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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; victory</title>
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		<title>Pat Caddell: Midterm Elections a Repudiation of Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/pat-caddell-midterm-elections-a-repudiation-of-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=pat-caddell-midterm-elections-a-repudiation-of-obama</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Nov 2014 05:52:22 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[One of America's foremost election experts analyzes the GOP's victory at Restoration Weekend. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong style="color: #232323;">Below are the video and transcript to Pat Caddell&#8217;s speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/112328603" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Yes, I’m basically happy.  The person I’m really happy about is that Harry Reid is no longer Majority Leader.  I say that certainly not because I’m a Republican.  I say that because I’m an American and, as I had said on television, he was the greatest danger to democracy, I said this election, that we&#8217;ve ever seen, and his damage to the institution of the Senate where no one was allowed to vote, where there were no amendments, where there were no bills considered unless he wanted to, where he killed all discussion and basically all effective work in the world’s most deliberative body, supposedly.  And what he did with the nuclear option overnight to roll back 250 years of protecting the minority, which now the Democrats are going to find out how much they like that, but all of that and I think for the sake of the democracy, his demise is the biggest and greatest news.  The fact that he stays on only shows you how my party cannot get beyond—he and Nancy Pelosi&#8211;the Democrats cannot get beyond their own myopia and thinking as they have a truly disastrous election.</p>
<p>An election, I want to point out that was not only &#8212; but has many interesting kernels to it.  And I want to say, first of all, and it has many instructions for the future and then it was also about not a lot, not a lot.  The one thing is that, first of all, yes, the Republicans won a big victory and, once again, left amazing possibilities on the table because their consultant, lobbying, whoever controls this Republican Party has the imagination of a French General staff in World War I.  They poured hundreds of millions of dollars into about a dozen states, and they did not put anything into what I thought was a pretty simple election.  First, the Republicans decided they didn’t have anything they were going to offer.  No economic plan, no message, nothing like what happened in &#8217;94 with which was the Contract for America.  Which no one knew what was in the Contract for America, but it set an image for the Republicans that year with Gingrich and the victory that year, which was that at least the Republicans had a plan, had an idea.  We’re most of all united.  Let me just say something about those kinds of things, misreading elections.  Newt Gingrich then misread that election that the country had voted for revolution.  The country had voted to stop Bill Clinton.  There is somewhat of a vast difference there.</p>
<p>This election, let me just say, the success.  I want to talk first about what was left there and then the success.  The strangest thing about the election, for those of you who don’t know, I’m on a program at 7:30 eastern time on Sunday nights live with Doug Schoen and John LeBoutillier called <i>Political Insiders</i> in which we basically try to tell the truth, and we’ve been fortunate enough to have quite a response, and sometimes I get a little carried away.  I called the President last week a raging narcissist, which is true.  The whole problem with this guy is not that he’s a radical Pres &#8212; he’s a raging narcissist, and he’s going to prove it in the next couple of weeks.  But the election hung for a long time.  Those close Senate races hung to the end.  You could not look at the national situation &#8212; the direction of America where it was more than two to one or going in the wrong direction, the President’s job rating poorly, all of his policies under attack and very negatively received, an economy that people believed was not helping them, and all of that &#8212; and you look at the historical record in the six years and you say, “My God, that’s got to be a Republican landslide.”  And then you look down at the individual race and you said, “My God, they’re all close.”  And I kept saying this tension could not hold.  And I thought, as I had said the Sunday before election, there was a good 30 percent chance or more that it would just blow open; that eventually the undecides would move in the direction they should and essentially that’s what happened.</p>
<p>But when I look at the election and say what was possible, and I don’t mean to be a sour note on what makes everyone happy, but it’s important to understand what it may tell you.  In the states that did not have big battleground Senate races, where none of the several billion dollars or $4 billion, whatever was spent, the Republicans put no effort whatsoever.  I had argued, as I had done in &#8217;12, and argued since, hey, this is a pretty simple election.  This is a referendum election.  And why the Republicans refused to take some of that money that they were wasting by piling even more.  For those of you who know economics, know the marginal gain, marginal differentials.  But when you keep pouring money into races where people are saturated beyond belief with television and where you’re watching 50 spots at one time and the whole thing, because of local buy, and the expense the stations are gouging, the people buying the media and whatever, why did the Republican National Committee, which does have the ability to do this, where the Senate can eat it up by national advertising amazes me, why didn’t they put air cover over the race?  Why didn’t they?  Very simple, first of all, remember we’ve had all of these crises.  Starting, you go to the VA, Benghazi, or anything you want to take, White House Secret Service, Bergdahl, on and on and on, a disaster after disaster this year.  And, voters, like all of us, there was one coming every week and then Ebola and ISIS and then you go, my God I forgot about the VA.  Well, in advertising there is a reason they keep reminding you.  So, what I’m wondering is why wasn’t there some kind of effort to put out a message that said to remind.  First of all, all it did was remind people.  Remember this, remember this, and ask a simple question.  Because we knew what the results were.  They were more than two to one people opposed his policies.  Once Obama handed the Republicans and shafted his party with the message that my policies are on the ballad, why didn’t they just quote that.  Put that up and say, “If you disagree with those policies and here’s an example, send him a message.  Vote Republican.”  If you weren’t going to say anything positive, that certainly was a major message.  And guess what, it would’ve been seen by everybody and cheaper and better placement, everywhere across the country.</p>
<p>And you know what would’ve happened?  Let me tell you what happens.  There were 15 House races that were undecided election night.  Most of them line outside of all of these states where the money was spent.  As of to date, nine of those 15 have ended up being won by Democrats because there was no national message.  If you look at Illinois, where the Republican Senate gubernatorial candidate won a surprising victory over one of the most corrupt&#8211;I mean really, I’m broke.  I mean what a disastrous place Illinois is&#8211;after Obama had campaigned for Pat Quinn, the incumbent.  Won by five, six points.  That’s even counting Chicago several times.  But Dick Durbin, the major force in Democrats in the Senate, Democrat Whitt got 53 percent of the vote.  Al Franken got 53 percent of the vote.  You go through some of these races and you think, my God.  Always when we have landslides, we have these surprise upsets.  Like Virginia almost was.  But we have them.  Now Gillespie had no more.  He couldn’t buy media pretty much the last month.  No one was supporting him.  Can you imagine what a little bit more push and a national message would have done or might have opened up in a couple of these Senate races?</p>
<p>Look, the Republicans have their best House position since 1946.  But if you’re going to win an election, take everything off the table you can is my theory.  But, unfortunately, the strategy I described does not enrich the political consultant, lobbyist class in the Republican party, which makes a lot more money by having only state races and does not require them to have any imagination other than storming across no man’s land in the same way they do.</p>
<p>Let me say this.  You look at the exit polls and there are some problems.  When everyone tells you how all the vote came out, let me tell you a dirty little secret for which I will probably be shot for having announced.  At the end of the process, after the votes come in, the people who run the exit poll reweight all of their actual results from the 20,000 people they interview and weight it to the results.  That’s like if you hired me to poll and I said to you, just wait election night I guarantee you I will give you the winner and the right result.  Well, they’ve got some bias problems in there.  So, take some of these divisions skeptically.  So, I went back.  I polled the numbers for the 97 percent before we had the magic of this.  And here’s part of the story of the election.  One, it is that the voters were not rewarding.  And this is important about misreading elections as I pointed out in &#8217;94.</p>
<p>This was a repudiation of the President and his policies and his party.  But it was not an endorsement of the Republican Party by any means.  This was voting for the lesser of which evil that was in front of you and the evil in front of you was the one that was in the White House and in power.  Now, that doesn’t mean the opportunities don’t exist for what you do, but to think that this was an endorsement, because mainly remember I don’t know if you can define.  I don’t know what the campaign was about other than beating Obama.  And in individual races, it worked.  But listen to this, and this goes to a message I’ll talk about at the end in a few minutes about 2016 and what’s coming and a project I’ve been working on.  But I want to tell you this.  What you had was both parties had high negative ratings.  The public was dissatisfied, to say the least, with Obama.  When asked angry or dissatisfied, it was around 60 percent.  The Republican leadership in Congress got the same number, 60 some percent, just to show you, and this is of Republicans.  I mean this is a Republican wave election.  Right?  Republicans are still getting even worse ratings relatively, if you think about how people are voting, than did the Democrats.  All of that pointed to me to the fact that one should be careful; that basically, this was a very dissatisfied election.</p>
<p>Remember, we had a drop off.  This is the lowest midterm election since 1942.  Now, in 1942 there was a reason a lot of people didn’t get to the ballot.  For those of you who are too young to know, there was a thing called World War II going on.  But the results are only slightly better than they were in the 1942 turnout because so many dissatisfied voters where both parties stayed home.  And they depended on area.  Someone has done this.  It’s quite an interesting analysis.  In the third most rural and, therefore, most Republican areas of the country, the turnout was down about 34 percent.  In the exurbs and the suburbs, it was 38 percent decline, and in the urban areas, the urban centers, it was 47 percent.  Now that does not mean that the black vote, for instance, necessarily, and this is where only when we get a genius like Mike Barone you get in the precinct and actual numbers analysis is what we know.  But we have a situation where the exit polls tell us that the black turnout, the African American turnout, was only a point less than it was in 2012.  The Hispanics really stayed home.  But as Tavis Smiley, I agree with Tavis Smiley, if you’re black or Hispanic or of any color, what the hell was your reason to turn out and vote Democratic.  What had you been given, an economy where your income had gone down, where your families are not benefited and where the very wealthy were.  Remember, this is a Fed, appointed by Barrack Obama, propping up the very richest people with this wonderful bond buying plan they had, which has stoked the stock market, but done nothing for ordinary Americans.  And the President can’t understand and the economists say, “Oh my gosh, look how good the economy’s doing.”  Well, the American people have a different perception whether they are Democrats, Republicans or Conservatives.  If they know that they are not doing as well, they know that the jobs being created, thanks in part to Obamacare, more than half of them and a vast majority of them now, are part-time.  People are not working.  They live on the edge and they are still very nervous even though things are getting better.  And that partly is reflected you could see in the exit polls.  Seventy-eight percent of the people thought that they were extremely or very worried about the economy in the next year or so, which is totally different than what we’re being told is the case.</p>
<p>And then finally, one of the points in the exit poll that was interesting was that 3/4th of the American people believe that we were going to have another terrorist attack.  That it was highly likely or more that we would have a terrorist attack.  Those numbers are actually higher than they were after 2001.  And I wonder why?  Well, because if you look to the feckless leadership of this White House.  I mean the only way I can even describe it in foreign policy is feckless.  Whether it is in Iran.  In search of a deal, you have to be panic.  Barrack Obama’s proven one thing.  In search of a deal, he will do anything.  And that’s what’s been happening with Iran.  They’re allowing Iran supposedly to stop their nuclear weapons plan to continue to enrich uranium.  Hardly a prescription.  And if they don’t get an agreement by the 24th, the Iranians have used this time and given up nothing that they said they would.  And we have the person, so you can feel certain at night and not worry, the very woman who crafted the wonderful plan with the North Koreans during the Clinton administration to keep them from having nucs and expanding is the one working with the Iranians that John Kerry has brought in to handle that.</p>
<p>And then we have the Ukraine.  Putin sees the President at this meeting in Asia for two days and immediately starts reinvading Ukraine because he was so amazed with the President’s toughness.</p>
<p>And then finally we do it in a climate deal with Chinese, which is wonderful.  They buy 20/30 somewhere in the future.  They will cut back their CO2 use, but with no plan.  And meanwhile, we’re supposed to cut even more in between.  Once again, the search free deal at all costs.  And it should frighten anybody that for two years this will happen and you have to look to the Republican Congress.</p>
<p>But the President’s lack of behavior during this ISIS, which most Americans support.  Fifty-eight, thirty-seven support.  And yet on the ISIS thing, you have a lot of the people who opposed it, Democrats and Republicans agreed equally in their support, but people who oppose this, Democrat and Republican, who oppose what’s going on with ISIS, voted Republican.  Why?  Because I suspect they think this is not working.  That this is another sham being presented.  And any plan that has five shorties a day for air cover with no one on the ground.  And now our new, in the spirit of Arvin, we are sending in deals to that crack Iraqi Army to take on ISIS, and with what will be, we promise, great results.  That whole unraveling, all of that has made the American people very, very nervous.  And yet the President seems to have learned nothing from the election.</p>
<p>And I want to talk about a couple of issues for now they are very important coming up, and they also relate to the election and what we also know.  And also the question of how the Republicans will behave because I think they’ve behaved badly on many of these issues, and I have said this before at this forum.</p>
<p>Let’s take Obamacare.  What I call the night it was passed, a crime against democracy.  To jam through something without any support, unlike Social Security or Medicare where we had massive support from both parties, jam through with lies.  And, by the way, when we really found out the lies, it was amazing but by, and basically on the basis of bribery.  And all those people this time who voted for it, except for Jeanne Sheehan, were defeated and Franken and Durbin.  But the point is is that the American people have never accepted Obamacare.  We are kept told how great it is.  And then we have this gift of Mr. Gruber.  I just can’t get over him.  All I can think is Goober peas.  Gruber, he’s out there with all his comments.  And the White House denies he had anything to do.  We were paying him $400,000.00 apparently not to do anything except write the plan.  He is a Romney hangover from Romneycare.  Which is one of the reasons I am so unenthusiastic about your last nominee, who should have won the election and lost the election that should never have been lost.  Again, and the same people who came up short in delivering what could have been this year and are running around crowing are the same people who delivered that mistake.</p>
<p>And the Supreme Court ruled Obamacare was legal.  But when John Roberts had that visitation that he wouldn’t be invited to Washington dinner parties anymore after <i>The Washington Post</i> warned him desperately.  Things in Washington, there are certain priorities in life, going to dinner parties.  Apparently, John Roberts is more important than the law.  So he changed his opinion, embarrassingly so, and then decided to call the mandated attacks.  And, as I said at the time, my God, in this terrible disaster, he’s handed one club to the Republicans that they must use, which is that they lied that it was a tax.  Right?  Now, you would have thought the Republican party would have taken that in the Senate and the election and pounded that, and they didn’t and they wouldn’t.  And, to this day, I don’t know.  I can speculate why, but they did not.  That message for the American people, because it was very simple for the Democratic opponents in some of these Senate races that year, which is were you lying.  Were you part of the lie or, if you didn’t know, will you vow to vote to repeal the mandate now that you were lied to too.  It’s only one of two choices.  Either you were fooled or you were part of the fooling of us.</p>
<p>But that kind of thinking doesn’t seem to make it into politics anymore, which I think would’ve been helpful.  I think all along the Republican establishment has been lukewarm about Obamacare.  They have gone through the motions, sometimes these useless repeals.  Why we had useless repeals after 27 of them or whatever after the Supreme Court decision, not move to specifically just repeal the mandate, which would’ve killed healthcare, I do not know.  We’re going to have more opportunities.  But the notion of let’s repeal it all or whatever the strategies are, Obamacare has been proven to be the big lie of American politics.  And the President and now Mr. Gruber has pulled the bandage off so we can all see what was the truth, and we’re hopeful that that will change.</p>
<p>The other issue is immigration.  I listen to the people saying how great things would be.  We’d all be holding hands and jumping up and down because Obama would now embrace the compromise.  So, I’m sitting with Neil Cavuto election night on his show on Fox Business about 10:00, and I’m getting this and someone’s arguing on a panel.  I’m going, wait a minute, didn’t we do this two years ago.  I sat right here while all you people were saying Obama now would have a legacy.  He’s got a second term.  He’ll now work with people.  And didn’t I tell you he just tore the country apart to win and that he hates his other opposition and he’s so arrogant.  I told you there would be no peace.  And now you people think he’s going to do anything.  He’s going to blow the country up.  And all of this we’re going to work together and whatever?  This is a President who has decided that with this immigration move, and here is a very important point if you take nothing back.  And I am going to stress it Sunday because it’s really important. I watched the Sunday shows last week and all of the commentators in the Beltway, all of the wonderful media, and I want to talk about them for one second in a minute.  But all of them talked about this in one sentence.  Well, the Republicans are going to be angry.  It’s going to be a firestorm among the Republicans.  No, the firestorm will be with the American people.</p>
<p>The attitudes on immigration have had a sea change in three months.  In September, Rasmussen had numbers that showed vast majorities of Americans both oppose the President granting amnesty, believe that he did not have the power to do so, and also believed that if they did, the Republicans should take him to court, which people had ridiculed before, and including a large majority of moderates, the most critical group in the election who were normally democratic.  They do not vote like liberals, but they generally follow that and they deserted on immigration.</p>
