GBTV - Where the Truth Lives

Election Season 2014

And it has brought us to this trainwreck called ObamaCare and we have bankrupted our kids and grandkids!

We are now headed into the 2014 Election Season and common sense and conservatism are on the rise. Please stand-up and be counted!

Reading Collusion: How the Media Stole the 2012 Election is a great place to start!

The Founding Father's Real Reason for the Second Amendment

And remember the words of Thomas Jefferson "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." See Video of Suzanna Gratia-Hupp’s Congressional Testimony: What the Second Amendment is REALLY For, below (u-tube HERE).

The Leaders Are Here... Palin, Cruz, Lee, Paul, Chaffetz....

T'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Can You Really Still Believe That None of These People Would Have Done a Better Job???

Bloggers' Rights at EFF

SIGN THE PETITION TODAY...

Showing posts with label Jimmy Carter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jimmy Carter. Show all posts

Monday, September 17, 2012

All Starting to Unravel for Obama and Hillary – Updated

It is now official that ‘NO’ Marines were in Libya at the Time of the Benghazi Attack. Really? No Marines for Libyan Ambassador But a Full Security Detail for O’s Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett on Vacation? And there is a report that our government knew of the attack(s) 48 hours, and possibly at least 3 days, before they happened. You can’t blame George Bush for this one, so instead they blamed Romney and an obscure film. But it is also now a common agreement, by all but the Kool-Aid bunch, that the 15-minute video about Muhammad that was originally blamed for the attacks in Egypt and Libya had nothing to do with them, especially the one in Libya… It was a pre-planned precision attack on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 to send a message. Yet Hillary Clinton keeps peddling her apology for an amateurish YouTube video that Muslims found offensive as the trigger of these events to deflect the focus from herself and from the State Department’s failure, so the filmmaker was arrested for exercising his 1st Amendment right in America. But we all know there is a problem when the State Department issues this statement to reporters: Stop asking us about the Benghazi attack!

The Independent reported “According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48-hours (and are now reporting 3-days) prior to the attack before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and ‘lockdown,’ under which movement is severely restricted.” Read the full article HERE.

These warnings were posted pre-9.11.12 on various blogs and on the front page of the Jerusalem Post on 9/11. Perhaps our State Department should add ‘reading’ to their intelligence sourcing, if Hillary is really making the claims that they did not know!?!

Sean Smith, one of the Diplomats killed in Libya posted online earlier in the day, “I have concerns about security. I hope we don’t die tonight.” That kind of says it all, doesn’t it?

Some would say, as noted at the Political Outcast, that the Obama presidency really started to unravel before it started, the day Barack Hussein Obama took office, swearing to God and all who watched to uphold the U.S. Constitution, but then having to retake the oath because of an error by Chief Justice John Roberts. That alone should have been a warning signal to us all! And Walid Shoebat noted that the domino effect in the Middle East began with Obama’s Cairo speech. Their ability to blame an amateur movie for the events began with President Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton agreeing to U.N. Resolution 16/18 handcuffing our government and suppressing the U.S. Constitution and Americans’ rights to freedom of speech and religion. The resolution supersedes the Constitution and favors Islam over all other religions. But the Law of Karma has now shattered Hillary Clinton’s lifelong dream of being the first female president of the United States.

The bias liberal mediabots are what got candidate Obama elected in 2008 and has kept President Obama’s presidency intact to the point that he is still running head to head with Mitt Romney in the race for President, using a coordinated disinformation program maintained by Team Obama the lamestream over the past four years. They have ignored, hidden and spun his every blunder, overstep and slight of hand move including his ties to the Islam. And any sound criticisms of the president were always declared to be “code words” for imbedded racism by the Republican Party; there actually is an official list. Yet finally even the New York Times seems to have had enough with their recent story: “The Competitor in Chief — Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else”.

So after the attacks on our embassies in Egypt and Libya insider sources have revealed that the lamestream media (MSM) was told to divert attention away from Obama himself, Secretary Clinton and the Obama administration by focusing their reporting on and repeating the mantra: “the movie about Muhammed caused this” and then to attack Mitt Romney’s presidential comments. And they have done both even after being caught colluding against Governor Romney on an open mic. Radio talk show host, Neil Boortz, spent an entire segment highlighting the media bias with guest and former GOP primary presidential candidate, Herman Cain. The American media followed orders and ignored President Obama’s security breach in Libya almost to a man/woman.

