>
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		<title>Iran: The 9-Step Plan to &#8216;Eliminate&#8217; Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/iran-the-9-step-plan-to-eliminate-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-the-9-step-plan-to-eliminate-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Nov 2014 05:54:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[eliminate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[negotiation]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[How Obama's nuclear negotiations have made the Islamic Republic more fearless than ever. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/khamenei-880329-3-000.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245347" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/khamenei-880329-3-000-380x350.jpg" alt="khamenei-880329-3-000" width="306" height="282" /></a>President Barack Obama appears to be determined to reward the ruling clerics in the Islamic Republic for its “good” behavior by engaging in nuclear negations.</p>
<p>In addition, President Obama has created the narrative that the Islamic Republic is in a weaker position in the nuclear negotiations because the Iranians want sanctions to be lifted against them. But what we witness in reality is that every time that the Islamic Republic rejects any deal that does not comply with its objectives, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry keep coming back with a new deal to satisfy the Iranian leaders. If the Islamic Republic is the weaker actor in these negotiations, then why are the rules of the nuclear deal not being set based on the p5+1 criteria?</p>
<p>John Kerry has been holding bilateral talks with the Russians and French in order to make sure that a final nuclear deal can be reached between the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and the Islamic Republic. Additionally, President Barack Obama seems to be determined.</p>
<p>President Obama has also recently written a secret letter &#8212; revealed by the <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/obama-wrote-secret-letter-to-irans-khamenei-about-fighting-islamic-state-1415295291">Wall Street Journal</a> &#8211;</span> to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, implying the shared regional interests that the Islamic Republic and the United States bear in the Middle East. The letter appears to be asking the Supreme Leader to grasp the opportunity and seal the final nuclear deal, which would result in the lifting of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>Apparently, President Obama is determined to strike the final nuclear deal and to make friends with enemies in other parts of the world in order to add to his superficial Middle East achievements.</p>
<p>But the crucial question is whether these rewards, and diplomatic leniency towards Iranian politicians and leaders, have resulted in creating or reinforcing good behavior in the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>Most recently, Ayatollah Khamenei <a href="https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/531366667377717248/photo/1"><span style="color: #0433ff;">published</span></a> a nine-step plan that would “eliminate” Israel. In response to the question “What is the most urgent action to take to militarily confront Israel?” the Supreme Leader points out, “The West bank should be armed like Gaza and those who are interested in Palestine’s destiny should take action to arm the people of he West bank, so that the sorrows and grieves (sic) of the Palestinian people will reduce in the light of their powerful hands and the weakness of the Zionist enemy.”</p>
<p>During a speech to university students in Tehran, Khamenei <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/khamenei-calls-palestinian-referendum-armed-resistance.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">stated</span></a>, &#8220;If God willing, it is eradicated, even better, but while this fraudulent regime is there and not eradicated, what’s the cure? The cure is a strong and armed resistance against this regime. In confronting the Zionist regime, strength needs to be shown from the direction of the Palestinians.&#8221;</p>
<p>In addition, Iran’s Supreme Leader took to Twitter to call for the elimination of Israel. Khamenei tweeted a series of vitriolic anti-Israel tweets that called for the<a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/11/09/barbaric-wolflike-and-infanticidal-khamanei-tweets-for-annihilation-of-israel/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"> elimination</span></a> of the “barbaric, wolflike &amp; infanticidal regime of Israel.”</p>
<p>Historically speaking, we have repeatedly witnessed that incentives and rewards do not elicit good behavior from the Islamic Republic and the ruling officials. For example, after the disclosure of the clandestine nuclear sites in 2002, not only did the Islamic Republic not pay any price for its covert operation, deception and fraudulence, but it was rewarded with hollow and ongoing negotiations in the international arena for the next decade, which fell right in the interest of the ruling clerics in the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>Did the Islamic Republic appreciate these diplomatic negotiations for its deceptive tactic in nuclear proliferation? Well, history shows that Iranian leaders continued to install covert nuclear sites, one of which was revealed seven years later on September 21, 2009. So why we are not learning from history? When will President Obama recognize that the Islamic Republic will not wake up all of sudden and alter all its objetives, dishonesty and covert operations in nuclear fields?</p>
<p>After the 2009 disclosure, again the White House decided to use diplomatic avenues, which were followed by a flimsy and face-saving interim nuclear deal and the release of billions of dollars to the Iranian government hoping that it will give up on its nuclear objectives.</p>
<p>After a 2009 disclosure of another nuclear site by IAEA, Ayatollah Ali Khemnei, the senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the ruling clerics wanted to buy time. They were capable of stalling until now, while installing more centrifuges (currently 19,000) and obtaining high-level enriched uranium. Currently, the objective of the Islamic Republic is to strike a flimsy final and comprehensive nuclear deal that will lead to the lifting of sanctions. Simultaneously, Iran will cheat its way to obtain nuclear weapons because there is no way that IAEA and the international community would be capable of fully monitoring all nuclear activities and its nuances inside the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>Incentives, removal of sanctions, and more respect are not going to change the behavior of the Islamic Republic. Apparently, rewarding the Islamic Republic has led to the emboldening of the Iranian government, increasing threats from its leaders, and the continuation of dishonesty. If we look at the dishonesty and deceptive strategies that Iranian leaders have utilized with regard to its nuclear program in the last decade, it becomes clear that this government is not going to give up its objectives of obtaining a nuclear bomb, give up exerting its regional hegemonic ambitions, proclaiming to be the leader of the Shiite and Muslims in the World, and give up its opposition to the US and Israel foreign policies in the region. The Islamic Republic is not solely a rational state actor based on the standards of international politics, but also an ideological state founded on the principles of the ruling clerics.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Kerry Forces Israel’s Moment of Decision</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/kerry-forces-israels-moment-of-decision/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=kerry-forces-israels-moment-of-decision</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Dec 2013 05:49:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213448</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the time has come for the Jewish State to free itself from the two-state trap. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Screen-Shot-2013-12-17-at-8.22.28-PM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213449" alt="Screen Shot 2013-12-17 at 8.22.28 PM" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Screen-Shot-2013-12-17-at-8.22.28-PM.png" width="261" height="226" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Our-World-Kerry-forces-Israels-moment-of-decision-335208">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>There was a ghoulish creepiness to US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Israel last week. Here we were, beset by the greatest winter storm in a hundred years. All roads to Jerusalem were sealed off. Tens of thousands of Jerusalemites and residents of surrounding areas were locked down in their houses, without power, heat, telephone service or water.</p>
<p>And all of the sudden, out of nowhere, Kerry appeared. As Hamas-ruled Gazans begged the supposedly hated IDF to come and save them from the floods, and as Israel took over rescue operations for stranded Palestinians living under the rule of the PLO ’s gangster kleptocracy in Judea and Samaria, here was Kerry, telling us that we’d better accept the deal he plans to present us next month, or face the wrath of the US and Europe, and suffer another Palestinian terror war.</p>
<p>What is going on? Why can’t Kerry leave Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the rest of the country alone, even for a week, in the middle of a blizzard of biblical proportions? According to leaks from the now five month old negotiations, after 20 rounds of talks, the Palestinians have not budged from the positions they have held to for the past 50 years. They do not accept Israel’s right to exist. They do not recognize the existence of the Jewish people. They do not believe that the Jews have the right to freedom or self-determination. They insist on taking control of our 3,000 year old capital. They demand that we surrender our ability to defend ourselves from foreign aggression and Palestinian attacks and infiltration from the east.</p>
<p>There is nothing new here, of course, This was the case 13 years ago at the Camp David summit. This was the case during the Annapolis summit in 2007 and 2008.</p>
<p>This was the case when PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas rejected then prime minister Ehud Olmert’s offer of peace in 2008.</p>
<p>Facing the Palestinians’ continued defiance of the very notion of peaceful coexistence with Israel, Kerry is planning to present his own peace deal next month and try to force Israel to accept it. Although the text of Kerry’s deal has not yet been revealed, we know exactly what it will involve just by listening to what he has already told us.</p>
<p>In his speech at the Saban Forum on December 7, Kerry said, “For many years the broad contours of an eventual solution have been absolutely clear, and they were crystallized for the world in December of 2000 when president Clinton laid down the parameters for a final-status agreement. They were reaffirmed through the Annapolis process during the Bush administration.”</p>
<p>The Clinton parameters involved a near complete American embrace of the PLO ’s maximalist demands. The Annapolis guidelines went even further in the PLO ’s direction.</p>
<p>And now, Kerry intends to put forth his own parameters that will be even more forthcoming to the PLO than either the Clinton or Bush administrations were.</p>
<p>Like the Clinton and Bush plans, the Kerry parameters will involve Israeli surrender of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount to the PLO , which rejects the historical fact that two Jewish temples were built at the site that was and remains the cradle of Jewish civilization and history and holiest site to Judaism.</p>
<p>They will involve the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to make room for an anti-Semitic, Jew-free state that maintains its devotion to the destruction of the rump Jewish state.</p>
<p>Kerry’s framework deal will involve the mass immigration of hundreds of thousands of foreign-born Arabs, who have been living in al-Qaida-, Hamas- and PLO -controlled UN-run “refugee camps,” for the past four generations.</p>
<p>Kerry’s plan will require Israeli society to destroy its cohesion through the dismemberment and destruction of hundreds of Jewish communities. As occurred before the Gaza withdrawal, it will require the government to oversee the demonization and criminalization of well over three million law abiding, patriotic Israeli citizens who oppose the mass expulsions.</p>
<p>Kerry’s parameters will require Israel to surrender its ability to defend itself against foreign aggression and Palestinian attacks. As for the Palestinians, implementation of the Kerry parameters will guarantee that all moderate elements in their society, including among Israeli Arabs, will be overwhelmed and destroyed. The PLO state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, like the Hamas state in Gaza, will be breeding grounds for global jihadists. They will actively incite, organize and oversee an armed insurrection of the Arabs of the Galilee and the Negev, meting out punishment for all dissenters.</p>
<p>As for the US forces that Kerry proposes deploying to the Jew-free PLO state, they will be targeted by the Palestinians, just as the Palestinians and the Syrians attacked US Marines in Beirut 30 years ago. And like the Marines in Beirut, they will be withdrawn in humiliation and defeat, but the lesson – that the Arabs perceive the Americans and Jews as enemies of equal weight – will not be learned. And, at any rate, unable to defend itself after agreeing to Kerry’s parameters, Israel will cease to be a strategic ally and be transformed into a strategic basket case. Its destruction will interest Kerry and his supporters just as much as the destruction of South Vietnam interested them in 1975.</p>
<p>Aside from being a more anti-Israel version of the Clinton parameters and Bush’s framework, Kerry’s parameters, and framework deal, have one other unique and particularly dangerous feature. Until now, US peace plans followed former prime minister Ehud Barak’s dictum that “nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.”</p>
<p>That is, no hypothetical Israeli concession on Jerusalem, for instance, will be binding unless a final deal is concluded.</p>
<p>Kerry indicated at the Saban Forum that his goal is to coerce Israel into making irrevocable concessions up front, before the Palestinians agree to peaceful coexistence.</p>
<p>As he put it, “A basic framework will have to address all the core issues – borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem, mutual recognition, and an end of claims. And it will have to establish agreed guidelines for subsequent negotiations that will fill out the details in a full-on peace treaty.”</p>
<p>For the past five and a half years, Netanyahu’s strategy for dealing with US President Barack Obama has been to try to survive him. He’s withstood Obama’s constant demand for Israeli national suicide for “peace” by giving the bare minimum of revocable concession possible to keep Obama at bay.</p>
<p>But with Kerry poised to shove his lethal parameters down our throats, parameters that will require Israel to irrevocably accept terms of peace that will destroy the country, it is obvious that Netanyahu needs to adopt a longer-term strategy. Our goal cannot be limited to waiting out Obama. Our goal must be to extricate Israel from the two-state trap.</p>
<p>Yes, Israel will pay a huge price for jumping ship. For 20 years, non-leftist Israeli leaders have been trying to go along to get along with the Left, and the Americans and their ever-escalating demands. But Kerry’s obsessive harping, and his insistence on pushing forward with his disastrous framework deal forces our hand.</p>