<p>Everything points to we had a referendum in Oregon election night.  Now, you wouldn’t know this because, even if you go to CNN or whatever, the only thing that you will find that was on the ballot in Oregon was the legalization of marijuana, which CNN and the people in the news organization mainly think that’s probably one of the more important issues.  But they didn’t cover, and they don’t even report to this day on their web site, is there was a ballot measure by the same people, liberal Oregon, which had just voted for marijuana, to allow illegal aliens to have driver’s license.  Almost 70 percent of the vote was no.  Okay?  You want to talk about canaries in the mine.  Actually, the Democrats will have to worry because they blow up the Democratic party with this.  But you know what happened in the election, and I said this weeks before.  I was talking about the sea change on immigration.  The fact that it went to the idea of the President was King, not President, and that even large numbers of Democrats were opposed, and what I didn’t understand is why wasn’t the Republican party making that a direct issue against Democratic candidates.  How are you voting on immigration?  The President’s going to sign this amnesty.  Will you reject the President or not?  Actually, make it explicit particularly in those places where you don’t have a chance.  But they didn’t and I’ll tell you why.</p>
<p>Because the unholy alliance.  And some of you won’t like this, but it’s the truth.  The unholy alliance on immigration is an alliance between unions and the left because they want more cheap votes and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, particularly, and a lot of major Republican donors who want a lot of cheap workers.  And, therefore, and that is best illustrated by <i>The Wall Street Journal</i>, which takes all leave of its senses because of their support for total, open borders, along with <i>The New York Times</i>.  That’s when they stroll through the lilies together, skipping through and singing.  This is the problem.  The country doesn’t want this.  The country’s attitudes are changing.  And certainly, by the way, generically, and I love the way the institutions organize and put together the stuff on polling because they try to give a question that will give them some answer.  So, once it was clear that attitudes on immigration change, all of the major mainstream media polling outfits stopped polling on immigration.  As I pointed out, they didn’t even mention it in their election results.</p>
<p>And it goes to the other question.  The President’s right to constitutional power; that he is King.  But I have no confidence when Lindsey Graham, who got, by the way, 54 percent in South Carolina and a black man got 62 percent, tells you what might have been in South Carolina.  Some people, as opponents, are better to be lucky than to be good.  But Lindsey Graham and John McCain, who led the surrender on the appointments when the President was appointing these people on the Labor Practices Commission, laid down on that, which the court ruled unanimously was illegal.  And the Republicans were halfhearted.  It’s like the response when Harry Reid did the nuclear option.  Mitch McConnell and the Republicans could have stopped everything in the Senate.  Everything in the Senate requires unanimous consent, including the prayer in the morning.  Do you know what happens if Mitch McConnell had gotten up and said there will be no more business in this Senate until this is revoked.  You are not going to overnight have a coup de tat against the Constitution of the United States.  A stand for principle for once, the people would’ve supported.  Instead, they just said, “Oh my God, wait until we get to have it.”  It’s just those kinds of things that disillusion Americans.</p>
<p>Finally, the last point I want to really talk about other than the media.  And let me tell you something, whatever goes forward, the true enemy, and I’ve said this for years, is the media.  And it is not because of the truth they tell or the lies they tell, it is what they do not tell.  It is their decision not to report things.  For instance, the Gruber incident as of last night until yesterday morning, once, had been mentioned, only once, on any of the major networks, NBC, ABC, CBS.  Now, of course, CBS news is run by the man whose brother, Ben Rhodes, is the one who manufactured the talking points at Tom Donlan’s direction from Benghazi, and who makes sure to protect Obama.  But, they report nothing.  In the election, its stunning.  Numbers were in 2006, huge percentages.  I think it was like 150 some mentions on the evening news about President Bush being in trouble.  On the three networks this time, it was like 15 or 16.  And on ABC, it was zero.  ABC wasn’t even…and you wonder why interest was lower?  Because a lot of it wasn’t being reported.  And this has got to be taken on at a different level.  Too many Republicans in Washington and the establishment want to have nice relations with the press.  They want to be mentioned in the press.  They want to go along.  There needs to be a war on the press because it goes to the culture and it goes to whether or not we have a Constitution.</p>
<p>I was on the board at West Point.  I watched young men and women who were willing to stand on the ramparts and pledge with their very lives to protect our freedom, who thought it was an honor.  The press, which their ramparts, is a special deal on the First Amendment is that they would protect the American people from power from the Government.  And they have deserted those ramparts.  And in deserting those ramparts, they have endangered the freedom of every American, Democrat, Republican, Liberal or Conservative.  And there has to be a real war here.  And there is not.</p>
<p>You people, it’s like Bill Maher on television.  I mean HBO.  Bill Maher is not practicing free speech.  He’s practicing paid speech.  He gets paid by HBO.  He gets paid by you subscribers.  How many of you people in here subscribe to HBO?  Look.  Come on, let’s all be honest, I mean.  Yeah.  You know what you’re doing, you’re subsidizing all of that because Conservatives don’t know how to fight.  They don’t know how to take on HBO and say, hey, we’re not asking you take Bill Maher off.  How about put someone else on.  I have a friend in mind I would like to mention, but I won’t.  But, put someone on that balances that out or we will all cancel.  Do you know how fast Time-Warner would do if a million people in this country said they would cancel if they did not put a balance on HBO?  But you don’t fight.  You just give in.  It’s like the war on the culture.  This is a time to actually make definitions of these things.  The influence of the culture in Hollywood, as my friend Michael Barnes here says, every day on YouTube and everything else, they get up and then the score is at the end of the day is 845 to nothing.  Imagine if you cut that to two to one in the culture in terms of messaging and real things.</p>
<p>Finally, on 2016.  Nothing can be read from 2014.  The things I talk about is what I have discussed in my Smith Project.  The American people are united about one thing.  They hate the political class in Washington.  They hate the Democrats and Republicans, alike, with that.  They believe they are being screwed by both.  And I would like to remind the Speaker, again last night, Elizabeth Warren’s position about how the banks operate and about how they are getting off.  You know who agrees with that?  About 85 percent of the Republicans and Conservatives.  The entire country understands being screwed by crony capitalism which operates with the Chamber of Commerce and in Washington and the Democrats with all of their energy and all of their building bureaucracies for political machinery.  And they know they’re not being benefited and there is a common sense center that is gigantic, and it is coming.  It didn’t come in this election because we were squeezed between who would be in control of the Senate.</p>
<p>But I will tell you one last thing from the exit polls that has not been discussed.  There was a special sub sample of them, in which they asked people about several candidates would they be a good president.  Hillary Clinton was 42 yes, 53 no.  Then they asked about four Republicans, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rand Paul and Rick Perrin.  On the average, 26 percent said that each of them would make a good president.  On average, 60 to 63 percent said no, they wouldn’t.  And this is in a Republican sweep going on.  And when they asked to how the people would vote in an election, 39 to 40 percent said they would vote Republican.  Thirty-four percent for Hillary.  This is not good news for Hillary at all.  And the balance said that it all depended.  They weren’t sure.  They weren’t particularly happy.  Understand we’re going to have insurgencies in 2016.  The Republican party and for the first time in your lifetime, my lifetime, or anyone’s lifetime.  Well, I guess some people were born in 1940 when you had Wendell Willkie seize the Republican party.  It was an insurgency.  You could have one this year.</p>
<p>And let me give you one last example why.  I’ll give you an issue.  One of the things the American people most are upset about when you ask them about it.  I’ve done it, Heather Higgins has done it, on polling about the exemption for Congress and the Congressional staff in the healthcare bill that the President came down and negotiated with Harry Reid and with John Boehner.  And Boehner was then saying, oh, he was against this exemption except that Harry Reid got ticked off and leaked all the emails where they agreed, they came together, so that they protect the Congress from what the American people were doing.  When you ask that of American people, 2/3rds of Republicans believe that’s the reason to turn every single person in Washington out of office.  You have 15, 18, whatever number of candidates running for President or thinking about running or having dreams and visions of White House and oval offices.  Not a single one of them will raise this issue.  This issue, the agreement between the two parties was that it was not to be discussed in the election, and it wasn’t.  Did you know that?  They had an actual agreement they would not raise this issue.  Do you know what could’ve happened to some of the incumbents, Democrats particularly, who were vulnerable if that had been raised.  And it wasn’t.  And the reason is and that’s what I mean, there is an insurgency.</p>
<p>I will know the Republican party has life when there’s a Republican running for President willing to attack the establishment of his own party the way that Jimmy Carter and others did in the Democratic party that I was involved in in the 70s.  Then you may get somebody who represents the American people.  As long as this is controlled by the people, as I said to you for two years, in Washington whose only real ambition is to hold on to the power they have and the money they make, your prospects in 2016 are dim.</p>
<p>Anyway, thank you very much.</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 Election Was Fun But Don’t Get Too Happy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-horowitz/the-election-was-fun-but-dont-get-too-happy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-election-was-fun-but-dont-get-too-happy</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Nov 2014 05:58:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republican]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244637</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The GOP has two years to give voters a real reason to vote for it -- before Dems regroup in 2016. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/election.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244639" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/election-450x346.png" alt="election" width="351" height="270" /></a>Eighteen years ago I met a Democratic consultant who said to me, “David, your side doesn’t give people a reason to vote for them. Republicans only win when Democrats screw up big time.” This year Democrats screwed up big time (along with many pollsters), and Republicans won big time. There’s a lot of good news here, especially the Republican gubernatorial victories in Democratic states like Michigan and Wisconsin, and battleground states like Ohio and Florida. Perhaps the most inexplicable good news of the day was the fact that Sandra Fluke got trounced by a Republican in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. No wonder Democrats are weaker now than at any time since the 1920s.</p>
<p>Looking over this Democratic wreckage, Republican doomsayers should take note. The American people are not “low information” dummies, who will believe anything Democrats tell them. Abe Lincoln had it right: “You can fool some of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Republicans should also note that despite all the people on food stamps and all of the voters getting free stuff – 47% by Mitt Romney’s misguided count – they were still independent and savvy enough to return Scott Walker in Wisconsin, to elect Tim Cotton in Arkansas, and to defeat Sandra Fluke in Santa Monica. Finally, Democrats’ racist appeals to minority voters don’t seem to be working as well as they used to. All these Republican whines were in fact excuses for poorly run political campaigns. Normally, you have to defeat your opponents. You can’t count on them to defeat themselves. Normally.</p>
<p>And this raises the big question, which is 2016. Democrats, when they are not over reaching and claiming against all evidence that the party of Joni Ernst and Shelley Moore Capito and Nikki Haley is conducting a war against women, are formidable political opponents. When they regroup after this defeat they will not be so easy beat in 2016. Unless…</p>
<p>Unless Obama, ideologue that he is, determines to stay the course, grants amnesty to 11 million illegals, continues to use fly swatters to combat ISIS, alternately stonewalls and heads for the golf course in the face of major crises, and vetoes Republican bills to restore the economy. There is always this possibility but don’t count on it. And in the absence of such screw-ups, Republicans will need to get their act together and give voters something to vote <i>for</i>.</p>
<p>Here’s an idea. What Republicans should offer voters is a national security program that protects them, and individual freedom. Freedom to choose their healthcare; freedom to run their businesses in an environment where government is not looking over their shoulders at every turn and stifling their incentives to create jobs; freedom to go about their lives without fear of terrorist attacks; freedom to shape their country and its culture within secure borders; freedom from electoral fraud, and IRS intrusion designed to turn their country into a one-party state.</p>
<p>These are not only policy preferences; they are moral themes – calls to action &#8211; that sum up what the Republican Party is about.</p>
<p><em>David Horowitz is the author of the recently published book </em>Take No Prisoners: The Battle Plan For Defeating The Left<em> (Regnery 2014).</em></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>A Lesson on Free Speech and Sharia in Knoxville</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/a-lesson-on-free-speech-and-sharia-in-knoxville/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-lesson-on-free-speech-and-sharia-in-knoxville</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2014 05:10:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom X]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[high-school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[William J. Becker]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244240</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A stunning defeat for CAIR in an unlikely place. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/lk.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244243" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/lk-450x137.jpg" alt="lk" width="279" height="85" /></a>A recent legal victory by <a href="http://freedomxlaw.com/">Freedom X</a> upheld the right of private citizens to discuss openly sharia law at a Knoxville, Tennessee, high school. “This is a victory for free speech,” Freedom X’s President <a href="http://freedomxlaw.com/board-of-directors-2/">William J. Becker</a> rightly explained, in yet another instructive example of Islamists seeking to subvert the United States Constitution’s First Amendment.</p>
<p>A local Knoxville chapter of <a href="http://www.actforamerica.org/">ACT! for America</a> began the case by arranging an April 24 evening town hall at <a href="http://www.knoxschools.org/farraguths">Farragut High School</a> (FHS). The event featured Dr. <a href="http://www.cspipublishing.com/">Bill French</a>, Center for the Study of Political Islam founder under the pen name Warner, and <a href="http://vimeo.com/93287215">Matt Bonner</a>, regional director of the <a href="https://www.crescentproject.org/">Crescent Project</a>, a Christian evangelization ministry for Muslims. They intended to address the encroachment in America of sharia, vaguely described in one online <a href="http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2014/04/anti-islam_event_cancelled.html">report</a> as “Islamic laws governing worship and lifestyle.” Becker correctly clarifies that “Sharia is incompatible with our constitutional and legal protections” in numerous ways.</p>
<p>Both local and national Muslims groups, however, greeted the event with harsh opposition. <a href="http://tntoday.utk.edu/2013/03/12/muslim-youth-minister-unique-position/">Abdel Rahman Murphy</a>, a Muslim chaplain at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, emailed then FHS principal <a href="http://elps.utk.edu/ed_admin/Reflective%20Essays%20-%20Field%20Award/Reflective%20Essay%20-%202001%20Michael%20Reynolds.pdf">Mike F. Reynolds</a> on April 8 requesting the event’s cancellation. The town hall flyer had “kind of an aggressive tone,” Murphy <a href="http://www.wate.com/story/25220254/upcoming-event-at-high-school-as-some-muslims-on-edge">argued to reporters</a>. “Feel free hosting” the event “anywhere else by renting out a banquet hall,” Murphy added, “but to host it at a public place…is not comfortable for the rest of us.”</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.cair.com/">Council on American-Islamic Relations</a> (CAIR), a <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/172">radical</a> faux civil rights group and an unindicted terrorism financing <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/1854/doj-cairs-unindicted-co-conspirator-status-legit">coconspirator</a>, also objected. An April 11 CAIR <a href="https://www.cair.com/press-center/press-releases/12446-cair-welcomes-cancellation-of-anti-muslim-event-in-tenn-school.html">news release</a> publicized a letter by CAIR National Communications Director <a href="http://www.cair.com/about-us/cair-national-board-and-key-staff/ibrahim-hooper-communications-director.html">Ibrahim Hooper</a> to FHS the previous day that “vilifies…French, Bonner and ACT! for America” with a “false attribution” of “anti-Muslim hate” refuted by Becker’s complaint. “We support the First Amendment right to free speech—even…hate speech used by these speakers,” Hooper argued. The “need for a safe and inclusive learning environment,” though, makes a “school…not the proper setting.”</p>
<p>Principal Reynolds’ April 10 letter to Knox County Schools Superintendent <a href="http://kcs.farragutis.schoolfusion.us/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=47850&amp;SID&amp;printable=TRUE&amp;SID&amp;portrait_or_landscape=portrait">James P. McIntyre, Jr.</a> shared Hooper’s sentiments. “Groups promoting hate rather than tolerance” would have the event “serve as a public forum for harassment and bullying practices that contradict the open-minded, academic discussion we seek to…foster at” FHS, Murphy wrote. The event would generate “little positive press or educational benefit,” yet “polarize our community” when “deemed ours by association.” Concerns of “potential backlash” and “future security threats” from “retaliation of opposing groups” existed. These “expressed concerns…about…disruption” from an event unsuitable for “a safe, healthy and comfortable learning environment” caused McIntyre to rescind ACT!’s invitation in an April 11 letter to its Knoxville chapter leaders.</p>
<p>A Knoxville school official was “happy to announce” ACT!’s uninviting. Hooper boasted of the school’s decision, arguing that “this event in a public school would send an implicit message of endorsement for the bigoted views of the speakers.” Knoxville schools must “remain a safe place for all students,” concurred <a href="http://acotn.org/about-us/staffboard/">Remziya Suleyman</a> from the Tennessee-based Muslim organization, American Center for Outreach.</p>
<p>The Knoxville ACT! chapter’s president John Peach held the event in a <a href="http://freedomxlaw.com/fx-sues-tn-school-district/">church</a>, not seeking other public venues for fear of another cancellation. “Sharia is not well-understood and we wanted to inform the public” as “concerned Americans,” Peach said. An “American…should” not “be afraid to speak out on public matters in a public forum.”</p>
<p>Peach noted that Muslim groups such as the Saudi-backed <a href="http://www.meforum.org/603/islamisms-campus-club-the-muslim-students">Muslim Students Association</a>, meanwhile, could openly operate unopposed at the University of Tennessee Knoxville campus. “If it’s right for Muslims to host events in tax-funded public facilities, then what is wrong with a group of citizens wanting the same,” he asked. “This is a great example of what Sharia Law is doing to America.”</p>
