The day’s Top Political News:
Obama Closes Doors on Openness
As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies.
One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications." The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure.
Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a "new era" of openness, "nothing has changed," says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. "For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/202875
Obama Job Approval Slips to 58% for First Time
Lowest reading for Obama thus far in Gallup Poll Daily tracking
President Barack Obama's job approval rating fell to 58% in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from June 16-18 -- a new low for Obama in Gallup tracking, although not dissimilar to the 59% he has received on four other occasions.
Thirty-three percent of Americans now disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president, just one point shy of his record-high 34% disapproval score from early June.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/121028/Obama-Job-Approval-Slips-58-First-Time.aspx
Obama calls on Iran to 'stop all violent and unjust actions'
Obama directly addresses the Iranian government for the first time after a day of violence in Iran.
As expected, Obama’s response has been weak and seems a result of indecision and confusion
Hillarys’ mythical phone call came to Obama in the wee hours of a morning, and, predictably, Obama has no idea of how to handle the emergency. He came to the Oval Office with no experience – a product of slick marketing by the most corrupt political organization in the country – Chicago Democrats.
Opinion:
Father’s Day – bigger than I appreciated over the years.
My father died 43 years ago this month. I still miss him.
We were close in a manner that only fathers and sons can be close. He taught me how to hunt – doves, rabbits, quail. He allowed me to smoke my first rabbit tobacco…I thought that was special because it was something we shared that I should tell my mother.
My father was a college professor. He taught forestry and in the summer took classes into the field for summer camp. For two summers, I went with him. The summer of 1950 was the best. That was the summer I awoke to the alarm radio news telling of the attack on South Korea by their Communist neighbors to the North.
I found it all very exciting – it brought back memories of my earlier days when the stories of World War Two made for great adventure movies and exciting stories of real American heroes.
There weren’t many heroes from the Korean War. There should have been. Major James Jebara became the first US Jet Ace and eventually shot down 15 Migs. They gave him a Distinguished Service Cross – they should have given him the Medal of Honor. But that’s a story for another day. Jabara was a personal hero – later, he would be an inspiration.
My WWII days seemed a lot of fun in retrospect, but no one was shooting at me and the fallen in the movies would always appear later in new movies, new roles, and new adventures. In war, casualties don’t get recycled.
I learned to drive that summer. The country back roads around a Georgia state park, “Hard Labor Creek” near the little town of Rutledge. I drove through that area a few years ago – wanting to show it to my two sons. Today much of it seems to be high end horse country – my son’s were distracted by comic books and other matters. They couldn’t share with me my memories shared with my father.
Two years later, I would be a student at Georgia myself. Fortunately, I made it into AFROTC and earned a commission as a prelude to becoming a pilot like Jabara. A dream was realized even if I didn’t get to shoot down 15 enemies.
My father was fearful of my flying career. Now that I have sons, I understand how he felt. True terror is being father to a teen aged son. Hillary’s Clinton’s mythical phone call at 3 am has nothing -- in terms of crisis -- on waiting for a teen aged son to get home at that sort of hour.
My father began having serious health problems after I graduated. The Air Force sent me to Kansas so I was not able to spend as much time with him as I should have. When I returned home, I ended up as a news director at a radio station in Columbus, Georgia. My mother and father could get a very bad reception of that station on a little Philco radio as they ate lunch in Athens (Ga). So we kept in touch…I now realize how important that must have been for my father and mother.
It was not much more complicated for my getting to Athens when I joined the news staff of a Montgomery television station. However, I chose to fly with the Alabama Air National Guard during that time – and I worked hard to keep my father from knowing I was flying jets again. I enjoyed flying the T-33, and even looked forward to moving up to the RF-84F unit aircraft. None of this could be shared with my father, of course, His fear of my flying never changed. My moving up to the unit aircraft came despite the fact the 84F was not a good aircraft. It was very slow on take off. The other pilot with whom I was going through the RF-84F check out, tried to take off too soon, stalled, and crashed into woods at the end of the runway. My news crew had film of his body being removed from the cockpit – naturally we didn’t use the film, but I got the message.
His fatal crash came the Tuesday after I checked out of the Alabama Air Guard on Sunday. Of course, I had to end my Air Guard experience because Governor George Wallace was standing in the doors of schools to prevent racial segregation and that was a national news story. As a newsman, I had to cover those stories and others involving the Civil Rights movement.
