Tuesday, January 6, 2009

The day’s top political news:

Obama names Leon Panetta – a former high Clinton staffer, as CIA Director

Leon Panetta has zero experience in the intelligence world  Of course, Obama himself has zero experience or training in the tools necessary for serving as president.

In choosing Leon E. Panetta to be the next CIA director, President-elect Barack Obama appears to have concluded that a spy chief who understands politics may be better equipped to carry out the incoming administration's national security agenda than one who understands espionage.

The surprise selection of Panetta, a former California congressman and chief of staff to President Clinton, would give Obama a CIA director with loyalty to the White House and an experienced managerial hand to steer the administration away from potential intelligence scandals.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-cia-panetta6-2009jan06,0,5514283.story

Ann Coulter Kicked Off NBC's 'Today Show' because of her new anti liberal book

Coulter posted on her web site that her appearance on tomorrow's Today Show, to promote her new anti-liberal and anti-Obama book, had been axed.

Matt Drudge headlines it at his blog, "banned for life" due to alleged untruths in her new book?

"Media Matters has been picking apart the book, and last week asked the following: 'Is NBC going to help Coulter sell this book?' Seems like they're not. (Media Matters is another George Soros liberal scam)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003926874

A congressional hearing into the alleged $50 billion Bernard Madoff fraud drew calls from Democratic lawmakers for an overhaul of financial regulation as their confidence ebbs in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Clearly our regulatory system has failed miserably and we must rebuild it now," said Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa).

Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the panel, said he saw no need at this stage for broad new laws or rules for the securities industry. "What we may have in the Madoff case is not necessarily a lack of enforcement and oversight tools, but a failure to use them," Bachus said.

Witnesses at the hearing included SEC Inspector General David Kotz, who pledged a thorough inquiry of the agency's handling of the case.

Opinion:
Liberal Democrats and our corrupted media form a fifth column of betrayal in the global war on terror

In the Godfather, a maxim is offered advising: “hold your friends closely, hold your enemies closer”. Accepting that admonition, I urge every normal American out there to grab the nearest liberal and engage him or her in a mighty bear hug.

Liberals are not all that big on patriotism.  They sneer at such values as honor, duty and country.  I make no exceptions to that finding.  Patriotism is simply not to be found in liberal DNA.  To clarify a possible point of confusion, I refer to today’s political liberals – people such as John Kerry, Teddy Kennedy, and Nancy Pelosi – they have participated in cheapening the term “liberal”.  Once “liberal” was an honorable adjective. That’s no longer the fact.  Of course, today’s liberals work hard to hide their reality – they hide under the term “progressive” – a euphemism without substance.  Certainly there is nothing at all honestly “progressive” about political liberals today.

But, back to the subject of liberal Democrat betrayal.

On a cold November afternoon in Washington, I stood on a windswept hill overlooking the Washington Monument.  I was there to film an anti war demonstration for use in a planned sequel to a documentary film I had produced the year before.  The documentary, “The Riotmakers” was based on a book by a Reader’s Digest Senior Editor, and a close friend of mine, Eugene Methvin.  It traced the history of those who create, organize, and generate riots in today’s America.  Such people use tactics honed by such as Stalin and Hitler. 

This November demonstration stunned my…despite my having filmed other such anti war events in the preceding year.  On the Mall of the US Capitol, was a mob of people listening intently to someone speaking live from Hanoi, they waved a sea of communist flags, and at various times, joined in anti Communist chants and slogans.

I could not help by consider what reactions of normal Americans would have been a mere three decades earlier had such a scene been staged in that more patriotic era.  Imagine a live diatribe from Joseph Goebbels echoing across the Mall, while a mob waved Nazi flags and shouted slogans praising Adolph Hitler and the Nazis,  Instead of “heil Hitler”, the mob of 1971 was shouting “Ho Ho Ho Chi Mien, Vietcong is gonna win”.

Patriotism was in retreat as liberals shouted their betrayal.

I forgot to mention something else…leading that pro Communist, anti American demonstration was none other than John Kerry, the future presidential nominee of the Democrat party – a liberal Democrat whose open embrace of treason is a matter of history.

Things are even worse today.   Liberal Democrats have done all they could to undercut and betray American troops under fire in the Middle East.  Nancy Pelosi tried 40 times to cut funding – pulling the rug from under the feet of American military people who were in harms way because they volunteered to defend freedom and oppose radical Islamic terror and their threats to slaughter all who don’t embrace their radical religion.

Dome Democrats even ban use of the term “Global war on Terror” in Congressional discussions.  What is it these guys don’t get.

