Saturday, March 17, 2012
I welcome my new daughter Shera Holland Klimson
My wife and I gave birth to Shera Holland Klimson March 13, 
2012. I thought I would share her with the world.
2012. I thought I would share her with the world.
Obama in 2008: Americans need to suck it up and pay more for energy « Hot Air
Morgen Richmond of the now-moribund Verum Serum blog found this nugget from Obama himself in May 2008, explaining that Hope and Change meant big change — in energy prices. When an attendee to this town hall asked Obama what sacrifices he would ask of Americans, Obama leaped at the chance to explain the outcome of his energy policies (via Ace):
letter from "Joe the Plumber"
Dear Fellow American,
Remember how the leftwing media crucified Sarah Palin in the 2008 election? Well, now they've made "Joe the Plumber" their new target.
Since winning my primary Tuesday night, the media has made it their number one mission to discredit my candidacy and annihilatemy character. I've been painted as a bigot, told I'm not qualified to serve in Congress, and lectured on live TV as if I'm a schoolboy inthe principal's office.
No, I didn't earn a degree at Harvard, I haven't worked on Wall Street, and I don't make a six-figure salary. I'm a normal American, just like you. I served my country in the military and I've worked day and night to provide for my family. If that doesn'tqualify a man to run for Congress, I don't know what does.
Washington insiders are sucking the lifeblood out of America by spending ourmoney with no consequences—what qualifies them to continue to serve? Absolutely nothing that I don't have. So stand with me and send ahard working, commonsense conservative just like you to Congress by following this link right now to make a donation of $25,$50, $100, $250 or more to my campaign.
America was founded on the idea—and our Constitution sets it in law—thatpeople would come out of their communities, represent their constituents—their fellow Americans—and then go back to home. Instead, rightnow we've got 535 career politicians who have lost touch with the reality of what is happening in America.
Thatreality is Americans need jobs.
I'm sick of the gossip, the tabloid journalism, and the "gotcha" questions theleftwing media has designed to trap us in trivial dialogues about issues that have absolutely no relevance with the matter at hand: putting Americansback to work. Go ahead and disagree with me all you want on the social issues. But when it comes to creating jobs, lowering taxes and getting rid ofthe regulations that are strangling our economy—let's have an honest conversation.
If you're ready to start that dialogue and putthe seventh grade shenanigans on the backburner, I need to know that you stand with me. Please follow this link to make a donation of $25, $50,$100, $250 or more to my campaign right away.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Sincerely,
Samuel "Joe thePlumber" Wurzelbacher
P.S. The leftwing media has me in their crosshairs and they're determined to force me out of this race. But guesswhat—I'm not going anywhere. As a hardworking American and Air Force veteran, I'm just as qualified to serve in Congress as any of the 535people there right now. So please stand withme to send a normal, hardworking American like yourself to Congress by making a donation of $25, $50, $100, $250 or more to my campaigntoday. Thanks—Joe
Paid for by Joe for Congress2012
Remember how the leftwing media crucified Sarah Palin in the 2008 election? Well, now they've made "Joe the Plumber" their new target.
Since winning my primary Tuesday night, the media has made it their number one mission to discredit my candidacy and annihilatemy character. I've been painted as a bigot, told I'm not qualified to serve in Congress, and lectured on live TV as if I'm a schoolboy inthe principal's office.
No, I didn't earn a degree at Harvard, I haven't worked on Wall Street, and I don't make a six-figure salary. I'm a normal American, just like you. I served my country in the military and I've worked day and night to provide for my family. If that doesn'tqualify a man to run for Congress, I don't know what does.
Washington insiders are sucking the lifeblood out of America by spending ourmoney with no consequences—what qualifies them to continue to serve? Absolutely nothing that I don't have. So stand with me and send ahard working, commonsense conservative just like you to Congress by following this link right now to make a donation of $25,$50, $100, $250 or more to my campaign.
America was founded on the idea—and our Constitution sets it in law—thatpeople would come out of their communities, represent their constituents—their fellow Americans—and then go back to home. Instead, rightnow we've got 535 career politicians who have lost touch with the reality of what is happening in America.
Thatreality is Americans need jobs.
I'm sick of the gossip, the tabloid journalism, and the "gotcha" questions theleftwing media has designed to trap us in trivial dialogues about issues that have absolutely no relevance with the matter at hand: putting Americansback to work. Go ahead and disagree with me all you want on the social issues. But when it comes to creating jobs, lowering taxes and getting rid ofthe regulations that are strangling our economy—let's have an honest conversation.