<p>On August 4<sup>th</sup>, Peach and French with Becker as counsel sued the school district for violating his First Amendment constitutionally protected rights. “It is unfortunate we have to educate the educators,” Becker stated in filing the lawsuit to coincide with the school year opening, but the First Amendment’s “freedom of speech…distinguishes America from Muslim nations.” “CAIR and other terror-affiliated groups are exploiting our laws,” Becker analyzed, “to erode…freedom of speech…part and parcel of a greater plan” for an “Islamic caliphate.” “Unfortunately…as Muslim activists play the victim card,” this trend will grow, even though blasphemy laws are unconstitutional.</p>
<p>Because “litigation would have been futile,” Becker rejoiced, the school’s attorneys settled just 21 days after his filing. An “undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome” the “hazardous freedom” that “is the basis of our national strength,” the 1969 United States Supreme Court <a href="http://www.oyez.org/cases/1960-1969/1968/1968_21"><em>Tinker v. Des Moines School District</em></a> decision cited by Becker held. In addition to paying plaintiff attorney fees and costs, a new school district policy states that “[a]pproval for use of school buildings and property will not be withheld based upon the content of the message or viewpoint of the applicant.”</p>
<p>As with a prior June 2014 Chicago CAIR lead <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/06/16/Council-on-American-Islamic-Relations-Seeks-to-Undermine-the-Land-of-the-Free">protest</a> involving another instance of ACT! using public facilities for an anti-Sharia program, America’s First Amendment protections have stopped those who would inhibit open discussion of Islam. Vague “hate” or “disruption” claims have not silenced indirectly in America speech censored directly in majority-Muslim countries or “multicultural” sensitive Europe. The Knoxville case, a precedent that will not remained unnoticed, has shown groups like CAIR that Americans will not hesitate to defend free speech under assault even in the land of the free.</p>
<p><em>This article was commissioned by </em><a href="http://www.legal-project.org/"><em>The Legal Project</em></a><em>, an activity of the </em><a href="http://www.meforum.org/"><em>Middle East Forum</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><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"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>The Unfinished War</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/the-unfinished-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-unfinished-war</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/the-unfinished-war/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Sep 2014 04:25:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240066</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What Israel must do to prevent the next onslaught from Hamas. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/image.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240067" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/image.jpg" alt="image" width="305" height="245" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Our-world-The-unfinished-war-374131">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The war with Hamas is not over. What we are experiencing today is a temporary cease-fire.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The most basic reason the war is not over is because Hamas has no existence outside its war against the Jewish state. Hamas exists to obliterate Israel. The goal of each round of fighting is to soften Israel up for the next round.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas will only stop fighting when it is defeated. And Israel did not defeat Hamas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Not only did Israel not defeat Hamas, according to Haaretz, senior IDF commanders are now lobbying the government to enable Hamas to credibly claim victory.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">According to Amos Harel, senior IDF commanders want Israel to bow to Hamas’s demands for open borders with Israel and for the steady transfer of funds to Hamas’s treasury.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Harel quoted a senior IDF source who said that if Israel doesn’t give in to Hamas’s demands for open borders, Hamas will renew its attacks at the end of September.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In the senior commander’s words, “If we can assist [Hamas] by expanding fishing grounds and easing restrictions on border crossings of people and goods into and from Israel, this will help maintain the quiet.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">So to delay the next Hamas onslaught against us, the IDF is lobbying the government to surrender to Hamas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">This behavior demonstrates two basic truths about Hamas’s war against Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">First, it is impossible for Israel to deter Hamas, but Hamas has apparently deterred the IDF General Staff.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">During Operation Protective Edge Hamas absorbed massive blows to its war machine. The IDF destroyed Hamas’s offensive tunnels that penetrated into Israel. It destroyed thousands of Hamas’s rockets, missiles and launchers. It killed hundreds of Hamas fighters, including some top commanders.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And yet, less than a week into the cease-fire, the IDF prefers to capitulate to Hamas’s demands, and so allow Hamas to recoup its losses, rather than face its depleted forces on the ground in four weeks.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, despite the blows it suffered, it is Hamas that has deterred the IDF.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Harel’s report is just the most recent indication that the IDF senior command echelon is Hamas’s ace in the hole. Throughout the war, news reports revealed that under Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz, the General Staff refused to present the security cabinet with any viable plan to defeat Hamas. And now, having failed to defeat Hamas, they insist that it is Israel that should surrender.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas went to war with Israel because its back was up against the wall. Due to Egypt’s decision a year ago to seal its borders with Gaza, Hamas lost the ability to expand its arsenal, fuel Gaza’s smuggling-based economy and pay its terrorists their salaries.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Its leadership figured that the best way to reopen its supply lines was by going to war against Israel. The risk-averse behavior of the General Staff both during the war and today tell Hamas’s leadership that they were right.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The General Staff’s behavior isn’t the only reason that Hamas thinks aggression is the way to go. The US and Europe have gone out of their way, both during the fighting and today, to show Hamas that they are right to attack Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">US President Barack Obama adopted Hamas’s demand for open borders as the official position of the US government almost at the outset of the conflict.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">He sought to replace Hamas foe Egypt as mediator with Hamas’s principle state sponsors Qatar and Turkey.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Under Obama the Federal Aviation Administration instituted a discriminatory and unwarranted flight ban on Israel. The repercussions of that move continue to harm Israel’s economy.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Today, the US and the EU are working together at the UN Security Council to draft a resolution that would see the deployment of international military forces to Gaza. The defined role of the force would be to oversee Gaza’s demilitarization, seemingly in line with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s demand.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But the notion that UN forces would take any steps to disarm Hamas is absurd. The minute such forces arrive in Gaza they will become human shields preventing Israel from defending itself against Hamas aggression. If they are deployed to Gaza, then in the next round of Hamas’s war against the Jews, IDF troops will have to constrain their offensive operations still further to avoid killing Western forces.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, the deployment of such a force in Gaza will make it all but impossible for Israel to fight Hamas in the future.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The current discussions at the Security Council tell Hamas it is winning.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">By attacking Israel, the genocidal jihadist group won the support of the West. At the UN today the US and the EU are crafting a resolution that will allow it to attack Israel from behind Western human shields.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">So between the IDF General Staff and the West, Hamas now knows that all they have to do to survive, thrive and expand their war on Israel, is shake the tree. Something will fall out that will reward their aggression.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">If they pay any price at all, it will involve nothing more than the death of the civilians of Gaza. And Hamas leaders couldn’t care less. For them, the death of civilians is yet another means of attacking Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Facing this dire state of affairs, our leadership must dedicate itself today to preparing for the next round of war.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To this end, Israel must begin acting in three areas, now.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">First, Israel must use whatever means it has at its disposal to scuttle the US’s attempts to pass any resolution related to Gaza at the UN Security Council.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Second, the government must clean the stables in the IDF General Staff.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Gantz is due to complete his tour of duty in February. Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon need to use his departure as an opportunity to replace not only Gantz but several other senior generals. Their replacements must be commanders who understand that the role of the IDF is to win wars, not lose them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To date, Netanyahu and Ya’alon have given no indication of their intentions. Senior ministers and the public should use both the General Staff’s support for surrender and its lack of strategic ambition and tactical imagination during the war as a means of pressuring Netanyahu and Ya’alon to conduct a major shakeup of the General Staff.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Finally, the time has come for Israel to expand its military industries.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">During the war both the US and European governments placed obstructions in the path of IDF resupply.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Israel cannot remain dependent on undependable foreign military suppliers. Israel needs to develop its own production lines, starting immediately.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">We have the technology. We have the economic wherewithal. And we have the external markets to cover the costs of development.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">True, this is a long-term undertaking.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But it has to begin now.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Residents of the south are livid at the government for opting for a ceasefire rather than mounting a full invasion of Gaza and dismantling Hamas piece by piece, terrorist by terrorist. As they see it, Operation Protective Edge failed to bring them the security they deserve and require to lead normal lives.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">There is much validity to their claims. Hamas’s declarations of victory would sound far more disingenuous if the IDF’s leadership wasn’t intent on proving them right.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Their celebrations would ring hollow and even pathetic if the Americans and Europeans weren’t laboring to set up a mechanism to prevent Israel from fighting in the future.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As it stands, the only way for our leaders to prove their credibility now is by rejecting Hamas’s demand for open borders, even if doing so will require us to go back into battle in a month. After we have seen what Hamas is capable of, the notion that we should allow them to resupply and so rebuild and expand their military capabilities is simply outrageous.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Every general even obliquely tied to this initiative should be given his walking papers.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">So too, our leaders need to demonstrate that they understand the nature of the diplomatic battlefield whose contours are being designed in Washington as well as Europe. To meet this threat, we must devise a clear plan to scuttle the cease-fire initiative at the Security Council, and we must diminish our dependence on our unreliable defense partners by building our own production lines.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Absent these responses, it is difficult to see how we will weather the next rapidly approaching storm. Absent these responses it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the time has come for new elections.</span></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>Hamas Declares &#8216;Victory&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/hamas-declares-victory-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hamas-declares-victory-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2014 04:00:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cease-fire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239793</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The terrorist group lives to fight another day after ceasefire. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Khaled-Meshaal.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239800" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Khaled-Meshaal.jpg" alt="Khaled-Meshaal" width="279" height="230" /></a>No sooner had the guns fallen silent in Gaza than Hamas leaders, some emerging from Shifa Hospital, others from five-star Qatari hotels, proclaimed “victory” before a paid crowd of shills and an adoring media. Speaking from his plush surroundings in the pseudo country of Qatar, some 1,000 miles away from the battle, Hamas’s political leader, Khaled Mashaal <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4565395,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">comically noted</span></a> that his terrorist group “dazzled the world with its victory and its endurance.” The perfunctory victory proclamation, following defeat at the hands of Israel, has become a cyclical, near ritualistic event in the Arab world.</p>
<p>Gamal Abdel Nasser did it in 1956 after Israel’s takeover of Sinai and routing of his forces stationed there. Anwar Sadat did it in 1973 following the encirclement of his armies by the Israel Defense Forces. Yasser Arafat did it in 1982 when his PLO gangsters were expelled from Lebanon and banished to different parts of the Mideast. Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah did it in 2006 when Lebanon was set back 10 years and Hamas has become proficient in these types of declarations, having performed identical victory rituals twice before, in 2009 and 2012.</p>
<p>Of course these silly, fantasy-like proclamations bare no rational resemblance to reality. In this current round, Hamas took a nasty beating. It lost at least 1,000 of its fighters and some 200 were taken prisoner. Its military leadership was decapitated in a series of punishing strikes. Its rockets were swatted out of the sky by Israel’s marvelous Iron Dome missile defense system and its rocket arsenal was severely depleted. Its command and control was left in tatters and its offensive tunnels, which took years to build and soaked up hundreds of millions of dollars, are no more. Most importantly, none of its demands, the creation of a seaport and an airport and the lifting of the blockade, were met.</p>
<p>The terms which Hamas had agreed to on day 49 of Operation Defensive Edge were precisely the same as those which the organization rejected during the initial days of conflict. To say that Hamas is back to square one would be inaccurate for Hamas emerges from this conflict with substantially less than what it had when it started.</p>
<p>Having been soundly defeated on the battlefield – 10 times since 1948 – Israel’s regressive enemies have adopted a new paradigm for victory – survival.  As long as the aggressor survives the battle with his capital intact – more or less – he can declare victory over the Zionist infidels.</p>
<p>It is not a difficult threshold to meet given that the EU and other Western enablers will always seek to prevent Israel from effectuating complete and total victory. A former high level security official noted that had the Israel Defense Forces been unencumbered by political constraints, it could have <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Fundamentally-Freund-Defeating-terrorists-From-Sri-Lanka-to-Gaza-371428"><span style="color: #0433ff;">conquered Gaza</span></a> within a week and that assessment was echoed by others within the security establishment. Humanitarian concerns and negative world reaction foreclosed that option.</p>
<p>And so, as the brave Hamas groundhogs emerge from their underground shelters situated beneath Shifa hospital and scan the scale of destruction that surrounds them, they declare victory. For the average Westerner, this warped mindset is difficult to explain. But for those well versed in the convoluted machinations of the Arab Middle East, this mentality is a natural outcome of the negative influences that permeate the region.</p>
<p>The Arab world, fed on a steady diet of religious dogma, racist supremacism and xenophobia, where Jews are considered to be the descendants of apes and pigs and non-Muslims are deemed second class citizens, produces thought processes vastly different from those of more progressive societies. Reversals and setbacks, which in the West would produce cause for reflection and introspection, are routinely ignored in the Arab world. A cognitive dissonance of sorts has set in whereby every loss, no matter how complete or devastating, is explained as merely being the will of Allah and a bump on the road toward the path of victory over the infidels.</p>
<p>The guns have now fallen silent in Gaza. In Israel, things will quickly return to normal. Universities will impart knowledge, businesses will thrive and scientific innovation will continue apace. In Gaza too things will return to normal. Hamas will continue to divert humanitarian goods for war making and the Imams will continue preach hate and anti-Semitism, setting the stage for the eleventh round and yet another Arab defeat.</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>Victor Davis Hanson on the &#8216;Savior Generals&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/paul-schnee/victor-davis-hanson-on-the-savior-generals/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=victor-davis-hanson-on-the-savior-generals</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Aug 2013 04:26:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Paul Schnee]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[character]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Generals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=201382</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Revealing the shared traits of the great men who turned around lost battles. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/hansonjpg-e1ceadbeecba7ea4.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-201443 alignleft" alt="hansonjpg-e1ceadbeecba7ea4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/hansonjpg-e1ceadbeecba7ea4-417x350.jpg" width="250" height="210" /></a>Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, former classics professor, scholar of ancient warfare, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and the author of some 20 books. He has been a commentator on modern warfare and contemporary politics for National Review and is a nationally syndicated columnist for the Tribune Media Group. Thus, it was particularly interesting to hear him talk about his new book, &#8220;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Savior-Generals-Commanders-Ancient/dp/160819163X">The Savior Generals</a>,&#8221; at the David Horowitz Freedom Center&#8217;s Wednesday Morning Club luncheon held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills on August 12th.</p>
<p>The major theme of the book, he said, was how contrarian and unpopular generals have often saved the day, defying the odds, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat to win a campaign and sometimes an entire war. To illustrate this, Hanson spanned almost 2,600 years, choosing Themistocles, Belisarius, Sherman, Ridgway and Petraeus as examples. Hanson noted they all shared certain traits: They all enjoyed their reputations for bucking conventional wisdom; they were all highly literate; they all spoke well and they all led by example.</p>