Today, we see the result as liberals throw their support to the Palestinians in Gaza.  These are people who chose to harbor terror – even voted to hand their government to the terrorist organization Hamas.  For months, they have rained down rockets on Israeli towns and populations.  Understand, these rockets are not the carefully guided missiles designed to hit designated targets.  They are rockets with no more guidance than those shot from Coke bottles in this country.  They hit at random and kill without reason.

But liberals love these Palestinians.

Mostly, they hate Israel – and that anti Semitism by liberal politicians has become more and more obvious and open as the years go by.  Of course these same liberal Democrats have also vigorously opposed effective interrogation of captured Islamic terrorists – interrogation that has a proven record of saving American lives.  It seems US lives are trivial matters to political liberals.

Liberal opposition to our efforts to fight off this nation’s enemies can be found in many places.  In my old home town of Columbus, Georgia, for years, a motley crew of rabid left wingers shout, scream, and make fools of themselves in an effort to shut down an anti Communist school at Fort Benning – a school that has been quite effective in training Central American military officers to effectively fight and defeat communists.

I know they have been effective because, as with the anti American demonstration on the Mall, I was there.  Off and on for about 20 years, I worked directly with the nation of Belize and have traveled in many areas of Central America.  The School of the Americas the liberals hate so much has given the honest people of that area great help in fending off the cancer of Communism – sadly, in Nicaragua and elsewhere, Communists have proven hard to whip and stay whipped.

Liberal Democrats love these communists.  Immediately after his election to the Senate, John Kerry grabbed the left wing extremist Senator, Tom Harkin, and dashed down to Nicaragua to embrace its communist dictator Daniel Ortega,  More recently, the rabid Bush hater, Cindy Sheehan, did the same with Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez.

All of this is not intended as just a venting of frustration and anger at a group of Americans who plot, scheme, and otherwise conspire against America and its people.

Most troubling of all, one of them has now been elected President and will be inaugurated in a matter of a couple of weeks.  There is nothing in the rhetoric, proposals, or actions of Brack Obama that offer any hope for normal America that his is not a tangible threat to our values – that he will be steadfast in the cause of freedom and respond effectively to keep this nation safe from radical Islamic terror.  Radical Islam has declared war on civilization.  To have a president whose fathers were both Muslim is a legitimate reason to question what may lie ahead for us.

That all his advisors, supporters, and confidantes are liberal Democrats should give all normal Americans who are paying attention, nightmares when they are abed and asleep, and real fear when they awake and see the nightmares are real.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

First an overview and inventory

1.

Liberals, Liars, and Cheats
Burt Prelutsky

…in the past few years, we have seen any number of rather obnoxious individuals called to our nation’s capitol so that members of the House and Senate could grill them in front of the TV cameras. And while I would normally enjoy watching tobacco, oil and car company CEOs, along with steroid-using baseball cheats, publicly embarrassed, that’s not how it’s worked out. Instead, because the politicians are so disgustingly arrogant and self-righteous, it’s hard not to view their victims in a sympathetic light. All I know is if I were ever guilty or even suspected of a crime, I would certainly want to be attacked by the likes of Christopher Dodd, Charles Schumer and Barney Frank.

http://townhall.com/columnists/BurtPrelutsky/2009/01/05/liberals,_liars,_and_cheats

2.

Democrats conspire to steal another election

Funny Business in Minnesota
In which every dubious ruling seems to help Al Franken.
 
Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111967642552909.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

3.

Christians Bankroll Palestinian Liberation

Some Christians pray for the peace of Jerusalem; others work to tear Jerusalem to pieces. The wealthy New York based United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) tends toward the latter. The GBGM recently approved grants to several anti-Israel groups, including a program operated by Palestinian Liberation Theologians.

GBGM is one of the largest mission agencies in American mainline Protestantism, with a budget of nearly $200 million and assets of about $400 million. Decades ago, GBGM set aside its historic emphasis on evangelism in favor of left-wing social change. Its political grants are small relative to GBGM's overall budget, but they reflect GBGM's ideology, and are certainly imply wider staff involvement in the favored causes.  

 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=0FC0F0C3-2383-4D38-A14B-9EAFC0E7F698

Now, for the details:

1.

Liberals, Liars, and Cheats
Burt Prelutsky

In high school, pretty girls and even those who are only so-so in the looks department will sometimes surround themselves with unattractive acolytes because they wind up looking so much better by comparison.

Such things don’t always occur by choice, but through circumstances. For instance, consider Laurel and Hardy who were teamed up by the legendary Hal Roach. Because Oliver Hardy was so heavy, he was called the Fat one, and Stan Laurel, who wasn’t all that thin, was therefore referred to as the Skinny One.