More Americans are beginning to pay attention with the election so close and there are more networks than just what used to be the big three ABC, CBS, and NBC, plus CNN and MSNBC who in the ratings tank. There is Fox Business News, Fox Cable News (although they have been somewhat compromised so choose your shows and hosts), foreign news, The Blaze, which was GBTV, and can now be found not only online but on DISH on channel 212 and talk radio. Plus there is the Internet with an instantaneous news cycle. And with the election only being 50-days away many Americans are finally realizing that they can no longer trust a beclowned American media… and are speaking out.

But when the stories of the embassy attacks hit the news, the coordination had already been done and we were told that it was about some obscure anti-Muhammad video. but now we’ve learned that the attacks were well planned in advance, coordinated and executed with precision… but the liberal media is still pushing their same orders like wound up tin soldiers. It is not coincidental that the attacks took place on 9/11. They were likely in retaliation of killing Osama bin Laden. Retaliation for taking out the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attack, or unfairly as many their believe, was always on the horizon, especially after the spiking of the ball by the Obama Administration over and over again. But whatever the reason, these were overt Acts of War against the United States.

The U.S. embassy in Cairo was attacked by a mob chanting “Obama, Obama, we’re all Osama.” Support of “Arab Spring,” apologies, political deference, religious appeasement, bowing and scraping, and billions in foreign aid haven’t done anything to placate the “we hate America” radical Muslims. In fact weakness, beginning with Obama’s apology tour through the Middle East in 2009 has made it worse. People in this part of the world only respect strength. That is why the hostages in Iran were released almost immediately after Ronald Reagan was elected, and could not be accomplished under out weak President, Jimmy Carter.

But what did the media do to protect the candidate they got elected? Like Obama himself and the Progressive Democrats, they shifted blame, as they have been doing for four years. But this time it was Romney’s fault instead of George Bush’s.

Romney did stand up in a Reaganesque manner and the “Obama Jour ‘no’ lists” jumped on him… even colluding in their attack on him, which was caught on an open live mic… and fed to the uninformed as being normal.

Then there’s Hillary Clinton who is still blaming everybody but herself, the Obama Administration and the terrorists on the ground for what happened.

The complicit Washington Post kept pushing the video story:

“Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton took strong steps Thursday to distance the U.S. government from a movie that has sparked protests throughout the Muslim world, calling the film ‘disgusting and reprehensible’ but also condemning violence in response to it.

“‘The U.S. government has absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its content and messages,’ Clinton said. ‘But there is no justification — none at all — for responding to this video with violence.’”

And Hillary herself repeated these apologies at the event at Andrew’s Air Force Base when the bodies came home.

As the truth leaked out:

Breitbart.com: Colonel says Hillary Clinton made decision to have no Marines in Benghazi – No wonder she sounded drugged as she spoke at the event at Andrews Air Force Base… Guilt?

CFP:

Purported President Barack “Barry Soetoro” Hussein Obama, and so-called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must resign immediately. No ifs, ands, or buts. Pack up their things and get the h*ll out of Washington, today. This woman, The Smartest Woman in America, and her boss, The Smartest Man in the Room, have just shown the world that they are anything but.

Hillary_thumb2

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Both Alinskyites and Disciples of Progressivism, Globalism and George Soros, Campaigning Against Each Other in 2008

The unmitigated arrogance and stupidity of this pair was on display this week, for all the world to see. These two apostles of Marxist agitator Saul Alinsky clearly see themselves as leaders of an elite intelligencia, far smarter than us of the Unwashed Masses, and therefore, ordained to lead, with We, the People, as blind, sheep-like followers. Thus, they were flabbergasted to discover that Muslims have not been won over by Obama’s endless apologies and bowing a scraping before Islamic royalty. They were stunned that Libyans were not grovelingly grateful that we had “liberated” their country from Muammar Gaddafi.

“We came, we saw, he died,” gloated Clinton.

Obama, too, has made a spectacle of himself, repeatedly, publicly bragging the He, the Anointed One, killed Osama bin Laden. He bragged, too that He, and only He, was in charge of the government’s “kill list,” containing the names of Islamist terrorists that are targeted for death.

It seems never to have occurred to this pair of bungling, egotistical morons that such statements in public, by high government officials, just might “offend” a few million zealous Muslims, all over the world? Did it not occur to Ms. Clinton that half the people in Libya were loyal supporters of Gaddafi, and just might, somewhere down the road, retaliate? Apparently not.