If you're ready to start that dialogue and putthe seventh grade shenanigans on the backburner, I need to know that you stand with me. Please follow this link to make a donation of $25, $50,$100, $250 or more to my campaign right away.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Sincerely,
Samuel "Joe thePlumber" Wurzelbacher
P.S. The leftwing media has me in their crosshairs and they're determined to force me out of this race. But guesswhat—I'm not going anywhere. As a hardworking American and Air Force veteran, I'm just as qualified to serve in Congress as any of the 535people there right now. So please stand withme to send a normal, hardworking American like yourself to Congress by making a donation of $25, $50, $100, $250 or more to my campaigntoday. Thanks—Joe
Paid for by Joe for Congress2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Monday, March 12, 2012
Liberal debris of the week #1 (Fluke does have ties to the White House)
These 3 hideous, pathetic, anti-american worms: Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem win stupid idiot, Liberal debris of the week comparing Rush Limbaugh to Josef Goebbels. You stupid idiots (or sluts?) Goebbels was the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany, he was their "FCC". Limbaugh doesn't pass regulations or laws. I don't remember Limbaugh ever hindering free speech like Goebbels.
I wipe this liberal debris away.
And for your information, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly revealed that the woman, Sandra Fluke, is not exactly an ordinary law student. She is a long-time activist on feminist causes who is represented by Anita Dunn, a former adviser to President Barack Obama and White House Communications Director in 2009. She is also dating the son of “Democratic stalwart” William Mutterperl, who has made numerous donations to the Democratic Party and liberal candidates in recent years.
When are Pelosi's constituents going to wake up! C'mon seriously.
Remember this?? Anyone in Pelosi's district who votes for him...or her (excuse me) has got to be the most complete idiot.
I cannot even believe this woman gets elected every term. They have to stuff the ballot box in her district.
I cannot even believe this woman gets elected every term. They have to stuff the ballot box in her district.
First Amendment Be Damned: Out of control TSA threatens bloggers
Called 'useless' by a former FBI terrorism expert, the TSA is out of control and has once again threatened, or 'cautioned against' journalists covering the TSA's bogus and costly security theater.
By Ms. Smith on Mon, 03/12/12 - 1:21pm.
According to TSA Out of Our Pants, $1B of TSA nude body scanners were made worthless by the blogger's video showing how to "get anything through" the TSA body scanners. This was immediately followed by the TSA threatening mainstream media not to cover the viral YouTube video.
In response to an emailed interview request, TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz "strongly cautioned" a SmarterTravel journalist from covering Jon Corbett's video story. The email said Corbett "clearly has an agenda" which "should not be aided by the mainstream media." To which Corbett wrote on TSA Out of Our Pants, "The TSA is clearly no fan of the 4th Amendment, nor of 5th Amendment due process rights, and now this blatant attempt to manipulate the free press with 'strong caution' hits at Amendment the First."
TSA's blogger Bob wrote about the viral video, calling it "a crude attempt to allegedly show how to circumvent TSA screening procedures."
It's one of the best tools available to detect metallic and non-metallic items, such as... you know... things that go BOOM. With all that said, it is one layer of our 20 layers of security (Behavior Detection, Explosives Detection Canines, Federal Air Marshals, , etc.) and is not a machine that has all the tools we need in one handy device. We've never claimed it's the end all be all. ... However, our nation's aviation system is much safer now with the deployment of 600 imaging technology units at 140 airports.
Safer? Is that because TSA officers spend their time breaking a laptop and then threatening the owner with arrest, hassling breast-feeding mothers over ice packs, or like last week by adding TSA miscellaneous prohibited items like "a fantasy knife that slays mythical creatures that don't exist." The TSA Blog likes to brag about what "dangerous items" are confiscated by the TSA at security checkpoints and reported:
Sure, it's great to share the things that our officers are finding, but at the same time, each time we find a dangerous item, the throughput is slowed down and a passenger that likely had no ill intent ends up with a citation or in some cases is even arrested.... Just because we find a prohibited item on an individual does not mean they had bad intentions, that's for the law enforcement officer to decide.
Techdirt advised "slow down TSA lynch mob" as what was revealed in the video is old news and the upgraded scanners no longer show "nude" images against a black background, but show a generic image against a white background. Regardless, "simply traveling or having private parts is not probable cause" for the TSA to think travelers have committed an offense worthy of being groped or being "ogled" in virtual strip-searches via naked body scanners.
Whether it's an old body scanner or a new one, this certainly is not the first time that the TSA has basically said the First Amendment be damned and threatened bloggers. The TSA has also threatened airlines if they tell passengers if they are on a watchlist. When Texas was planning to ban groping by TSA agents and make it illegal to touch anyone's junk, it fell through when the feds threatened to shut down Texas airports. And why? Because nine other states were seeking similar legislation to defend our Constitution.
In fact even complaining about the TSA and exercising that First Amendment right might get you flagged. At that time, Mike German, a former FBI agent turned ACLU attorney, said, "Expressing your contempt about airport procedures -- that's a First Amendment-protected right. We all have the right to express our views, and particularly in a situation where the government is demanding the ability to search you." German added, "It's circular reasoning where, you know, I'm going to ask someone to surrender their rights; if they refuse, that's evidence that I need to take their rights away from them. And it's simply inappropriate."
Sadly enough even complaining about government at all has landed some people on watchlists, such as when Mark Faulk, an Oklahoma City writer and filmmaker active in Occupy OKC was placed on the federal No Fly List.