<p>When confronted with catastrophe, all of Hanson&#8217;s examples had one question in mind: &#8220;What is the plan of attack?&#8221; These great men also understood that in war the status of aggressors and defenders and of the victors and the vanquished is not interchangeable. Hanson lamented that in the current political climate, this one simple fact seems to get overlooked. He expressed his dismay when shortly after army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hassan, who was a Muslim, murdered 13 troops and injured 32 others at Fort Hood, the best that Army Chief of Staff General Casey could say was that he hoped that the U.S. Army&#8217;s &#8220;diversity&#8221; would not become a casualty of this massacre.</p>
<p>None of Hanson&#8217;s generals led from behind or were what Byron called &#8220;those Pagod things of sabre-sway/With fronts of brass and feet of clay.&#8221; Nowhere in the &#8220;Art of War&#8221; by Sun Tzu, Caesar&#8217;s &#8220;Commentaries&#8221; or the war manuals of von Clausewitz will one read that one should love one&#8217;s enemy. What one will read is the categorical imperative that one should kill, crush and defeat one&#8217;s enemy and keep on doing so until he has had enough of it. Themistocles, Belisarius, Sherman, Ridgway and Petraeus were all soldiers who forged their own path and who knew that without victory there would be no chance of survival.</p>
<p>For these men, however, fate has often been unkind. Themistocles was subjected to trumped up charges of corruption; Belisarius had an unfaithful wife and an ungrateful emperor; Sherman was slandered as a terrorist because he had humiliated the enemy and often had many personal feuds; Ridgway was forced to resign as Chief of Staff by President Eisenhower with whom he had strong disagreements about the role of the U.S. Army; and Petraeus resigned as Director of the CIA due to an extra-marital affair.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, when President Reagan awarded General Ridgway the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Medal_of_Freedom">Presidential Medal of Freedom</a> on May 12, 1986 saying that &#8220;Heroes come when they&#8217;re needed; great men step forward when courage seems in short supply,&#8221; he could have been talking just as much about Themistocles, Belisarius, Sherman and Petraeus as he was about Ridgeway.</p>
<p>Victor Davis Hanson spoke for 45 minutes without notes and it was clear that he took delight in his subjects. He displayed an encompassing range of historical knowledge and, with his subjects in the &#8220;The Savior Generals,&#8221; confirmed that people of great courage and character can change the course of history.</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 Six-Day War &#8212; 46 Years Later</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-puder/the-six-day-war-46-years-later/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-six-day-war-46-years-later</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Jun 2013 04:07:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Arab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[jordan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[six day war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=192529</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Israel's great leap forward. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/flags_and_planes.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-192624" alt="flags_and_planes" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/flags_and_planes-375x350.jpg" width="300" height="280" /></a>It is hard to believe that 46 years have passed since the Six-Day War of June, 1967. The world has changed a great deal since then. Technology has revolutionized communications and warfare. Instead of war between nations and world wars, most of today’s conflicts occur within states as witnessed in recent years in the Arab world. Facebook and Twitter broke the Arab governments’ monopoly over information, and enabled millions of Egyptians, Tunisians, Syrians, and now Turks to rally against their arbitrary and oppressive governments. Hostility towards the Jewish state did not, however, change much. Still, Israel today is much stronger vis-à-vis her enemies than in 1967.</p>
<p>The countries that played key roles in the Six-Day War drama have undergone changes, albeit not all of which bode well for the future. The Jordanian (monarchy) government made peace with Israel and is no longer an enemy of the Jewish State. Syria never made peace with Israel and is currently involved in a civil war that might spillover into a conflict with Israel. Egypt, Israel’s most serious protagonist, made peace with Israel, but its current Islamist (Muslim Brotherhood) government is hostile to Israel and major elements within the civilian leadership would very much like to abrogate the 1979 Peace Treaty and engage the Jewish state militarily. Non-Arab Iran, a friendly state led by the Shah that sold oil to Israel in 1967, is now ruled by a radical Islamist regime that poses an existential threat to the Jewish State.</p>
<p>Marked changes have also taken place in Israel &#8212; in its society, economy, political landscape, and demography. Prior to the Six-Day War, Israel was a small, intimate society governed by the paternalistic Mapai (Israel’s Labor party) elite. To a great extent, Israel was, at that time, an egalitarian society with few opportunities for conspicuous consumption or ostentatious living, as we see in Israel today. There were no shopping malls in every town. Most people did not own cars nor were there four lane super highways.</p>
<p>For decades before and during the Six Day War, Mapai was the dominant force in Israel’s political life. In control since the pre-State days, Mapai’s socialist economic orientation was responsible for jobs, housing, health-care, and other necessities of life. The non-socialist Likud party has been in power for many of the recent decades, as well as today, and has freed the Israeli economy from government-controlled enterprises by major privatization. Both the private sector and exports have grown enormously, especially in the high-tech sector. In 2010, Israel joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which brings together the wealthiest nations in the world.</p>
<p>Israel’s population in 1967 was <a href="http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop-people-population&amp;date=1967" target="_blank">2,745,000</a>, while, on the eve of 2013, Israel’s population stood on the cusp of 8 million (<a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/on-eve-of-2013-israels-population-stands-at-cusp-of-8-million/" target="_blank">7,981,000</a><span style="text-decoration: underline;">)</span>. More than 1 million Jews (and non-Jewish relatives) arrived from the former Soviet Union, as well as over 100,000 from Ethiopia. Israel has become one of the few Western states with a healthy demographic growth of about 2% a year.</p>
<p>Poverty, lack of economic opportunity, political and social chaos, and frustration remain the reality in Egypt and Syria. Islamism has replaced Arab nationalism as the dominant ideology in the Arab world. In Syria, the Islamist opposition is fighting to topple the Baathist (Arab national-socialist) regime of Bashar Assad. The only significant growth that has occurred in Egypt and Syria is in population. Egypt’s population in 1967 was <a href="http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop-people-population&amp;date=1967" target="_blank">33,947,380</a>, Syria’s was <a href="http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop-people-population&amp;date=1967" target="_blank">5,771,876</a>. Today, Egypt has a population of <a href="http://countrymeters.info/en/Egypt/" target="_blank">85,668,335</a>, that it can barely feed, and Syria’s is <a href="http://countrymeters.info/en/Syria/" target="_blank">21,133,056</a>.<b> </b>Nearly 100,000 have been killed in the civil war, and millions have fled to other states.<b> </b></p>
<p>The events that led to the Six-Day War began with Egyptian President Abdul Nasser’s decision to expel United Nations troops from the Sinai Peninsula and blockade Israel&#8217;s port of Eilat. This action, according to international law, was a <i>casus belli</i> – an act of war. Nasser succumbed to belligerent Arab threats to destroy Israel. In addition, many of the provocative actions can be traced to Soviet meddling and misinformation, which escalated tension and skirmishes between Syrian and Israeli forces along their mutual border.</p>
<p>At the end of Day 1 of the war, June 5, 1967, the air forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq no longer existed. Israel’s pilots and ground crews helped the IDF demolish the armies of Egypt in the Sinai, capturing huge arsenals of Soviet armaments. On the third day of the war, Israeli troops reached the Suez Canal, and had most of the Sinai Peninsula under IDF control. Jordan, who entered the war in spite of the urging of Israel’s PM Levi Eshkol to stay out, lost the territory on the West Bank. Israel liberated its lost Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, and reunited its capital. On the fifth day of the war, Israel battled the Syrians on the Golan Heights, capturing the entire Golan.</p>
<p>In the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War, diplomatic outreach was the order of the day. However, the war had done little to bring the sides closer together, and at a summit in Khartoum, Sudan, Arab countries repudiated peace and reaffirmed their rejection of Israel. More diplomatic headway was made in the United Nations Security Council. After some wrangling, the international community agreed on several principles that would be the basis of a &#8220;just and lasting peace&#8221; in the Middle East. UN Security Council Resolution 242 called on the parties to make full peace in exchange for “territories,” but not all the territories that Israel captured. Israel was assured of secure and defensible borders.</p>
<p>The Six-Day War had many long term implications on the region. Israel came into control of a large number of Arab refugees, some of whom were among those displaced since 1948 and who were then able to return to the Israeli-controlled West Bank. They, along with their neighbors, witnessed unprecedented economic growth over the course of the next two decades. Israeli investment in the infrastructure of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, along with policies that allowed Arabs to move freely, increased the standard of living of Palestinians, who were now able to work both in Israel and in the oil rich countries of the Middle East.</p>
<p>The relative prosperity and peace in the West Bank and Gaza was broken by the first intifada of December 1987. Yasser Arafat’s PLO, operating from Tunis, opposed the continued occupation and simultaneously refused to establish a state alongside Israel (the PLO charter sought to replace Israel and erase the Jewish State). Arafat instigated terror and unrest in the territories, which in turn prompted Israel to increase its security measures.</p>
<p>The Six-Day War enabled Israel to reach a peace treaty with Egypt by returning the entire Sinai Peninsula, including the oil fields of Abu Rudeis and Ra’s Sudr. Israel subsequently (August 2005) withdrew from the Gaza Strip without a peace treaty &#8212; a move which failed to end violence against Israel from that territory.</p>
<p>The “occupation” mantra has been mischaracterized as the primary, if not the sole cause<i> </i>of the conflict, rather than an effect of it. Many journalists unfamiliar with the relevant facts and context mistakenly believe that the starting point of Mideast tensions is the ”occupation” rather than Arab and Islamic intolerance towards the existence of a Jewish State in their midst.</p>
<p>The Six-Day War gave Israel bargaining chips with their hostile Arab enemies. Land for peace has not made the Arab Palestinians more amenable to living side by side with Israel. Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish State. Nevertheless, the Six Day War fostered massive immigration and support for Israel, which made it stronger and a major regional player. And, while peace with the Palestinians remains elusive, it is no longer impossible.</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>Thank You Mayor Bloomberg for Beating the Bus Union</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/thank-you-mayor-bloomberg-for-beating-the-bus-union/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=thank-you-mayor-bloomberg-for-beating-the-bus-union</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Feb 2013 04:03:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=177970</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This union wants to take advantage of New Yorkers and we won’t stand it.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/thank-you-mayor-bloomberg-for-beating-the-bus-union/bloom-4/" rel="attachment wp-att-178037"><img class=" wp-image-178037 alignleft" title="bloom" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/bloom-450x345.jpg" alt="" width="315" height="241" /></a>One may think the cheers heard from New York City are from school kids happy that all school buses are now running again but indeed all New Yorkers should be celebrating the victory of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg against Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181.  9,000 New York City school unionized drivers have been on strike, inconveniencing 113,000 school kids and their families, and now <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/union_strike_bus_ted_T5PctXt7LSIOnWA2hqFZMI">the strike is over</a> with the city’s largest school bus drivers union agreeing to return to work.</p>
<p>New York City isn’t an easy place to challenge unions – especially in the dead of winter and when kids are involved.  But Bloomberg did it and thankfully he won. The strike was sparked by Bloomberg’s decision to allow open and competitive bidding on NYC school bus contracts for the first time in 33 years to reduce costs and adapt to changed needs. As a New York City tax-payer I say thank you Mr. Bloomberg.  These absurdly high costs are covered by hard-working tax-payers.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/nyregion/new-york-school-bus-drivers-go-on-strike.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=1&amp;">even the liberal New York Times reported,</a> NYC school buses kids cost almost $7,000 a year for each bus passenger.  Comparatively, Los Angeles spends $3,200, Chicago $5,000, and Miami $1,000. The union’s strike offended many New Yorkers, reeking of entitlement.  In what sane world is pricing not competitive – and why would anyone think they have the right to be guaranteed work?</p>
<p>Taxes in New York City are already absurdly out of control.  As Mayor Bloomberg explained when refusing to meet the drivers &#8220;The terms of the bid are clearly only price, and we&#8217;ve got to get the best price for the city. We have an obligation to save the taxpayers&#8217; money.&#8221; <em>How could any sane person possibly object to that statement? </em>In the greatest capitalist city in America how can anyone believe free-market economics to be wrong?</p>
<p>NYC school bus drivers are paid for eight hours of work each day, while few drive more than five or six hours, and many of the senior drivers with the highest wages work the fewest number of hours. Bloomberg rightfully refused to force winning bidders to hire union workers, and sent the very clear message that the best man will be employed for the job, not a system of entitlement.</p>
<p>As Bloomberg said “…the end of this strike reflects the fact that when we say we put children first, we mean it.” He is absolutely right as business is about being competitive.  New York State is already ranked by The Tax Foundation as the worst state in the nation to start a business.  New Yorkers who earn six-figures can expect to pay more than 50% in taxes between federal, state and local taxes. Business is about being competitive every single day, and those of us who pay taxes have no guaranteed income – why should bus drivers?</p>
<p>In a recent issue of the New York Post, the President of the Local 1181 union is quoted as telling his members, “This war is not over.” It is the one point on which I will agree with the union. As a lifelong New York resident, and entrepreneur of a <a href="http://www.5wpr.com/">PR firm</a> I agree this war is not over.  We will not sit down and allow someone to be paid a full day’s wage if they don’t work a full day.</p>
<p>Decent, hard working Americans will insist and demand that prices are competitive and fair, and ensure that everyone is made aware that job protection is a non-capitalist concept. This union wants to take advantage of New Yorkers and we won’t stand it.</p>
<p>Thank you Mayor Michael Bloomberg.</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>Newt Gingrich&#8217;s Keynote Address at Restoration Weekend</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/newt-gingrichs-keynote-address-at-restoration-weekend/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=newt-gingrichs-keynote-address-at-restoration-weekend</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2012 04:49:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[LOST]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newt Gingrich]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=167296</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A political visionary discusses the path forward for conservatism. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>Editor&#8217;s note: Below is the video and transcript of keynote speaker Newt Gingrich&#8217;s address at the David Horowitz Freedom Center&#8217;s 2012 Restoration Weekend. The event took place Nov. 15th-18th at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. </em></p>
<p><iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/AYOJ430C.html?p=1" width="550" height="443" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYOJ430C" style="display:none"></embed></p>
<p>Newt Gingrich:  Thank you.  Thank you all very, very much.  And thank you for that introduction.  And, Louie, thank you for the suicidal moment of bravery, which I&#8217;m sure pleased John Boehner beyond belief.</p>
<p>David, it&#8217;s always great to be back with you.  And you are, in fact, an institutional and cultural warrior.  You understand exactly what needs to be done and we are thrilled to be with you once again.</p>
<p>I also want to invite all of you &#8212; we did a movie called <em>City Upon a Hill</em>, which Callista and I will introduce at 2:30, working with Citizens United.  And it really communicates the American exceptionalism which is at the heart of Callista&#8217;s two books in which Ellis the Elephant introduces four-to-eight year olds, which I thinks fits a little bit of what Robert Davi was talking about.  We have to be in the culture, communicating creatively and effectively and attractively in order to be directly competitive.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s part of the reason we&#8217;ve had such a great time now making seven documentaries altogether with Dave Bossie and Citizens United and why we&#8217;ve had a good time at Regnery introducing both children&#8217;s books, where they reopened their children&#8217;s division, and the books I&#8217;ve written with them.</p>
<p>In addition, I have a &#8212; and we&#8217;ve launched an American Legacy Book Tour, which has gone very well so far.  This is my third volume on George Washington as a biography, a<em> </em>series<em> </em>of fictional novels.  This is one is <em>Victory at Yorktown</em>.</p>
<p>Particularly I want to single out somebody who was in many, many ways responsible for us doing these three volumes.  And that&#8217;s Gay Gaines, whose leadership at Mount Vernon was just unimaginable.  If you want to see an example of fighting the cultural war effectively, go look at the Education Center of Mount Vernon and the great job they do.  And I hope &#8212; we haven&#8217;t worked out the details yet, but I hope with her help that I&#8217;ll be able to actually teach a course online from Kaplan University on George Washington from Mount Vernon on his birthday.  And I think that it&#8217;s the kind of thing where you open it up to the whole country.</p>
<p>Part of our commitment has to be that in the long run truth beats falsehood.  And the fact that we are so incompetent as a party that we can&#8217;t tell the truth as well as the other side lies is shame on us.  I mean, it&#8217;s not their fault they lie. Given their values, they have no choice.  But it is really pathetic that we can&#8217;t tell the truth more effectively than they can lie.  That&#8217;s apparently where we are.  (Applause)</p>
<p>I want to comment Robert for being here because it, frankly, takes more courage for him to be in this room, given the reception that we have back in Los Angeles, than any other single person.  And so we&#8217;re thrilled that you&#8217;re here and we appreciate you.  (Applause)</p>
<p>I also want to note that Michele Bachmann and Louie Gohmert were two of the five members who I called the National Security Five, because they had the courage to ask the question about influence in the State Department and the national security process.  And that took real courage.  They were assaulted for having the courage to ask good questions.</p>
<p>But, candidly, I think the same question has to be raised again.  And I may, at the risk of getting them in trouble, resurrect their letter for the following reason.  To what extent was the fundamental total dishonesty of the administration on the cause of the attack at Ben Ghazi a function of the internal influence of Islamists who refuse to concede that terrorism is from Islam?  (Applause)</p>