Nor did it occur to these criminally negligent overseers of the safety of not just Americans at home, but of our citizens serving in our embassies and consulates abroad, that after all this provocation, the anniversary of 9/11 just might be an appropriate time for heightened security that included at least giving our security personnel ammunition for their weapons. The Fraud in the White House has been far too busy playing golf and doing fundraisers with “celebrities” for His collapsing campaign to attend even half of the daily intelligence briefings.

So, combined with His cock-sure belief He knows more than anyone else about everything, it comes as no surprise that He was caught flat-footed and clueless. Nor is it a surprise to anyone who has watched Him over the past three-and-a-half-years that His reaction to the deaths of one of His ambassadors and three other Americans was wooden, devoid of genuine emotion, and slow in coming.

The upshot is that the Obama Administration’s Middle East Policy – calling pandering and floundering, and selling out our allies a policy, is, I admit, a stretch – the upshot is that it has failed utterly and completely. It‘s a smoking ruin of consulates and embassies in a dozen Muslim counties, many of which had “Arab Spring” uprisings, supported by Obama, Clinton, and a whole lot of other Democrats who are now tellingly silent, with participants that have now turned their violent attentions toward us. All that remains to create a perfect maelstrom is for Iran, in alliance with Obama’s pals in the Muslim Brotherhood, to launch a nuke at Jerusalem, the capital of Israel that the Democrat Conventioneers refused to recognize, setting off what could easily turn into World War III.

These two – Obama and Clinton – must resign immediately. The damage they have done to America, worldwide, may be irreparable. We cannot allow them to continue to charge around like blind bulls in the proverbial china shop. Republicans, speaking as one, must demand their resignations, and any Democrat who still has a vestige of patriotism and love of country left must join with them. We cannot let another day go by with people so obviously unqualified and unsuited to occupy positions of power and authority continuing to do so.

As we face the prospect of having to defend ourselves against an onslaught of raging fanatics from Islamist countries, out to establish a worldwide caliphate and to kill all infidels who resist, we also need to remember that Obama promised Russia’s thug president, Vladimir Putin, that if re-elected, He would unilaterally give up our nuclear weapons. He has already sabotaged our missile defenses, and tried, along with Clinton, to sign us onto the UN’s anti-Second Amendment Small Arms Treaty. We need, too, to remember that Obama’s policy toward China, nuclear-armed and hardly what most would call an ally, is also one of pandering, bowing, and kow-towing. This arrogant, inept and useless duo has landed us in the most dangerous position America has been in, in decades.

This arrogant, inept and useless duo; the damage they have done to America, worldwide, may be irreparable

Obama and Clinton must resign – NOW!

By all the expert’s accounts and common sense the movie didn’t have a thing to do with the actions of these insane people. So why are Clinton and Obama so focused on apologizing for this movie? Why? For those who do not know this… Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Hussein Obama are so busy apologizing because they agreed to UN Resolution 16/18 whereby we (The United States and its citizens) cannot say anything negative about Islam, favoring Islam over all other religions in the U.S. They have already sold us down the river, through this U.N. Resolution which implements Sharia Law over the U.S. Constitution and favors Islam over all other religions and over our right to freedom of speech in the United States. Representative and GOP Primary candidate for President Michele Bachmann explained this on Huckabee this past Saturday:

Erick Stakelbeck, author of The Terrorist Next Door said of these events and our current situation in the Middle East, “We have seen this movie before!” We saw it under Jimmy Carter, and like weak one term President Carter, weak President Obama must go.

Congressman and Lt Col. Allen West said in a special on Justice in America, “We do not want to relive the ordeal of the hostages held in the Iranian Embassy under President Carter” As President Reagan after whose election the hostage crisis in Iran ended and and Americans came home said, “Peace through Strength” Strength is what GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney showed last week. CFP’s video of the day was of Congressman Allen West on Susan Rice’s comments: "Assinine, naive, inept, incompetent and borderline ignorant"

Nancy Pelosi said, “If they (some Republicans in Congress) are suggesting we should cut off assistance to Egypt, I don’t agree with that.” Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said, “Perhaps not in public, but in private, Obama should already have told the countries involved and all the countries in that region, “If anything like this happens again you can kiss our money goodbye!”.

And Mike Baker, former CIA Operative and Rich Brewer, former Marine Guard at attacked Embassy in Lebanon said, “Benghazi is an outpost and the State Department did not properly access the security situation there a year ago.” There have been 4-incidents there since June 2012.