According to another former FBI Special Agent Steve Moore, the TSA is totally useless. As previous head of the Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force Al Qaeda squad, and an FBI agent for 25 years, Moore knows a thing or two about catching terrorists. Moore said the TSA is out of control. "Civil libertarians on both sides of the aisle should be appalled at an unauthorized use to which TSA is putting their screening: Identifying petty criminals--using one search method to achieve a secret goal. This is strictly forbidden in other government branches."
Additionally Moore wrote on G-man Case File:
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was formed to ensure America's freedom to travel. Instead, they have made air travel the most difficult means of mass transit in the United States, at the same time failing to make air travel any more secure.
TSA has never, (and I invite them to prove me wrong), foiled a terrorist plot or stopped an attack on an airliner. Ever. They crow about weapons found and insinuate that this means they stopped terrorism. They claim that they can't comment due to "national security" implications. In fact, if they had foiled a plot, criminal charges would have to be filed. Ever hear of terrorism charges being filed because of something found during a TSA screening? No, because it's never happened. Trust me, if TSA had ever foiled a terrorist plot, they would buy full-page ads in every newspaper in the United States to prove their importance and increase their budget.
TSA surveillance is a peep show, a police state and privacy invasion. It blows my mind that in America, any agency can claim show us your body or we'll feel you and then get by with groping people. The intimidation tactics to stifle dissent and the First Amendment also makes me wonder, did I wake up in another country or is that KGB-like in the USA? This is Sunshine Week, so please do shine rays of light on the TSA to disinfect the worthless security theater which is costing We the People a fortune. And just think, in the future, the TSA plans to track all of your daily travels to work, to the grocery store, to social events and everywhere else you go.
By Ms. Smith on Mon, 03/12/12 - 1:21pm.
According to TSA Out of Our Pants, $1B of TSA nude body scanners were made worthless by the blogger's video showing how to "get anything through" the TSA body scanners. This was immediately followed by the TSA threatening mainstream media not to cover the viral YouTube video.
In response to an emailed interview request, TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz "strongly cautioned" a SmarterTravel journalist from covering Jon Corbett's video story. The email said Corbett "clearly has an agenda" which "should not be aided by the mainstream media." To which Corbett wrote on TSA Out of Our Pants, "The TSA is clearly no fan of the 4th Amendment, nor of 5th Amendment due process rights, and now this blatant attempt to manipulate the free press with 'strong caution' hits at Amendment the First."
TSA's blogger Bob wrote about the viral video, calling it "a crude attempt to allegedly show how to circumvent TSA screening procedures."
It's one of the best tools available to detect metallic and non-metallic items, such as... you know... things that go BOOM. With all that said, it is one layer of our 20 layers of security (Behavior Detection, Explosives Detection Canines, Federal Air Marshals, , etc.) and is not a machine that has all the tools we need in one handy device. We've never claimed it's the end all be all. ... However, our nation's aviation system is much safer now with the deployment of 600 imaging technology units at 140 airports.
Safer? Is that because TSA officers spend their time breaking a laptop and then threatening the owner with arrest, hassling breast-feeding mothers over ice packs, or like last week by adding TSA miscellaneous prohibited items like "a fantasy knife that slays mythical creatures that don't exist." The TSA Blog likes to brag about what "dangerous items" are confiscated by the TSA at security checkpoints and reported:
Sure, it's great to share the things that our officers are finding, but at the same time, each time we find a dangerous item, the throughput is slowed down and a passenger that likely had no ill intent ends up with a citation or in some cases is even arrested.... Just because we find a prohibited item on an individual does not mean they had bad intentions, that's for the law enforcement officer to decide.
Techdirt advised "slow down TSA lynch mob" as what was revealed in the video is old news and the upgraded scanners no longer show "nude" images against a black background, but show a generic image against a white background. Regardless, "simply traveling or having private parts is not probable cause" for the TSA to think travelers have committed an offense worthy of being groped or being "ogled" in virtual strip-searches via naked body scanners.
Whether it's an old body scanner or a new one, this certainly is not the first time that the TSA has basically said the First Amendment be damned and threatened bloggers. The TSA has also threatened airlines if they tell passengers if they are on a watchlist. When Texas was planning to ban groping by TSA agents and make it illegal to touch anyone's junk, it fell through when the feds threatened to shut down Texas airports. And why? Because nine other states were seeking similar legislation to defend our Constitution.
In fact even complaining about the TSA and exercising that First Amendment right might get you flagged. At that time, Mike German, a former FBI agent turned ACLU attorney, said, "Expressing your contempt about airport procedures -- that's a First Amendment-protected right. We all have the right to express our views, and particularly in a situation where the government is demanding the ability to search you." German added, "It's circular reasoning where, you know, I'm going to ask someone to surrender their rights; if they refuse, that's evidence that I need to take their rights away from them. And it's simply inappropriate."
Sadly enough even complaining about government at all has landed some people on watchlists, such as when Mark Faulk, an Oklahoma City writer and filmmaker active in Occupy OKC was placed on the federal No Fly List.