<p>Either we pay a huge price now, or accept our destruction within five to 15 years.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Emperor&#8217;s New Rules</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/the-emperors-new-rules/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-emperors-new-rules</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Nov 2013 04:55:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Obama decrees Americans can keep their health plans -- but can the damage be undone? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/600x39926.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210775" alt="600x39926" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/600x39926-443x350.jpg" width="266" height="210" /></a>Stung by public anger and his rapidly plunging approval ratings, President Obama wants to delay the cancellation of existing health care insurance policies for one year.</span></b></p>
<p>It has nothing to do with the public interest. It has everything to do with crass political calculations.</p>
<p>As an electoral tsunami gradually develops that threatens to drown Democrats and give Republicans a healthy majority in the Senate, Democrats remain focused. They are clinging to the increasingly unlikely prospect of recapturing the House of Representatives in next year&#8217;s elections, a move that would allow them to ram through more America-killing legislation. This, of course, assumes the Democrats keep control of the Senate, something that at the moment seems quite impossible.</p>
<p>President Obama yesterday played out a tableau that could easily have come from Hans Christian Andersen&#8217;s &#8220;The Emperor&#8217;s New Clothes.&#8221; Obama preyed on the most gullible Americans, the lowest of low-information voters, putting on a show for their benefit.</p>
<p>But even Americans who can&#8217;t name the Vice President of the United States know something about Obamacare, so they are not likely to be easily manipulated.</p>
<p>Obama might have gotten away with such a dimwit-friendly tack but for the fact that everyone in the country knows Obama lied about Obamacare allowing Americans to keep their health plans and their medical doctors. In addition, too many people are experiencing real hardship as the Affordable Care Act causes their insurance to be canceled &#8212; and they know who to blame for their pain and suffering.</p>
<p>In the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, the president and press corps may as well have been surrounded by unicorns, leprechauns, and satyrs as Obama threw pixie dust in the air and waved his magic wand after mispronouncing incantations in Austrian.</p>
<p>Obama exposed the residents of all 57 states of the nation to his lies yet again, promising that even now Americans would be able to keep their health insurance plans if they liked them.</p>
<p>&#8220;I completely get how upsetting this can be for a lot of Americans, particularly after assurances they heard from me that if they had a plan that they liked, they could keep it,&#8221; Obama <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/14/statement-president-affordable-care-act">said</a> in his by-now tiresome fake sympathy routine.</p>
<p>&#8220;And to those Americans, I hear you loud and clear. I said that I would do everything we can to fix this problem. And today I&#8217;m offering an idea that will help do it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama explained that a grandfather clause in the Affordable Care Act already allows people whose insurance plans don&#8217;t change to keep their plans. He didn&#8217;t bother to explain that that consumer protection measure is more or less moot because insurance plans change constantly.</p>
<p>&#8220;Today, we&#8217;re going to extend that principle both to people whose plans have changed since the law took effect, and to people who bought plans since the law took effect,&#8221; Obama said.</p>
<p>Except that His Imperial Majesty is doing no such thing. While taking credit on live television for appearing to do something about the cancelation crisis caused by the Obamacare law, Obama passed the buck to insurers and state regulators.</p>
<p>The president said state insurance commissioners retain authority to decide which plans can be sold in their states and insurance companies &#8220;can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into 2014, and Americans whose plans have been canceled can choose to re-enroll in the same kind of plan.&#8221;</p>
<p>Except that they can&#8217;t. The Obamacare statute says they can&#8217;t and the economics of the situation won&#8217;t allow it. The legal infrastructure of the health care insurance market has been changed. Policies were canceled because they don&#8217;t subsidize all the new services that Obamacare mandates. Those policies no longer exist for a reason. Insurers can&#8217;t just push a button and bring them back into existence.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s bizarre pronouncement reflects leftists&#8217; disdain and ignorance of market processes, and the president&#8217;s determination to proceed in defiance of those processes. A locomotive going 60 miles per hour can&#8217;t stop instantly when brakes are activated. Similarly, the Obamacare juggernaut has so many moving parts spread out over such a wide area that locking up one part of the beast won&#8217;t stop it from continuing to barrel forward.</p>
<p>Continuing his lunchtime stroll through La-La Land, Obama said,</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;We’re also requiring insurers to extend current plans to inform their customers about two things. One, that protections &#8212; what protections these renewed plans don’t include.  And number two, that the marketplace offers new options with better coverage and tax credits that might help you bring down the cost.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s pure fantasy, of course, but lying, stalling, misdirecting, and stonewalling have served the Obama administration well over its first five years. Besides, extravagant healthcare subsidies begin to kick in next year, and all that free money floating around is bound to calm at least some irate consumers.</p>
<p>When consumers find out they&#8217;ve been hoodwinked, the Left is counting on them to blame the corporate world. Obama and desperate Democratic lawmakers are already blaming insurance companies for en masse cancelations, and saying insurers should let consumers keep their plans, seemingly oblivious to the fact that all this upheaval was caused by the Obamacare law.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s fanciful fix requires cooperation from insurance companies and state regulators, and so far he&#8217;s not getting it from either.</p>
<p>Health care insurers promptly slapped down Obama&#8217;s proposal and refused to accept the blame.</p>
<p>“This doesn’t change anything other than force insurers to be the political flack jackets for the administration,&#8221; <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/insurance-industry-rips-white-house-obamacare-fix">said</a> one insurance industry source. &#8220;So now when we don’t offer these policies the White House can say it’s the insurers doing this and not being flexible.”</p>
<p>&#8220;The only reason consumers are getting notices about their current coverage changing is because the ACA requires all policies to cover a broad range of benefits that go beyond what many people choose to purchase today,&#8221; said Karen Ignagni, CEO of America&#8217;s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers. Premiums have already been set for next year based on an assumption of when consumers will be transitioning to the new marketplace. If now fewer younger and healthier people choose to purchase coverage in the exchange, premiums will increase and there will be fewer choices for consumers. Additional steps must be taken to stabilize the marketplace and mitigate the adverse impact on consumers.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>State insurance regulators also threw cold water on the crazy proposal.</p>
<p>Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, a Democrat, said allowing state residents to keep their non-ACA-compliant policies would wreck his state&#8217;s health insurance exchange so the state won&#8217;t permit it. District of Columbia Insurance Commissioner William P. White, who was appointed by the city&#8217;s Democratic mayor Vincent Gray, said the proposal &#8220;undercuts the purpose of the exchanges, including the District&#8217;s D.C. Health Link, by creating exceptions that make it more difficult for them to operate.&#8221;</p>
<p>All of this chaos created by Obamacare and President Obama&#8217;s admission that his system isn&#8217;t working, vindicates the aggressive approach taken by conservatives who pushed hard to defund Obamacare before the partial shutdown of the federal government last month.</p>
<p>The Senate Conservatives Fund, which has been at the forefront of the fight, loosed a mass email after Obama&#8217;s speech yesterday, boasting that, &#8220;Ted Cruz was right. Republicans should have refused to fund Obamacare.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to the SCF,</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The president&#8217;s health care law is an unmitigated disaster and now Democrats in Washington are running for political cover. If Republicans had listened to Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), they could have won this fight and stopped Obamacare. Instead, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sabotaged the effort and now Americans are paying the price.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>The SCF points out that Congress will have another opportunity to defund Obamacare two months from now. &#8220;Obamacare funding expires January 15 and Republicans should not renew it,&#8221; the political committee says in the email. &#8220;If Democrats cause another government shutdown to protect this terrible law, Republicans should hold firm and use the showdown to push for full repeal.&#8221;</p>
<p>Although the House is expected today to take up Congressman Fred Upton&#8217;s (R-Mich.) largely symbolic legislation that would supposedly allow Americans to keep their insurance plans, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) urged repeal. &#8220;There is no way to fix this,&#8221; he said following Obama&#8217;s presser.</p>
<p>Even Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is now calling for the repeal of Obamacare. Just weeks ago McCain labeled those fighting Obamacare as &#8220;wacko birds.&#8221;</p>
<p>It should be noted that Obama&#8217;s midday press conference yesterday, which started more than a half hour late, came the day after the the administration&#8217;s latest lies about enrollment numbers were made public.</p>
<p>Leftist Greg Sargent of the <i>Washington Post</i>, ever the patient Obamacare cheerleader, eagerly conveyed the administration&#8217;s lies, claiming &#8220;[a]round 106,000 enrolled in new plans during October.&#8221; He linked to a <a href="http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2013/MarketPlaceEnrollment/EnrollmentPathv5_files/p1.png">grossly misleading flow chart</a> at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that tries to justify the make-believe enrollment figure.</p>
<p>The chart states with lawyerly precision that &#8220;106,185 have selected a Marketplace plan,&#8221; and that &#8220;396,291 Americans were determined or assessed eligible for Medicaid/CHIP.&#8221;</p>
<p>Therefore, the chart concludes, &#8220;For October 1-November 2, 502,446 (396,261 + 106,185) Americans are positioned to have health coverage in 2014 through the Marketplace, Medicaid and CHIP.&#8221; The 502,446 figure is interesting but irrelevant.</p>
<p>The indispensable Avik Roy of <i>Forbes</i> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/11/12/interactive-obamacare-enrollment-map-45865-have-selected-plans-in-19-states-7-of-total-first-year-goal/">says</a> the real enrollment figure (as of Nov. 8) was a pathetic 45,865 spread out over 19 states. That represents a laughable 0.7 percent &#8211;that&#8217;s seven-tenths of one percent&#8211; of the total first year enrollment goal of 7 million by March 15, 2014. There <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/11/12/the-obamacare-exchange-scorecard-around-100000-enrollees-and-five-million-cancellations/">have been</a> about 5 million cancellations nationwide, according to Roy.</p>
<p>Visiting <a href="http://healthcare.gov/">healthcare.gov</a> or a state exchange website, creating an an online account, applying for coverage, and choosing a government-approved exchange plan, doesn&#8217;t count as an enrollment, Roy reminds us. An insured person has to pay the initial premium to have coverage begin and for the action to count as an enrollment.</p>
<p>Unless the government meets its enrollment goal, tricking young, healthy persons into agreeing to heavily subsidize older, sicker persons, the Affordable Care Act cannot succeed, Roy writes. &#8220;Low exchange enrollment results in higher premiums for those who do enroll, as the costs of coverage and care are spread out among premium-paying enrollees.&#8221;</p>
<p>With all this news of Obamacare-created chaos descending on the nation, now is not the time to be cutting deals with pitiable Democrats.</p>
<p>Although Obamacare may already contain within itself the seeds of its eventual self-destruction, Americans who care about the future of this country have to keep the pressure on. We can&#8217;t assume this hideous program will go away on its own.</p>
<p>Conservatives have to keep pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes until they are blue in the face and ready to drop from exhaustion.</p>
<p>Now is the time to go on offense.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><strong>To watch this week’s episode of <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, which focuses on <em>When Obama Said He’s “Sorry”</em> and unravels the president’s peculiar apology about his ObamaCare lie, <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/when-obama-said-hes-sorry/">Click Here.</a></strong></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>ObamaCare&#8217;s Dirty Little Secret &#8212; on The Glazov Gang</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Nov 2013 04:00:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov Productions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Glazov Gang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama lied]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[plan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209426</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Get ready for the lines you see at the DMV.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/secret.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-209790" alt="secret" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/secret.jpg" width="300" height="300" /></a>The Glazov Gang was joined by titans <strong>Mell Flynn</strong>, a Hollywood actress and the president of the <a href="http://www.hollywoodrepublicans.com/home.htm">Hollywood Congress of Republicans,</a> <strong>Kai Chen</strong>, a former basketball star on the Chinese national team and the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/One-In-Billion-Journey-Freedom/dp/1425985025">One in a Billion</a>, and <strong>Monty Morton</strong>, a Conservative Entrepreneur and walking Encyclopedia of Economics.</p>