I tell myself I had to leave the Guard. My civilian career needed to be given the nod over other matters by then. My father’s health was getting worse.
I ended my TV career early in 1965 when Bo Callaway, the first Republican Congressman from Georgia – “since Reconstruction” – made me the head of his home based Columbus office. My father was proud.
The next year Callaway decided to run for governor. My father had a campaign button fastened to the pillow in his hospital room.
A few months later, I got the phone call we all dread – my father had a stroke and the prospects were dim. Dim indeed. He died before the week was out.
Years later, I have thought back on my relationship with my father. We were close. We enjoyed Georgia football games together – even if just listening on radio. Georgia home games were major family events. Friends, distant relatives, and others would congregate at our house in Athens. They were special days…always. They still are.
A big regret has surfaced in all this. As I have said, I felt very close to my father. We had that special relationship I mentioned earlier. But we never hugged. Never. It was just “not done” as an unspoken rule.
That occurred to me a little over a year ago, and I don’t plan to repeat that with my own sons. (I have never had such a problem with any of my daughters, we hug and kiss as natural reactions and sincere expressions of mutual love – in fact, moments ago, my youngest surprised me by coming in quietly and giving me a hug and kiss.)
So I have discussed my not exchanging fatherly hugs with my sons. We don’t shake hands when we arrive or depart any more. We hug and exchange simple kisses. I feel better about that. Much better. I hope someday my sons will be glad we did.
All of this seems appropriate for Fathers’ Day. I will spend it with my younger son, the 18 year old. It’s his birthday, after all. Eighteen years ago, he became my best Father’s Day present of all. Now he’s about to leave for College.
Which brings me back to memories of my Father, of course. In those days, months and years were longer. Today, they fly by and the intervening 18 years seem far fewer. But the same can be said of the almost twenty years since the birth of my eldest son.
The older son was born on a day in which I had to wrap up organization of a political group in Nashville, and hurry back to Miami to help deal with a campaign visit by the elder President George Bush…Bush the elder had hired me some years earlier to deal with Republican interests in the deep South.
When I called family upon landing in Miami, I got the news of my eldest son’t birth…somehow helping greet and provide for President Bush took a back seat…but the connection may have been one influence that has led him to become a politician.
I leave about noon to go play poker at a legal poker parlor with my number two son. It should be one of those father-son adventures not unlike my summers years ago. I hope my son sees it the same way.
Looking back on life, memories are the real profits. They are dear belongings no one can rob. They are good or bad depending on our actions at the time – thus becoming motivations for living a good life.
I have a lot of good memories. Many involved my father. Today is a good day for reflection – looking back I enjoy the special times with my father…the REAL Fathers’ Days. They didn’t all come in June. They were private observations – most we didn’t even recognize at the time.
Excuse me for this hiatus from my usual political comments. It’s Father’s Day after all, and I’m a Father. I get to do that. Obama and the liberals cant stop me and they cant tax the option either.
Buddy
The day’t top blogs:
1.
Japan warns that North Korea may fire missile at U.S. on Independence Day
Mail Foreign Service
North Korea may launch a long-range ballistic missile towards Hawaii on American Independence Day, according to Japanese intelligence officials.
The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles, would be launched in early July from the Dongchang-ni site on the north-western coast of the secretive country.
Intelligence analysts do not believe the device would be capable of hitting Hawaii's main islands, which are 4,500 miles from North Korea.
Details of the launch came from the Japan's best-selling newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun.
Both Japanese intelligence and U.S. reconnaissance satellites have collated information pointing to the launch, according to the report.
North Korea's Taepodong-2 missile which has a range of 4,000 miles.
Intelligence analysts do not believe it would be capable of hitting Hawaii which is 4,500 miles away.
(NOTE: But more than one intel sources is predicting the July 4 firing. Of course we can take heart from the consistent failures of the Korean missiles…and there are serious questions regarding the nuclear test N Koreans claim they carried out. The Communist state and its less than sane leader, is big on bluster, but if the west stands firm and insists on reasonable actions, N Korea will be forced to back down. Weak reactions by Hillary and Obama should be our biggest fear.)
It is understood the communist state is likely to fire the missile between July 4 and 8. A launch on July 4 would coincide with Independence Day in the States.It would also be the 15th anniversary of North Korean president Kim Il-Sung's death.