<p>And let me just remind you, if you stand up for the truth, you will be in a fight.  When you run into Republicans who are too proud, too organized, too courteous, wear clothing that&#8217;s too neat in order to be in a fight, you&#8217;re watching people who are prepared to surrender.  And I&#8217;m very concerned that the leadership in the House doesn&#8217;t understand that they have a President who&#8217;s going to take everything he can get.</p>
<p>And my major comment on revenues I&#8217;m doing this week, tomorrow morning, is real simple:  Let me see what Obama is prepared to bring to the table that he will endorse and deliver Democrats on fundamental reform of spending and entitlements.  And then I&#8217;ll look at a variety of things.  But this idea that we should walk in, as we did in 1982 under Reagan, as we did in 1990 under Bush, we should lead it to taxes, they should promise that at some point in the distant future maybe under certain circumstances they might conceivably eventually cut some spending as long as it&#8217;s not real.  I mean, how often do you have to be stupid to decide you shouldn&#8217;t be in the business?  (Applause)</p>
<p>Now, the other person that I want to mention who was here earlier and I think may come back is Colonel Allen West.  And I certainly hope all of you will help (applause) &#8212; he clearly needs financial support to go through the recount process and, as they&#8217;ve already discovered, entire boxes that weren&#8217;t counted, 1,000 votes that have disappeared, a variety of small, typical in a Democratic county that&#8217;s trying to win the election situation.  Allen needs your help.  He deserves it.  He&#8217;s a tremendously courageous person and a real, real asset.</p>
<p>Now, Robert Davi got me to thinking, because I thought he had a very, very useful conversation.  And, by definition, sees the world from a different angle and through a different set of experiences than virtually anybody else in the conservative movement.  Because he and a handful of very courageous people are actually conservatives in a zone where it is a very heretical thing to do and can be very dangerous for your career.</p>
<p>And I think his whole point about the incrementalism and reversing the incrementalism led me &#8212; this has been a very difficult period for me.  I was totally wrong on election night.  And Callista and I &#8212; I had been so convinced that you could not carry 7.9% unemployment, $2.00 a gallon extra for gasoline, the largest deficits in history, radical policies, dishonesty about Ben Ghazi &#8212; you couldn&#8217;t carry all that and win the election.   So I&#8217;d been fairly convinced we &#8212; I said publicly I thought we&#8217;d win with 315 electoral votes and 53% of the vote.  Because, given my understanding of the country I used to campaign in, that&#8217;s what would have happened.</p>
<p>And the first thing we knew was, frankly, was listening to Frank Luntz&#8217;s phone call about 5:30 when he read the exit poll numbers.  And the exit poll numbers were so stark and so consistent that we just kind of stared at each other when we hung up.</p>
<p>Now, I&#8217;m going to come back to this, but part of what I have concluded is, all of my career I&#8217;ve believed this is a center-right country and that essentially our job was to organize and communicate and we would win.  I believe now, because we have lost the entertainment world, the news media, and the academic world, this is, in a sense, at best a centrist country with a dominant left and we&#8217;re, in fact, fighting to reclaim lost ground, we&#8217;re not fighting to consolidate the [current.]  And I think that&#8217;s a very different strategic situation and will require deep thought.  And I&#8217;ll come back to that in a minute.</p>
<p>Let me just ask you &#8212; and I want you to think about this a minute.  How many of you thought on Election Day Romney would win?  Okay.  Raise your hands again.  I just want &#8212; just look around.  Okay.  Because I want to make a point about this.  Robert&#8217;s saying no, because he was in a different vantage point, living there.  He&#8217;s &#8212; &#8220;Are all these other people stupid?&#8221;  (Laughter)</p>
<p>Robert Davi:  (Inaudible &#8211; off microphone)</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich:  That&#8217;s right.  But it&#8217;s part of the whole thing.  Okay, so, let me just ask a couple &#8212; how many of you would have believed Tuesday morning of election that Romney would get 1.5 million fewer votes than McCain?  Think about this.  Probably with the numbers he&#8217;s down about 1.5.  But, okay, 1.5 million, 2 million &#8212; less, okay?  How many of you would have believed that he would have done worse with Asians than with Latinos?  Think about this.  How many of you would have believed that Obama could churn out &#8212; I talked to Tommy Thompson, who pointed out that in Milwaukee the turnout was 87.5%</p>
<p>Now, it raises two questions.  One is, how did they do it?  And the other is, in the five or ten biggest Republican counties, why didn&#8217;t we do it?  I mean, think about it.  And this was pretty consistent across the country.  This is not &#8212; you have to look at how big their margins are. You can say, okay, maybe Port St. Lucie has some voter fraud.  They don&#8217;t have voter fraud on that scale in every single place that they were winning big.  They had intense, focused, two-year-long organizational politics, which we are totally out of sequence with.</p>
<p>Now &#8212; so I think that we are in a challenging &#8212; and this is not a Romney problem.  This is a Republican institutional problem.  Romney&#8217;s just a symptom.  We lost North Dakota in the US Senate race.  We lost Montana in the Senate race, and I think also the governorship.  These are not states that we should have been losing.  George Allen lost in Virginia.  You just go down the list and you have to say to yourself, there is something profoundly wrong.</p>
<p>Now, I want to tell you, having been reasonably successful for most of my career in politics, when I am as wrong as I was election night &#8212; and I had, thanks to R.C. Hammond, who is here &#8212; we had brilliantly scheduled me into CNN and CBS the next morning so that I could explain the meaning of the Romney victory.  (Laughter)  And actually, with Dave Bossie and Citizens United, we ended up not going to the RNC victory party for obvious reasons, starting about 8:05 or something.  And we went &#8212; I think we closed down (inaudible) because we just kept sitting there, stunned.</p>
<p>Now, one of our people, maybe the smartest person that works for us, Vince Haley, went to bed at 9:30.  He said, &#8220;I get it.  I don&#8217;t want to deal with it.  I&#8217;m not &#8212; &#8221;  And he went to bed.  He refused to watch TV.  We weren&#8217;t that smart, we were masochists.  We&#8217;re sitting there going &#8212; and another piece of bad news comes in.  I mean, it was really &#8212; it was just amazing.</p>
<p>So there I am the next morning.  And I was about to go on CBS News first, like at 7:00 in the morn &#8211; &#8212; it was really truly one of the dumbest scheduling I&#8217;ve done in a long time.  And I thought, what do you &#8212; because obviously I had said the day before I thought we&#8217;d win the 315 electoral votes. So I walked in and I boldly took the following position:  I was wrong.  I was so wrong and so profoundly wrong that it&#8217;s going to take several months to think through just how wrong we are.</p>
<p>And I want to start with that.  I&#8217;m launching a project through Gingrich Productions with Callista and we&#8217;re going to try to raise money from about 25 people or institutions at 25 each.  We&#8217;re going to take half our staff and put them full time on going through all the data.  And not just about votes, but about campaigning.</p>
<p>We did <em>The View</em> this week as part of our American Legacy Book Tour.  They could never get Romney on <em>The View.  </em>I did <em>The Colbert Report.</em>  They couldn&#8217;t get Romney on <em>The Colbert Report</em>.  I was at the University of Texas two days ago.  Do you know how many kids walked up and said they saw me on Colbert?  Dave was telling me that his son, Griffin, who&#8217;s now nine, noticed that Romney wouldn&#8217;t do <em>Nickelodeon.</em> So you have Barack Obama, President of the United States, finds the time to be interviewed by a kid on <em>Nickelodeon</em>, but the Republican can&#8217;t, who&#8217;s the challenger who needs the votes, can&#8217;t find the time.  Why?  Because I suspect one of his staff said, &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s not our market.&#8221;</p>
<p>And so if you have a 50 &#8212; if you have a 47% view of America, it&#8217;s amazing how many places you concede.  In fact, if you have a 47% view of America, you&#8217;re not going to be President, you shouldn&#8217;t be President, you couldn&#8217;t govern as President.  Because you have to have a 100% view of who you&#8217;re going to lead, and you have to communicate with 100%.  I mean, it&#8217;s just &#8212; period.  (Applause)</p>
<p>We have gotten into a cycle &#8212; those of you like David who are in California live through this, like Robert.  We&#8217;ve gotten into a cycle we say, &#8220;We&#8217;re not going to carry California so let&#8217;s not spend any effort in California.&#8221;  Therefore we don&#8217;t carry California.  We don&#8217;t build a party organization.  We don&#8217;t have people who are out there every day.  The only thing we do is go to California to raise money.  And the net result is guess what?  We&#8217;re not going to carry California.</p>
<p>Now if you write off the largest state in the country you hand it to your opponent.  Say, &#8220;Here.  You don&#8217;t have to campaign there.  You don&#8217;t have to spend a penny there.  You don&#8217;t have to worry about it.  We&#8217;re giving you this gift to start the day.&#8221;  I&#8217;ve been describing it as having a football coach who said, &#8220;I know there&#8217;s 53½ yard width of a football field.  But I&#8217;ve decided our game plan is to focus on 30.  And we&#8217;re going to dominate that 30.&#8221;  And then every time we go out there we find out that our opponents, who have studied the game films, on every play score a touchdown because they run in the 20 yards we&#8217;re not &#8212; that we&#8217;ve conceded.  And then we have a meeting afterwards.  They say, &#8220;You know, if our defensive backs had just been prettier.&#8221;  (Laughter)</p>
<p>And then we have these other games.  We say, &#8220;They cheat.&#8221;  They&#8217;re out in these areas they&#8217;re not supposed to be in.  If they weren&#8217;t out there they couldn&#8217;t score every time.  But it&#8217;s very hard for us to get a group in a room to say, &#8220;You know, maybe we better learn to play the whole field.  And maybe we&#8217;d better learn to fight for every inch.&#8221;  (Applause)</p>
<p>So, probably &#8212; I hope this will all going to be published by Regnery probably by June.  And it will have with it a video package.  Because you have to see some of the stuff.  You have to see the Obama ads on Spanish language media that show Romney explaining that it&#8217;s okay to deport your grandmother.  Now, I don&#8217;t care how good your argument is over economics.  When you explain to somebody in a community that we&#8217;re going to deport grandma, they kind of go, &#8220;Hmm.  Let me get this straight.  I can have a less adequate job but Sunday lunch.  Or I can have a really great job and send postcards.&#8221;  It just becomes emotionally impossible.</p>
<p>And we were doing this over and over and over.  And it&#8217;s not Mitt; it&#8217;s the entire Republican consultant class.  (Applause)  You know, you look at the amount of money that Rove-related operations spent.  You look at the philosophy behind it, the technique they used.  And you say, &#8220;You think you&#8217;re going to win? &#8221;  If we had spent 10% of that money in year one of the Obama administration competing head to head with messaging and then 10% in year two and 10% in year three, we&#8217;d have been in a battlefield that was even.</p>
<p>Instead what we do &#8212; and this is partly because of many of you &#8212; we have a donor class that gets extraordinarily excited around Labor Day, and rushes in and says &#8212; I&#8217;ve got a very smart guy who said to me, &#8220;Which counties do you think we should focus on?&#8221;  Because he drank the Kool-Aid.  &#8220;Boy, if we carry Hamilton County &#8211;&#8221;  And I said, &#8220;You know, there&#8217;s a country.&#8221;</p>
<p>The most efficient way to communicate in this country is national.  Rush Limbaugh is in 50 states.  Sean Hannity is in 50 states.  (Applause)  And that doesn&#8217;t &#8212; I know a fair amount about targeting.  But when we won a majority in 1994, we beat Danny Rostenkowski in downtown Chicago because we followed Wooden&#8217;s theory of a full court press and we wanted to compete everywhere.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s the way we&#8217;ve got &#8212; we want to serve the whole country.  We want to compete in the whole country.  We want to take the left on intellectually, but we want to learn the tools and techniques of taking them on effectively.  And if it isn&#8217;t effective we&#8217;re just wasting our time.  (Applause)</p>
<p>So what I&#8217;d like to do is open up a few minutes to questions.  I k now you guys are running late and I don&#8217;t want to keep you too long.  So David, I suspect, will give me the hook at some point.  But let me toss it open for comments, thoughts, and it&#8217;s yours.  Yes, sir?</p>
<p>Unidentified Audience Member:  Thank you for all that you do.  What can the House do relative to executive orders or EPA regulations to impede Obama&#8217;s ability to rule by fiat?</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich:  They could refuse to fund it.  They simply say, &#8220;We&#8217;re not going to pass any bill which provides any money for doing these things.&#8221;  Then the President would say, &#8220;Well, I&#8217;ll veto the bill.&#8221;  And they you&#8217;d be &#8212; you&#8217;d do what we did.  We closed the government twice.  The second time we closed the government I think it was for an amazingly long period of time.  People couldn&#8217;t go up the Washington Monument.  They couldn&#8217;t go to the Smithsonian.  Tourists were really mad at us.  The Washington Post was melting down.  And most of the country said, &#8220;Well, that&#8217;s cool.  I mean, you guys are actually serious.  You want to balance the budget.&#8221;</p>
<p>So part of it would have to be to say, &#8220;Look, we don&#8217;t live in a dictatorship.  He did not win a parliamentary election.  He can&#8217;t unilaterally do things.  Article 1, Section 1 is the House, not the Presidency.  There are two mandates, the Republican mandate and the President&#8217;s mandate and you need to negotiate somewhere in the middle of those two.&#8221;  But if we passively allow him to run over us over and over, he will learn how to run over us.  And they&#8217;ve learned a great deal in the last two years about how to govern without Congress.  And it&#8217;s very dangerous.</p>
<p>But the ultimate congressional tool is money.  It&#8217;s designed that way and if somebody wanted to &#8212; again, take somebody who&#8217;s willing to get scarred up.  You have to be prepared to go to the mat and say, &#8220;You know, we&#8217;re not going to provide you money for those purposes.  And if you are determined to do that we&#8217;re going to have a crisis because you are breaking the Constitutional framework and we&#8217;re not going to sit here and let you do it.&#8221;  But it would be that tough.  It would make the 2014 elections pretty extraordinary.</p>
<p>Yes, sir?</p>
<p>Unidentified Audience member:  (Inaudible &#8211; off microphone) In the last panel we were talking about &#8212; Paul brought up a list of on November 1<sup>st</sup> what television networks were being watched to see where we&#8217;re getting our information.  Well, my generation hates paying for TV and cable.  So what do we do?  We go to YouTube.  And guess what?  The day before the election Obama had a beautiful ad on YouTube.  It took up an entire [banner] right there underneath the search bar.  So guess what?  My generation goes to YouTube to watch the news and who do they see?  They see this man up there right there in their face before they search the video, find the news.</p>
<p>I love my generation and my generation can be brought back over to this.  How do we communicate to them?  I want to share this with you all because this is crucial.  Newt, I love what you do.  What do we need to do?</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich:  Well, that&#8217;s part of why I&#8217;m going to write this report.  Because, as I said, it&#8217;s not just about voting patterns.  It&#8217;s about the use of technology and it&#8217;s about texting.  It&#8217;s about YouTube.  It&#8217;s about Google search.</p>
<p>First of all, remember that in the 2008 campaign, one of the cofounders of Facebook was the leader of the IT effort at the Obama campaign.  So we hire a couple of consultants who come out of politics, but have studied computing.  They&#8217;re the guys who are inventing the social media we&#8217;re competing in.</p>
<p>And, as Robert said &#8212; and I learned this first with Clinton.  You know, Clinton was extraordinarily good at going to Hollywood and getting Hollywood to design the advertising.  Politics, like most movies, is about storytelling.  If you can&#8217;t tell a story, people can&#8217;t understand what you&#8217;re doing.  And we&#8217;re just in a profound mismatch across the whole system.</p>
<p>So part of what I would argue &#8212; I said this all through the campaign.  They should have spent 30% of their budget on the internet.  They should have spent 30% of their total budget on Latinos, for a very simple reason.  If we don&#8217;t break through and we&#8217;re not competitive we&#8217;re not going to be a majority party again in your lifetime.</p>
<p>Now, if something is really obvious &#8212; it&#8217;s kind of like being on the side of the road with a flat tire.  If you&#8217;re not prepared to fix the tire, you could be at the side of the road for a long time.  And so you stand there and you say, &#8220;I wonder what the theoretical situation is that we&#8217;re in here?&#8221;  You have a flat tire, stupid.  &#8220;Yes, but what is the larger gestalt within which we are dealing with this?&#8221;  You&#8217;re tire&#8217;s flat.  &#8220;I understand, but that&#8217;s work.  And I dressed up this morning and fixing the tire I would get dirty.&#8221;</p>
<p>I mean, for example, to deal with Latinos you&#8217;d actually have to work with Latinos.  Have you looked at our consultants?  They don&#8217;t even want to work with people who are themselves.  (Laughter)  When we have a consultant class which is too arrogant to actually listen to anybody, why would you think they can understand people they&#8217;ve never met?</p>
<p>It is this fundamental a change that we are faced with if we are serious about taking back our country.</p>
<p>Yes, sir?</p>
<p>Unidentified Audience Member:  First, I&#8217;d like to thank you for your service to the country.  I would like to thank all the speakers here.  (Applause)  This is my first time at David&#8217;s conference and I&#8217;d like to thank David.  And I&#8217;ll be going to more conferences.  Anyways, my grandfather&#8217;s Spanish.  My mother&#8217;s from Argentina.  My dad&#8217;s American.  So what I get from this weekend is I have a good access to the Latin community.  And I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction, how &#8212; who to talk to, who to network with, where to put money to attract the Latin community back to the Republican Conservative party.  Thank you.</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich:  Well, this is just from my personal frame of reference.  There is somebody who a few of you know from California named Eric Beech, who is putting things together.  And my older daughter, Kathy Lubbers, who lives in Miami, who ran a project called The Americano for seven years, that was a conservative Latino website, is working with him to look at how &#8212; because we&#8217;re very close to Univision.</p>
<p>Go back and look at when Obama&#8217;s Univision advertising began.  Again, this is pretty basic stuff.  They were on for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks.  It started in May.  And this is the kind of stuff I want to, frankly, pull together so I can give you actual data and show you, whether it&#8217;s how to reach young people &#8212; I want to find out every show that Obama did that Romney didn&#8217;t do.</p>
<p>And you&#8217;ll be startled how many places &#8212; because in terms of people under 30, more people under 30 get news from <em>The Daily Show</em> and <em>Colbert</em> than get news from Fox.  Now, if you&#8217;re not in <em>The Daily Show</em> and <em>Colbert</em> you&#8217;re not even in their world.  And I think that&#8217;s the kind of stuff we just simply have to map reality, think it through and be prepared to compete anew.</p>
<p>Yes, sir?</p>