<p>The Gang gathered to discuss <em>ObamaCare&#8217;s Dirty Little Secret</em>. The discussion occurred in <strong>Part II</strong> and warned Americans to ready for the lines that they see at the DMV. The segment also shed light on <em>What The $17 Trillion Debt Really Means</em><em>,</em> <em></em><em>Mao&#8217;s Kitchen in Los Angeles </em>and<em> <em>Sean Penn&#8217;s Call for Ted Cruz and Tea Party Members to be Institutionalized:</em></em></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/EvWpGxlczm0" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>In <strong>Part I</strong> the Gang focused on <em>To Lie for ObamaCare</em>, shedding light on the falsehoods told by the president to force his socialist medicare plan on the American people.  The guests also dissected the catastrophe that ObamaCare will inflict on America.</p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dj3lOEvbNHM" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>To watch previous <i>Glazov Gang</i> episodes, </b><a href="http://jamieglazov.com/"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><strong>To sign up for </strong><em><b>The Glazov Gang</b></em><strong>: </strong><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><b>Click here</b></a><strong>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Conservatives Balk at Ryan Gov. Funding Plan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/another-gop-plan-for-ending-the-shutdown/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=another-gop-plan-for-ending-the-shutdown</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Oct 2013 04:35:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[house]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paul Ryan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[plan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shutdown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wall Street Journal]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=206887</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[While the president may be showing signs of cracking. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/120718_paul_ryan_westcott.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-206889" alt="120718_paul_ryan_westcott" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/120718_paul_ryan_westcott.jpg" width="296" height="223" /></a>Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/327533-ryan-offers-plan-to-end-standoff">come up</a> with a two-step plan aimed at lifting the debt ceiling, and then opening the government long enough to pass meaningful entitlement reforms. In a <i>Wall Street Journal</i> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303442004579123943669167898.html">op-ed</a> published Tuesday, the Chairman of the House Budget Committee insisted that &#8220;both sides should agree to common-sense reforms of the country&#8217;s entitlement programs and tax code.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ryan formally presented his idea at a meeting Wednesday afternoon with the conservative Republican Study Committee. He presented a plan that was ostensibly more detailed than what he outlined in the <i>Journal, </i>but those are the only details currently available. In his op-ed, Ryan said he believed <i>&#8220;</i>most of us agree that gradual, structural reforms are better than sudden, arbitrary cuts.&#8221;</p>
<p>He went on to explain why such reforms are vital, noting that Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates for spending over the next 10 years reveal how much more important it is to get mandatory spending under control than discretionary spending. Discretionary spending, which consists of everything other than debt service and entitlement programs, will increase by $202 billion, or roughly 17 percent over the next decade. By contrast, mandatory spending, which consists mostly of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security funding will skyrocket by an additional $1.6 trillion or roughly 79 percent.</p>
<p>Ryan notes that it is not impossible to reach a bipartisan consensus on an entitlement program, citing the historical <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2009/04/02/bipartisan-reagan-oneill-social-security-deal-in-1983-showed-it-can-be-done">agreement</a> reached in 1983. Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democrat House Speaker Tip O&#8217;Neill came up with a plan to save Social Security after the plan&#8217;s trustees warned that it was headed for bankruptcy. By raising the payroll tax, phasing in an increase in the retirement age from 65 to 67, requiring government employees to contribute to the system, and delaying a cost of living increase for six months, the agreement extended the fund&#8217;s solvency for an additional two generations.</p>
<p>According to Ryan, these changes didn&#8217;t save any money for the first five years. But after that, the savings were significant, reaching $100 billion through 2012, and as much as $4.6 trillion over the next 75 years.</p>
<p>Ryan&#8217;s &#8220;conversation starter&#8221; for the current impasse includes asking wealthier Americans to pay higher premiums for Medicare, reforming Medigap plans by incentivizing efficiency and reducing costs, and having federal employees make greater contributions to their own retirement packages.</p>
<p>He envisions additional funding for programs coming from &#8220;pro-growth&#8221; reforms &#8220;that put people back to work.&#8221; These include the development of America&#8217;s &#8220;vast energy reserves,&#8221; and bipartisan tax code reform based on efforts undertaken by Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT). As of September, the Camp–Baucus plan has apparently reached <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-09/business/41901672_1_tax-overhaul-tax-code-camp">some consensus</a> with regard to corporate tax reform. But the two chairmen of the Congressional tax-writing committees both say that such reform will not proceed unless they can build a consensus for reframing tax laws that affect individual Americans.</p>
<p>Ryan explains his plan isn&#8217;t a &#8220;grand bargain,&#8221; insisting that Congress needs to undertake a &#8220;complete rethinking of government&#8217;s approach to helping the most vulnerable, and a complete rethinking of government&#8217;s approach to health care.&#8221; But for now, he believes it is more important to open the government, pay our bills, and find a way to make sure we can pay them in the future. &#8220;All it takes is leadership—and for the president to come to the table,&#8221; Ryan concludes.</p>
<p>Conspicuously missing from Ryan&#8217;s plan is any mention of the healthcare bill. That omission didn&#8217;t sit well with several Republicans. Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham was<a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/327469-conservative-leader-paul-ryans-shutdown-offer-off-target"> intransigent.</a> &#8220;The only acceptable way out of this is some sort of deal that funds the federal government without funding ObamaCare,&#8221; he insisted. Amanda Carpenter, the senior communications adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/conservatives-bash-paul-ryans-shutdown-op-ed-missing-one-important-word/">echoed</a> that sentiment. &#8220;There is one big word missing from this op-ed. It starts with an O and ends with BAMACARE,&#8221; she tweeted. Conservative <i>New York Times</i> columnist Ross Douthat had a far more pertinent tweet, which he addressed to National Review editor Robert Costa. &#8220;Who is Paul Ryan speaking for in his WSJ op-ed?&#8221; he wondered.</p>
<p>Apparently it wasn&#8217;t those who attended the Republican Study Committee meeting, many of whom seemed less than thrilled by Ryan&#8217;s ideas. “Somebody needs to convince me why we need to raise the debt ceiling,” said Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL).  “This would not be without some agreement already reached,” said Rep. John Fleming (R-LA), explaining that Ryan&#8217;s plan to concede a short-term increase in the debt ceiling would not be &#8220;clean.&#8221; “It would only give us time to go through the order necessary to get the agreed-upon goals through a conference committee.” Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) said that he and his colleagues &#8220;aren’t going to solve the long-term challenges in a week.” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), who revealed that Ryan had defended downplaying ObamaCare at the meeting, was apparently put off as well. “When you’re talking about continuing to have the largest deficits in our history, how could you not talk about the biggest deficit driver that we have ever had?” he wondered.</p>
<p>Fortunately, there were some revelations about the healthcare plan that emerged yesterday. The privacy policy included the Maryland Health Connection (MHC), the state&#8217;s ObamaCare marketplace was <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-marketplace-personal-data-can-be-used-law-enforcement-and-audit-activities_762237.html">deeply troubling</a>. While it promised never to sell one&#8217;s health information to others, and that personal information will only be used to carry out MHC functions, it revealed that &#8220;we may share information provided in your application with the appropriate authorities for law enforcement and audit activities.&#8221; The privacy statement further noted that if one communicated with one&#8217;s insurance carrier by email, that communication &#8220;may become a public record&#8230;in accordance with Maryland’s Public Information Act.&#8221;</p>
<p>That may be the MHC&#8217;s definition of privacy, but one suspects the possibility of having one’s health records examined by government officials, or used as part of an IRS audit, might have Marylanders believing otherwise.</p>
<p>In Illinois, residents were <a href="http://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/local/navigators-raise-identity-theft-risk/article_e528f016-2f09-11e3-847a-001a4bcf6878.html">warned</a> by the State&#8217;s Department of Insurance that fraud and identity theft could become a problem due to the emergence of phony healthcare navigators. “We have been made aware that scams are possible,” said Kimberly Parker, a Department of Insurance spokesperson. “If someone is at your door, err on the side of caution.” They also warned people not to give out personal information via “unsolicited telephone calls of any kind.”</p>
<p>Such efforts may be quixotic at best. In 2012, there were 13,000 identity thefts in Illinois, 40 percent of which involved “government documents or benefits fraud.”</p>
<p>Since Americans are being forced to buy insurance at these marketplaces, that number could increase exponentially.</p>
<p>And, as has been the case since its launch nine days ago, the online rollout of ObamaCare continues to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/many-remain-locked-out-of-federal-health-care-web-site/2013/10/08/be8e71e6-302c-11e3-bbed-a8a60c601153_story.html">frustrate</a> Americans. Millions are attempting to navigate a poorly designed, prematurely introduced system aimed at signing up people for insurance that even ObamaCare supporters have <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_24248486/obamacares-winners-and-losers-bay-area">discovered</a> could be far more expensive that advertised. Californian Cindy Vinson, whose new individual insurance policy will cost an additional $1800, epitomized the mindset of many of those supporters. &#8220;Of course, I want people to have health care,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I just didn&#8217;t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.&#8221;</p>
<p>What every American is currently paying for is the unseemly intransigence of a president who steadfastly refuses to negotiate anything. On Tuesday, Obama <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/8/obama-calls-boehner-still-refuses-negotiate/">called</a> House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to reiterate his refusal to bargain. The same day he <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/live-stream-president-obama-holds-news-conference-government-shutdown-article-1.1479547">contended</a> that he’s fighting the budget battle because “we can’t make extortion routine as part of our democracy.” At a White House press conference, he <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2013-10-08-18-24-20">upped</a> the ante. &#8220;The greatest nation on earth shouldn&#8217;t have to get permission from a few irresponsible members of Congress every couple months just to keep our government open or to prevent an economic catastrophe,&#8221; he contended. Yesterday, he reportedly <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/government-shutdown-house-democrats-white-house-meeting-98047.html">pushed</a> the envelope one more time, telling House Democrats he would negotiate with Republicans but “not with a gun at my head.”</p>
<p>Thus, Republicans are expected to negotiate with a president who has characterized them as irresponsible, gun-toting extortionists determined to bring the nation to economic catastrophe. That’s quite the “ice-breaker.”</p>
<p>Perhaps the nation is slowly catching on. While Republicans still get the most of the blame for the shutdown&#8211;a Washington Post/ABC News <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/10/07/republican-disapproval-grows-in-budget-battle-post-abc-poll-finds/">poll</a> showed 70 percent of Americans disapprove of the GOP&#8217;s handling of budget negotiations, compared to 61 percent for Democrats&#8211;the president is also getting a thumbs down from 51 percent of Americans. Moreover, his approval rating has <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/09/ap-poll-obama-at-37-approval/">sunk</a> to 37 percent, and 52 percent of Americans said the president isn&#8217;t doing enough to cooperate with Republicans in ending the shutdown.</p>
<p>Perhaps Obama is catching on. Late Wednesday, he <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/10/09/obama-plans-meet-with-gop-lawmakers-shutdown/myxCeKK0y0pjSGmL34DAVJ/story.html">invited</a> Republicans to White House meeting on Thursday. &#8220;It is our hope that this will be a constructive meeting and that the president finally recognizes Americans expect their leaders to be able to sit down and resolve their differences,’’ said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner. Maybe it will be, but the odds aren’t good. Stay tuned.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Amateur’s War</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-amateurs-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-amateurs-war</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 04:40:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203618</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama has an impressive war machine but not the understanding of how to use it.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ok.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203654" alt="ok" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ok-450x272.jpg" width="315" height="190" /></a>Syria would be Obama’s fourth war, but it might as well be his first war. The amateur has an impressive war machine that can level entire countries, but not the understanding of how to use it.</p>
<p>Obama has reportedly flipped through 50 war plans for Syria, but he hasn’t been able to provide one sensible reason why the attack should happen. His rationalizations and justifications never stop shifting. If you don’t like one excuse, wait a bit and another one will come along.</p>
<p>In his weekly address, Obama said that military action was necessary to protect against the national security threat of chemical weapons falling “into the hands of terrorist groups who wish to do us harm.”</p>
<p>This explanation contradicted his actual plan of attacking Syrian military installations thereby helping the Syrian terrorists who wish to do us harm. The surest way to see chemical weapons fall into the hands of terrorists is by bombing Assad.</p>
<p>If Obama were really worried about national security, he would be more concerned about Al Qaeda’s nerve gas manufacturing efforts in Iraq and Assad’s chemical weapons being captured by its Al Nusra Front affiliate.</p>
<p>Obama’s plan for Syria is really a maze of excuses riven with contradictions.</p>
<p>It’s a military solution to a problem that he insists can only have a diplomatic solution. It’s a unilateral attack launched by two men who built their recent political reputations on opposing unilateralism. And Obama is bringing it to Congress for approval as a symbolic gesture while making it clear that he will not be bound by a negative decision.</p>