And this should worry us: Posted on July 14, 2010 – Top Clinton Official: Only A Terror Attack Can Save Obama Was this done on purpose? Or is there more planned turmoil to come… an October surprise? By all measures and anyone’s common sense, Mitt Romney should be beating Obama in every poll and in most states. Why isn’t he? Plus President Obama (and Hillary Clinton) have already submitted to the Muslim Brotherhood and United Nation Resolution 16/18 again by asking for the suppression of anti-Islam video in lieu of standing up for the American principle of Free Speech.

We all know that Obama is not going to resign and neither will Secretary Clinton, but we can retire them both on November 6th. Mitt Romney was Reaganesque the day of the embassy attacks and it was obliterated by the Obama mediabots using Alinsky tactics. For those who still, for whatever your reason, aren’t sure about voting for Romney… Then vote against Obama and help save America to fight another day.

Wake-up America!! It really is almost too late to save America and if President Obama is re-elected or Hillary Clinton is election in the future, it will be too late to save the America we grew up in and the freedoms our Founding Fathers gave us! What will you tell your children and grandchildren what you were doing as America died?

Ask Marion~ – h/t to Justice for America , Huckabee, CFP, Political Outcast and the Independent

Friday, September 14, 2012

REPORT: Obama administration was warned about attacks, did nothing

Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary to Donald Rumsfeld and other military experts are asserting that the attacks on our Embassies and the violence in the Middle East is a failure of the Obama Doctrine… Obama’s weak foreign policy… Wolfowitz also said that Mitt Romney was right in his statements and that Romney has every right and should be speaking out as the possible next President of the United States. Paul Wolfowitz added that there was too much bragging and spiking of the football by the White House about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. He went on to say that President Obama’s treatment of Israel and overall weakness, America’s absence of leadership, has caused these events…

jimmy-carter_obama-sees-in-mirror1

President Obama Drug Out the Weak Jimmy Carter Today to Try to Point Out that There is Merit in Negotiations.  But Former Iran Embassy Hostage  Don Shearer Pointed Out in an Interview With Megyn Kelly that it was the Election of Ronald Reagan, Who’s Mantra was Peace Through Strength… Not President Carter’s Weak Stance Negotiations that Produced the Release of the Hostages…

Message… Time of a Change!!

Report: Intelligence Cable Sent To Cairo Prior To Attacks

The Blaze:

Senior diplomatic sources say the U.S. State Department had credible information, 48 hours prior to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya and the embassy in Cairo, that American locations may be targeted, however, no warnings were issued, no “lock down” orders given, The Independent reports.

On Tuesday, a mob of radical Islamists stormed the consulate in Benghazi, killing U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in a fiery assault. Officials say the murders of the four men were likely the result of “a serious and continuing security breach,” the report states.

Report: State Dept. Had Credible Information 48 Hours Prior to Libya Consulate Attack

A picture shows the damage inside the burnt US consulate building in Benghazi on September 13, 2012, following an attack on the building late on September 11 in which the US ambassador to Libya and three other US nationals were killed. Libya said it has made arrests and opened a probe into the attack, amid speculation that Al-Qaeda rather than a frenzied mob was to blame. (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

U.S. officials now believe the Libya attack was premeditated, despite initial reports that an anti-Muslim YouTube clip sparked spontaneous riots throughout the Middle East. However, Stevens’ return to Libya was intended to be confidential as well as his location in Benghazi, where he and his staff were murdered, raising additional security concerns for American assets in the country.

The attack was an organized two-part operation by heavily armed militants that included a precisely timed raid on the supposedly secret safe house just as Libyan and U.S. security forces were arriving to rescue evacuated consulate staff, a senior Libyan security official said on Thursday.

Wanis el-Sharef, eastern Libya’s deputy interior minister, said the attacks Tuesday night were suspected to have been timed to mark the 9/11 anniversary, with the militants using the film protest by Libyan civilians to mask their action.

To make the crisis in Libya worse, “sensitive documents” have reportedly gone missing from the U.S. consulate in Benghazi as well as a secret location of a “safe house” in the city, where the consulate staff had retreated to but were bombarded with a mortar attack. Other “safe houses” in the region are no longer considered safe.

The Independent has the exclusive on this story:

Exclusive: America 'was warned of embassy attack but did nothing'

Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.

Mr Stevens had been on a visit to Germany, Austria and Sweden and had just returned to Libya when the Benghazi trip took place with the US embassy’s security staff deciding that the trip could be undertaken safely.

