US Declassifies Document Revealing Israel's Nuclear Program

Obama revenge for Netanyahu's Congress talk? 1987 report on Israel's top secret nuclear program released in unprecedented move. ✧ In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel's nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent.

Read more at Israel National News Read More......

U.N. Leader Blames U.S. for Boston Bombing

U.N. Leader: U.S. ‘Israel First Ethos’ to Blame for Boston Bombing - While our nation continues to deal with the aftermath of the Boston Marathon terrorist bombings, which killed three people and wounded more than 260, jihadists and their sympathizers gloat, rationalize or turn the blame for the bombings back onto the United States and Israel. Leftists, who were so quick to accuse Tea Party members or right wingers for the bombings, have remained mostly silent as the truth of the Islamist roots of the bombing suspects became known. ✧ The suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, now dead, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, now in custody, were described by one U.S. government official as “aspiring jihadists.” They were led to their alleged evil act by their understanding of their Muslim faith. Tellingly, on the Russian social networking site Vkontakte, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev described his world view as “Islam.” Read more at Front Page Magazine... Read More......

Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts

This summer, I heard a brief newscast teaser stating that $16 Trillion was 'missing' with a reference to the Federal Reserve. I thought details would follow and expected a huge backlash but never heard more until Jean Nelson sent a link to the following article this evening. Jean wrote, "Ron Paul’s persistence has resulted in a tremendous expose of the Federal Reserve Bank." --bc

SILVER BEAR CAFE (via unelected.org), July 21, 2011 - The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill (HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning [July 21, 2011].

What was revealed in the audit was startling:

$16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious - the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.

To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is "only" $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is "only" $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.

"This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else." - Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Ron Paul (R-TX) as well as self identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability.

Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually plunder the world economy.

The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and are as follows...

• Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
  
• Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
  
• Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
  
• Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
  
• Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
  
• Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
  
• Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
  
• Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
  
• JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
  
• Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
  
• UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
  
• Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
  
• Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
  
• Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
  
• BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
  
• and many many more including banks in Belgium of all places

View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve (July 21st, 2011): GAO-Fed-Investigation (on scribd.com)
Source: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-696
FULL PDF on GAO server: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf
Senator Sander’s Article: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3
Hat tip: SILVER BEAR CAFE (via www.unelected.org) Read More......

JWR: Enabling the Muslim Brotherhood in America

JEWISH WORLD REVIEW/INSIGHT, 4/19/2011 by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. (Hat tip: Carolyn Webb)

The Muslim Brotherhood's mask is slipping in Egypt. Small "d" democrats there and elsewhere are alarmed by top Brotherhood officials who now aver openly what has been utterly predictable: Once in power they will impose shariah - the totalitarian, supremacist politico-military-legal program practiced in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and increasingly elsewhere.

The prospect that the most populous Arab nation - one that sits astride the strategic Suez Canal and has a vast American-supplied arsenal - is heading in such an ominous direction is made all the more remarkable since evidence continues to accumulate that the Obama administration has been enabling the rise of the Ikhwan (as the Muslim Brotherhood, or MB, is known in Arabic). Consider a few data points: Read more at JWR...

Read More......

STRATFOR: Making Sense of the START Debate

STRATFOR,12/28/2010 by By George Friedman - Last week, the U.S. Senate gave its advice and consent to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which had been signed in April. The Russian legislature still has to provide final approval of the treaty, but it is likely to do so, and therefore a New START is set to go into force. That leaves two questions to discuss. First, what exactly have the two sides agreed to and, second, what does it mean? Let’s begin with the first.

The original START was signed July 31, 1991, and reductions were completed in 2001. The treaty put a cap on the number of nuclear warheads that could be deployed. In addition to limiting the number of land- and submarine-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and strategic bombers, it capped the number of warheads that were available to launch at 6,000. The fact that this is a staggering number of nuclear weapons should give you some idea of the staggering number in existence prior to START. START I lapsed in 2009, and the new treaty is essentially designed to reinstate it.