<p>Unidentified Audience Member:  Newt, what are the three effective arguments or explanations you can give to a liberal-minded friend or family member that you can use instead of having to choke them?  (Laughter)</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich:  Look, I think it&#8217;s pretty simple.  If you value fairness more than jobs, you&#8217;re going to have everybody equally unemployed.  Okay?  That&#8217;s the first big principle.  As Margaret Thatcher put it, &#8220;The problem with socialism is you run out of other people&#8217;s money to spend.&#8221;  So the first principle is simple.  Their model of society doesn&#8217;t work.  And if you&#8217;re happy that we have more people on food stamps than any time in American history, this is working.  Okay?</p>
<p>The second principle is equally simple.  Do you think you and your doctor should worry about your health?  Or do you think your doctor should be constrained by a bureaucrat you never met who has never been in your state, does not know what your disease is, but has a mathematical model which suggests that on average this will be fine, even though your doctor thinks it&#8217;s crazy.</p>
<p>Now, you decide.  You want Washington to run your &#8212; I tell people, the folks who are failing with Sandy in Long Island and Staten Island are the folks that they want to have run our health system.  So if you think they&#8217;re doing a great job in cleaning up New Jersey, you&#8217;re going to love it when they start controlling medicine.  Which is why &#8212; there is a reason conservatism will come back.  The only question is how stupid we are and how long it takes it.  It will come back.</p>
<p>The third is, do you think the primary danger in the world is that occasionally Americans make dumb movies and Danes make dumb cartoons?  Or is the primary danger in the world is that there is a faction that genuinely wants to kill us and that practices figuring out how to kill us on a regular basis and proves it?  And I think you begin to find these kind of fundamental divisions about reality.</p>
<p>Yes, way over here.</p>
<p>Unidentified Audience Member:  How to you defund when you&#8217;re governed by continuing resolutions?</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich:  The way you defund is it you don&#8217;t put it in the continuing resolution.  You just say, &#8220;Nothing in this resolution shall fund &#8216;X&#8217;,&#8221; whatever X is.  And then you get in a fight, then.  And then it&#8217;s going to get nasty and mean.  And then you&#8217;re going to have all the network television people saying, &#8220;The Republicans are being obstructionist because they ref- &#8221; You know.  It&#8217;s like Big Bird.  Big Bird gets $317,000 a year as an actor.  And Sesame Street makes $800 million a year, 94% of it from the private sector.  Now, you should be able to communicate, &#8220;I want Big Bird to live, but I want him to live in freedom.&#8221;  (Applause)</p>
<p>This lady right up here.    And then I want to come to Gay.</p>
<p>Unidentified Audience Member:  My question is regarding the length of the primaries.  Can you comment?  Because I felt it was so long and we started so late.</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich:  You see, I think, again, as a matter of fact, Hillary Clinton was still competing with Barack Obama on June 3<sup>rd</sup>.  So I don&#8217;t think &#8212; if the primaries were a problem for us it&#8217;s because we ended up nominating a candidate who was vivid in the primaries at saying things that made great commercials.  But I&#8217;m not sure you can say, &#8220;Gee, I don&#8217;t want to have our candidate be &#8212; say these things in the primaries because I&#8217;d like for him to say them in the general.&#8221;  So then I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s anything wrong with &#8212; the Democrat primaries were longer by two months.</p>
<p>But the other difference is, you go back to watch Obama in &#8217;08, he filled the summer.  He did not wait for the convention.  And, frankly, this idea that the convention was a problem is absurd.  We knew who the nominee was going to be, so he could behave as though he was in the general election from late May.</p>
<p>And then they say, &#8220;Well, they were out of money.&#8221;  He gave $42 million personally to win in 2008.  They could have somehow found the money if they were serious about winning.  This idea that they had to sit passively while Obama attacked them for three months is nonsense, I mean, just plain nonsense.  They had to model the campaign.  The model didn&#8217;t work.  We proved it on Tuesday a week ago.</p>
<p>And, again, I&#8217;m not blaming anybody else.  I thought we were going to win.  The model I had in my head was as wrong as the model the Romney team had in their head.</p>
<p>And, Gay, I think you have to be the last question.</p>
<p>Gay Gaines:  Monica mentioned this morning the education system has been taken over by the left.  And, Newt, we&#8217;ve had this conversation.  How on earth are the people of the United States going to vote Republican and believe in the Constitution if they&#8217;ve never studied, with three generations of historically illiterate students and the teachers themselves don&#8217;t know American history?</p>
<p>So I&#8217;m thrilled you&#8217;re coming to Mount Vernon.  We&#8217;re going to build a library at Mount Vernon for George Washington which opens next September.  And you have to come there and teach from the library, as all of you do.  Monica, I&#8217;m inviting you.  I&#8217;m inviting Laura Ingraham.  Because we can beam into the classrooms across America and start getting them to understand.  But what else can we do?  What else (inaudible &#8211; multiple speakers) &#8211;</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich:  But start &#8212; just stay with that for a minute, because I think it&#8217;s useful [to expand on] and a nice way for me to remind you that we do have a documentary film at 2:30 and that we have books that are American history.  We&#8217;re going to sign them there.</p>
<p>But here&#8217;s what I want all of you to think about.  There&#8217;s an institution called the Khan Academy, which you can see, by just putting in K-A-H-N Academy.  This is a guy who was an investment banker who began doing YouTube videos on math for his nephews who didn&#8217;t understand certain aspects of math.  And the videos began to go viral.  He now has 3,000 hours of free material, and really was the person who broke through in a huge way.</p>
<p>The Vice President for Development at Google decided he was going to teach a course at Stanford for 400 students in advanced design.  But he decided he would put it on the internet.  He announced casually at some speech in Palo Alto and within three days &#8212; this is a 400 student course &#8212; within three days they had thousands signed up.  They ultimately had 100,000 sign up.  They had 40,000 complete the class.</p>
<p>When they took the exam the top student at Stanford was number 42.  Forty-one other people who had taken the course by long distance outscored him in the final exam.  And it was a great recruiting device for Google because you now had thousands of people across the planet interacting that they could look at and say, &#8220;Oh, gee, we might want to hire you some day.&#8221;</p>
<p>Now, I&#8217;m giving you those examples because the reason we have an agreement now with Kaplan, and we&#8217;re trying to think through how to offer a series of courses and how to do it in a way that combines video, combines music, et cetera, so that you create compet &#8212; we&#8217;re never going to fix the public schools.  The unions are too entrenched.  They&#8217;re too left wing.  The length of time it would take us to fix them, that will be after the victory.</p>
<p>Between here and the victory what we can do is offer better products that are more exciting, and simply drain away the vitality and the energy.  And when you now have Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Virginia all offering their courses online for free, you&#8217;re really seeing the breakdown of the whole structure of the old order.  (Applause)  And I think we want to &#8211;</p>
<p>So Gingrich Productions actually wants to work with people like Robert Davi, both on his cinema side and his  music side, because it&#8217;s the composite of it all &#8212; it&#8217;s making it come alive in a way that people say, &#8220;I want that,&#8221; as opposed to, &#8220;You have to have it.&#8221;</p>
<p>And if we can do that well enough, I believe that the truth beats lies.  I think that history beats fantasies.  And I think that the world will, in fact, validate our philosophy and invalidate their philosophy.  And I think we have to be as courageous as George Washington and refuse to become defeated, refuse to become depressed, and commit ourselves to getting this country back on the right track.</p>
<p>Thank you all very much.  (Applause)</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 Signs of a Romney Victory</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/evan-sayet/the-signs-of-a-romney-victory/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-signs-of-a-romney-victory</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/evan-sayet/the-signs-of-a-romney-victory/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jul 2012 04:23:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Evan Sayet]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138791</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama is a one-term president. Let us count the ways.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/romney2.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-138798" title="romney2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/romney2.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="527" /></a>As I study the news looking for clues as to who is going to win the White House in November, I am struck by how, no matter where I look – from the most obvious to the things only a political junkie finds under a rock or in some tea leaves, etc. – every single indicator (big and small) points to a Romney victory and, in fact, something awfully close to an electoral college landslide.  While I will, of course, discuss the polls, the vast majority of my analysis comes from observation and common sense.</p>
<p>Let’s first establish a baseline.  Mark Levin asked a room full of folks at the Ronald Reagan library recently, “Do any of you know a single person – even one – who <em>didn’t </em>vote for Obama in 2008 who plans to vote for him in 2012?”  The answer, of course, was “no.”  Not a single person in the room knew a single person who Obama had, in the course of his presidency, convinced that he was better than they’d expected him to be.  Conversely, we all know at least one person – and I personally know more than a dozen (because I ask) – who voted for Obama in 2008 who nothing less than rues the day.</p>
<p>Given that Obama’s 2008 victory was, while large in size, in no way numerically historic, and that he had all sorts of advantages (being a blank slate, following eight years of war after 9-11, etc.) that he won’t have this time, Obama’s chances for a second term are significantly lower based on just Levin’s observation alone.  But, for Obama, it gets worse.</p>
<p>Not only is the pool of potential Obama supporters way down from 2008, so too is the enthusiasm amongst those who still, to one degree or another, prefer Obama over the alternative.  Whereas, not all that long ago, Obama could pack football stadiums and basketball arenas with ease, not even the lure of attending the big campaign kick-off event was enough for Obama supporters to come, leaving the venue half-empty.  If you can’t get your supporters to an historic rally in the spring, there’s little chance they’re going to drive to the polls in the dead of winter.</p>
<p>Worse still for the President is that, in order for him to have pulled off his original victory, he needed unprecedented enthusiasm (manpower, money, votes and more) from a handful of the Democrat Party’s traditional constituencies such as blacks, Jews and those under twenty-five.  If these numbers were to simply return to normal, then Obama’s chances of a second term are only further diminished.  But logic and evidence suggests Obama’s support from these groups will be less – in some cases far less – than what any and all Democratic nominees can count on.  This is because, thanks to his policies, each of these constituencies has a specific and rightful grievance against this president.  These grievances not only dampen their enthusiasm for Obama but, in many cases, turn them against him.</p>
<p>Blacks, for example, particularly hard hit by the liberals&#8217; fifty-year war against the traditional family, have taken singular exception to Obama’s clearly politically motivated endorsement of homosexual marriage; Jews are rightly concerned about the most virulently anti-Israel President since the Jew-hating Jimmy Carter, while the young who have (attempted) to enter the workforce are suffering the realities of looking for a job in an Obama economy and can’t be wholly unaware that each dollar of new deficit Obama racks up will be expected to be paid for by them.  Will Obama still take a majority – even a large majority – of votes from these constituencies?  Of course.  But in every way – manpower, financial contributions and votes – not only will Obama fail to receive <em>record </em>support as he did in 2008, or even the usual support a Democrat needs, he will fall short and even see some of that support drift to Romney.</p>
<p>There is one more constituency that Obama had to win – and win big – in order to win the White House in 2008 that is now not only less supportive but greatly disgruntled.</p>
<p>They are the independents (and even some right-of-center Republicans) who might well have disagreed with many of Obama’s policies and prescriptions but who were willing to accept four or eight years of an Obama presidency in exchange for the promise his rhetoric offered of a more civil America.  Higher taxes, more wasteful spending, they believed, were an acceptable price to pay for a “post-partisan” America and maybe even a “post-racial” United States.</p>
<p>After four years of the most viciously partisan presidency in anyone’s living memory and the most race-charged administration most of us can ever recall (not to mention the vile tactics so closely associated with Obama and his administration, which are named after his hometown, “The Chicago Way”), those who voted against their policy preferences to elect the guy with “hope” and “change” are and can be nothing less than disgusted with him.</p>
<p>The category pollsters use to measure this sentiment is called “likeability” (or “personal favorability”) and Obama’s rating in this category is plummeting. The <em>only </em>way that a failed president can win a second term is if the people like and trust him. According to the latest <em>New York Times </em>poll, Obama’s tactics have left him “favorable” to only about one out of every three voters (36 percent).</p>
<p>Other recently released data suggest that Obama is in big trouble as well.  Not the least of them is the Obama camp’s inability to get people to donate to their campaign.  Not all that long ago, a confident (arrogant?) Obama team was predicting so much support that they’d bring in more money than any other campaign in human history – over one billion dollars.  So far, not only has Obama not come close to being the greatest fundraiser in all of human history, he’s not even the top fundraiser in his two-man contest for the presidency.  In fact, he trails Romney’s financial support by a wide margin.</p>
<p>This is important not just because money is a plus in any campaign (though not nearly the plus that many make it out to be) but because it is a <em>tangible </em>action.  Answering the telephone and saying “yes” or “no” ten times to some stranger from a polling company doesn’t require much of a commitment.  People who donate to a campaign are likely to do even more for that campaign and they are almost guaranteed to do the one thing that matters most: vote.</p>
<p>And there is more evidence of an impending Romney victory to be found in how each camp is conducting its campaigns.  The strategies employed, the rhetoric chosen, all of these things reflect the campaign’s belief about where they stand at any given moment in the contest.</p>
<p>For example, it is simply a truism in politics that a candidate who believes he’s winning stays on the message that put him in the lead.  Those who believe they’re losing change their message until they find one they believe is a winner.  Romney has run almost the entire time on a single, compelling and positive message.  At its heart it’s something like “America is in economic dire straits.  I’ve made my fortune and my reputation saving big and complex things (the Olympics, major industries, etc.) from economic dire straits.  Vote for me and I’ll save America.”  Romney’s staying on that message makes clear that, at the very least, his own internal polling and other evidence has convinced his campaign that he’s winning.</p>
<p>Obama, on the other hand, seems to be premiering a new message just about every week or two.  It’s a practice of the desperate not so delicately known as “Throwing sh-t against the wall hoping <em>something </em>sticks.”  Clearly, then, the Obama camp’s inside information is telling them the same thing my analysis and Romney’s intelligence is telling us: their messages aren’t working and that they trailing in the election.</p>
<p>Making matters worse for the president is that, while Romney’s message is positive and promising, the tenor of Obama’s ever-changing messages has been singularly negative.  As a failed president, since he can’t run on his record, the only option available to him is to try and render the alternative so far beyond the pale that, no matter how bad Obama is, the alternative is just unacceptable.  In other words, the entirety of Obama’s message (whatever it is at the moment) is comprised not of words like “Vote for me because” but only “Vote against him because…”  Such an unrelenting campaign of negativity – the only option for Obama – only serves to further undermine the only thing that could possibly help him win: his “likeability.”  It’s a catch-22 from which Obama is unlikely to be able to escape.</p>
<p>Making matters worse still for the current president is that, in these ever-changing messages, Obama’s case against Romney has ranged from beneath the dignity of a president of the United States to beneath contempt to beneath sanity.</p>
<p>
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		<title>The Muslim Brotherhood Takes Egypt &#8212; on The Jamie Glazov Show</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/the-muslim-brotherhood-takes-egypt-on-the-jamie-glazov-show-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-muslim-brotherhood-takes-egypt-on-the-jamie-glazov-show-1</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jun 2012 04:00:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Nonie Darwish]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=135952</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Mideast-expert Nonie Darwish warns of the horrors on the horizon. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/mbv.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-135885" title="mbv" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/mbv.jpg" alt="" width="301" height="169" /></a>Join <em>The Jamie Glazov Show</em> that aired on Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 8-9 pm Pacific (11-12 pm EST) on Blog Talk Radio. The show focused on the dark consequences of the Muslim Brotherhood taking Egypt.</p>
<p>This week’s guest was Nonie Darwish, the author of the new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Devil-Dont-Know-Revolutions/dp/1118133390"><em>The Devil We Don’t Know: The Dark Side of Revolutions in the Middle East</em></a>.</p>
<p>To listen to the program, <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-jihad/2012/06/27/the-jamie-glazov-show">click here</a>.</p>
<p>Or go to: <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-jihad/2012/06/27/the-jamie-glazov-show">http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-jihad/2012/06/27/the-jamie-glazov-show</a>.</p>
<p>See you next Tuesday night!</p>
<p><strong>You can make sure that </strong><a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/donate.html?key=ASY2NUM6OSJ9" target="_blank"><em><strong>Jamie Glazov Productions</strong></em></a><strong> continues to take you where no other media </strong><a title="Powered by Text-Enhance" href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/15/communist-website-denounces-the-glazov-gang-1/"><strong>programs</strong></a><strong> dare to go. Help us by </strong><a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/donate.html?key=ASY2NUM6OSJ9" target="_blank"><strong>clicking here</strong></a><strong> and making a tax deductible contribution today.</strong><em></em></p>
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		<title>The Muslim Brotherhood Takes Egypt &#8212; on The Jamie Glazov Show, Tuesday, June 26, 2012, 8-9 pm Pacific</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/the-muslim-brotherhood-takes-egypt-on-the-jamie-glazov-show/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-muslim-brotherhood-takes-egypt-on-the-jamie-glazov-show</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/the-muslim-brotherhood-takes-egypt-on-the-jamie-glazov-show/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2012 04:00:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jamie glazov]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nonie Darwish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=135879</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Mideast-expert Nonie Darwish takes your calls for the full hour.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/mbv.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-135885" title="mbv" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/mbv.jpg" alt="" width="301" height="169" /></a>Join <em>The Jamie Glazov Show</em> that will air on Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 8-9 pm Pacific (11-12 pm EST) on Blog Talk Radio. We will be focusing on the dark consequences of the Muslim Brotherhood taking Egypt.</p>