<p>The man who advocated turning a blind eye to Sudan and Rwanda during his campaign, who emerged into the spotlight opposing the removal of Saddam Hussein, suddenly insists that we cannot turn a blind eye to Syria…after having turned a blind eye to it for years.</p>
<p>Even if 1,429 Syrians did die in the chemical attack, that’s only 1.5 percent of the total deaths in the war. By the end of 2011, the UN listed 5,000 dead in Syria. Obama was willing to turn a blind eye to those 5,000, and the 100,000 that followed, but not to these 1,429.</p>
<p>And like so much else, the chemical attack that Obama is using to justify the strikes is a question mark.</p>
<p>UK intelligence claims 350 dead. French intelligence puts it at 281. Doctors Without Borders lists only 355. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights lists 502 dead.  The one thing these estimates have in common is that they are far below Kerry’s 1,429.</p>
<p>Like these numbers, the facts and excuses fluctuate wildly. Obama promises Americans a light attack to deter Assad, but tells senators that it will lead to regime change. Either Obama is lying or he can’t make up his mind.</p>
<p>The men and women around Obama have proven to be equally amateurish and incompetent.</p>
<p>Samantha Power, his UN ambassador, wasted time trying to convince Iran to reject Assad over his use of chemical weapons, apparently unaware that Iran was developing nuclear weapons to be used on Israel.</p>
<p>Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told the House Committee that the attacks would cost tens of millions of dollars. Considering that Tomahawk cruise missiles cost $1.5 million each, not to mention the cost of warship deployments and operations, a more realistic figure would be in the hundreds of millions.</p>
<p>White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough admitted that while there was no “beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence,” the videos of the attacks led him to a “common sense” conclusion that Assad was responsible. Apparently we start wars now based not on evidence, but on common sense conclusions.</p>
<p>Secretary of State John Kerry had told Congress that there was indeed proof beyond a reasonable doubt only to be contradicted by the Chief of Staff. But Kerry didn’t need to be contradicted by McDonough because he was too busy contradicting himself, telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he wanted the option of putting boots on the ground before denying it, telling Congressmen that this was a Munich moment but promising “unbelievably small” strikes.</p>
<p>Kerry, who began his entry into international politics with illegal negotiations with the Viet Cong and began his Senate career with unsolicited negotiations with the Sandinistas, had spent his career practicing to become a diplomatic disaster.</p>
<p>The amateurish performance culminated with Kerry suggesting that Assad could avoid a war by giving up his chemical weapons. Russia signed on to the proposal. A State Department spokesman explained that Kerry hadn’t really meant it. Obama then announced that he was ordering Kerry to follow through on the proposal that he hadn’t meant seriously. It was a comedy of errors with countless lives at stake.</p>
<p>Senator McCain called Kerry’s efforts “unbelievably unhelpful.” The Washington Post described him as “dangerously bad.”</p>
<p>General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the only professional on the team, who had warned earlier, “Once we take action, we should be prepared for what comes next. Deeper involvement is hard to avoid,” appeared to sum up the inchoate state of affairs by replying to the question &#8220;What is it you&#8217;re seeking?&#8221; with &#8220;I can&#8217;t answer that, what we&#8217;re seeking.&#8221;</p>
<p>If the highest ranking military officer can’t answer that question about Syria, who can?</p>
<p>After months of trying, no one in the administration can explain what they hope to achieve by bombing Syria. They hint at regime change and then rule it out. They promise that it will be unbelievably small and that it will change the momentum of the war. They talk about keeping weapons out of the hands of terrorists, but follow a course that will put chemical weapons into the hands of terrorists.</p>
<p>Attacking Syria is bad policy. Attacking Syria without having a plan isn’t even a policy. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.</p>
<p>And it’s Obama’s disaster.</p>
<p>Conservatives who urge support for Obama’s plan to patriotically protect his credibility and leadership, are suffering from misplaced priorities. Not only are these qualities as absent as they have ever been, but this country does not send men into battle to protect incompetent politicians who are too busy playing Hamlet to act the part of commander-in-chief.</p>
<p>&#8220;The United States should never go to war because it wants to; the United States should go to war because we have to,&#8221; John Kerry said during his debate with George W. Bush. Those are not bad words.</p>
<p>We don’t fight wars because we can, because France wants us to or because not dropping the bombs will undermine the standing of an elected official.</p>
<p>War is serious business. It’s too important to be left to amateurs.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Exposed: Morsi’s ‘Brotherhoodization’ Plan for Egypt</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/exposed-morsis-brotherhoodization-plan-for-egypt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=exposed-morsis-brotherhoodization-plan-for-egypt</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:43:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=184588</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Government to be cleansed of thousands of officials. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/exposed-morsis-brotherhoodization-plan-for-egypt/mohammed-morsi-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-184743"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-184743" title="Mohammed Morsi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/morsi151-450x301.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="181" /></a>The Muslim Brotherhood’s former General Guide, Mahdi Akef, the organization’s supreme leader from 2004-2010, declared during an interview published yesterday by Kuwait’s well-known newspaper, <a href="http://www.aljarida.com/news/index/2012594681/%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%83%D9%81-%D9%84%D9%80-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A9%E2%80%A2--%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%B3%D9%8A-%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%82%D9%8D-%D8%B1%D8%BA%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%86%D9%81-%D9%88%D9%84%D8%A7-%D9%86%D9%87%D8%B6%D8%A9-%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%86-%C2%AB%D8%A3%D8%AE%D9%88%D9%86%D8%A9%C2%BB" target="_blank"><em>Al Jarida</em></a>, that the “Brotherhoodization” of Egypt’s state organs—which would see the transformation of Egypt into the image of the Muslim Brotherhood—is President Muhammad Morsi’s grand plan for the nation.</p>
<p>Akef was referring to Morsi’s electoral program, also known as his “Nahda [or Renaissance] Project,” which, as it appears on <a href="http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=29932">the website</a> of the Muslim Brotherhood, says nothing about overrunning Egypt’s state institutions with Brotherhood members, but rather speaks glowingly of freedom, equality, and pluralism.  Yet, according to <em>Al Jarida</em>, Akef declared that “there is no Nahda without the Brotherhoodization of Egypt’s state organs.”</p>
<p>Akef further indicated the determination of Morsi’s resolve by saying that, “despite the lack of cooperation from some state institutions and despite his being exposed to a fierce attack from the media and judiciary, he [Morsi] remains in office.”</p>
<p>During the same <em>Al Jarida</em> interview, Akef—who when once pressured to talk more about Egypt’s interests and less about Islam’s declared “<a href="http://www.alwatanvoice.com/arabic/news/2006/04/12/42211.html">the hell with Egypt</a>”—further exposed the totalitarian and supremacist nature of the Muslim Brotherhood mentality.  For example, concerning Egyptian surgeon-turned-satirist, Bassem Youssef—who has been targeted by Morsi’s government for his jabs at the Muslim Brotherhood—Akef warned that the comedian “is transgressing against his masters.”</p>
<p>Needless to say, this assertion has ruffled some feathers among Egyptians.  As secular TV host <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=QflmjUupBYk">Mahmoud Sa‘ad</a> said in mockery, “Who, exactly, are our masters, the Muslim Brotherhood?  They have to clarify, so we can kiss their hands and their feet when we meet them, since they’re our masters.”</p>
<p>Egyptian talk show host Sa‘ad also read Akef’s words as documented in Kuwait’s <em>Al Jarida</em>, including that approximately 3,000 Egyptian officials are on their way to being removed by Morsi and replaced by Brotherhood members, as part of the “Brotherhoodization” process. Visibly amazed at this assertion, Sa‘ad said “Did you hear that?  Are you paying attention? No one has even denied this report as false.  Of course, they’ll deny it now, since I read it on the air, but as of this moment, this report is still up on the Kuwaiti paper’s website.”</p>
<p>True to Sa‘ad’s prediction, Akef <a href="http://www.masrawy.com/news/Egypt/Politics/2013/April/3/5577249.aspx">just responded</a> hours ago saying he never said any such thing, that “the entire interview is lies, all lies.” Yet, as of this writing, Kuwait’s <em>Al Jarida</em> has not taken down the interview from its website, not to mention I have the PDF of the actual newspaper, a snapshot of which also appears on several prominent Arabic websites including <a href="http://gate.ahram.org.eg/News/329252.aspx">Gate Ahram</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Israel&#8217;s Role and the Way Forward</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/aaron-shuster/israels-role-and-the-way-forward/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israels-role-and-the-way-forward</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Dec 2012 04:34:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Aaron Shuster]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[anti-Semitim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[change foreign policy]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=168270</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Isn't Israel tired of routinely returning to the world stage for yet another beating?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/aaron-shuster/israels-role-and-the-way-forward/youth-of-israel/" rel="attachment wp-att-168276"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-168276" title="youth-of-Israel" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/youth-of-Israel.jpg" alt="" width="294" height="196" /></a>When I was a younger man, my father told me a joke that has always stuck with me. It went something like this: On his knees, the Masochist looks up at the Sadist and pleads, “Hit me, hit me!” Coolly, the Sadist looks down at the Masochist and responds with relish, “Nooooo.”</p>
<p>As I matured, I began to see the nuance and depth of this joke. There is something comically brilliant in its reversal of expectation in the Sadist’s sheer enjoyment of withholding the beating that the Masochist so deeply craves. More importantly, it captures the interdependent relationship between Masochist and Sadist. They need one another to fulfill their roles just as Vladimir needs Estragon and vice versa as they perpetually wait for the ever absent Godot.</p>
<p>In recent years, this joke has begun to resonate even more strongly as I began to see Israel willfully playing the role of Masochist to the world’s Sadist. Is there not some aspect of Israeli foreign policy that perversely enjoys suffering? Over and over again, Israel returns to the world stage for yet another beating, another U.N. condemnation, another soul ripping flagellation at the hands of its enemies. The only thing is that this is no joke. This is a nightmare come to life.</p>
<p>What does Israel do in response to these condemnations? After weakly protesting in the form of yet another eloquent speech, it then returns to the stage for yet another beating, “Please sire, hit me again.” Like the Rabbi of Rome summoned by the Pope in medieval times for the ceremonial slap at Easter, Israel dutifully complies to play the role of “Kike” on the world stage.  After all, the only thing that unites the United Nations of the world is their blind hatred of Jews. The world needs their Emmanuel Goldstein aka Israel which brings the nations of the world together in a fury of unmitigated hatred.</p>
<p>It is not out of some great love and respect of Arabs that the world unites in an unprecedented action of voting to create a spurious, Palestinian “abomi-nation.”  Rather, it is out of a vehement hatred of Jews . Only eight nations other than Israel had the resolve and moral courage to vote against it. The creation of a “Palestinian” state is simply a method to tighten the noose around Israel’s neck and bring it a step closer to annihilation. It does not matter that the Arabs signed the Oslo Agreement which specifically negates such an action. In the world of Jew hatred, however, there is only one unwritten law: Everything is legal when it comes to bringing about the extinction of the Jews.</p>
<p>The Jew hating nations of the world have learned their lessons well from their Nazi mentors. You see, the Nazis perfected the use of law to legitimize genocide. The Nazis were expert at writing law to first ostracize and then exterminate their Jewish victims. They comprehended that the malleable legal system can be used to justify anything.  In that iniquitous tradition, the United Nations use that ignoble institution to bludgeon Israel time and time again. The creation of a spurious “Palestinian State” is merely a legalized form of Judea-cide, another nail in the coffin of Israel and Judaism.  Is it any wonder that Germany, unable to truly shake off its Nazi past, “abstained” in the vote?  I suppose they just can’t wait to see the Jewish question answered by their old Islamic allies.  Apparently, in Deutschland, old habits die hard.</p>
<p>Certainly, after years of unrelenting international Jew hatred, an unending war with their Arab neighbors, and the recent rise of the Islamic juggernaut of unprecedented immigration which is crushing an effete Europe, Israel finds itself more isolated than ever. It confronts an international malevolent behemoth of unmitigated Jew hatred. However, there is a way to defeat this beast and emerge victorious.   To do this one must make vital changes in both foreign and domestic policy.  Naturally, it does not hurt to have the tenacity of will to achieve it.</p>
<p>The first step involves changing one’s behavior and actions. You cannot keep acting the same way and expect different results.  If you want to change something, you first have to change yourself.   As in a Hollywood film, the protagonist’s actions define his character.  Or, to put it more simply, you are what you do.</p>
<p>What is Israel’s first action? How does it redefine its new character, its new persona? How does it announce itself anew to the vile and corrupt world? The answer is to be found in the past, the ultimate guide, The Torah. When the shepherd, David, hears that King Saul will reward his daughter’s hand in matrimony to any man brave enough to confront Goliath, he responds, &#8220;Would not any Jew destroy this Goliath, not for the sake of riches or for the hand of the king&#8217;s daughter, but simply to defend and sanctify God&#8217;s name and the pride of His people, which this arrogant villain dares to defile?&#8221;</p>
<p>David, the shepherd steps forward not for reward, but with the understanding that “God will protect me when I go to save the dignity and fate of my people, in a fight with a vicious heathen who dared profane God&#8217;s holy name!&#8221; How many times must the world profane God’s name, Jewish pride, Jewish lives, before Israel responds in kind?</p>