It is important to remember that Ronald Reagan first proposed START. His initial proposal focused on reducing the number of ICBMs. Given that the Soviets did not have an effective intercontinental bomber force and the United States had a massive B-52 force and follow-on bombers in the works, the treaty he proposed would have decreased the Soviet quantitative advantage in missile-based systems without meaningfully reducing the U.S. advantage in bombers. The Soviets, of course, objected, and a more balanced treaty emerged.

What is striking is that START was signed just before the Soviet Union collapsed and implemented long after it was gone. It derived from the political realities that existed during the early 1980s. One of the things the signers of both the original START and the New START have ignored is that nuclear weapons by themselves are not the issue. The issue is the geopolitical relationship between the two powers. The number of weapons may affect budgetary considerations and theoretical targeting metrics, but the danger of nuclear war does not derive from the number of weapons but from the political relationship between nations.

The Importance of the Political Relationship

I like to use this example. There are two countries that are historical enemies. They have fought wars for centuries, and in many ways, they still don’t like each other. Both are today, as they have been for decades, significant nuclear powers. Yet neither side maintains detection systems to protect against the other, and neither has made plans for nuclear war with the other. This example is from the real world; I am speaking of Britain and France. There are no treaties between them regulating nuclear weapons in spite of the fact that each has enough to devastate the other. This is because the possession of nuclear weapons is not the issue. The political relationship between Britain and France is the issue and, therefore, the careful calibration of the Franco-British nuclear balance is irrelevant and unnecessary.

The political relationship that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1980s is not the same as the relationship that exists today. Starting in the 1950s, the United States and Soviet Union were in a state of near-war. The differences between them were geopolitically profound. The United States was afraid that the Soviets would seize Western Europe in an attack in order to change the global balance of power. Given that the balance of power ran against the Soviet Union, it was seen as possible that they would try to rectify it by war.

Since the United States had guaranteed Europe’s security with troops and the promise that it would use nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union to block the conquest of Europe, it followed that the Soviet Union would initiate war by attempting to neutralize the American nuclear capability. This would require a surprise attack on the United States with Soviet missiles. It also followed that the United States, in order to protect Europe, might launch a pre-emptive strike against the Soviet military capability in order to protect the United States and the balance of power.

Until the 1960s, the United States had an overwhelming advantage. Its bomber force gave it the ability to strike the Soviet Union from the United States. The Soviets chose not to build a significant bomber force, relying instead on a missile capability that really wasn’t in place and reliable until the mid-1960s. The Cuban missile crisis derived in part from this imbalance. The Soviets wanted Cuba because they could place shorter-range missiles there, threatening the B-52 fleet by reducing warning time and threatening the American population should the B-52s strike the Soviet Union.

A complex game emerged after Cuba. Both sides created reliable missiles that could reach the other side, and both turned to a pure counter-force strategy, designed to destroy not cities but enemy missiles. The missiles were dispersed and placed in hardened silos. Nuclear submarines, less accurate but holding cities hostage, were deployed. Accuracy increased. From the mid-1960s on the nuclear balance was seen as the foundation of the global balance of power.

The threat to global peace was that one side or the other would gain a decisive advantage in the global balance. Knowledge of the imbalance on both sides would enable the side with the advantage to impose its political will on the other, which would be forced to capitulate in any showdown.

The Russo-American Strategic Balance

Therefore, both sides were obsessed with preventing the other side from gaining a nuclear advantage. This created the nuclear arms race. The desire to end the race was not based on the fear that more nuclear weapons were dangerous but on the fear that any disequilibrium in weapons, or the perception of disequilibrium, might trigger a war. Rather than a dynamic equilibrium, with both sides matching or overmatching the other’s perceived capability, the concept of a treaty-based solution emerged, in which the equilibrium became static. This concept itself was dangerous because it depended on verification of compliance with treaties and led to the development of space-based reconnaissance systems.