The Japanese newspaper also noted that North Korea had fired its first Taepodong-2 missile on July 4, 2006.
Officials had initially believed that North Korea might attempt to launch a similar device towards either Japan's Okinawa island, Guam or Hawaii.
But the ministry concluded launches toward Okinawa or Guam were 'extremely unlikely' because the first-stage booster could drop into waters off China, agitating Beijing, or hit western Japanese territory.
If the missile were fired in the direction of Hawaii, the booster could drop in the Sea of Japan.
News of the launch would put 'enormous military pressure on the United States,' the Yomiuri said, citing the ministry report.
A missile fired from North Korea would have to travel 4,500 miles before it reached the U.S. state of Hawaii.
A spokesman for the Japanese Defense Ministry declined to comment on the report.
South Korea's Defense Ministry and the National Intelligence Service - the country's main spy agency - said they could not confirm it.
Tension on the divided Korean peninsula has risen markedly since the North, led by Kim Jong-il, conducted two nuclear tests this year in defiance of repeated international warnings.
The first rocket, fired in April, was widely seen as a disguised long-range missile test. A second launch came on May 25.
U.S. satellite intelligence has shown that a missile launch pad had been erected at Dongchang-ri on North Korea's north-west coast.
General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it would take at least three to five years for North Korea to pose a real threat to the U.S. west coast.
The UN Security Council last week authorised member states to inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo, requiring them to seize and destroy goods shipped that violate the sanctions against arms export.
On Saturday, in response to this declaration Pyongyang said it would bolster its nuclear programs and threatened war.
Growing tensions come as arms-watchdog the International Crisis Group (ICG) claimed North Korea has several thousand tonnes of chemical weapons it could mount on missiles.
The report from the non-government organisation said they believed the North's army have about 2,500 to 5,000 tonnes of chemical weapons which include mustard gas, sarin and other deadly nerve agents.
ICG also also warned South Korea may become a target.
'If there is an escalation of conflict and if military hostilities break out, there is a risk that they could be used. In conventional terms, North Korea is weak and they feel they might have to resort to using those,' said Daniel Pinkston, the ICG's representative in Seoul.
The North has been working on chemical weapons for decades and can deliver them through long-range artillery directed on Seoul which is home to about half of South Korea's 49 million people and via missiles that could hit all of the country.
2.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/06/conservatives_the_austrian_sch_1.html
Conservatives & The Austrian School of Economics (Part 2)
Lee Cary
Conservatives would do well to arm themselves for the debate over national economic policy by stocking up on ammunition from the Austrian School of Economics.
Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) is the recognized founder of the Austrian School. His book Planned Chaos (1947) was first published over 60 years ago, but remains relevant today.
Here are several excerpts from it:
[Socialism vs. Interventionism] "The system of the hampered market economy, or interventionism, differs from socialism by the very fact that it is still market economy. The authority seeks to influence the market by the intervention of its coercive power, but it does not want to eliminate the market altogether. It desires that production and consumption should develop along lines difference from those prescribed by the unhindered market, and it wants to achieve its aim by injecting into the working of the market orders, commands, and prohibitions for whose enforcement the police power and its apparatus of coercion and compulsion stand ready." (p. 20)
By this definition, the Obama administration is engaged in aggressive and expanding interventionism, particularly in the auto industry, perhaps eventually in the health care industry. Interventionism, if left unchecked, morphs into full blown socialism.
(NOTE: Obama and liberal Democrats recognize their inability to impose socialism per se. They must be careful not to provide normal Americans with ammunition with which to oppose their efforts. But socialist approaches to our problems are coming with increasing regularity. “Socialism by seepage” has taken our auto industry and much of our financial community. There are encouraging signs they may not be able to impose socialism on our healthcare, but the fight will be a difficult one. Quality and available access to healthcare is a central issue.)
"Our age has to face great economic troubles. But this is not a crisis of capitalism. It is the crisis of interventionism, of policies designed to improve capitalism and to substitute a better system for it."
The boundary between interventionism and socialism is only a measure of the range of intervention. Interventionism is to the adolescent as socialism is to the adult.
During his speech before the American Medical Association (AMA), President Obama implicitly ridiculed, by voice inflection, the notion that his Health Care plan represents socialism.