<p>After years of abuse, Israel acts not like a proud shepherd boy serving God and defending his people, but more like a victim of spousal abuse loyally serving a malicious husband.  Israel beats its breast and complains about how the world treats it and yet always comes back for more punishment.  No longer does Israel act out of pride, but out of shame. Like an oppressed <em>shtetl</em> Jew, Israel allows the most inhuman abuses to be heaped upon it without any serious repercussions.</p>
<p>So how does Israel change its role in the world? How does it move from being the world’s whipping boy to a King David? The very first step is for Israel to leave the international house of ill-repute, the United Nations, and withdraw its membership.  This first step will reverberate around the world and make all the difference.  It will be the first move to redefine itself as a leader of freedom and liberty and achieving the ends it most desires: peace, security and prosperity.</p>
<p><strong>Aaron Shuster is a writer/producer/director residing in Los Angeles whose credits include the hit film,<em> The Bank Job.  </em>He is a scholar of Middle Eastern politics and writes on foreign and domestic political issues.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Art Laffer Introduces Obama to Econ 101</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/art-laffer-introduces-obama-to-econ-101/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=art-laffer-introduces-obama-to-econ-101</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Oct 2012 04:15:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Debunking the attacks against Romney-Ryan tax reform. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Dr. Art Laffer, economic theorist and former economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, breaks down the lies being leveled against the Romney-Ryan tax reform proposals.</strong></p>
<p><iframe width="610" height="343" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jGgpbPSexTM?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The New Korean War</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/stephenbrown/the-new-korean-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-new-korean-war</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 26 May 2010 04:27:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stephen Brown]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Kim Jong-il puts his tyranny's armed forces on war footing.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em> </em></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/new.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-61140" title="new" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/new.gif" alt="" width="375" height="464" /></a></p>
<p>President Obama may soon discover his  predecessor, George Bush, was more than correct in designating  North  Korea an “Axis of Evil”  state.</p>
<p>As the  United  States announced on Monday it would conduct joint  naval exercises with the South Korean navy in response to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_sinking" target="_blank">sinking of a South  Korean warship</a> two months ago, North  Korea, the nation deemed responsible for the  disaster that cost 46 lives, raised tensions by putting its military forces on a  war footing.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LE26Dg01.html" target="_blank">Asia Times</a></em> reported yesterday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, in a military  broadcast, placed his million plus armed forces on “combat readiness,” causing  concern worldwide about North Korean intentions as well as a drop in major stock  markets.</p>
<p>“We  do not hope for war but if South Korea, with the United States and Japan on its  back, tries to attack us, Kim Jong-il has ordered us to finish the task of  unification left undone during the…(Korean) war (in 1953),” the military  broadcast stated.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LE26Dg01.html" target="_blank">North Korea, of course, denies</a> that it sank the South Korean corvette, <em>Cheonan</em>, on March 26, but the evidence  states otherwise. An international commission made up of experts from  Australia,  America and  Sweden investigated the sinking and  concluded North  Korea was guilty of the atrocity after finding North  Korean torpedo parts in the wreckage raised from the sea bottom.</p>
<p>“The  evidence is quite compelling,” said Ban Ki-moon, United Nations secretary  general. “There is no controversy.”</p>
<p>North  Korea also has a long history of committing  terrorist acts against South  Korea. In 1983, North Korean agents bombed a South  Korean delegation in Burma, killing several members. In 1987,  North  Korea was also blamed for blowing up a South Korean  airliner in flight. In another naval incident in 2002, four South Korean sailors  were killed in an exchange of gunfire with North Korean patrol boats.</p>
<p>Besides  joint naval exercises with the United  States, the South Korean government has responded  with punitive measures. All trade with  North  Korea will be cut off as well as access to shipping  lanes through South Korean waters that North Korean ships use to shorten voyages  to China.</p>
<p>South  Korea will also again name  North  Korea as its “principal enemy”, a designation  dropped in 2004 during a warming of relations. According to a <em><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/world/asia/26korea.html?hp" target="_blank">New York  Times story</a></em>, North Korea was  first named a “principal enemy” in 1994 after threatening “to turn Seoul into a  ‘sea of fire’ ” during the crisis over its nuclear weapons program.” After the  <em>Cheonan</em> incident, Kim Jong-il has  threatened South  Korea with “all-out war” if sanctions are applied.</p>
<p>The  world is now waiting to see whether Kim Jong-il will actually carry out his  threat to engulf the two countries in war or whether he is simply staging a  tantrum to extort aid from Western countries as he has done in the past.</p>
<p>Although the two  Koreas are still technically at war,  outwardly, the war scenario appears the most unlikely one. Both North and  South  Korea know the latter is not going to initiate any  military action against the North over the <em>Cheonan</em> incident. As columnist Donald  Kirk states, South  Korea is doing so well economically, possessing one  of the world’s fastest growing economies, it does not want to risk its  hard-earned prosperity and high living standards in a destructive war. Kirk and  other military analysts have pointed out a further reason for  South  Korea’s avoiding war over North Korean provocations  like the <em>Cheonan</em>:  Seoul would bear the brunt of any North  Korean attack due to its location close to the North Korean border.</p>
<p>“The North  still has thousands of artillery pieces within range of metropolitan Seoul and  the nearby port of Inchon as well as missiles with the range to reach anywhere  in the South, and nobody in South Korea really wants to challenge that,”  <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LD29Ae01.html" target="_blank">Kirk writes</a>.</p>
<p>For  North  Korea’s part, war also does not appear to be an  option. Its army is in a very dilapidated condition. Years of sanctions and a  ramshackle economy have left the North Korean armed forces with no money for  training, maintenance or for purchasing new equipment.  North  Korea’s biggest military threat is its 60,000  commando troops, many of whom have been moved close to the border. In case of  war, it is thought the North Koreans’ plan, due to their army’s movement  limitations, would be to occupy Seoul and then seek a  ceasefire.</p>
<p>Analysts, like the military news publication <em><a href="http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/South-Korea-Plans-To-Invade-The-North-6-26-2009.asp" target="_blank">Strategy  Page</a>,</em> state that the modern, well-equipped South Korean army, which  produces many of its own weapons and is supported by a strong economy, has a  plan to throw back such an invasion and then move into the North. Such a plan to  cross the border would also be implemented if the North Korean state ever  collapsed. American forces in South Korea, which numbered 42,000 before 9/11,  now stand at about 30,000 and would come under South Korean command in case of a  conflict.</p>
<p>But  common sense may play no part in a Stalinist dictatorship’s decision to go to  war, especially one struggling to survive. Reports have been coming out of  North  Korea that the people are again facing starvation  like in the 1990s when an estimated two million died. A poor harvest this year,  the failure of a currency reform scheme last year and the repressing of private  farmer’s markets have again left the long-suffering North Koreans destitute.</p>
<p>North  Korea also cannot look to  China, its main ally, for help.  China, like other countries, has refused  food aid as long as North  Korea refuses to give up its nuclear weapons  program. Not wishing to support an economic cripple,  China also vainly wanted  North  Korea to adopt free market reforms and become  self-sufficient like it did. Like South  Korea, China fears a North Korean collapse and  the millions of hungry Korean refugees that would flood over its border seeking  food.</p>
<p>Unlike in the 1990s though, North Korean citizens are  reported to be more restless regarding their cruel, state-sponsored fate. The  underground black market is reported as thriving, indicating a disregard for the  government, as the people are becoming more aware of what is happening outside  their country, especially on the North Korean-Chinese border, where smuggling  and Chinese cell phones, although illegal, have connected North Koreans with the  modern world.</p>
<p>To  block this unrest from becoming a popular uprising and detract people’s  attention from their misery, the North Korean government may do what the  Argentinean military junta did in 1982 when faced with a similar disastrous  economic situation and restless population: launch a military adventure. And  with the 60<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the start of the Korean War next month,  Kim Jong-il may see that as a sign to “finish the task” of reuniting the Koreas,  especially while his government still controls the population.</p>
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		<title>Drill, Maybe, Drill</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/drill-maybe-drill/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=drill-maybe-drill</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Apr 2010 04:09:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Obama gives the green light to offshore drilling, but does it go far enough?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/oil-rig-evelyn-patrick.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-56999" title="oil-rig-evelyn-patrick" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/oil-rig-evelyn-patrick.jpg" alt="" width="420" height="315" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The Obama administration opened up some of the nation’s shores to offshore drilling on Wednesday, a move that seemed more political than practical. Ironically, environmentalists and conservatives inadvertently found common ground when criticizing the plan: it won’t do all that much to create true energy independence. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell praised the move, but qualified his support by noting that it was &#8220;a small one that leaves enormous amounts of American energy off limits.” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune felt much the same way, for different reasons of course, saying that &#8220;drilling our coasts will [do] nothing to lower gas prices or create energy independence.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama opened up offshore drilling along much of the Atlantic coast and in the Cook Inlet in Alaska. The drilling ban remains in place along the Pacific coast and most of Alaska, while more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico remains under study. Accordingly, this is merely a partial measure, as both McConnell and Brune imply. But, Brune’s assertion that more drilling will do nothing to lower gas prices is likely incorrect. Gas and oil prices depend in large part on the futures market and the prospect of more supply down the road, even a little more, will help to depress futures prices. Back in 2008, when gasoline prices were over four dollars per gallon, president Bush moved to open up offshore drilling. That announcement had the desired effect. Gasoline prices dropped, not because there was an immediate increase in supply, but because the market responded to the prospect of increased supplies down the road.</p>
<p>It’s worth remembering how the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/02/campaign.wrap/">Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi responded</a> when Bush pushed for more offshore drilling in 2008:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The president has failed in his economic policy, and now he wants to say, &#8216;but for drilling in protected areas offshore, our economy would be thriving and the price of gas would be lower.&#8217; That hoax is unworthy of the serious debate we must have to relieve the pain of consumers at the pump and to promote energy independence.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Did Speaker Pelosi complain about Obama’s drilling initiative in similar terms, or at all? You don’t need Google to answer that question. Yet, the last sentence in Pelosi’s 2008 attack still largely applies, for if Obama’s plan isn’t actually a hoax, it doesn’t go nearly far enough towards fulfilling the worthy goal of energy independence. This move feels like a bargaining chip, but – having already flipped it onto the table – it’s hard to see how this ploy will help the administration. Ideally, Obama would like to pass a comprehensive energy bill that includes cap and trade, or some other form of greenhouse gas reduction measures. Now that he has “given in” on offshore drilling, does the president expect Republican support for an energy bill in return? That seems an unlikely scenario, given how unpopular greenhouse gas reduction measures are among the public and the GOP.</p>
<p>Environmental groups are upset with the president over his latest move, but their anger will pass, especially with new motor vehicle fleet fuel efficiency standards going into effect and as Obama pushes cap and trade back into the spotlight. Both moves will go a long way to soothing hurt feelings. Still, it was amusing to hear the rhetoric from the environmental crowd after the president relaxed the offshore drilling ban. &#8220;Short of sending Sarah Palin back to Alaska to personally club polar bears to death, the Obama administration could not have come up with a more efficient extinction plan for the polar bear,&#8221; <a href="http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/04/01/general-us-obama-drilling_7480716.html?boxes=Homepagebusinessnews">Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity complained</a>.</p>
<p>The <em>Christian Science Monitor</em> had to reach back <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2010/0401/Obama-and-offshore-drilling-a-crude-move">more than forty years</a> to find an environmental incident it could use to smear offshore drilling: “In 1969, off Santa   Barbara, Calif., 3 million gallons of crude oil bubbled up from the seabed after a blowout on an oil-drilling platform,” the <em>Monitor</em> said in an April 1 editorial. The fact that they had to dig that deeply in the archives to find a significant incident is a testament to how much drilling technology has evolved. In fact, some scientific data indicates that <em>not drilling</em> hurts the environment more than doing so. A <a href="http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=412">1999 study by the University of California, Santa Barbara</a> concluded that offshore drilling reduces oil seepage on the ocean floor, by reducing pressure on undersea petroleum reservoirs.</p>