According to another former FBI Special Agent Steve Moore, the TSA is totally useless. As previous head of the Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force Al Qaeda squad, and an FBI agent for 25 years, Moore knows a thing or two about catching terrorists. Moore said the TSA is out of control. "Civil libertarians on both sides of the aisle should be appalled at an unauthorized use to which TSA is putting their screening: Identifying petty criminals--using one search method to achieve a secret goal. This is strictly forbidden in other government branches."
Additionally Moore wrote on G-man Case File:
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was formed to ensure America's freedom to travel. Instead, they have made air travel the most difficult means of mass transit in the United States, at the same time failing to make air travel any more secure.
TSA has never, (and I invite them to prove me wrong), foiled a terrorist plot or stopped an attack on an airliner. Ever. They crow about weapons found and insinuate that this means they stopped terrorism. They claim that they can't comment due to "national security" implications. In fact, if they had foiled a plot, criminal charges would have to be filed. Ever hear of terrorism charges being filed because of something found during a TSA screening? No, because it's never happened. Trust me, if TSA had ever foiled a terrorist plot, they would buy full-page ads in every newspaper in the United States to prove their importance and increase their budget.
TSA surveillance is a peep show, a police state and privacy invasion. It blows my mind that in America, any agency can claim show us your body or we'll feel you and then get by with groping people. The intimidation tactics to stifle dissent and the First Amendment also makes me wonder, did I wake up in another country or is that KGB-like in the USA? This is Sunshine Week, so please do shine rays of light on the TSA to disinfect the worthless security theater which is costing We the People a fortune. And just think, in the future, the TSA plans to track all of your daily travels to work, to the grocery store, to social events and everywhere else you go.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Book Recommendation: Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why It can Happen Again
Book Description
Publication Date: January 16, 2012
Who’s really to blame for America’s catastrophic financial meltdown and devastating national recession? Contrary to what the “Occupy Movement” might tell you, it’s not just greedy Wall Street executives (though they certainly earned their share of scorn). It’s not just failed regulation (even though Washington has failed miserably, both Republicans and Democrats, to protect us). As one of America’s top financial professionals reveals in this shocking new book, the failures of Wall Street and Washington have opened us up to economic warfare, with our foreign enemies exploiting our lurking financial weaknesses.
In Secret Weapon, Kevin D. Freeman unveils how all the evidence—including motive, means, and opportunity—points to America’s foreign enemies as deliberately pushing our economy over the brink.
In this stunning exposé, Freeman reveals:
The evidence linking Communist China and Islamic finance to economic warfare against the United States
Why initial reports linked the 2008 stock market crash to economic terrorism—and why the Obama administration continues to look the other way
How the financial attack unfolded—and how the perpetrators tried to cover their tracks
Why you should expect another financial attack even more devastating than the last one—and how you can protect yourself from it
In Secret Weapon you’ll learn what our enemies know and what the Obama administration has chosen to ignore—that our financial system is profoundly vulnerable to financial terrorism, and that we are being targeted for further and even more destructive attacks by our enemies, who want to cripple America as the world’s leading economy. If you want to protect yourself and protect our country, then you need to read Secret Weapon to understand how we have entered a new age of warfare—an age our enemies want to make the Dark Ages of the United States.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Freeman explains persuasively and clearly why we may be beginning the third act of a monetary and fiscal tragedy. You don’t care about dark pools, huge Middle-Eastern sovereign wealth funds, naked short selling, and bear runs? I’m afraid you will, and rather soon.”
—R. James Woolsey, Chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Director of Central Intelligence
“Every American needs to understand how our financial markets have been manipulated by people who want to destroy the nation and how they can do even greater damage in the future. This book is a critical read for everyone.”
—William G. Boykin, Lt. Gen. USA (ret), former Commander of U.S. Army Special Forces and founding member of Delta Force
“Kevin Freeman’s alarming proposition on economic warfare merits attention from those at the highest levels entrusted with our nation’s security. It is incumbent on the U.S. intelligence and defense community, financial regulators, and those with advanced financial acumen to assess and address this modern security vulnerability. Warfare continues to evolve. As the United States remains vigilant against emerging threats, we must appreciate newfound challenges to longstanding assumptions about how our enemies could exploit our financial markets with potentially devastating consequences for our nation.”
—Congressman Bill Posey
“Kevin Freeman has done an exceptional job working with open source financial data. This is a superb effort to expose extreme vulnerabilities to our financial system. With today’s international markets in such a fragile and volatile state, Freeman’s work deserves serious reflection. To do so would cost little. To dismiss it outright might cost us everything.”