Eight Americans, some from the military, were wounded in the attack which claimed the lives of Mr Stevens, Sean Smith, an information officer, and two US Marines. All staff from Benghazi have now been moved to the capital, Tripoli, and those whose work is deemed to be non-essential may be flown out of Libya.

[...]

There is growing belief that the attack was in revenge for the killing in a drone strike in Pakistan of Mohammed Hassan Qaed, an al-Qa’ida operative who was, as his nom-de-guerre Abu Yahya al-Libi suggests, from Libya, and timed for the anniversary of the 11 September attacks.

Eastern Libya’s deputy interior minister, Wanis el-Sharef, said a mob first stormed the consulate Tuesday night and then, hours later, raided a safe house in the compound just as U.S. and Libyan security arrived to evacuate the staff. That suggested, el-Sharef said, that infiltrators within the security forces may have tipped off the militants to the safe house’s location.

Killed in the attack were U.S. Ambassador Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith

private security guard Glen Doherty and one other American who has yet to be identified.

Report: State Dept. Had Credible Information 48 Hours Prior to Libya Consulate Attack

A vehicle (R) and the surround buildings burn after they were set on fire inside the US consulate compound in Benghazi late on September 11, 2012. An armed mob protesting over a film they said offended Islam, attacked the US consulate in Benghazi and set fire to the building, killing one American, witnesses and officials said. (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

Report: State Dept. Had Credible Information 48 Hours Prior to Libya Consulate Attack

An armed man waves his rifle as buildings and cars are engulfed in flames after being set on fire inside the US consulate compound in Benghazi late on September 11, 2012. An armed mob protesting over a film they said offended Islam, attacked the US consulate in Benghazi and set fire to the building, killing one American, witnesses and officials said. (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

El-Sharef said four people were arrested at their homes Thursday in relation to the attack, but he refused to give any further details. He said it was too early to say if the suspects belonged to a particular group or what their motive was. Libya’s new prime minister, Mustafa Abu-Shakour, said authorities were looking for more suspects.

Additionally, U.S. embassies across the world ramped up security Thursday as Muslims reportedly angry over an anti-Islam film stormed the U.S. mission in Yemen and clashed with police near the American mission in Cairo.

In Yemen, hundreds of protesters chanting “Death to America!” stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in the capital, Sanaa, and burned the American flag. Yemen’s president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, quickly apologized to the U.S. for the attack and vowed track down the culprits.

To read the rest of the report from The Independent, click here.  -  The Associated Press contributed to this report

Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary to Donald Rumsfeld and military experts are asserting that the attacks on our Embassies and violence in the Middle East is a failure of the Obama Doctrine… Obama’s weak foreign policy… Wolfowitz also said that Mitt Romney was right in his statements and that Romney has every right and should be speaking out as the possible next President of the United States.  Paul Wolfowitz added that there was too much bragging by the White House about the killing of Osama Bin Laden.  He went on to say that President Obama’s treatment of Israel and overall weakness, America’s absence of leadership, has caused these events…

Now the Muslim Bastards are Demonstrating at the U.S. Embassy in London and in Sudan, in addition to the others.  In Sudan, the protestors just burned down the German Embassy

Time for Some Reaganesque Strength… Romney 2012

--> Global Research: Now there are reports that: US-Backed Terrorists Murder US Ambassador in Libya  <--

 

Watching the speeches by President Obama and Secretary Clinton at the Ceremony for our murdered dignitaries was nauseating knowing that the policies and inactions of Obama and Clinton caused their deaths!

Hillary was apologizing for the video as the bodies are being loaded into hearses. Absolutely disgusting. This administration is the worst. She was speaking so slowly, it sounded like she was sedated… guilt?

And Obama starts his speech with “Scripture teaches us..." Really… Down right insulting

Neither showed any true emotion…

MARK STEYN: “EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEIR PRESIDENT!”

Machiavelli: “It is more important to be feared than loved!”

Reagan: “Peace Through Strength”

Obama like Carter: “Apologies and Weakness” or is it Betrayal?

Related:

Libyan Ambassador: Muslims Believe U.S. Gov’t Behind Anti-Islam Movie & Filmmakers are ‘Terrorists’  -  Really?