<p>If the president wants to increase domestic energy production with more than just a token gesture, there’s a number of substantive moves that he could make, but the sorts of policies that would markedly boost homegrown energy in the long run are precisely the sorts of policies that would send the green faction of his base screaming over the edge of sanity in righteous horror and indignation, rather than seeing them merely grumble about a relatively minor change in policy that will be forgotten in a week or two.</p>
<p>If Obama really wanted to boost domestic energy production and give the economy a shot in the arm, opening up ANWR would be a nice start. Tapping the vast petroleum reserves locked away under federal lands in the west would be another fine move, as would drilling along the Pacific coast, the Gulf of Mexico and further into Alaskan enclaves. We all know that none of this is going to happen. Still, if the president isn’t going to go “all in” as far as domestic gas and oil production is concerned, I suppose we must be grateful that he tossed a chip into the pot, even if it’s one that is relatively unimportant to him.</p>
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		<title>The Great Healthcare Robbery</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/the-great-healthcare-robbery/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-great-healthcare-robbery</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:03:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Obama and the Democratic Congress have lied every step of the way to pass socialized medicine. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/obama-reid-pelosi.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-53215" title="obama-reid-pelosi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/obama-reid-pelosi.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="301" /></a></p>
<p>&#8220;No one has talked about reconciliation,&#8221; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared during last week’s health care summit. It was a lie shocking in its boldness.</p>
<p>Live on national television, the Democrats’ leader in the U.S. Senate told the nation that not a single person had discussed even the possibility of using the Senate’s budget reconciliation rules, which require a simple majority vote instead of 60, as needed under regular Senate rules, to pass President Obama’s health care reform plan. Yet, a week before, Reid himself had said publicly that reconciliation was an option for passing the plan, <em>Politico.com</em> reported. Of the Senate’s 59 Democrats, 23 had already signed a letter urging the president to pass the plan via reconciliation by the time Reid said &#8220;no one&#8221; was even talking about it. And of course, a week later, President Obama, as expected, urged Democrats to pass the bill through the reconciliation process if necessary.</p>
<p>In other words, the Democratic Party leadership in Washington hadn’t just talked about reconciliation. It was central to their strategy.</p>
<p>Reid’s blatant revisionism perfectly encapsulates the Democratic leadership’s plan for passing legislation to completely remake health care in the United   States. Simply put, the plan is this: Lie. Thus, President Obama and the leadership in Congress have lied about nearly everything, from start to finish. Obama said that if you have health insurance you like, you’ll absolutely get to keep it under his plan. That was a lie. As he eventually acknowledged, millions of Americans will lose their existing coverage if the changes he wants become law.</p>
<p>Similarly, Obama spent all last summer saying health care reform wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone but the rich. But on August 2 the Associated Press reported that the administration admitted that taxes might have to be raised on the middle class to pay for the health care bill.</p>
<p>Obama has said repeatedly that insured families pay about $1,000 a year to cover the costs of the uninsured. Factcheck.org puts the figure at $200.</p>
<p>Obama said our current health care system causes a bankruptcy every 30 seconds. That’s not remotely true. If every bankruptcy in the United States in which health care costs played any factor at all were counted as a bankruptcy caused by health care, the figure would be one per minute, not double that.</p>
<p>In the summer, Obama was claiming that health care reform was paid for. At the time, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the House bill added $239 billion to the federal deficit over a decade and the Senate bill $597 billion. The president’s claims still aren’t true because of tricks such as removing the &#8220;doc fix&#8221; provisions and putting them into a separate bill.</p>
<p>Obama claimed health care reform would save the average American family $2,500 a year. Factcheck.org could find no evidence for that at all. Obama apparently just made it up.</p>
<p>Obama promised at least eight times that the health care negotiations would be televised live on C-SPAN. They weren’t. They were done, as everything in Washington is done, behind closed doors.</p>
<p>There us no shortage of additional examples. When it comes to health care, on point after point after point, the American people have been lied to – systematically, methodically and deliberately.</p>
<p>It should go without saying that opponents of the Democrats’ plans haven&#8217;t always been truthful, either. Some attacks have contained intentional falsehoods, others inadvertent ones. I don’t defend any of those. But they don’t make any less outrageous the fact that our own government has systematically misled us in an attempt to generate support for a plan the president and leaders in Congress knew we would never accept if we knew the whole truth about it.</p>
<p>Sure, politicians have always lied. But this administration, with its campaign theme of hopeful “change,” was supposed to be the most open and transparent administration in history. Even Congress was supposed to be different. Nancy Pelosi promised the most ethical Congress in history. Instead, the White House and its Congressional allies have joined forces to launch an almost daily barrage of falsehoods designed to trick us into supporting a dramatic transformation of one sixth of the American economy. And here’s the worst part about the politics of the healthcare debacle: We have at least three more years of this to look forward to.<em> </em></p>
<p><em>Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the </em><a href="http://www.unionleader.com/">New Hampshire Union Leader</a><em>.<br />
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		<title>Bowing to Radical Islam</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joe-kaufman/bowing-to-radical-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bowing-to-radical-islam</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:03:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joe Kaufman]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Pompano, Florida government officials invite and ignore the Islamist threat to their community.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/kaufman.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-52787" title="kaufman" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/kaufman.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="344" /></a></p>
<p>On February 9, 2010, the Pompano Beach, Florida city commission granted the imam of the Islamic Center of South Florida (ICOSB), Hasan Sabri, the honor of giving the invocation at one of its bi-weekly commission meetings. Given the extremist history of the imam and his mosque, one can only look upon this as a tremendous embarrassment for the city and an ominous sign for the future of its citizens.</p>
<p>“I ask you now to stand for the invocation, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Invocation tonight is given by Imam Hassan Sabri from our Islamic center.”</p>
<p>These were the words of Pompano Mayor Lamar Fisher, just prior to him rising out of his seat, clasping his hands, and bowing his head in prayer, as Sabri stood directly in front of him and commenced in the honor that was bestowed upon him. All but one of the city’s commissioners mimicked the Mayor with their clasped hands and bowed heads, as did much of the audience. If many of the onlookers knew of this imam and the institution he was representing, they might have walked out instead.</p>
<p>Sabri began his prayer, otherwise known as <em>Salaat</em>, with the words, <em>“A’uudhu billaahi minash shaitaan ar-Rajeem,”</em> which means “I seek refuge in Allah from Satan, the accursed.” After he completed the Arabic, he attempted to translate for the audience his recitation. However, nothing close to the first statement would be found in the translation. Was this deliberate or merely an oversight?</p>
<p>Sabri, the imam of ICOSB, was previously affiliated with the Islamic Center of Boca Raton (ICBR), a radical mosque with a number of ties to terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda. In March 2000, Sabri’s name was <a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/Hasan_Sabri_ICBR_ICOSF.html">found on the homepage of the ICBR website</a> as the teacher for ICBR’s new Wednesday <em>tafseer</em> (Quran interpretation) class.</p>
<p>Under Sabri’s name was an announcement that ICBR had added a new link to its site. That link was qoqaz.net or “Jihad in Chechnya,” a website that existed to raise funds and recruit fighters for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The site was produced by Azzam Publications, named for the former mentor of Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam.</p>
<p>Later that year, ICOSB <a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/Hasan_Sabri_ICBR_ICOSF.html">posted on its website a Friday sermon given by Sabri</a>, where he denounced America as an enemy and threatened Muslims who assist the U.S.</p>
<p>Sabri stated, “Allah tells us, in the Quran, that the kuffar will continue to fight Muslims &#8211; will continue to put a plan after a plan and implement a plan after a plan &#8211; until Islam will cease to be and until Muslims are either liquidated or they have joined the Christian or the Jewish faith… And it is imperative upon us as Muslims belonging to the Ummah of Islam to understand exactly what&#8217;s happening to our brothers, not only for the sake of understanding alone, but so that we will know what the enemies of Islam are planning, and so that we will plan ourselves… [The United States] is calling its people and its army and its nation to rush to the help of Muslims, but in reality this is not what&#8217;s going on. In reality what&#8217;s going on is that they want to mobilize Muslims and to use the vigor and the vim that Muslims can generate &#8211; to use their money and to use their souls and to use their lives &#8211; so that they will further [the United States’] plans in that part of the world… [D]o not rely on the kuffar, because if you do so, you will suffer.”</p>
<p>This same type of animosity was present, when this author appeared on a South  Florida radio show to debate Sabri in the beginning of 2003. During the show, Sabri said that Jews have no right to Jerusalem and that “Allah” should “rid <em>Beit Al-Maqdis”</em> (Jerusalem) of all of its Jewish inhabitants.</p>
<p>As well, during the show, Sabri said that it was “prophesy” that, in the future, Jews would go to war with Muslims and that inanimate objects, such as large rocks, will inform Muslims that Jews are hiding behind them and will tell the Muslims to kill the Jews. Sabri described this as “the final battle between right and wrong.”</p>
<p>With all of this in mind, it is very possible that, when Sabri mentioned in his Pompano commission invocation that he “seeks refuge” from “Satan, the accursed,” he actually was directing the statement at the audience and commission to which he was speaking in front of. This is disturbing in itself, but how much more so is it, given the fact that Mayor Fisher, in his introduction of Sabri, referred to ICOSB as “our Islamic center.”</p>
<p>It was an interesting choice of words for the Mayor to use. Indeed, he was one of the commissioners, in 2006, who voted in favor of giving ICOSB a permit to build, in the heart of Pompano, a brand new 29,000 square foot mosque – a structure whose construction is well underway – so in a sense, he is tied to the center’s prolonged existence. And being that this is the case, Mayor Fisher, on some level, needs to accept responsibility for the problems that go along with <em>his</em> Islamic center, specifically its terrorist connections.</p>
<p>According to the Broward County Property Appraiser’s office, ICOSB is <a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/Pompano_Mosque_NAIT.html">owned by the North American Islamic Trust</a> (NAIT), a group that was recently named by the United States Justice Department as being a party to a criminal conspiracy to provide millions of dollars to Hamas. Aside from its ownership of various radical American mosques and children’s schools, NAIT also controls the finances of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), two of the largest Muslim Brotherhood entities in the U.S.</p>
<p>Of course, all of the above information had to be ignored, in order for Sabri to receive the honor of performing the commission meeting invocation. It had to be ignored, as well, for ICOSB to receive the permit for its radical mosque to be built.</p>
<p>The expense for these ignored threats to the community goes way beyond the millions of dollars in construction costs for the mosque. The expense is the security of the residents of Pompano and beyond.</p>
<p><em>Joe Kaufman is the Chairman of </em><a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/"><em>Americans Against Hate</em></a><em> and the founder of </em><a href="http://www.youngzionists.org/"><em>Young Zionists</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<p><em>Beila Rabinowitz, the Director of </em><a href="http://www.militantislammonitor.org/"><em>Militant Islam Monitor</em></a><em>, contributed to this report.</em></p>
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		<title>Playing Freedom Cheap</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/thomas-sowell/playing-freedom-cheap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=playing-freedom-cheap</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/thomas-sowell/playing-freedom-cheap/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:02:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Thomas Sowell]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=50526</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the Obama administration nurtures resentment to foster big government.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/obama4.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-50535" title="GYI0000729870.jpg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/obama4.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="356" /></a></p>
<p>If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms, in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office. Dire alarms and heady crusades are among the many distractions of our attention from the ever increasing ways that government finds to take away more of our money and more of our freedom.</p>
<p>Magicians have long known that distracting an audience is the key to creating the illusion of magic. It is also the key to political magic.</p>
<p>Alarms ranging from &#8220;overpopulation&#8221; to &#8220;global warming&#8221; and crusades ranging from &#8220;affordable housing&#8221; to &#8220;universal <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/thomas-sowell.html#" target="_blank">health care</a>&#8221; have been among the distractions of political magicians. But few distractions have had such a long and impressive political track record as getting people to resent and, if necessary, hate other people.</p>
<p>The most politically effective totalitarian systems have gotten people to give up their own freedom in order to vent their resentment or hatred at other people— under Communism, the capitalists; under Nazis, the Jews.</p>