<p>This week’s guest will be Nonie Darwish, the author of the new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Devil-Dont-Know-Revolutions/dp/1118133390"><em>The Devil We Don’t Know: The Dark Side of Revolutions in the Middle East</em></a>.</p>
<p>To listen to the program, <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-jihad/2012/06/27/the-jamie-glazov-show">click here</a>.</p>
<p>Or go to: <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-jihad/2012/06/27/the-jamie-glazov-show">http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-jihad/2012/06/27/the-jamie-glazov-show</a>.</p>
<p>The call-in # is: (347) 857-1380.</p>
<p>See you Tuesday night!</p>
<p><strong>You can make sure that </strong><a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/donate.html?key=ASY2NUM6OSJ9" target="_blank"><em><strong>Jamie Glazov Productions</strong></em></a><strong> continues to take you where no other media </strong><a title="Powered by Text-Enhance" href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/15/communist-website-denounces-the-glazov-gang-1/"><strong>programs</strong></a><strong> dare to go. Help us by </strong><a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/donate.html?key=ASY2NUM6OSJ9" target="_blank"><strong>clicking here</strong></a><strong> and making a tax deductible contribution today.</strong><em></em></p>
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		<title>The Recall Heard Around the World</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ann-coulter/the-recall-heard-around-the-world/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-recall-heard-around-the-world</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ann-coulter/the-recall-heard-around-the-world/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jun 2012 04:25:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ann Coulter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recall]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Scott Walker]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Unions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wisconsin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=134332</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The night "the campaign to save America" began.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/120606031439-scott-walker-victory-speech-story-top.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-134333" title="120606031439-scott-walker-victory-speech-story-top" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/120606031439-scott-walker-victory-speech-story-top.gif" alt="" width="375" height="253" /></a>I watched the Wisconsin returns on MSNBC Tuesday night, and it came right down to the wire between &#8220;the Democrats were outspent 7-to-1&#8243; and &#8220;Republicans are stripping union rights!&#8221; As we go to press it&#8217;s still too close to call.</p>
<p>President Obama wanted to go to Wisconsin, but he just didn&#8217;t have time. He&#8217;s been doing so many campaign fundraisers lately he barely has time to play golf.</p>
<p>The left&#8217;s &#8220;outspent&#8221; argument is ridiculous. Unions take money by force from members, hire hundreds of political operatives and give them salaries to work on campaigns, then call them &#8220;volunteers&#8221; so their work isn&#8217;t reported as a campaign contribution.</p>
<p>Luckily for them, government employees&#8217; non-punishing work schedules leave them plenty of time to be in a constant state of grievance, demanding recalls after any election they lose, and mobilizing voters.</p>
<p>This election had nothing to do with people being paid a fair wage for the work they do. The question is: Do you want a society where the people whose salaries you pay make more than those who pay them?</p>
<p>The Democrats will do anything the government unions ask, because (1) It&#8217;s not their money they&#8217;re spending, it&#8217;s the taxpayers&#8217;; and (2) Government unions reciprocate by making sure the Democrats keep getting re-elected.</p>
<p>Gov. Andrew Cuomo is about to turn New York into Pottersville from &#8220;It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life&#8221; by legalizing gambling so he can keep paying the unions.</p>
<p>All manufacturing has been driven out of the state by high taxes &#8212; and by well-compensated government employees who make it impossible to do business in New York. The state&#8217;s principal cash cow, New York City, is now entirely composed of a tiny slice of Wall Streeters and the people who serve them –- personal trainers, doormen, maids, doctors, lawyers, restaurateurs and Keith Olbermann&#8217;s cat groomer.</p>
<p>Outside of New York City, everyone works for the government. But there&#8217;s no actual industry in the state. People are fleeing New York faster than Democrat legislators fled Wisconsin before a vote they were going to lose.</p>
<p>Soon it will be just another mid-range, dying state. If the financial sector ever leaves, New York City will be Detroit, which itself was once the nation&#8217;s crown jewel metropolis.</p>
<p>So Cuomo&#8217;s going to bring in casinos to save public sector salaries, perks and pensions. Democrats don&#8217;t care that gambling destroys neighborhoods and ruins lives. They will do anything to keep government employees happy. They&#8217;ll legalize drugs or sell body parts to keep paying off public sector workers.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s a reason both FDR and labor leader George Meany said it would be insane to ever allow government employees to unionize. People who work for the government don&#8217;t have a hard-driving capitalist boss on the other side of the bargaining table demanding more work for less pay.</p>
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		<title>Psychological Operations and the Afghanistan Withdrawal</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/nick-guariglia/psychological-operations-and-the-afghanistan-withdrawal/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=psychological-operations-and-the-afghanistan-withdrawal</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/nick-guariglia/psychological-operations-and-the-afghanistan-withdrawal/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Mar 2012 04:03:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[N.M. Guariglia]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Drones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Withdrawal]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=126767</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why we need to be bringing to light -- and ridicule -- our enemy’s private fears.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/afghan55.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-126774" title="afghan55" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/afghan55.jpg" alt="" width="368" height="230" /></a></p>
<p>It has been a bad month in Afghanistan.  First there was the inadvertent burning of the Koran by U.S. troops.  Although the Korans had initially been desecrated by Taliban prisoners—an act forbidden in Islam—this fact was lost on the Afghans.  In their <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report/2012/02/28/white-house-response-violence-afghanistan">self-righteous vengeance</a>, Afghans killed numerous Americans, most notably two U.S. Army officers that were <a href="http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/26/10509207-afghan-intelligence-officer-sought-in-connection-with-us-slayings">shot in the back of the head</a> inside the Afghan Interior Ministry.  These murders prompted NATO—which had shamelessly <a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/02/26/nato-agrees-to-prosecutions-for-koran-burnings/">agreed to prosecute</a> the Americans involved in the Koran burning—to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17165410">withdraw its personnel</a> from all Afghan ministries.  Even hawkish conservative stalwarts were beginning to say “<a href="http://www.therightscoop.com/rush-maybe-its-time-to-say-the-hell-with-afghanistan-and-bring-our-troops-home/">the hell with the place</a>.”</p>
<p>Then Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales purportedly <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304636404577298081237407836.html">massacred 17 Afghan civilians</a>, a cold-blooded act that threatens to change the entire dynamics of the war.  Subsequently, about 200 U.S. Marines were told to <a href="http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/14/10684063-in-highly-unusual-move-marines-asked-to-disarm-before-leon-panetta-speech">leave their weapons outside the tent</a> during a visit from Defense Secretary Panetta.  This was a symbolic moment that spoke volumes about the disarray of our strategy.  Trust is indispensable in war, and it is being undermined in every corner.  The timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan—slated for either 2013 or 2014, depending on who is asked—may now be expedited due to these developments.</p>
<p>Yet all is not lost in Afghanistan.  While the United States might not “win” the decade-long war, it is almost impossible to lose.  In a sense, there is nothing to win: Afghan culture is an embarrassment to the human condition.  Even the “good guys” will kill people over a book and then sell their daughters to a septuagenarian.  But there is nothing to lose, either.  Lest we forget, the U.S. routed al-Qaeda and the Taliban more than ten years ago, by December 2001, with the use of <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/293733/worse-powder-keg-andrew-c-mccarthy">just 5,200 troops</a>.  The ensuing failure of Afghan civil society is not a U.S. military defeat.</p>
<p>In World War II, General Douglas MacArthur famously said, “We are not retreating—we are advancing in another direction.”  As we begin to withdraw from Afghanistan, U.S. leaders should speak in a comparable manner.  What we need is a public psychological operations strategy—or what the military now calls “Military Information Support Operations,” or MISO—coupled with tangible displays of military superiority.</p>
<p>Win or lose, Afghanistan was always going to be at the whims of Pakistan.  Thus, the U.S. has a Pakistan problem, not a Taliban problem.  It’s Hamid Karzai with the Taliban problem.  The Taliban are bad actors, no doubt, but they’re essentially a hobnob militia.  The head of the snake is Pakistan, which covertly supports al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and every major terrorist group in South Asia.  We must be clear: our eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan does not portend an American flight from South Asian politics.  In fact, if we are wise, it might strengthen our leverage.</p>
<p>We must intensify our drone campaign throughout the “Af-Pak” theater—and talk about it openly, too.  Predator drones work.  They have killed thousands of top-tier terrorists and <a href="../2010/05/13/the-drone-campaign/">have not hurt our popularity</a> throughout the region (we are already unpopular).  The drones have, however, undermined among the indigenous population the popularity of the Taliban.  If someone in your village were liable to get bombed at any moment, at some point you would want to kick him out your village.</p>
<p>Our air campaign has struck fear into the hearts of the enemy.  Terror chieftain Ustadh Ahmad Farooq <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/new-wave-of-drone-strikes-has-al-qaeda-crying/">was quoted as saying</a>: “There were many areas where we once had freedom, but now they have been lost.  We are the ones that are losing people; we are the ones facing shortages of resources.  Our land is shrinking and drones are flying in the sky.”  American leaders should be citing quotes like this publicly.  Bringing to light the enemy’s private fears is effective psychological warfare.</p>
<p>Although there are some slippery-slope arguments against the use of Predator drones, we should not doubt their efficacy.  The conventional wisdom once suggested that the more we bombed, the more we would “inflame” hatred against us.  But just the opposite is true.  The more air supremacy we display over our al-Qaeda and Taliban adversaries, the more they doubt themselves and their actions.  The truth is this: when our Islamist enemies have been irrefutably whipped on the battlefield, they are not enraged, but rather humbled, and are more prone to second-guess the divine sanction of their cause.  Allah doesn’t like losers, you see.  This was Osama bin Laden’s old “strong horse” logic: a neutral man will not gravitate to a weak horse.</p>
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		<title>Romney Rising</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/obamas-america-detour-not-destiny/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-america-detour-not-destiny</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/obamas-america-detour-not-destiny/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:45:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Florida Primary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mitt romney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newt Gingrich]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rick Santorum]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ron Paul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=121181</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Mitt's Florida victory may be the beginning of an unstoppable winning streak.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/romney_victory_speech1_120131_620x350.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-121182" title="romney_victory_speech1_120131_620x350" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/romney_victory_speech1_120131_620x350.gif" alt="" width="375" height="246" /></a></p>
<p>Mitt Romney won a big victory in Florida’s primary yesterday, taking the state’s 50 delegates with 46% of the vote. There’s still a long road ahead, as Romney only has 87 of the 1,144 delegates needed to officially win the nomination. In their speeches following the primary results, the candidates indicate that the contest will take a more positive direction.</p>
<p>Romney did not mention any of his opponents by name in his victory speech. The only criticism he made was that the others did not have the experience in creating jobs that he has. His focus was completely on President Obama, sounding as if the general election campaign had already begun. He pledged to “end the Obama era and begin a new era of American prosperity.”</p>
<p>He said that President Obama wants to “fundamentally transform” the country and that he be the one to bring true hope and change. One standout line in Romney’s speech was, “Hope is a new paycheck, not a faded word on an old bumper sticker.” A look at Romney’s financial advantage and the upcoming contests helps explain why Romney sounded so confident and is, once again, talking as if the nomination is his. &#8220;If you believe the disappointments of the last few years are a detour, not our destiny, then I am asking for your vote,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>The Romney campaign has <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72261.html">nearly 10 times</a> the money that Newt Gingrich has with no debt. It is likely that Romney will score 7 victories in a row by the end of February, as political analyst Dick Morris <a href="http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/february-is-romneys-month/">pointed out.</a> The next contest will be on February 4 when Nevada holds its caucus. Romney won the state in 2008 and has led in <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/nv/nevada_republican_presidential_primary-1768.html">every poll</a> taken there. Maine begins its week-long caucus that day also and polls <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/me/maine_republican_presidential_primary-1746.html">show</a> Romney leading. Romney won Maine in 2008. On February 4, the caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota take place, both of which Romney won last time.</p>
<p>The only debate of the month will be held on February 22, giving Romney’s opponents an opportunity to stall his momentum. If they don’t, he will win the Michigan and Arizona primaries on February 28. Romney won the former in 2008 and lost the latter to McCain. The last <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/27/poll-gingrich-romney-tied-in-arizona/">poll</a> in Arizona had Gingrich and Romney tied. Super Tuesday, the date when 10 states hold their caucuses and primaries, arrives on March 6.</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich came in second place in Florida with 32% of the vote, but didn’t win any delegates because it is a winner-takes-all contest. He claimed that the state had “made it clear” that the campaign had narrowed down to two people, with Romney as the “Massachusetts moderate” and him as the “conservative leader.” By making this statement, he was trying to compel supporters of Rick Santorum and Ron Paul to jump to his side. He repeatedly talked about winning by running a “positive” campaign and his relatively tepid criticism of Romney may be the result of a shift in strategy.</p>
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		<title>Tough Call on Afghanistan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/alan-w-dowd/tough-call-in-afghanistan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=tough-call-in-afghanistan</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/alan-w-dowd/tough-call-in-afghanistan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:42:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carl Levin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cnn poll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[country]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Laden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Osama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[roman historian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sen carl levin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vital national interest]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=95778</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The time for a decision on troop withdrawal draws near. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/3379472935_04467d2940.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-95967" title="3379472935_04467d2940" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/3379472935_04467d2940.gif" alt="" width="375" height="275" /></a></p>
<p>“War,” as the Roman historian Sallust once observed, “is easy to begin but difficult to stop.” Americans know this to be true because they have lived it in places like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan.</p>
<p>For good or ill, after nearly 10 years of war, the table is being set for President Barack Obama to declare victory in Afghanistan and pull the troops out.</p>
<p>“By us killing Osama bin Laden, getting al Qaeda back on its heels, stabilizing much of the country in Afghanistan so that the Taliban can’t take it over,” he said in a recent interview, “it’s now time for us to recognize that we’ve accomplished a big chunk of our mission and that it’s time for Afghans to take more responsibility.”</p>
<p>This is what Obama had in mind in late 2009, when he authorized the Afghan surge and concluded that “it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan,” before <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/12/01/new-way-forward-presidents-address">promising</a> that “after 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.”</p>
<p>Those 18 months will have come and gone in July. Setting aside the bizarre notion that America’s “vital national interest” has an expiration date, the real question, it seems, is not whether or not “it’s time for Afghans to take more responsibility” but this: are Afghans capable of taking on more responsibility, capable of maintaining the institutions we have built to resist the impulses to jihadism, and if not, does staying the course serve America’s interests or does withdrawing?</p>
<p>Reasonable people can and do disagree about the answer to that multifaceted question.</p>
<p>On one side, there is growing sentiment in the White House and Congress to bring the troops home. Sen. Carl Levin, for instance, wants to withdraw at least 15,000 troops by the end of this year. This is a reflection of public sentiment. A recent CNN poll reveals that 58 percent of Americans oppose the war, and 54 percent think the U.S. should no longer be involved in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>It’s no wonder why the American people have tired of the war. With more than 1,580 American troops killed, $444 billion spent and nearly a decade of commitment fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, America has already made an enormous sacrifice. Moreover, many Americans simply don’t think this counterinsurgency can be won.</p>
<p>On the other side, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, wants to press the initiative. He recently reported that ISAF has “inflicted enormous losses on mid-level Taliban…and taken away some of their most important safe havens” and that standing up new Afghan army units and creation of the Afghan Local Police is reintegrating “reconcilable insurgents” back into society, much like the Sons of Iraq program did during the surge he led in Iraq.</p>