The treaties did not eliminate anxiety. Both sides continued to obsessively watch for a surprise attack, and both sides conducted angry internal debates about whether the other side was violating the treaties. Similarly, the deployment of new systems not covered by the treaties created internal political struggles, particularly in the West. When the Pershing II medium-range ballistic missiles were deployed in Europe in the 1980s, major resistance to their deployment from the European left emerged. The fear was that the new systems would destabilize the nuclear balance, giving the United States an advantage that might lead to nuclear war.

This was also the foundation for the Soviets’ objection to the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed “Star Wars.” Although Star Wars seemed useful and harmless, the Soviets argued that if the United States were able to defend itself against Soviet attack, then this would give the United States an advantage in the nuclear balance, allowing it to strike at the Soviet Union and giving it massive political leverage. This has always been the official basis of the Russian objection to ballistic-missile defense (BMD) — they said it upset the nuclear balance.

The United States never wanted to include tactical nuclear weapons in these treaties. The Soviet conventional force appeared substantially greater than the American alliance’s, and tactical nuclear weapons seemed the only way to defeat a Soviet force. The Soviets, for their part, would never agree to a treaty limiting conventional forces. That was their great advantage, and if they agreed to parity there it would permanently remove the one lever they had. There was no agreement on this until just before the Soviet Union collapsed, and then it no longer mattered. Thus, while both powers wanted strategic stability, the struggle continued on the tactical level. Treaties could not contain the political tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.

And now we get to the fundamental problem with the idea of a nuclear balance. The threat of nuclear war derived not from some bloodthirsty desire to annihilate humanity but from a profound geopolitical competition by the two great powers following the collapse of European power. The United States had contained the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union was desperately searching for a way out of its encirclement, whether by subversion or war. The Soviet Union had a much more substantial conventional military force than the United States. The Americans compensated with nuclear weapons to block Soviet moves. As the Soviets increased their strategic nuclear capability, the American limit on their conventional forces decreased, compensated for by sub-strategic nuclear forces.

But it was all about the geopolitical situation. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Soviets lost the Cold War. Military conquest was neither an option nor a requirement. Therefore, the U.S.-Soviet nuclear balance became meaningless. If the Russians attacked Georgia the United States wasn’t about to launch a nuclear war. The Caucasus is not Western Europe. START was not about reducing nuclear forces alone. It was about reducing them in a carefully calibrated manner so that no side gained a strategic and therefore political advantage.

New START is therefore as archaic as the Treaty of Versailles. It neither increases nor decreases security. It addresses a security issue that last had meaning more than 20 years ago in a different geopolitical universe. If a case can be made for reducing nuclear weapons, it must be made in the current geopolitical situation. Arguing for strategic arms reduction may have merit, but trying to express it in the context of an archaic treaty makes little sense.

New START’s Relevance

So why has this emerged? It is not because anyone is trying to calibrate the American and Russian nuclear arsenals. Rather, it goes back to the fiasco over the famous “reset button” that Hillary Clinton brought to Moscow last March. Tensions over substantial but sub-nuclear issues had damaged U.S.-Russian relations. The Russians saw the Americans as wanting to create a new containment alliance around the Russian Federation. The Americans saw the Russians as trying to create a sphere of influence that would be the foundation of a new Moscow-based regional system. Each side had a reasonable sense of the other’s intentions. Clinton wanted to reset relations. The Russians didn’t. They did not see the past as the model they wanted, and they saw the American vision of a reset as a threat. The situation grew worse, not better.

An idea emerged in Washington that there needed to be confidence-building measures. One way to build confidence, so the diplomats sometimes think, is to achieve small successes and build on them. The New START was seen as such a small success, taking a non-objectionable treaty of little relevance and effectively renewing it. From here, other successes would follow. No one really thought that this treaty mattered in its own right. But some thought that building confidence right now sent the wrong signal to Moscow.