The reason that relativity is on my mind is because in the past few years, we have seen any number of rather obnoxious individuals called to our nation’s capitol so that members of the House and Senate could grill them in front of the TV cameras. And while I would normally enjoy watching tobacco, oil and car company CEOs, along with steroid-using baseball cheats, publicly embarrassed, that’s not how it’s worked out. Instead, because the politicians are so disgustingly arrogant and self-righteous, it’s hard not to view their victims in a sympathetic light. All I know is if I were ever guilty or even suspected of a crime, I would certainly want to be attacked by the likes of Christopher Dodd, Charles Schumer and Barney Frank.

Recently, the Los Angeles Board of Education was so eager to fire School Superintendent David Brewer that they bought out the last year-and-a-half of his four-year contract. Because Mr. Brewer is a black man, certain parties are suggesting that the Board’s decision was racially motivated. One can’t help wondering how it’s possible to accuse the same people who hired the incompetent to a $300,000-a-year job can now be accused of being racists for dumping him, even though they wrote him a check for about half a million dollars. They can certainly be regarded as nincompoops for hiring him in the first place, but that’s a whole different can of worms.

Yet, we find the same pattern repeated each and every time a black baseball manager, football coach or corporate executive, loses his job. Are different rules supposed to apply for blacks and whites in the work place? Are they both supposed to compete equally for the job, but only one of them can never be fired if he gets the job and then fails to measure up? It seems to me that if I’m going to be labeled a racist if I ever have to cut a black employee loose, I’d be a darn fool to hire him in the first place.
Martin Luther King spoke about the day when people would be judged by their character, not their color. Well, we also need to be free to judge people on their competence and on results, and it’s high time that America’s blacks started saying this out loud, instead of providing a braying chorus for the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Speaking of people who have made a career out of spouting nonsense, if Chris Matthews carries out his threat to run for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, in 2010, will Barack Obama feel obligated to announce with a straight face that the mere thought of Matthews becoming a senator sends a thrill up his leg?

Finally, according to a recent poll, 30% of America’s youth admit they’ve stolen from stores and 64% confess they’ve cheated on tests. Frankly, I’m neither shocked nor surprised. After all, as borne out by the recent presidential election, young people tend to be liberals. The unsettling thing is that they hold themselves in such high esteem, giving themselves top marks when it comes to ethics and honesty. But, I suppose that’s what comes of grading on the curve.

Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

http://townhall.com/columnists/BurtPrelutsky/2009/01/05/liberals,_liars,_and_cheats
 
2.

Democrats conspire to steal another election

Funny Business in Minnesota
In which every dubious ruling seems to help Al Franken.
 
Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.

This disenfranchises Minnesotans whose vote counted only once. And one Canvassing Board member, State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, has acknowledged that "very likely there was a double counting." Yet the board insists that it lacks the authority to question local officials and it is merely adding the inflated numbers to the totals.

In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had "lost" 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge -- officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night -- the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.

Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.

And then there are the absentee ballots. The Franken campaign initially howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. Counties were supposed to review their absentees and create a list of those they believed were mistakenly rejected. Many Franken-leaning counties did so, submitting 1,350 ballots to include in the results. But many Coleman-leaning counties have yet to complete a re-examination. Despite this lack of uniformity, and though the state Supreme Court has yet to rule on a Coleman request to standardize this absentee review, Mr. Ritchie's office nonetheless plowed through the incomplete pile of 1,350 absentees this weekend, padding Mr. Franken's edge by a further 176 votes.

Both campaigns have also suggested that Mr. Ritchie's office made mistakes in tabulating votes that had been challenged by either of the campaigns. And the Canvassing Board appears to have applied inconsistent standards in how it decided some of these challenged votes -- in ways that, again on net, have favored Mr. Franken.

The question is how the board can certify a fair and accurate election result given these multiple recount problems. Yet that is precisely what the five members seem prepared to do when they meet today. Some members seem to have concluded that because one of the candidates will challenge the result in any event, why not get on with it and leave it to the courts? Mr. Coleman will certainly have grounds to contest the result in court, but he'll be at a disadvantage given that courts are understandably reluctant to overrule a certified outcome.

Meanwhile, Minnesota's other Senator, Amy Klobuchar, is already saying her fellow Democrats should seat Mr. Franken when the 111th Congress begins this week if the Canvassing Board certifies him as the winner. This contradicts Minnesota law, which says the state cannot award a certificate of election if one party contests the results. Ms. Klobuchar is trying to create the public perception of a fait accompli, all the better to make Mr. Coleman look like a sore loser and build pressure on him to drop his legal challenge despite the funny recount business.

Minnesotans like to think that their state isn't like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn't. But we can't recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111967642552909.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
 
3.
 