Patrick Cockburn: The murder of US ambassador Christopher Stevens proves the Arab Spring was never what it seemed

State Department (Of Course) Denies Claim It Had Advance Knowledge of U.S. Embassy AttacksJust Look at Hillary’s Face and You Know This Is a Lie

Editorial: Obama must measure his response

US defends itself to the world - but back home it's war

Jerome Taylor: Fear and loathing - Another unholy row

We Can No Longer Trust a Beclowned American Media…

FNC’s Democrat Kirsten Powers Slams ‘Utterly Insane’ Media ‘Obsession’ With Attacking Romney

The softly spoken diplomat who lifted the rebels' resolve

Robert Fisk: The provocateurs know politics and religion don't mix

Jay Carney on Unrest in Middle East: ‘This Is Not a Case of Protests Directed at the United States’Really?

LIBYA MASSACRE: US Ambassador Raped Before Murdered

U.S. Embassy Attacked: CNN Breaking News @ 14:06 EDST on 9/11, From Egypt… Then Libya, No Comments From Obama – Updated

Day Late… Dollar Short… Spinner in Chief

Obama: The Weak Horse

Pitiful! Obama Campaign Tweets About Sweatshirts While Caskets of Four Dead American Diplomats Flown, Land at Andrews Air Force Base

Romney… Called for a moment of silence at his campaign stop after the Andrews Air Force Base Ceremony honoring the fallen…  “We are a Patriotic and Compassionate Nation”, he said.

Romney-Ryan – Vote for Strength  in 2012

Thursday, September 13, 2012

We Can No Longer Trust a Beclowned American Media…

Most everyone knows that the bulk of those in the mainstream media lean left but they now have become so blatantly partisan that it is embarrassing for them, but should also be frightening to every American and lover of freedom!  The media must be neutral or at least balanced in its coverage because it is their job to be the watchdog… a fair impartial watchdog.  We no longer have that in America.  M~

clip_image001

American Media

Ronald Reagan:  “Peace through strength!”

Barack Obama: “Turmoil through weakness and apologies”

And last night on the main news outlets 9-minutes were spent demonizing Mitt Romney over his Reaganesque type comments, after reporters colluded to ambush him at a press conference, for standing up and speaking out against our embassies being attacked in Egypt and Libya and 4-Americans being murdered including our Ambassador to Libya.  Only 25-seconds were spent on what was actually going on in the Middle East…  Are we being had? You be the judge.

Red State:

Yesterday, as the American consulate in Libya was smoking and the rioters were returning in Egypt, the President of the United States flew off to Las Vegas for a fundraiser while his spokesman was telling the American press corps that yesterday wasn’t really a normal political day. Had it been George W. Bush, the media would, right now, be marching on the White House with pitch forks and torches. Remember, on 9/11, as events were unfolding in Washington, the American media was crying for President Bush to return to Washington. They wanted Daddy at home in the White House where he could tuck them in bed, damn the security issues of getting him there.

I get that Chuck Todd is a former Democrat hill staffer. I get that the Politico is riddled with Democrats, some former activists and a former staffer for Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I get that Michael Scherer from Time magazine is a left wing reporter for Mother Jones and Salon.com turned respectable, “objective” journalist. I get that Ben Smith, leading up Buzz Feed, is a leftwing journalist paraded about as if he is some sort of objective reporter at a trendy site full of cat photos. [Editor's Note: Totally forgot to include Journolist and have updated to include it] I get that precious Ezra Klein started Journolist so reporters and political operatives could collaborate on the news and narrative and now he sits at the Washington Post and gets trotted out as a fact checker. What I really get is that the American media runs with a herd mentality, leans left, and yesterday collectively fell over their group think as they leaned so far left to focus on Mitt Romney and not President Obama. Yesterday, the American media beclowned itself in ways I didn’t really even think was possible, even knowing how in the tank for Barack Obama they are.

Yesterday, we learned that there were no Marines protecting our Ambassador to Libya despite State Department warnings about violence and kidnappings in the Benghazi. We already knew Al Qaeda was coming on strong there. But we relied on locals for support and now we know the locals betrayed us as they have in the past in Afghanistan and Iraq too.

But the media wanted to focus on Mitt Romney.

Night before last, the President condemned Mitt Romney in harsher tones than he condemned the rioters. It took him until sun up yesterday to condemn them.

But the media wanted to focus on Mitt Romney.

Yesterday, the media spent much time condemning the Coptic Christians for their movie, but we now know the movie had been out for months and we also know the riots were orchestrated in advance. We also know the attack on the American consulate in Libya used the riots as cover for the attack.

But the media wanted to focus on Mitt Romney.

Yesterday, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a man who swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, called an American civilian to ask him to stop exercising his first amendment rights.