—Thomas W. O’Connell, former Assistant Secretary of Defense (Special Operations) (2003-2007) and former member of the NASDAQ Public Board of Directors
About the Author
Kevin D. Freeman, CFA, is the founder and CEO of Freeman Global Investment Counsel. In 1990, Freeman wrote a business plan for Sir John Templeton and was hand-picked by him to help build the Templeton Private Client group, which managed nearly $2.5 billion in global markets within a decade. One of the world’s leading experts on economic warfare and financial terrorism, Freeman authored the report “Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses” for the Department of Defense in 2009 and has briefed members of Congress, U.S. senators, and past and present members of the CIA, DIA, FBI, SEC, Homeland Security, Justice Department, and state and local law enforcement. He has appeared in the international media including CNBC, Fox News, Glenn Beck, the Counter Terrorist, the Washington Times, and the UK’s Daily Mail and Times of London.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product Details
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Regnery Publishing (January 16, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1596987944
ISBN-13: 978-1596987944
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
The O% Obama Doctrine: When Zero Threat is Too Great a Risk to Ignore
The 0% Doctrine: Obama Breaks New Ground When It Comes to War With Iran
by Tom Engelhardt l TomDispatch
When I was young, the Philadelphia Bulletin ran cartoon ads that usually featured a man in trouble -- dangling by his fingers, say, from an outdoor clock. There would always be people all around him, but far too engrossed in the daily paper to notice. The tagline was: “In Philadelphia, nearly everybody reads the Bulletin.”
Those ads came to mind recently when President Obama commented forcefully on war, American-style, in ways that were remarkably radical. Although he was trying to ward off a threatened Israeli preemptive air strike against Iran, his comments should have shocked Americans -- but just about nobody noticed.
I don’t mean, of course, that nobody noticed the president’s statements. Quite the contrary: they were headlined, chewed over in the press and by pundits. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich attacked them. Fox News highlighted their restraint. (“Obama calls for containing Iran, says ‘too much loose talk of war.’”) The Huffington Post highlighted the support for Israel they represented. (“Obama Defends Policies Toward Israel, Fends Off Partisan Critiques.”) Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu pushed back against them in a potentially deadly U.S.-Israeli dance that might bring new chaos to the Middle East.
But somehow, amid all the headlines, commentary, and analysis, few seemed to notice just what had really changed in our world.
Tomgram: Engelhardt, War as the President's Private Preserve
The president had offered a new definition of “aggression” against this country and a new war doctrine to go with it. He would, he insisted, take the U.S. to war not to stop another nation from attacking us or even threatening to do so, but simply to stop it from building a nuclear weapon -- and he would act even if that country were incapable of targeting the United States. That should have been news.
Consider the most startling of his statements: just before the arrival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, the president gave a 45-minute Oval Office interview to the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. A prominent pro-Israeli writer, Goldberg had produced an article in the September issue of that magazine headlined “The Point of No Return.” In it, based on interviews with "roughly 40 current and past Israeli decision makers about a military strike," he had given an Israeli air attack on Iran a 50% chance of happening by this July. From the recent interview, here are Obama’s key lines:
“I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don't bluff. I also don't, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.”
Later, he added this chilling note: “I think it's fair to say that the last three years, I've shown myself pretty clearly willing, when I believe it is in the core national interest of the United States, to direct military actions, even when they entail enormous risks.”
The next day, in a speech meant to stop “loose talk about war” in front of a powerful pro-Israeli lobbying outfit, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the president offered an even stronger formula, worth quoting at length. Speaking of seeing the consequences of his decisions to use force “in the eyes of those I meet who’ve come back gravely wounded,” he said:
“And for this reason, as part of my solemn obligation to the American people, I will only use force when the time and circumstances demand it... We all prefer to resolve this issue diplomatically. Having said that, Iran’s leaders should have no doubt about the resolve of the United States -- just as they should not doubt Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs. I have said that when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power... and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.
“Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.”
An American president couldn’t come closer to saying that, should American intelligence conclude the Iranians were building a nuclear weapon, we would attack. The next day, again addressing an AIPAC audience, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta set the president’s commitment in stone: “No greater threat exists to Israel, to the entire region, and indeed to the United States, than a nuclear-armed Iran... Military action is the last alternative if all else fails, but make no mistake: When all else fails, we will act.”
The Power of Precedents
To understand what’s truly new here, it’s necessary to back up a few years. After all, precedent is a powerful thing and these statements do have a single precedent in the atomic age (though not one the president would profess to admire): the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. After all, one clearly stated reason for the invasion was Saddam Hussein’s supposed nuclear program as well as one to produce biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
In a series of speeches starting in August 2002, President George W. Bush publicly accused the Iraqi dictator of having an active nuclear program. His vice president hit the news and public affairs talk show circuit with a set of similar accusations, and his secretary of state spoke of the danger of mushroom clouds rising over American cities. (“We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon... [W]e don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”)
At the same time, the Bush administration made an effort -- now long forgotten -- to convince Congress that the United States was in actual danger of an Iraqi WMD attack, possibly from anthrax, in the immediate future. President Bush suggested publicly that, with unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), Saddam might have the ability to spray East Coast cities with chemical or biological weapons. And Congress was given fear-inducing classified private briefings on this.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, claimed that he voted for the administration's resolution authorizing force in Iraq because "I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard."