U.S. opposition was divided into two groups. One, particularly Republicans, saw this as a political opportunity to embarrass the president. Another argued, not particularly coherently, that using an archaic issue as a foundation for building a relationship with Russia allowed both sides to evade the serious issues dividing the two sides: the role of Russia in the former Soviet Union, NATO and EU expansion, Russia’s use of energy to dominate European neighbors, the future of BMD against Iran, Russia’s role in the Middle East and so on.

Rather than building confidence between the two countries, a New START would give the illusion of success while leaving fundamental issues to fester. The counter-argument was that with this success others would follow. The counter to that was that by spending energy on a New START, the United States delayed and ignored more fundamental issues. The debate is worth having, and both sides have a case, but the idea that START in itself mattered is not part of that debate.

In the end, the issue boiled down to this. START was marginal at best. But if President Barack Obama couldn’t deliver on START his credibility with the Russians would collapse. It wasn’t so much that a New START would build confidence as it was that a failure to pass a New START would destroy confidence. It was on that basis that the U.S. Senate approved the treaty. Its opponents argued that it left out discussions of BMD and tactical nuclear weapons. Their more powerful argument was that the United States just negotiated a slightly modified version of a treaty that Ronald Reagan proposed a quarter century ago and it had nothing to do with contemporary geopolitical reality.

Passage allowed Obama to dodge a bullet, but it leaves open a question that he does not want to answer: What is American strategy toward Russia? He has mimicked American strategy from a quarter century ago, not defined what it will be.

---

Making Sense of the START Debate is republished with permission of STRATFOR. Read More......

Debt Package for Europe Took U.S. Nudge

NEW YORK TIMES/Deal Book Blogs, 5/12/2010 - President Obama had just flown into Hampton, Va., Sunday morning to deliver a commencement address. But before he donned his silky academic robes, he was on the phone with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, offering urgent advice — and some not so subtle prodding — that Europe needed to try something big. ∴ Weeks of hesitant half-steps to address Greece’s debt problems had only worsened market worries about the euro, and were threatening the still-fragile economic recoveries in the United States and Asia, Steven Erlanger, Katrin Bennhold and David Sanger report in The New York Times. Now, Mr. Obama told Mrs. Merkel that the Europeans needed an overwhelming financial rescue to end speculation that the euro — and European unity — could crumble. Read more at the NYT...

Related
Breitbart TV: Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) (video) "We didn't ask Europe to bail out New Jersey or California. American taxpayers should not be responsible for bailing out Europe." Read More......

Potential breakdowns in homeland security protections

THE HILL, 12/26/2009 - Congressional hearings will begin in January to investigate the alleged attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight just before touching down in Detroit on Christmas Day, as top lawmakers voiced concerns about potential breakdowns in homeland security protections. Read more at The Hill... Read More......

U.S. Climate Change legislation potentially coming this spring

News Hub: Climate Deal Falls Short 12/18/2009

The leaders of the U.S., China, India and South Africa reach a deal at the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, but as WSJ's John Bussey tells Kelsey Hubbard, it falls short of a breakthrough and is "bereft of details." Read More......

U.N.-Usual Suspects

The United Nations has sent a special investigator to look into whether affordable housing is so hard to find that it constitutes a human rights violation. Her destination? New York, Washington D.C., Chicago and three other U.S. cities.

U.N. special investigator Raquel Rolnik's mission is to tour the American cities and report back to the U.N. General Assembly. The New York Post editorial board writes: "Since 2000, the U.N. has had a housing investigator looking into shortages in such obvious places as Cambodia, Kenya, and Iran... but this is its first foray into U.S. territory — and it remains to be seen whether she'll call for Donald Trump and other landlords to be hauled before the International Criminal Court." --Fox News Channel's Lanna Britt contributed to this report. Read More......