<p>Under extremist Islamic regimes today, hatred is directed at the infidels in general and the &#8220;great Satan,&#8221; the United States, in particular. There some people have been induced to give up not only their freedom but even their lives, in order to strike a blow against those they have been taught to hate.</p>
<p>We have not yet reached these levels of hostility, but those who are taking away our freedoms, bit by bit, on the installment plan, have been incessantly supplying us with people to resent.</p>
<p>One of the most audacious attempts to take away our freedom to live our lives as we see fit has been the so-called &#8220;health care reform&#8221; bills that were being rushed through Congress before either the public or the members of Congress themselves had a chance to discover all that was in it.</p>
<p>For this, we were taught to resent doctors, insurance companies and even people with &#8220;Cadillac health insurance plans,&#8221; who were to be singled out for special taxes. Meanwhile, our freedom to make our own medical decisions— on which life and death can depend— was to be quietly taken from us and transferred to our betters in Washington.</p>
<p>Only the recent Massachusetts election results have put that on hold.</p>
<p>Another dangerous power toward which we are moving, bit by bit, on the installment plan, is the power of politicians to tell people what their incomes can and cannot be. Here the resentment is being directed against &#8220;the rich.&#8221;</p>
<p>The distracting phrases here include &#8220;obscene&#8221; wealth and &#8220;unconscionable&#8221; profits. But, if we stop and think about it— which politicians don&#8217;t expect us to— what is obscene about wealth? Wouldn&#8217;t we consider it great if every human being on earth had a billion dollars and lived in a place that could rival the Taj Mahal?</p>
<p>Poverty is obscene. It is poverty that needs to be reduced—and increasing a country&#8217;s productivity has done that far more widely than redistributing income by targeting &#8220;the rich.&#8221;</p>
<p>You can see the agenda behind the rhetoric when profits are called &#8220;unconscionable&#8221; but taxes never are, even when taxes take more than half of what someone has earned, or add much more to the prices we have to pay than profits do.</p>
<p>The assumption that what A pays B is any business of C is an assumption that means a dangerous power being transferred to politicians to tell us all what incomes we can and cannot receive. It will not apply to everyone all at once. Like the income tax, which at first applied only to the truly rich, and then slowly but steadily moved down the income scale to hit the rest of us, the power to say what incomes people can be allowed to make will inevitably move down the income scale to make us all dependents and supplicants of politicians.</p>
<p>The phrase &#8220;public servants&#8221; is increasingly misleading. They are well on their way to becoming public masters— like aptly named White House &#8220;czars.&#8221; The more they can get us all to resent those they designate, the more they can distract us from their increasing control of our own lives— but only if we sell our freedom cheap. We can sell our birthright and not even get the mess of pottage.</p>
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		<title>The Savaging of Paul Ryan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/vasko-kohlmayer/the-savaging-of-paul-ryan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-savaging-of-paul-ryan</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/vasko-kohlmayer/the-savaging-of-paul-ryan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:09:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Vasko Kohlmayer]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49530</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Wisconsin Republican has a plan to restore America’s financial footing – and Democrats won’t forgive him for it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/paul_ryan.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49533" title="paul_ryan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/paul_ryan-300x260.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="260" /></a></p>
<p>Bemoaning the legislative stalemate in Washington, President Obama last month publicly rebuked Republicans in a speech from New Hampshire:</p>
<blockquote><p>“You’ve been sitting on the sidelines criticizing what we’re proposing&#8230; You got a better idea bring it on.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The president has finally got his wish. It comes in the form of the most constructive legislative proposal to emerge from Congress in a long time. Called &#8220;A Roadmap for America&#8217;s Future,&#8221; it is the brainchild of Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan. The <a href="http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/plan/#Intro">proposal</a> is unusual by Washington&#8217;s standards: It actually offers real solutions to a pressing problem.</p>
<p>Faced with moribund economy and weighted down with astronomical obligations it cannot make good on, our federal government is slouching toward fiscal disaster. This much is obvious to most observers and politicians alike. The problem is that politicians are loath to do anything about it, because the swamp of federal spending has always been a fertile ground for political fortunes. Paul Ryan&#8217;s <em>Roadmap</em> bucks this trend and seeks to reverse our disastrous course with a series of commonsense measures. Here are some of the plan&#8217;s highlights:</p>
<ul>
<li>Allowing those under 55 to invest over one-third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, similar to the Thrift Savings Plan available to federal employees;</li>
<li>Placing future Medicare beneficiaries (those currently under 55) into a semi-private programs similar to those currently used by Members of Congress;</li>
<li>Reducing the tax code into two rates: 10% on income up to $100,000 for joint filers and $50,000 for single filers, and 25% on taxable income above these amounts;</li>
<li>Eliminating the alternative minimum and the death tax;</li>
<li>Doing away with taxes on interest, capital gains and dividends;</li>
<li>Replacing the corporate tax—currently the second highest in the industrialized world—with a business consumption tax of 8.5%;</li>
<li>Imposing a 10 year discretionary spending freeze.</li>
</ul>
<p>The Congressional Budget Office <a href="http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/CBO01-27-Ryan-Roadmap-Letter.pdf">estimated</a> that Ryan&#8217;s plan would accomplish what no other recent proposal could claim to do – it would strengthen the economy and put the government&#8217;s finances on a sustainable track. Having evaluated the <em>Roadmap</em>, the CBO issued a letter which stated that it would “lower budget deficits” and “result in much less federal debt than under the alternative fiscal scenario and thereby a much more favorable macroeconomic outlook.” The Congressional Budget Office concluded its evaluation as follows:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Roadmap would put the federal budget on a sustainable path, generating an annual budget surplus of about 5 percent of GDP by 2080&#8230; The economy would be considerably stronger under the proposal than it would be under the alternative fiscal scenario. Real gross national product per person would be about 70 percent higher in 2058 under the proposal than under the alternative fiscal scenario.</p></blockquote>
<p>In his syndicated column, George Will – who is no ferocious partisan – <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/views/os-ed-george-will-020710-20100208,0,2786839.column">praised</a> Ryan&#8217;s program as one that successfully “connects three destinations – economic vitality, diminished public debt, and health and retirement security.” Even President Obama himself was forced to <a href="http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-401841">admit</a> during his get-together with Republicans in Baltimore that Ryan&#8217;s proposal constitutes a “detailed” and “legitimate” plan to address our fiscal crisis.</p>
<p>Yet, Ryan&#8217;s constructive approach is not playing well with Congressional Democrats. Sensing the possibility of scoring political points, they wasted no time launching a salvo of vicious attacks. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who chairs the House Democrats&#8217; reelection committee, had this to <a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/dem-leadership-rips-republican-plan-to-privatize-slash-medicare-social-security.php">say</a> of Ryan&#8217;s plan: “Put it this way. For seniors on Medicare, it&#8217;s a dead end.&#8221; In case you missed it, the pun is not incidental. Van Hollen really meant to imply that Ryan&#8217;s plan would be the death sentence for seniors.</p>
<p>House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired from both barrels when she described the <em>Roadmap</em> as a scheme that “provides tax breaks for the wealthy, it ends Medicare as we know it, and privatizes Social Security. Here they go again. Rehashing the same failed Bush policies.&#8221; Pelosi was deftly seconded by House Democratic Caucus Chair John Larson who chimed in with the following: &#8220;They are dusting off their old playbook, rehashing the policies that the American people have rejected in the past. They want to privatize Social Security. They want to turn Medicare into a voucher program. And they&#8217;re providing tax breaks for the wealthy while they raise taxes on the middle class.&#8221; Never one to mince words, Democrat guru and strategist Paul Begala scoffed: “They have ideas, and lots of them. And their ideas ruin the country.&#8221;</p>
<p>Killing seniors and “ruining the country” just about delineate Democrats&#8217; discussion parameters when it comes to Ryan&#8217;s plan. So vicious and intense has their assault been that that now even Republicans are trying to distance themselves from Ryan’s plan. Last week, the <em>Washington Post</em> gleefully reported that “even Ryan&#8217;s fellow GOP colleagues will not endorse his plan.” When asked about it, House Minority Leader John Boehner disclaimed any responsibility for the contents of Ryan’s plan, insisting that &#8220;it&#8217;s his.&#8221;</p>
<p>Despite assaults from the Left and the lack of reinforcements from his own side, the embattled Ryan is sticking to his guns. He has gone so far as to say that he is willing to fight for his cause and lose his job if it means ending the deficit. &#8220;The Democratic attack machine is in full throttle,&#8221; he said in a recent <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/83669182.html">interview</a> with the <em>Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel</em>. &#8220;It&#8217;s sad but predictable.&#8221;</p>
<p>And this brings us to the moral bankruptcy of Washington, DC. Overspending and saddled with obligations it cannot pay, our government is quickly approaching fiscal Armageddon. Our politicians, however, refuse to do anything about it, because it would mean that they would have to start behaving responsibly and stop buying votes with money they do not have. Then along comes one man who proposes meaningful, common-sense measures to avert the impending calamity. For this he gets vilified to the point that even the leadership of his own party, the party that claims to stand for fiscal responsibility, runs away from him in fear.</p>
<p>Given that we are on the brink, this situation is hardly tolerable. Take Medicare, for example. Its unfunded obligations are estimated by some to be in excess of $80 trillion. This is more than five times the current amount of our national debt. Even if the estimate is wrong by a half, this program by itself will still bankrupt our federal government. If we want to survive fiscally, something must be done, which is exactly what Paul Ryan is trying to do. And yet he is being brutally savaged, while those who defend this fiscal black hole posture as defenders of the people.</p>
<p>Several Democrats have charged that Ryan&#8217;s proposal will end Medicare as we know it. First of all, the charge is disingenuous, since anyone 55 years old or above will continue with the program. Given today&#8217;s life expectancy, we are talking about at least four more decades of the program&#8217;s continuance. But here is an even larger question: Why should ending Medicare be a bad thing? From whichever angle we look at it, Medicare has been a disaster. Ending it would be a good thing. In fact, America cannot prosper financially while Medicare continues in its present form.</p>
<p>Especially glaring is the fact that Democrats do not engage Ryan&#8217;s plan on its substance. The fact that his is the only proposal around that would alleviate our fiscal strain is of no concern to them. Instead they use fear-mongering and demagoguery to destroy and revile the man who at least attempts to do something about this country&#8217;s desperate straits. Given our dire situation, even Ryan&#8217;s plan may be the case of too little too late. But it is without question a step in the right direction and as such deserves serious attention from those who hold this nation&#8217;s purse strings.</p>
<p>Democrats will defend the status quo, because they think that by doing so they will make political hay. They obviously value electoral gain more than the price that will have to be paid. That price is America&#8217;s bankruptcy. And woe to anyone who attempts to do something about it. Reviled and abused, Paul Ryan is learning this lesson the hard way.</p>
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		<title>Paul Ryan’s Express &#8211; The Weekly Standard</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/paul-ryan%e2%80%99s-express-the-weekly-standard/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=paul-ryan%25e2%2580%2599s-express-the-weekly-standard</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:29:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49555</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Representative Paul Ryan’s 40th birthday coincided with the House GOP retreat in Baltimore on January 29. Ryan’s wife and three children joined him for the event. President Obama was also there, at the invitation of the House Republican leadership, to deliver remarks and answer questions from selected members. And he had a surprise in store [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/paul-ryan%E2%80%99s-express"><img src='http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/PaulRyan_0.jpg' alt='' /></a></p>
<p>Representative Paul Ryan’s 40th birthday coincided with the House GOP retreat in Baltimore on January 29. Ryan’s wife and three children joined him for the event. President Obama was also there, at the invitation of the House Republican leadership, to deliver remarks and answer questions from selected members. And he had a surprise in store for the six-term Wisconsin Republican: a spur-of-the-moment, presidential-level debate over the federal budget.</p>
<p>Hmm, Ryan thought. This is interesting. The two engaged in a back-and-forth over the president’s increase in discretionary spending during fiscal year 2010. Later, Obama said that Ryan, the ranking member of the House Budget and Ways &amp; Means Committees, is “a pretty sincere guy” with “a beautiful family.” Later still, the two went at it once more, this time over the politics of Medicare. “I want to make sure that I’m not being unfair to your proposal,” Obama said.</p>
<p>He was talking about Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future,” an ambitious plan to overhaul the welfare state and pay off the national debt (you can read the 95-page document at www.americanroadmap.org). For Americans under 55, the Roadmap would fundamentally restructure Medicare and Medicaid through means-tested vouchers, while introducing opt-in personal accounts to Social Security. It would replace the corporate income tax with a business consumption tax; repeal the Alternative Minimum, dividend, capital gains, and estate taxes; and reduce the six current tax brackets to two—one at 10 percent, the other at 25 percent. And that’s not all. Other parts of the plan include job training programs, budgetary reforms, and a free-market health care proposal modeled on Ryan’s Patients Choice Act. “This works,” Ryan told me last week. “It solves our fiscal crisis. It turns it around.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office agrees with him.</p>