Christians Bankroll Palestinian Liberation  and the terror it sponsors 
By Mark D. Tooley

Some Christians pray for the peace of Jerusalem; others work to tear Jerusalem to pieces. The wealthy New York based United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) tends toward the latter. The GBGM recently approved grants to several anti-Israel groups, including a program operated by Palestinian Liberation Theologians.

GBGM is one of the largest mission agencies in American mainline Protestantism, with a budget of nearly $200 million and assets of about $400 million. Decades ago, GBGM set aside its historic emphasis on evangelism in favor of left-wing social change. Its political grants are small relative to GBGM's overall budget, but they reflect GBGM's ideology, and are certainly imply wider staff involvement in the favored causes.  

At its October 2008 directors meeting, GBGM approved $10,000 for a "youth leadership training program" for Sabeel, a Jerusalem-based "partner" of GBGM and other liberal Western groups. According to church supporters, Sabeel is an "ecumenical, Palestinian Christian, Liberation Theology Center which seeks to make the Gospel contextually relevant." Sabeel advocates a "spirituality based on justice, peace, nonviolence, liberation, and reconciliation," while also promoting a "more accurate international awareness regarding the identity, presence, and witness of Palestinian Christians."  Hosting visitors and organizing events, Sabeel propagandizes for the Palestinians and against Israel, just as similar groups once apologized for the Sandinista dictatorship, and assailed the Contras and the U.S., under the aegis of Liberation Theology.

GBGM has one "missionary intern" who works full-time for Sabeel.

"The people of Palestine know about faith, about hope in things unseen," that GBGM missionary intern for Sabeel rhapsodized earlier this year in a Lenten study.
The people of Palestine know about standing firm. They also know about exile. They know about going out, and they know about coming in. They know about movement, and the lack thereof. They have relatives who have left. They have others who cannot leave. They have others who cannot come back. There can be no God for the Palestinians who does not keep them both in their steadfastness and in their going out and coming in.

Of course, for Liberation Theology's now ossified adherents, God is less interested in saving souls and more focused on overthrowing "unjust" economic and political structures tied to Western capitalism. For its Liberation Theology devotees, Israel is the agent of Western exploitation against oppressed and faultless Palestinian victims.

In further solidarity with the Palestinians, GBGM also voted $10,000 for the International Middle East Media Center 's Palestinian Youth Media Training program. Another $11,400 from GBGM will support a staff person for the group over the next three years. The Center calls itself a "collaboration between Palestinian and International journalists to provide independent media coverage of Israel-Palestine." Essentially, it spins a pro-Palestinian perspective through willing media outlets.

The center is an affiliate of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People, which is a "Palestinian community service center" that supports the "local Palestinian community's efforts to remain steadfast in the face of the hardships imposed by occupation policies." It also urges people to "become involved in nonviolent action and leading them in resistance to the occupation and the struggle for human and national rights." It aims to "lobby for the just Palestinian cause" and "defend Palestinian rights." Among its other public relations activities, the center organizes an "Activist Summer Camp" for Palestinians and international visitors, in collaboration with the American Friends Service Committee and the Holy Land Trust. The camp helps youngsters "enhance their skills in civil-based resistance."

Another beneficiary of GBGM's missions generosity is the "U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation," which is getting $5,000. Based in Washington, D.C, it is devoted to "working for freedom from occupation and equal rights for all by challenging US policy to wards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." The Campaign targets the U.S. government, corporations, and other institutions that "sustain Israel's domination of the Palestinian people and denial of their human rights." It seeks to "educate U.S. citizens on the way that these institutions function to undermine the rights of the Palestinian people and mobilize them in support of human rights."

The Campaign supports anti-Israel divestment policies, a right of full-return for all purported Palestinian refugees, and declines to take sides between support for a two-state or a one-state solution. So, essentially the demographic eradication of Israel would suit the Campaign. In November, the Campaign hosted an "anti-apartheid" speaking tour in the U.S. that featured Diana Buttu, a Canadian citizen of Palestinian ethnicity who worked for the PLO during the Second Intifada. The Campaign's steering committee includes GBGM's Executive Secretary for Human Rights & Racial Justice David Wildman.

GBGM has declined officially to endorse anti-Israel divestment, and the United Methodist Church's governing General Conference earlier this year resoundingly rejected divestment proposals. But GBGM and other United Methodist agencies, largely unknown to the church's eight million U.S. church members, remain deeply embedded in anti-Israel activism. GBGM's support for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation illustrates that the goal is not merely to empower Palestinians but eventually to demographically eliminate Israel.

Traditionally, Christian missions agencies aim to help and redeem nations. But for GBGM, the slow liquidation of at least one country appears to be the objective.
________________________________________
Mark D. Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy.
 
 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=0FC0F0C3-2383-4D38-A14B-9EAFC0E7F698