Driving the need to produce evidence, however fantastic or fabricated, of a possible threat to the U.S. was a radical new twist on war-making 101. In the days after 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney proposed that even a 1% chance of an attack on the United States, especially involving weapons of mass destruction, must be dealt with as if it were a certainty. Journalist Ron Suskind dubbed it“the one percent doctrine.” It may have been the rashest formula for "preventive" or "aggressive" war offered in the modern era.
Of course, the fact that Saddam’s Iraq had no nuclear program, no biological or chemical weapons, no functioning drones, and no way of reaching the East Coast of the United States proved strike three for critics of the Bush administration. Missed was what was truly new in the invasion: not just the 1% doctrine itself, but the idea -- a first on planet Earth -- of going to war over the possibility that another country might be in possession of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.
Until then, such a concept hadn’t been in the strategic vocabulary. Quite the opposite: in the Cold War years, nuclear weapons were thought of as “deterrence” or, in the case of the two massively nuclear-armed superpowers of that era, “mutually assured destruction” (with its fabulously grim acronym MAD). Those weapons, that is, were considered guarantors, however counterintuitively, against an outbreak of war. Their possession was a kind of grisly assurance that your opponent wouldn’t attack you, lest you both be destroyed.
In that spirit, between the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and the Iraqi invasion of March 2003, seven countries -- the Soviet Union, England, France, China, Israel (though its large nuclear arsenal remains unacknowledged), India, and Pakistan -- all went nuclear without anybody suggesting that they be attacked simply for possessing such weapons. An eighth country -- white-ruled South Africa -- actually assembled six nuclear weapons, and later became the only country to de-nuclearize itself. South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, and Brazil all had incipient nuclear programs, though none produced weapons. Japan is today considered to be at a point the Iranians have not yet reached: “breakout capacity,” or the ability to build a nuclear weapon relatively quickly if a decision to do so were made. In 2006, North Korea set off its first nuclear test and, within years, had become the ninth active nuclear power.
In other words, in 2003, the idea that the possession of nuclear weapons or simply of an "active" nuclear program that might one day produce such weapons was a casus belli represented something new. And when it became clear that Saddam had no nuclear program, no weapons of mass destruction at all, that explanation for American war-making, for what Jonathan Schell once dubbed “disarmament wars” -- so visibly fraudulent -- seemed to disappear into the dustbin of history.
War and the Presidential “I”
Until now, that is.
Whether he meant to or not, in his latest version of Iran war policy President Obama has built on the Bush precedent. His represents, however, an even more extreme version, which should perhaps be labeled the 0% Doctrine. In holding off an Israeli strike that may itself be nothing but a bluff, he has defined a future Iranian decision to build a nuclear weapon as a new form of aggression against the United States. We would, as the president explained to Jeffrey Goldberg, be committing our military power against Iran not to prevent an attack on the U.S. itself, but a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
And by the way, note that he didn’t say, “We don’t bluff.” His formulation was: “I don’t bluff.” And that “I” should not be ignored. The Bush administration promoted a cult of presidential power, of (as they called it at the time) a “unitary executive.” No one in the White House uses such a term these days, any more than they use the term “Global War on Terror,” but if both terms have disappeared, the phenomena they named have only intensified.
The Global War on Terror, with its burgeoning secret military, the elite special operations forces, and its growing drone air force, controlled in part by the CIA, should be thought of as the president’s private war. In addition, as legal scholar Jonathan Turley wrote recently, when it comes to drone assassinations (or “targeted killings” as they are now more politely known), Attorney General Eric Holder has just claimed for the president the “authority to kill any American if he unilaterally determines them to be a threat to the nation.” In doing so, added Turley, “Obama has replaced the constitutional protections afforded to citizens with a ‘trust me’ pledge.” With terror in its crosshairs, war, in other words, is increasingly becoming the president’s private preserve and strikes on the enemy, however defined, a matter of his own private judgment.
It is no longer a matter of “we,” but of a presidential “I” when it comes to unleashing attacks in what has become a global free fire zone for those drones and special ops forces. War, in other words, is increasingly lodged in the Oval Office and a commander-in-chief executive. As the Libyan intervention suggested, like the American people, Congress is, at best, an afterthought -- even though this Congress would rubber-stamp a presidential act of war against Iran without a second thought.
The irony is that the president has propounded a war-making policy of unprecedented extremity at a moment when there is no evidence that the Iranians are pursuing a bomb -- not yet at least. The “supreme leader” of their theocratic state has termed the possession of nuclear weapons “a grave sin” and U.S. national intelligence estimates have repeatedly concluded that the Iranians are not, in fact, moving to build nuclear weapons. If, however -- and it’s a giant if -- Iran actually got the bomb, if a 10th country joined the nuclear club (with others to follow), it would be bad news, and the world would be a worse place for it, but not necessarily that greatly changed.
What could change the world in a radical way, however, is the 0% doctrine -- and the trend more generally to make war the personal prerogative of an American president, while ceding to the U.S. military what was once the province and power of diplomacy.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), has just been published.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook.