<p>No question, the Roadmap is a big idea. But it isn’t a new one. Ryan initially released the proposal in 2008, when it fell flat. “First they laughed at us, then they ignored us,” says Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Ryan ally.</p>
<p>What’s changed? America has fallen into a vat of red ink. The financial crisis and recession have darkened the country’s long-term fiscal outlook. Unemployment stands at 9.7 percent. The president’s fiscal year 2011 budget forecasts record deficits and debt long into the future. Inflation, punishing interest rates, high taxes, and economic stagnation are not far behind. Hence the Democrats, who can’t defend their own budgets, desperately want to change the subject. They’ve found one they like: what’s wrong with Ryan’s Roadmap.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/paul-ryan%E2%80%99s-express">Paul Ryan’s Express | The Weekly Standard</a>.</p>
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		<title>Saudi Arabia wants Taliban to expel bin Laden &#8211; AP</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/saudi-arabia-wants-taliban-to-expel-bin-laden-ap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=saudi-arabia-wants-taliban-to-expel-bin-laden-ap</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/saudi-arabia-wants-taliban-to-expel-bin-laden-ap/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:50:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afghan]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48522</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia will not get involved in peacemaking in Afghanistan unless the Taliban stops providing shelter and severs all ties with Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida movement, officials said Tuesday. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is visiting Saudi Arabia hoping for an active Saudi role in his plan to persuade Taliban [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia will not get involved in peacemaking in Afghanistan unless the Taliban stops providing shelter and severs all ties with Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida movement, officials said Tuesday.</p>
<p>Afghan President Hamid Karzai is visiting Saudi Arabia hoping for an active Saudi role in his plan to persuade Taliban militants to switch sides.</p>
<p>Saudi Arabia has a unique relationship with Taliban since it was one of the few countries to recognize the regime before it was ousted in 2001 and has acted as an intermediary before.</p>
<p>The Saudi conditions for participating in the talks with Taliban, especially expelling former Saudi citizen bin Laden, are not new, but Riyadh is restating them amid a new international push to work with the Afghan militants.</p>
<p>Riyadh &#8220;holds to its position which rejects entering any negotiations with Taliban before the group announces very clearly it is severing its connections with extremists and expelling the head of al-Qaida Osama bin Laden from its territories,&#8221; a Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100202/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_saudi_afghan">Saudi Arabia wants Taliban to expel bin Laden &#8211; Yahoo! News</a>.</p>
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		<title>The Spender-in-Chief&#8217;s Fiscal Freeze Follies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/michellemalkin/the-spender-in-chiefs-fiscal-freeze-follies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-spender-in-chiefs-fiscal-freeze-follies</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/michellemalkin/the-spender-in-chiefs-fiscal-freeze-follies/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:04:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47923</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There are more loopholes in Obama's proposed “spending freeze” than in an Olympic volleyball net. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47925" title="freeze" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/freeze.jpg" alt="freeze" width="450" height="469" /></p>
<p>There are more loopholes in President Obama&#8217;s proposed “spending freeze” than in an Olympic volleyball net. Gargantuan government entitlements (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) are exempt. A half-trillion in unspent stimulus money is exempt. Foreign aid is exempt. The Democrats&#8217; proposed $154 billion jobs bill (Stimulus II) is exempt.</p>
<p>Pet federal education programs will be exempt (including $4 billion for the White House “Race to the Top” standards initiative and an additional $1.35 billion he just requested in the 2011 budget). Green jobs spending will be exempt. (Obama proposed $10 billion in new clean energy spending earlier this month.) Electorally driven tax-credit expansions will be exempt. The <a style="border-bottom: 0.075em solid darkgreen ! important; font-weight: normal ! important; font-size: 100% ! important; text-decoration: underline ! important; padding-bottom: 1px ! important; color: darkgreen ! important; background-color: transparent ! important; background-image: none; padding-top: 0pt; padding-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt;" href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin.html#" target="_blank">health care</a> takeover plan is not included. As even The New York Times reported, the “estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time.”</p>
<p>Which amounts to a molecule in a drop of the ocean of red ink in which American taxpayers have been drowning.</p>
<p>The current Spender-in-Chief unveiled details of this lofty new work of political fiction on Monday with more fanfare than a new “Twilight” title. It was supposed to be the centerpiece of the State of the Union address. But by Tuesday morning, Obama&#8217;s illusion of fiscal discipline had been shredded left, right and center. By Tuesday afternoon, irritated White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was already downplaying the gimmickry. It&#8217;s just something Obama will “mention,” Gibbs bristled.</p>
<p>After campaign videos of Obama repeatedly deriding “hatchet”-wielding spending freezes spread like Kudzu across the Internet, official White House blogger Jared Bernstein tried to control the widespread hypocrisy charges:</p>
<p>“During the campaign, you may recall that John McCain touted option 1 — the hatchet approach of an across-the-board freeze.</p>
<p>“The President was critical of that approach then, and we would be critical of it now. It&#8217;s not what we&#8217;re proposing. To the contrary, the entire theory of the President&#8217;s proposed freeze is to dial up the stuff that will support job growth and innovation while dialing down the stuff that doesn&#8217;t. Under our plan, some discretionary spending will go up; some will go down.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a big difference from a hatchet. …</p>
<p>“President Obama deeply understands the various imperatives of this moment in time, even if they don&#8217;t always point in the same direction.”</p>
<p>So, he had a hatchet on Monday when he wanted headlines praising his return to austerity in the wake of the GOP&#8217;s Massachusetts Senate victory; a scalpel on Tuesday when he needed to mollify the big-government left. What will he wield at the State of the Union address on Wednesday night? A variable-speed Dremel rotary tool?</p>
<p>Some conservative Beltway analysts are cheering Obama&#8217;s fiscal freeze follies as a step in the right direction, a rhetorical victory and a “good start.” Pardon me for not joining in the standing ovation for the latest performance of White House kabuki theater. Praising the president for carrying on the charade of budget reform because a few piddling cuts are real is like complimenting the Naked Emperor&#8217;s fingernails: So he didn&#8217;t have any clothes. At least his cuticles were real. It&#8217;s a start!</p>
<p>Moreover, who believes this freeze will last for the entire, cynically timed three-year period that the White House announced fewer than 72 hours ago? McDonald&#8217;s French fries have a longer shelf life than Obama&#8217;s pledges of fiscal accountability. All it&#8217;ll take is one more bad jobs report, one Chicken Little Congress-induced panic, to drop the budget restrictions faster than reality dad Jon Gosselin&#8217;s ex-girlfriends.</p>
<p>One year after riding into town on a wave of adulation and ambition, Obama has lost his “swagga.” His pre-State of the Union appearances have been listless and perfunctory. His dependence on a teleprompter — even for a standard 6-minute stump statement at an elementary school — is now the butt of universal mockery. And his political machine has been forced to lay down enough fake Astroturf support to cover a football field.</p>
<p>This is the time to nail the phonies in the White House, not to beg for meetings in hopes of bipartisan problem-solving. There&#8217;s little triumph in Obama&#8217;s empty “concessions” on the need to cut spending. They are fueled not by sincere commitment to reining in Washington&#8217;s appetites, but by craven political self-preservation.</p>
<p>The president has lately regressed into his “I will fight for you” campaign sloganeering — by which, of course, he means, “I will fight for me.” There will be no hands reaching across the aisle. Obama&#8217;s too busy using them to point fingers at everyone else for his own political meltdown.</p>
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		<title>Paul D. Ryan: A GOP Road Map for America&#8217;s Future &#8211; WSJ.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/paul-d-ryan-a-gop-road-map-for-americas-future-wsj-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=paul-d-ryan-a-gop-road-map-for-americas-future-wsj-com</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/paul-d-ryan-a-gop-road-map-for-americas-future-wsj-com/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:55:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[A Road]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47829</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In tonight&#8217;s State of the Union address, President Obama will declare a new found commitment to &#8220;fiscal responsibility&#8221; to cover the huge spending and debt he and congressional Democrats have run up in his first year in office. But next Monday, when he submits his actual budget, I fear it will rely on gimmickry, commissions, [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In tonight&#8217;s State of the Union address, President Obama will declare a new found commitment to &#8220;fiscal responsibility&#8221; to cover the huge spending and debt he and congressional Democrats have run up in his first year in office. But next Monday, when he submits his actual budget, I fear it will rely on gimmickry, commissions, luke-warm spending &#8220;freezes,&#8221; and paper-tiger controls to create the illusion of budget discipline. Meanwhile, he and the Democratic congressional leadership will continue pursuing a relentless expansion of government and a new culture of dependency.</p>
<p>America needs an alternative. For that reason, I have reintroduced my plan to tackle our nation&#8217;s most pressing domestic challenges—updated to reflect the dramatic decline in our economic and fiscal condition. The plan, called A Road Map for America&#8217;s Future and first introduced in 2008, is a comprehensive proposal to ensure health and retirement security for all Americans, to lift the debt burdens that are mounting every day because of Washington&#8217;s reckless spending, and to promote jobs and competitiveness in the 21st century global economy.</p>
<p>The difference between the Road Map and the Democrats&#8217; approach could not be more clear. From the enactment of a $1 trillion &#8220;stimulus&#8221; last February to the current pass-at-all costs government takeover of health care, the Democratic leadership has followed a &#8220;progressive&#8221; strategy that will take us closer to a tipping point past which most Americans receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes—a European-style welfare state where double-digit unemployment becomes a way of life.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703808904575025080017959478.html">Paul D. Ryan: A GOP Road Map for America&#8217;s Future &#8211; WSJ.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>After Brown victory, Obama struggles to control message &#8211; AP</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/after-brown-victory-obama-struggles-to-control-message-ap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=after-brown-victory-obama-struggles-to-control-message-ap</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/after-brown-victory-obama-struggles-to-control-message-ap/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:52:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47826</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With the president&#8217;s State of the Union address coming up on Wednesday, the White House appears to be struggling to find its feet. Republican Scott Brown&#8217;s surprise victory in liberal Massachusetts has dominated the national conversation in the last week and made Obama&#8217;s goal of signing health care reform impossible before the big speech. Now, [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100126/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1077"><img src='http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/videolthumb.95fe3d629eea0a4327b7ee7a232edfac.jpg' alt='' /></a></p>
<p>With the president&#8217;s State of the Union address coming up on Wednesday, the White House appears to be struggling to find its feet. Republican Scott Brown&#8217;s surprise victory in liberal Massachusetts has dominated the national conversation in the last week and made Obama&#8217;s goal of signing health care reform impossible before the big speech.  Now, even Obama&#8217;s apparent attempt to soothe voters&#8217; budget-deficit concerns by proposing a three-year freeze on some federal spending is being met with ridicule from both the right and the left.</p>
<p>The plan Obama will propose breaks down as follows:</p>
<p>- Freeze discretionary spending on non-security-related programs and government agencies whose budgets are set annually by Congress. Affected programs could include subsidies for farmers, child nutrition, and national parks.</p>
<p>- Exempt from the freeze would be budgets for federal entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, as well as the budgets for the Pentagon, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and foreign aid.</p>
<p>The administration claims this will save the country $250 billion over the next decade, or about 3% of the $9 trillion deficits the U.S. is expected to accumulate over that period.</p>
<p>Conservatives have mocked the freeze as not doing nearly enough to get to the root of the country&#8217;s economic problems. The right-leaning blog RedState.com chided the effort, saying that it would have &#8220;virtually no impact on the financial standing of the United States of America.&#8221; On her Twitter page, right-wing commentator Michelle Malkin compared the freeze to &#8220;promising to slow down from 250 mph to 249.9.&#8221; House Minority Leader John Boehner likened the plan to &#8220;announcing you&#8217;re going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest.&#8221;</p>
<p>via <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100126/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1077">After Brown victory, Obama struggles to control message &#8211; Yahoo! News</a>.</p>
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