<p>Petraeus said last week that progress against the Taliban and other insurgent groups is “fragile” and “reversible.” “We want to ensure that Afghanistan does not become, again, a safe haven in which [al Qaeda] might plot attacks such as those of 9/11…The only way to achieve that mission, of course, is to help our Afghan partners to enable them to develop the ability over time to secure and govern themselves.”</p>
<p>Likewise, outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that “if we keep this momentum up, we will deliver a decisive blow to the enemy and turn the corner on this conflict.” The operative phrase from Gates’ perspective is “if we keep this momentum up.” As <a href="http://defensenews.com/story.php?i=6733790&amp;c=ASI&amp;s=LAN">Defense News</a> notes, Gates finds himself “sparring at a distance with White House aides who are pushing for a faster drawdown of the 100,000-strong U.S. force.”</p>
<p>Incoming Pentagon chief Leon Panetta seems to share Gates’ view, arguing at a confirmation hearing that “to be able to finish the job, we’ve got to keep the pressure up.”</p>
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		<title>Libya: An Ugly War Getting Uglier</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/stephenbrown/libya-an-ugly-war-getting-uglier/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=libya-an-ugly-war-getting-uglier</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 13 May 2011 04:40:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stephen Brown]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[aid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[artillery fire]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[human shields]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muammar gaddafi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public relations coup]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stronghold]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A turning point for anti-Gaddafi forces. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Picture-3.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-93025" title="Picture-3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Picture-3.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="289" /></a></p>
<p>Libyan rebels scored their most important victory in the nearly three-month old uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, when they captured the airport in Misrata on Wednesday, virtually taking control of the city. Gaddafi’s forces had been besieging Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, for two months and had driven the rebels into an area around the harbour, where they were subjected to constant rocket and artillery fire. Two Western journalists, one American and one British, were among the people <a href="http://english.cntv.cn/20110422/105802.shtml+http:/english.cntv.cn/20110422/105802.shtml">killed</a> by the heavy barrage during this time.</p>
<p>“The airport and its approaches were the last remaining pieces of significant terrain in the city to be controlled by the Qaddafi soldiers,” the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/world/africa/12libya.html"><em>New York Times</em></a> reported.</p>
<p>NATO immediately followed up the rebel success with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/world/africa/13libya.html?_r=2&amp;ref=world&amp;pagewanted=print">air strikes</a> on Thursday on a compound in Tripoli. Three civilians were allegedly killed in the attack, but after a government-guided tour of the area, reporters suspect civilians are being used as human shields in the compound to protect a possible underground military complex.</p>
<p>The rebels’ capture of Misrata is important for several reasons. It is the only city the anti-Gaddafi forces hold in Western Libya and is regarded as the stepping stone to capturing Tripoli, Gaddafi’s stronghold. Located 130 miles east of Tripoli, a Misrata in rebel hands represents a knife at Gaddafi’s throat. Which is why the Libyan leader fought so bitterly to take it from rebel hands and why strenuous efforts may still be made in counterattacks to recover the lost ground there. But even if Gaddafi does succeed in containing the insurgents within Misrata, their victory will certainly add to the accumulating military strain on his forces.</p>
<p>Moreover, the rebels’ taking of Misrata is a huge public relations coup. In the eyes of the world, the battle for Misrata had become an important symbol of the anti-Gaddafi cause. Gaddafi is now seen to have failed to attain a goal he badly wanted and needed, and so close to home at that, while the rebels prevailed. Ultimately, if the rebels overthrow Gaddaffi, the Misrata victory may become for the Libyan conflict what Stalingrad was for the Soviets: a psychological and military turning point.</p>
<p>On the rebel side, probably their greatest advantage in breaking Misrata’s isolation consists in the fact they can now start to bring in food and medical supplies through the sea port for the city’s 500,000 desperate, suffering people. Only tugboats and a few Red Cross ships had risked making the trip to Misrata during the siege due to the danger.</p>
<p>Supplying soldiers and civilian populations, or logistics as military strategists term it, decides many wars, and <a href="http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/libya/articles/20110510.aspx">some analysts</a> believe this is what will determine the Libyan conflict’s outcome. On Wednesday, the rebels scored an important triumph in this area by opening an avenue to feed the people under their control in an important city.</p>
<p>Gaddafi, on the other hand, is facing a bleak future logistics-wise. Although Gaddafi’s army is believed to have enough weapons and ordnance for a year’s fighting, his <a href="http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/libya/articles/20110510">ability to feed </a>Tripoli’s one million people for that period of time is problematic. NATO has imposed a tight air and sea blockade around his stronghold. An extended period of suffering could see a renewal of the anti-Gaddafi protests the Libyan capital experienced earlier in the conflict that loyal security forces seem to have quelled. But when people become very hungry and unhappy, like in Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt, force will not prevent them from taking to the streets again.</p>
<p>While NATO countries are blocking Gaddafi’s supplies, they are helping rebel logistics significantly with shipments of food and aid to Benghazi, the rebel stronghold. The <a href="http://tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=1&amp;i=6002">first American ship</a> to deliver “non-lethal aid” to the rebels arrived in Benghazi this week. Among the items delivered were 10,000 ready-to-eat meals. Ships from <a href="http://www.seanews.com.tr/article/HOTN/55585/Italy-Libya-Aid/">other NATO countries</a> have already made trips to Benghazi, delivering food and aid, while <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/2011/04/16/3557043/ships-deliver-arms-food-to-fighters.html">Qatar</a> has been sending the rebels weapons, the only country reported to have done so. The rebels have asked NATO for better weapons but the alliance has been <a href="http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/libya/articles/20110510">slow to respond</a>. The United Nations has imposed an arms embargo on Libya, but some governments interpret it as applying only to Gaddafi.</p>
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		<title>A Crippling Blow to Al-Qaeda</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/matt-gurney/a-crippling-blow-to-al-qaeda/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-crippling-blow-to-al-qaeda</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 09 May 2011 04:25:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gurney]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[american railway]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[COMPOUND]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[mohame]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moral victory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national security advisor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Osama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=92580</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The victory behind the victory of killing Osama bin Laden. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/binl.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-92596" title="Mideast Egypt Bin Laden" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/binl.jpg" alt="" width="399" height="272" /></a></p>
<p>The death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs last Sunday is a victory for America, the West and the entire free world. The death of bin Laden is a triumph for the victims, both living and dead, of the September 11<sup>th</sup> attacks, and a sign to the world that America does not forgive or forget crimes committed against its citizens. But the killing of bin Laden promises to be more than just a long-sought, symbolic victory. Though little is known at this early date, according to U.S. officials, documents and digital data captured by the U.S. forces that stormed bin Laden’s compound are already proving enormously invaluable. After the intelligence obtained from the operation is processed, last Sunday’s raid could very well be the greatest victory so far in the war on terror &#8212; all considerations of symbolism and justice aside.</p>
<p>The impact of bin Laden’s death, and America’s capture of troves of valuable intelligence, will be measurable in three key areas (not counting the aforementioned moral victory). Once he was found, the SEALs entered not just one man’s hideout, but what U.S. intelligence officials <a href="http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Osama+Laden+plotted+against+from+Pakistan+compound/4745827/story.html">have called</a> “an active command and control center.” In an interview with CNN, White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon compared the documents found in the compound to a “small college library,” a “really extraordinary” find — the largest ever seized in a single anti-terrorist operation.</p>
<p>Already made public was al-Qaeda’s interest in hitting American <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/06/osama-bin-laden-intelligence-us-rail-threat">railway targets</a> on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks this year. The intelligence suggested the attack was in the “aspirational” stage — al-Qaeda had decided to move ahead, but did not yet have a plan in place about which trains to derail or what terminals to bomb. The intelligence also confirmed what is already known — for maximum psychological effect, the organization sought to strike out at the West on civic and religious holidays. Recall, for example, the attempt by terrorist Mohamed Osman Mohamad to <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/11/fbi_thwarts_terrorist_bombing.html">bomb the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony</a> in lovely Portland, Oregon. While Mohamad may have been acting alone, he shared the same fondness for symbolic dates as al-Qaeda.</p>
<p>It will likely not be known for some time what other plots similar to the Portland bombing or the public transit attack have been discovered. And as is often the case with intelligence operations, it is possible that many of the counterintelligence victories achieved from the raid will never be known.</p>
<p>It is equally easy to accept that still further lives will be saved as al-Qaeda goes into damage-control mode and attempts to cope with a catastrophic breach of its operational security. Clearly, given how long it took bin Laden to be found, the organization places a high value on secrecy. If all the various factions of al-Qaeda were to be joined at any one place, it would likely be the top — with bin Laden himself. Furthermore, the raid caught the al-Qaeda leader completely by surprise, without giving him any opportunity to warn his fellow terrorists to seek cover or to destroy evidence. Indeed, two telephone numbers were found <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8492845/Osama-bin-Laden-had-500-Euros-and-phone-numbers-sewn-into-clothing.html">sewn into his clothes</a> — one can only imagine how nervous the people at the other end of those telephone lines now are.</p>
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		<title>From 9/11 to 5/1</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/alan-w-dowd/from-911-to-51/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=from-911-to-51</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 03 May 2011 04:36:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[death]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[elite strike force]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[songs of victory]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=92009</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Just how good a day was Sunday for America? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/0502_bin-laden-reaction-ground-zero.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-92024" title="0502_bin-laden-reaction-ground-zero" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/0502_bin-laden-reaction-ground-zero.gif" alt="" width="375" height="328" /></a></p>
<p>There is nothing bad about Osama bin Laden’s death, nothing our post-modern, post-heroic culture should apologize for, anguish over, deconstruct or lament. The elimination of bin Laden—and not by some faceless drone or double-dealing “ally,” but by the force and skill of American arms striking at close range—is a victory for the country, for the notion of justice, for America’s troops and intelligence officers. This is a good day to be an American.</p>
<p>How good? News of bin Laden’s death made today’s crop of college students—poisoned by years of moral relativism and politically correct bunk equating all uses of force as the same, declaring war as our enemy, teaching that nothing is worth fighting for or against—take to the streets and spontaneously sing the Star Spangled Banner while waving the American flag. They were waving the Marine Corps flag and Old Glory on the streets in front of the White House, chanting “USA!” in Times Square, climbing up trees to hoist the colors—our colors—high. Anything that can do that is wonderful and wondrous.</p>
<p>They have every right to be proud and wave flags and sing songs of victory. This is a great country that can do great things in war and in peace, with a great political system that can sustain and win long, twilight struggles, protected by a great military that is amazing not just because of its reach and determination, but also because of its restraint.</p>
<p>Never forget that as our elite strike force of Navy SEALs hunted down a mass-murderer masquerading as a holy man, other U.S. forces were feeding the hungry in sub-Saharan Africa, trying to stop a massacre in Libya, nurturing a fragile peace in Iraq, building bridges while fighting the medieval Taliban in Afghanistan, fighting pirates off the Horn of Africa. In recent years, they have rescued Haiti and Pakistan and Sumatra and Japan after disasters of biblical proportion; liberated Iraqis and Afghanis from vast prison states; and shielded Kosovars and Kurds, Kuwaitis and Koreans.</p>
<p>Their work never ends and never ceases to amaze and humble. They are America’s very best not because they wear a uniform, but because of what they do in that uniform, which leads us to our system of government and politics. Our defenders take their oath to the country and its constitution, not to a man. It pays to recall that the U.S. military’s long hunt for bin Laden began in the 1990s and was the shared work of three administrations, three commanders-in-chief. They are very different men, serving at very different moments in history: one in the pre-9/11 world, in a decade when the burdens of leadership and history seemed to be quaint relics of some bygone era; one amid the flames and fury of bin Laden’s maiming of Manhattan and the Pentagon, in the early days of a new twilight struggle; one in a decade when the scars and memories of that terrible Tuesday had started to fade. Yet for all their differences and disagreements, flaws and failures, imperfections and indiscretions, they pursued the same goal, the latter two with virtually the same team of warriors, generals and commanders in place, keeping just enough of the country on the same page to realize this day.</p>
<p>That’s the kind of tenacity and resolve that, viewing America through the distorted and grimy prism of our own popular culture, bin Laden and his ilk will never understand. Beneath the soft, flabby outer edges of our nation, there exists muscle and bone that can unleash an unspeakable, unrelenting fury. As one wartime president soberly put it, “It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war.”</p>
<p>After mocking America as impotent and cowardly, the enemy now understands this.</p>
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		<title>What MacArthur&#8217;s Farewell Teaches Us Today</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/alan-w-dowd/what-macarthurs-farewell-teaches-us-today/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-macarthurs-farewell-teaches-us-today</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Apr 2011 04:36:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[enemy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Farewell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gen douglas macarthur]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[joint session of congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[niall ferguson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Dwight Eisenhower]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Harry Truman]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[How to wage an effective war.]]></description>
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<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/macarthur.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-91619" title="macarthur" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/macarthur.gif" alt="" width="364" height="370" /></a></p>
<p>It was 60 years ago this month that Gen. Douglas MacArthur delivered his farewell address to a joint session of Congress, effectively closing the book on a consequential and controversial public life. What do the words an “old soldier” have to do with today? More than you might think.</p>
<p>What brought MacArthur to the House chamber in April 1951—and brought his career as a soldier and general to an abrupt end—is fairly well-known: He openly challenged the commander-in-chief, President Harry Truman, who, with an eye on the Soviet Union’s global capabilities, was committed to “limited war” and “police action” in Korea. MacArthur, on the other hand, advocated expansion of the war in Korea to targets in China, criticized “those who advocate appeasement and defeatism in Asia” and famously declared, “There is no substitute for victory.” Toward that end, as Niall Ferguson details in “Colossus”, MacArthur called for blockades of China, attacks on Chinese airbases, the use of Taiwanese forces against Mainland China and the deployment of atomic weapons against China.</p>
<p>Even MacArthur’s critics, Ferguson among them, concede that the general’s proposed strategy was “seriously discussed” after his departure and, in a sense, adopted to bring the war to an end. Just months after MacArthur was ousted, Truman threatened to blockade China and contemplated atomic weapons. In fact, upon his election, general-turned-president Dwight Eisenhower raised the possibility of an atomic strike on China to bring the Chinese to heel, conveying the message to China via India. They took the threat seriously, and an armistice was quickly signed.</p>
<p>In other words, MacArthur’s proposals were not the problem; it was how and where he aired them that was the problem. And to preserve the principle of civilian control over the military, Truman had to dismiss MacArthur. The Truman-MacArthur showdown is a subject for another essay. Suffice it to say that MacArthur and Truman embodied the tension that has been at the very heart of our republic since the founding. After all, the first president was a general, a war hero, a conqueror. He wouldn’t be the last. Moreover, the Founders divided war-making authority, opening the way to disputes between the executive and legislative and between civilians and the military. Although the Constitution made civilian control over the military paramount—and thankfully so—it led to a system that encourages great deference to military command.</p>
<p><em>The Limits of Time-Limited War</em></p>
<p>This century’s version of “police action” is on display in Libya and Afghanistan. The White House, for example, calls Libya a “time-limited, scope-limited” war. NATO’s description of the Libya intervention declares, incredibly, that “NATO is impartial in this operation.”</p>
<p>Over in Afghanistan, the enemy is using Pakistan as a safe haven, allies fly fighter-bombers without bombs and shout warnings before engaging the enemy, and President Barack Obama concluded that “it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops” before <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/12/01/new-way-forward-presidents-address">promising</a> that “after 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.”</p>
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