"Many advocates of interventionism are bewildered when one tells them that in recommending interventionism they themselves are fostering antidemocratic and dictatorial tendencies and the establishment of totalitarian socialism. They protest that they are sincere believers in democracy and opposed to tyranny and socialism. What they aim at is only the improvement of the condition of the poor. They say that they are driven by considerations of social justice and favor a fairer distribution of income precisely because they are intent upon preserving capitalism and its political corollary or superstructure, viz., democratic government.
What these people fail to realize is that the various measures they suggest are not capable of bringing about the beneficial results aimed at. On the contrary they produce a state of affairs which from the point of view of their advocates is worse than the previous state which they were designed to alter."
The following quote brings to mind the debate that centered around Joe the Plumber.
"The most absurd justification of interventionism is provided by those who look upon the conflict between capitalism and socialism as if it were a contest over the distribution of income. Why should not the propertied classes be more compliant? Why should they not accord to the poor workers a part of their ample revenues? Why should they oppose the government's design to raise the share of the underprivileged by decreeing minimum wage rates and maximum prices and by cutting profits and interests rates down to a "fairer" level?...
However, this mode of reasoning is entirely vicious. It takes for granted that the various measures of government interference with business will attain those beneficial results which their advocates expect from them....
The conflict between capitalism and socialism is not a contest between two groups of claimants concerning the size of the portions to be allotted to each of them out of a definite supply of goods. It is a dispute concerning what system of social organization best serves human welfare."
The current administration is provoking a choice in America. Obama would say we made that choice with his election. But 52% of the vote, particularly considering those who did not realize the full intent of his promise to bring change, does not signal a decided issue.
"Men must choose between the market economy and socialism. The state can preserve the market economy in protecting life, health and private property against violent or fraudulent aggression; or it can itself control the conduct of all production activities. Some agency must determine what should be produced. If it is not the consumers by means of demand and supply on the market, it must be the government by compulsion." (p. 34)
3.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/che_guevara_the_counterinsurge.html
Che Guevara, the Counterinsurgent, Communist thug
Humberto Fontova
Last Saturday marked the day 81 years ago when Ernesto Guevara de la Serna y Lynch entered the world. As luck would have it, a PBS special titled "The 60's Experience" featuring former Animals' singer, Eric Burdon, sporting a humongous (as befits the quite rotund Burdon nowadays) Che Guevara T-shirt is recently making the rounds. Eric's tent-like covering shames both Carlos Santana's and Johnny Depp's Che shirts. It features an elegant collar, and a huge image of the gallant Che's face on both front and back. Naturally, Eric was belting out the Animals' classics, which featured his incomparable, "We Gotta Get Out of This Place."
EXACTLY, Eric!" I blurted at the TV. "That was the exact and desperate refrain from 6.3 million Cubans (Cuba's population in 1959) when your t-shirt icon imposed his liberation!" (Pre-Castro Cuba, by the way, took in more immigrants as a percentage of population than the U.S., mostly from Europe. People used to be almost as desperate to "get into that place" as they later became to quote Burdon's song.)
When your idiot professor and the idiots on The History Channel, etc. call Che a "guerrilla fighter" they're quite correct, but unwittingly.
(NOTE: “Che” t shirts are regular wear for young participants in demonstrations. I doubt few have any remote idea regarding what the real Che was. In short, he was a killer – a thug who enjoyed revolution. Fortunately for many people in Latin America and in areas of Africa such as the former Congo, Che was not all that good at revolutions. Cuba stands out as his singular success, and Fidel had more to do with that success than Che. To suggest “Che” is any sort of hero ignores the facts. But ignoring facts and truth is common in our colleges and universities these days.)
The term "Indian fighter" was used for cowboys who fought against Indians right? Well, did your history prof or The History Channel inform you that one of the bloodiest and longest guerrilla wars on this continent was fought - not by - but against Fidel and Che, and mostly by campesinos?
Didn't think so. Farm collectivization was no more voluntary in Cuba than in the Ukraine. And Cuba's Kulaks had guns, a few at first anyway. Had these rebels gotten a fraction of the aid the Afghan Mujahedeen got, the Viet Cong got -- indeed that George Washington's rebels got from the French -- had these Cuban rebels gotten any help, my kids would speak Spanish and Miami's jukeboxes today would carry Faith Hill rather than Gloria Estefan.