'Evil' oil men may help Europe become less dependent on Russia

AMERICAN THINKER, 10/11/2009 by Rick Moran - While flogging the reputation of American oil men for being greedy and evil, those very same companies may be Europe's answer getting out from underneath Russia's heel when it comes to natural gas deliveries. ∴ A new way to squeeze natural gas out of oil shale is revolutionizing the industry and Europe appears ready to jump into the market with both feet:

A new technique that tapped previously inaccessible supplies of natural gas in the United States is spreading to the rest of the world, raising hopes of a huge expansion in global reserves of the cleanest fossil fuel. Italian and Norwegian oil engineers and geologists have arrived in Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania to learn how to extract gas from layers of a black rock called shale. Companies are leasing huge tracts of land across Europe for exploration. And oil executives are gathering rocks and scrutinizing Asian and North African geological maps in search of other fields. Read more at American Thinker...

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Grand Strategy and Socialism

GEOPOLITICAL GLOBAL ANALYSIS, 10/2/2009 by J. R. Nyquist - Consider two categories: (1) grand strategy for states where power is constitutionally constrained; (2) grand strategy for states where power is concentrated in the hands of an unchecked oligarchy. In the first category, the grand strategist is forced into a conservative position. In the second category, the grand strategist takes a revolutionary position. It may be argued that the first position is linked to capitalism, while the second position is linked to socialism and Russia.

According to Ludwig von Mises, "It is the aim of Socialism to transfer the means of production from private ownership to the ownership of organized society, to the State. The socialist State owns all material factors of production and thus directs it." In other words, socialism signifies the concentration of economic power in the hands of government officials acting in the name of the state. The concentration of economic power naturally implies the concentration of all power - including international power. It is oddly significant, in this context, that the first socialist country was Russia, where the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics was born. Russia thereby became the "motherland" of socialism, from whence all international socialists drew their strength. Read more at Global Analysis...

Also see Nuclear Disarmament: A Modern Fairy Tale, published 09/25/2009 Read More......

Cuba to Russia: Drill Here, Drill Now!

AMERICAN SOLUTIONS, 8/6/2009 by Steve Everley - While Americans continue to suffer from an artificial energy crisis, perhaps it's time we take advice from the unlikeliest of places: Cuba. ∴ The Cuban government announced last week that it had signed contracts with Russia to allow the Russians to explore for oil and gas off its coast, possibly as close as 45 miles from American shores. Read more at American Solutions...

"...Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, bowing to anti-energy influences, has needlessly delayed the offshore leasing process." Read More......

More on "A Reckless Congress"

ADDENDUM (from WSJ article A Reckless Congress): Sorry! I missed this in an earlier post. The Heritage Foundation Chart (below the fold) shows that, if the Obama budget and the House health-care plan become law, including a 2.9% Medicare tax, then U.S. taxes will exceed those of France. Even worse, see where Oregon places in comparison.




There's Oregon with the highest tax rate in the U.S.!



See what happens when the people elect Democrats! You'd think they'd learn. Read More......

Czar? You Mean Commissar

PRAVDA.RU (English), 7/17/2009 - There is a new silliness in the Western Anglo Media, comparing the US Emperor's Czar program to the number of Tsars that Holy Russia had. It is a good thing that the US/UK public is ignorant not only of ancient history but also of recent history, otherwise they might start to worry. Read more at Pravda...

Hat tip: Bill Cantrell (Facebook) Read More......

Honduran talks snag on proposal for unity govt

BREITBART NEWS, 7/18/2009 by Marianela Jimenez - SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP): Honduras' interim government rejected a mediator's proposal to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya and form a national unity government, throwing negotiations on settling the political crisis into doubt Saturday night. ∴ Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who is mediating the U.S.-backed talks, said both sides agreed to hold more talks Sunday, but he acknowleged they were far apart over how to end the dispute over a June 28 coup that toppled Zelaya and send him int exile. ∴ "We have to make an effort to bring the positions closer," Arias, who won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending Central America's civil wars, said at the end of Saturday's round of talks. Read more at Breitbart... Read More......