But the media wanted to focus on Mitt Romney.

We also now know that the President, close to 60% of the time, has opted for printed intelligence briefings, which this White House thinks are as useful as an intelligence officer in the room who the President can probe, prod, challenge, and question.

But the media wanted to focus on Mitt Romney.

And in focusing on Mitt Romney, finally, of all the places, Slate and Dave Weigel finally point out that Mitt Romney’s gaffe was no gaffe, it was a consistent view of foreign policy foreign to the ears of the political press. He, I, and many others really do think Barack Obama is an apologist. We really do think his speech to Cairo after his entrance to the White House was part of a world apology tour. And we sure as hell think his actions in the past year to foster the Arab Spring were the actions of a naive fool.

But then the media has been playing the naive fool for him.

——————————

UPDATE: A friend points out that what the news media is doing here is roughly what they did after Trayvon Martin’s killing. They rushed to judgment, got basic facts wrong, and then sensationalized it with audio experts and what not only to have to beat a path to retreat later.

Comments:

Christine: 

Romney did what we hoped he would do - showed some spine and spoke up rather than just sit there or spout pleasantries to the President. We should strongly support that and encourage EVERY Republican to do the same. Speak up. Talk about this, don't just hide in a corner or let the LSM walk on them.

One "journolist" said on Twitter yesterday that Romney's election chances are in trouble because he's somehow offended "the press". These things also should be put out in the daylight for as many as possible to see.

sayoung80913:

lol, they are pulling out the Palin playbook with Romney- it worked then, but apparently unbeknownst to those in the media- their time came and went with The Daily Caller publishing little Ezra Klein's emails regarding Journolist.  Not familiar?  See: Journolists: The Truth of Media Fraud Confirmed and Politico Palin Alert: Vast Left Wing Conspiracy’s Mission: Sarah Palin Must Be Destroyed Uncovered!

FNC's Democrat Kirsten Powers Slams 'Utterly Insane' Media 'Obsession' With Attacking Romney

Video: Open mic shows press pool coordinating question if Romney regretted criticizing Obama on Egypt

NewsBusters:

Appearing on Fox News's America Live on Thursday, Daily Beast columnist and Democratic pundit Kirsten Powers ripped the liberal media for expressing more outrage over Mitt Romney's reaction to Tuesday's embassy attacks, than toward the attackers themselves: "I mean, it is just absolutely utterly insane the way that they have elevated this." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Powers worried that the blatant bias had "overshadowed any kind of outrage that you would see over the fact that you have Islamic flags being hoisted over American embassies, the fact that an American ambassador is dead."

Acknowledging the Democratic perspective, Powers explained: "...let's just stipulate that, for the sake of argument, that Romney shouldn't have done it [criticized Obama] – I don't agree with that – it still would not explain the obsession with Romney's statement over these horrific events that are unfolding in front of us."
Later in the discussion, host Megyn Kelly asked Powers: "You always have to look back at, you know, when detecting media – you know, potential media bias, you look back at what would the media have done if this had happened on George Bush's watch?"
Powers denounced the double standard:

Yeah. It would have been completely radically different. Look, like I said, even if you agree that Mitt Romney did something wrong, okay, look at that, but let's also look at the Obama administration. It was just radio silence....why didn't they know that these attacks were coming? Was Obama getting his intelligence briefings? I mean these are the issues that should be being asked and would be being asked if this had happened on George Bush's watch.

Here are portions of the September 13 discussion:

2:36PM ET
(...)
MEGYN KELLY: And just so our viewers know, what happened was the U.S. embassy, just to refresh you, in Cairo, came out with a statement condemning "the misguided individuals who tried to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims." Then they got attacked and they doubled down on that statement. Mitt Romney came out and criticized the statement, saying, "that's disgraceful that the administration's first response was not to condemn the attacks on the diplomatic mission, but to sympathize with those waging them." Later, Washington pulled back the embassy statement and said we didn't authorize it either. So Kirsten, you wound up having the Obama administration and Mitt Romney agreeing that the embassy statement was not appropriate. And yet, the whole media narrative yesterday was how awful Governor Romney was for pointing it out.