But JFK's Missile Crisis "solution" pledged to Castro and his Soviet sponsors that the U.S. pull the rug out from under Cuba's in-house freedom fighters. Raul Castro himself admitted that at the time of the Missile Crisis his troops and their Soviet advisors were up against 179 different "bands of bandits" as he labeled the thousands of Cuban anti-Communist rebels then battling savagely and virtually alone in Cuba's countryside, with small arms shipments from their compatriots in south Florida as their only lifeline.
Kennedy's deal with Khrushchev cut this lifeline.
The Cuban freedom-fighters working from South Florida were suddenly rounded up for "violating U.S. Neutrality laws." The Coast Guard in Florida got 12 new boats and seven new planes to make sure Castro and his Soviet patrons remained utterly unmolested as they consolidated Stalinism 90 miles from U.S. shores.
Think about it: here's the U.S. Coast Guard and Border patrol working 'round the clock arresting Hispanics in the U.S. who are desperate to return to their native country.
This ferocious guerrilla war, waged 90 miles from America's shores, might have taken place on the planet Pluto for all you'll read about it in the MSM and all you'll learn about it from those illustrious Ivy League Academics. To get an idea of the odds faced by those betrayed rural rebels, the desperation of their battle and the damage they wrought, you might revisit Tony Montana during the last 15 minutes of "Scarface."
Che had a very bloody (and typically cowardly) hand in this slaughter, one of the major anti-insurgency wars on this continent.
Eighty percent of these anti-communist guerrillas were executed on the spot upon capture, a Che specialty. "We fought with the fury of cornered beasts," is how one of the lucky few who escaped described this desperate freedom fight against the Soviet occupation of Cuba through their proxies Fidel and Che.
In 1956 when Che linked up with Fidel, Raul, and their Cuban chums in Mexico city, one of them (now in exile) recalls Che railing against the Hungarian freedom-fighters as "Fascists!" and cheering their extermination by Soviet tanks.
In 1962 Che got a chance to do more than cheer from the sidelines.
He had a hand in the following: "Cuban militia units commanded by Russian officers employed flame-throwers to burn the palm-thatched cottages in the Escambray countryside. The peasant occupants were accused of feeding the counterrevolutionaries and bandits." At one point in 1962, one of every 17 Cubans was a political prisoner. Fidel himself admits that they faced 179 bands of "counter-revolutionaries" and "bandits."
Mass murder was the order in Cuba's countryside. It was the only way to decimate so many rebels.
These country folk went after the Reds with a ferocity that saw Fidel and Che running to their Soviet sugar daddies and tugging their pants in panic. That commie bit about how "a guerrilla swims in the sea which is the people, etc." fit Cuba's anti-Fidel and Che rebellion to a T.
So in a relocation and concentration campaign that shamed anything the Brits did to the Boers, the gallant Communists ripped hundreds of thousands of Cubans from their ancestral homes and herded them into concentration camps on the opposite side of Cuba. I interview several of these "relocated" families too.
One of these Cuban redneck wives refused to be relocated.
After her husband, sons, and a few nephews were murdered by the Gallant Che and his minions, she grabbed a tommy gun herself, rammed in a clip and took to the hills. She became a rebel herself. Cubans know her as La Niña Del Escambray.
For a year she ran rings around the Communist armies sweeping the hills in her pursuit. Finally she ran out of ammo and supplies and the reds rounded her up. Amazingly, she wasn't executed (Che must have taken that day off.) For years La Niña suffered horribly in Castro's dungeons, but she lingers in a Miami nursing home today, mentally shattered.
Seems to me her tragic story makes ideal fodder for Oprah, for all those women's magazines, for all those butch professorettes of "Women's Studies," for a Susan Sarandon role, for a little whooping up by Gloria Steinem, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary herself. If Sonia Sotomayor's is a Cinderella story La Nina's is Joan of Arc's.
Think about it: here's that favored theme for Hollywood producers and New York publishers - "the feisty woman." Well, they don't come much feistier than Zoila Aguila, her real name.
Had she been fighting, say, Somoza or Pinochet or Batista you can bet your last penny Hollywood and New York would be all over her story. Instead she fought the Left's premier pin-up boys.
So, naturally, nobody's heard of her.
Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Exposing the Real Che Guevara. Visit hfontova.com.
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