Found at Newsbusters

Newsbusters.org
Titled: Weekend Captionfest II
A carnival float depicting President Obama with Europe being dragged along is seen during the traditional carnival parade in Duesseldorf, Germany, on Monday, Feb. 23, 2009. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein) [H/t Gary H.]


But wait! This isn't quite right. To see what's really happening...

Isn't this better? Here we see President Obama chasing after the socialist tendencies of Europe to achieve 'change' in America.

Photoshopped.

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Jihad Comes to Wall Street

National Review, April 3, 2008, by Alex Alexiev

"Sharia finance" does exactly what it promises, financing the spread of sharia — and terror.

If you’ve seen Geert Wilders’s film Fitna, you may not have noticed a single headline amongst all the bombings, beheadings, and earnest expressions of Islam’s eventual world domination: Halal-fund: investments for Muslims. But the investment vehicles referenced are an essential part of radical Islam’s efforts to insinuate itself into Western societies in order to destroy them from within. And Wall Street, barely out of the woods from its disastrous run-in with sub-prime mortgages — and having lost one of its historic investment houses, Bear Stearns, in the process — is now chasing the very kind of “sharia finance” against which Wilders's movie warns, a business line that may eventually wind up being even more calamitous than the subprime-mortgage fiasco. Continued...

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Zak salutes Mel Martinez

Mel Martinez, Republican Senator and Hispanic immigrant
Grand Old Partisan, January 24, 2008, Michael Zak wrote,

Grand Old Partisan salutes Senator Melquíades (Mel) Martinez (R-FL). On this day in 2001, Martinez became the first Cuban-American in a presidential cabinet when he became Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the George W. Bush administration. Continued...

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Canadian comments on US candidates

Political Commentary on US Presidential Candidates from a Canadian
January 15, 2008

From Theo Caldwell as published in the National Post (Canada) on Wednesday, December 26, 2007 - "An obvious choice can be unnerving. When the apparent perfection of one option or the unspeakable awfulness of another makes a decision seem too easy, it is human nature to become suspicious." For the entire article, read RanchitoD's blog entry at bentongop.com. Read More......

American Decline?

Works and Days, January 6, 2008, Victor Davis Hanson wrote,

Another reader wondered whether the United States is now in irrevocable decline, while India, Russia, China, Japan, and Europe reemerge to assume our once global prominence. I doubt it. All of those countries have far more fundamental problems that we do. India is mired in poverty and overpopulation, prone to religious violence and burdened by a caste system. Russia is a neo-Czarist thugocracy, a $100-a-barrel oil price plastering over the otherwise corrupt and inefficient Russian economy, and a shrinking Russian population. China has not yet come to grips with class strife and unionism, suburban malaise, and must spend hundreds of billions in infrastructure. Its environmental degradation will take years and trillions to repair.

Europe is shrinking, as its socialist/secular/pacifist/heaven-on-earth creed has brought short-term prosperity and stability, but also millions of unassimilated Muslims, no defenses in the face of rising jihadism, possible rogue nuclear states like Iran and North Korea, and a bullying Russia, and a sybarite culture founded on the premise that the here and now is all there is.

In short, America’s natural wealth, its meritocracy and legions of different races, religions and tribes that are united under meritocratic values, its superb military, its past avoidance of doctrinaire political extremism, whether fascism, militarism, Nazism, communism, or jihadism, and its ability to react and galvanize almost overnight, all suggest we can rather quickly, should we wish, defeat any foreign enemy, get off our costly dependence on foreign oil, close our borders and end illegal immigration, begin to spend less federal money, promote more individual savings, balance budgets, pay off foreign debt, and restore our financial preeminence—if we get honest charismatic and competent candidates who can appeal to the better angels of our nature.

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