Copyright 2012 Tom Engelhardt
by Tom Engelhardt l TomDispatch
When I was young, the Philadelphia Bulletin ran cartoon ads that usually featured a man in trouble -- dangling by his fingers, say, from an outdoor clock. There would always be people all around him, but far too engrossed in the daily paper to notice. The tagline was: “In Philadelphia, nearly everybody reads the Bulletin.”
Those ads came to mind recently when President Obama commented forcefully on war, American-style, in ways that were remarkably radical. Although he was trying to ward off a threatened Israeli preemptive air strike against Iran, his comments should have shocked Americans -- but just about nobody noticed.
I don’t mean, of course, that nobody noticed the president’s statements. Quite the contrary: they were headlined, chewed over in the press and by pundits. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich attacked them. Fox News highlighted their restraint. (“Obama calls for containing Iran, says ‘too much loose talk of war.’”) The Huffington Post highlighted the support for Israel they represented. (“Obama Defends Policies Toward Israel, Fends Off Partisan Critiques.”) Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu pushed back against them in a potentially deadly U.S.-Israeli dance that might bring new chaos to the Middle East.
But somehow, amid all the headlines, commentary, and analysis, few seemed to notice just what had really changed in our world.
Tomgram: Engelhardt, War as the President's Private Preserve
The president had offered a new definition of “aggression” against this country and a new war doctrine to go with it. He would, he insisted, take the U.S. to war not to stop another nation from attacking us or even threatening to do so, but simply to stop it from building a nuclear weapon -- and he would act even if that country were incapable of targeting the United States. That should have been news.
Consider the most startling of his statements: just before the arrival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, the president gave a 45-minute Oval Office interview to the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. A prominent pro-Israeli writer, Goldberg had produced an article in the September issue of that magazine headlined “The Point of No Return.” In it, based on interviews with "roughly 40 current and past Israeli decision makers about a military strike," he had given an Israeli air attack on Iran a 50% chance of happening by this July. From the recent interview, here are Obama’s key lines:
“I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don't bluff. I also don't, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.”
Later, he added this chilling note: “I think it's fair to say that the last three years, I've shown myself pretty clearly willing, when I believe it is in the core national interest of the United States, to direct military actions, even when they entail enormous risks.”
The next day, in a speech meant to stop “loose talk about war” in front of a powerful pro-Israeli lobbying outfit, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the president offered an even stronger formula, worth quoting at length. Speaking of seeing the consequences of his decisions to use force “in the eyes of those I meet who’ve come back gravely wounded,” he said:
“And for this reason, as part of my solemn obligation to the American people, I will only use force when the time and circumstances demand it... We all prefer to resolve this issue diplomatically. Having said that, Iran’s leaders should have no doubt about the resolve of the United States -- just as they should not doubt Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs. I have said that when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power... and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.
“Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.”
An American president couldn’t come closer to saying that, should American intelligence conclude the Iranians were building a nuclear weapon, we would attack. The next day, again addressing an AIPAC audience, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta set the president’s commitment in stone: “No greater threat exists to Israel, to the entire region, and indeed to the United States, than a nuclear-armed Iran... Military action is the last alternative if all else fails, but make no mistake: When all else fails, we will act.”
The Power of Precedents
To understand what’s truly new here, it’s necessary to back up a few years. After all, precedent is a powerful thing and these statements do have a single precedent in the atomic age (though not one the president would profess to admire): the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. After all, one clearly stated reason for the invasion was Saddam Hussein’s supposed nuclear program as well as one to produce biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
In a series of speeches starting in August 2002, President George W. Bush publicly accused the Iraqi dictator of having an active nuclear program. His vice president hit the news and public affairs talk show circuit with a set of similar accusations, and his secretary of state spoke of the danger of mushroom clouds rising over American cities. (“We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon... [W]e don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”)
At the same time, the Bush administration made an effort -- now long forgotten -- to convince Congress that the United States was in actual danger of an Iraqi WMD attack, possibly from anthrax, in the immediate future. President Bush suggested publicly that, with unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), Saddam might have the ability to spray East Coast cities with chemical or biological weapons. And Congress was given fear-inducing classified private briefings on this.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, claimed that he voted for the administration's resolution authorizing force in Iraq because "I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard."
Driving the need to produce evidence, however fantastic or fabricated, of a possible threat to the U.S. was a radical new twist on war-making 101. In the days after 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney proposed that even a 1% chance of an attack on the United States, especially involving weapons of mass destruction, must be dealt with as if it were a certainty. Journalist Ron Suskind dubbed it“the one percent doctrine.” It may have been the rashest formula for "preventive" or "aggressive" war offered in the modern era.
Of course, the fact that Saddam’s Iraq had no nuclear program, no biological or chemical weapons, no functioning drones, and no way of reaching the East Coast of the United States proved strike three for critics of the Bush administration. Missed was what was truly new in the invasion: not just the 1% doctrine itself, but the idea -- a first on planet Earth -- of going to war over the possibility that another country might be in possession of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.
Until then, such a concept hadn’t been in the strategic vocabulary. Quite the opposite: in the Cold War years, nuclear weapons were thought of as “deterrence” or, in the case of the two massively nuclear-armed superpowers of that era, “mutually assured destruction” (with its fabulously grim acronym MAD). Those weapons, that is, were considered guarantors, however counterintuitively, against an outbreak of war. Their possession was a kind of grisly assurance that your opponent wouldn’t attack you, lest you both be destroyed.
In that spirit, between the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and the Iraqi invasion of March 2003, seven countries -- the Soviet Union, England, France, China, Israel (though its large nuclear arsenal remains unacknowledged), India, and Pakistan -- all went nuclear without anybody suggesting that they be attacked simply for possessing such weapons. An eighth country -- white-ruled South Africa -- actually assembled six nuclear weapons, and later became the only country to de-nuclearize itself. South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, and Brazil all had incipient nuclear programs, though none produced weapons. Japan is today considered to be at a point the Iranians have not yet reached: “breakout capacity,” or the ability to build a nuclear weapon relatively quickly if a decision to do so were made. In 2006, North Korea set off its first nuclear test and, within years, had become the ninth active nuclear power.
In other words, in 2003, the idea that the possession of nuclear weapons or simply of an "active" nuclear program that might one day produce such weapons was a casus belli represented something new. And when it became clear that Saddam had no nuclear program, no weapons of mass destruction at all, that explanation for American war-making, for what Jonathan Schell once dubbed “disarmament wars” -- so visibly fraudulent -- seemed to disappear into the dustbin of history.
War and the Presidential “I”
Until now, that is.
Whether he meant to or not, in his latest version of Iran war policy President Obama has built on the Bush precedent. His represents, however, an even more extreme version, which should perhaps be labeled the 0% Doctrine. In holding off an Israeli strike that may itself be nothing but a bluff, he has defined a future Iranian decision to build a nuclear weapon as a new form of aggression against the United States. We would, as the president explained to Jeffrey Goldberg, be committing our military power against Iran not to prevent an attack on the U.S. itself, but a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
And by the way, note that he didn’t say, “We don’t bluff.” His formulation was: “I don’t bluff.” And that “I” should not be ignored. The Bush administration promoted a cult of presidential power, of (as they called it at the time) a “unitary executive.” No one in the White House uses such a term these days, any more than they use the term “Global War on Terror,” but if both terms have disappeared, the phenomena they named have only intensified.
The Global War on Terror, with its burgeoning secret military, the elite special operations forces, and its growing drone air force, controlled in part by the CIA, should be thought of as the president’s private war. In addition, as legal scholar Jonathan Turley wrote recently, when it comes to drone assassinations (or “targeted killings” as they are now more politely known), Attorney General Eric Holder has just claimed for the president the “authority to kill any American if he unilaterally determines them to be a threat to the nation.” In doing so, added Turley, “Obama has replaced the constitutional protections afforded to citizens with a ‘trust me’ pledge.” With terror in its crosshairs, war, in other words, is increasingly becoming the president’s private preserve and strikes on the enemy, however defined, a matter of his own private judgment.
It is no longer a matter of “we,” but of a presidential “I” when it comes to unleashing attacks in what has become a global free fire zone for those drones and special ops forces. War, in other words, is increasingly lodged in the Oval Office and a commander-in-chief executive. As the Libyan intervention suggested, like the American people, Congress is, at best, an afterthought -- even though this Congress would rubber-stamp a presidential act of war against Iran without a second thought.
The irony is that the president has propounded a war-making policy of unprecedented extremity at a moment when there is no evidence that the Iranians are pursuing a bomb -- not yet at least. The “supreme leader” of their theocratic state has termed the possession of nuclear weapons “a grave sin” and U.S. national intelligence estimates have repeatedly concluded that the Iranians are not, in fact, moving to build nuclear weapons. If, however -- and it’s a giant if -- Iran actually got the bomb, if a 10th country joined the nuclear club (with others to follow), it would be bad news, and the world would be a worse place for it, but not necessarily that greatly changed.
What could change the world in a radical way, however, is the 0% doctrine -- and the trend more generally to make war the personal prerogative of an American president, while ceding to the U.S. military what was once the province and power of diplomacy.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), has just been published.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook.
Copyright 2012 Tom Engelhardt
2001 Chicago Public Radio Interview with Barack Obama
In 2001 Obama opining on the role of courts in promoting the redistribution of wealth.
What Is Critical Race Theory?
Last week, Breitbart.com released video demonstrating Barack Obama’s close relationship with Derrick Bell, the father of Critical Race Theory (CRT). And we’ve seen Soledad O’Brien try to twist the definition of critical race theory in order to protect Obama by grabbing a quick definition from Wikipedia. But just what is CRT? Why is it so dangerous? And what role does it play in President Obama’s thinking?
Rest of the Story: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/11/What%20Is%20Critical%20Race%20Theory
This is a must-watch for the @Newt2012HQ team http://youtu.be/aOliYadnvW0 RT @newtgingrich: Please Retweet #250gas today!
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