Video:  How the Media is Handling the MidEast Crisis, Gov. Romney and the President

KIRSTEN POWERS: Oh yeah, it's still the media narrative. And the thing is, the outrage that has been expressed over the fact that Mitt Romney put out this statement has even overshadowed any kind of outrage that you would see over the fact that you have Islamic flags being hoisted over American embassies, the fact that an American ambassador is dead. I mean you just are not seeing the same level of outrage over just the process of what time he put the statement out. I mean, it is just absolutely utterly insane the way that they have elevated this. And even if we stipulated, Megyn, let's just stipulate that, for the sake of argument, that Romney shouldn't have done it – I don't agree with that – it still would not explain the obsession with Romney's statement over these horrific events that are unfolding in front of us.
(...)
KELLY: And Kirsten, you always have to look back at, you know, when detecting media – you know, potential media bias, you look back at what would the media have done if this had happened on George Bush's watch?
POWERS: Oh, yeah.
KELLY: If we had had these attacks on the embassies and the consulates.
POWERS: Yeah. It would have been completely radically different. Look, like I said, even if you agree that Mitt Romney did something wrong, okay, look at that, but let's also look at the Obama administration. It was just radio silence. You know, they allowed that statement to stay up on an embassy web site, which is taken as the official position of the U.S. government. This person was, someone was tweeting from the official account and they didn't – they didn't come out and say a word. So what's that about? And did they know – why didn't they know that these attacks were coming? Was Obama getting his intelligence briefings? I mean these are the issues that should be being asked and would be being asked if this had happened on George Bush's watch.
(...)
POWERS: One of the things that a lot of liberals are complaining about is they're saying that Mitt Romney attacked Obama, basically saying this was his statement, which of course, we all thought it was the Obama administration's statement because it was on the embassy web site. But even if it wasn't, what has he said that's any different than that? You know, I mean he hasn't used that exact phrasing, but we could not have had a weaker response to this if we just sat around and tried to think of like, what's the weakest thing we could do? And that initial statement was weak, and now we have a continued – the administration coming out and condemning this movie as if the movie caused this attack. The fanatics attacked the embassy. They're going to attack us whether there's a movie or there's not a movie. And they are continuing to do – the sentiment in that original statement continues to be the sentiment of the Obama administration.

Brent Bozell's picture

Barack Obama has morphed into Jimmy Carter before our eyes, said Brent Bozzel the founder and president of the Media Research Center
but the liberal media have refused to report on the Obama Administration’s failed foreign policy of apologies and appeasement. Terrified to hurt Obama’s chances of re-election, they are shamelessly seizing on this horrific attack on Americans abroad to push their go-to narrative that Mitt Romney is tone deaf.

Romney rightly criticized the Obama Administration for its spineless apology to thugs whose idea of ‘diplomacy’ is intimidation, violence and murder. As the façade of the ‘Arab Spring’ continues to fracture and crumble away, the media have shifted to a strategy of distraction and omission.

These are the same media that hailed Obama’s Libya policy as ‘deft’ and proclaimed that his ‘victories’ in the Middle East would ‘burnish his credentials as a world leader.’ NBC’s David Gregory said Obama would ‘use [that] experience as a club against Republicans.’ Instead of letting Obama club the Republicans, the media administered a beating on Romney.

There were two political stories to report yesterday, and the liberal media deliberately chose to amplify the insignificant one because it damaged Romney and helped Obama’s chances to win re-election.  The hope is that the American people are a lot smarter than the leftist media gives them credit for.

Another common sense journalist, Diana West, the author of "The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization”, blasts Obama and Clinton for their concern over hurting Muslims 'feelings': Islamic law does not nullify 1st Amendment!

For anyone who is not up on the events that led to Romney’s comments and the open mic incident highlighting the media’s favoritism, media collusion and the left’s disdain for the true purpose of their careers and responsibility as watchdogs as well as for the American people see:  U.S. Embassy Attacked: CNN Breaking News @ 14:06 EDST on 9/11, From Egypt… Then Libya, No Comments From Obama – Updated and  Day Late… Dollar Short… Spinner in Chief

This is the same slight of hand that goes on with the polls and the reporting of polls:  IN BED WITH OBAMA: CNN Uses Heavily Weighted Polling Sample to Pretend Obama is Leading

Related:

U.S. identifies anti-Muslim filmmaker -  Really… Our government is now identifying film makers, like they did our seal team, to terrorists?  And instead of focusing on the problems with our government’s actions, the MSM is deriding Romney’s quick and presidential response and show of strength against the actions, including the murder of our Ambassador, Christopher Stevens, by Muslim terrorists against American Embassies in Egypt and Libya. 

Obama was at a fundraiser in Nevada, missing his Intel briefing, instead of dealing with the emergency and virtually simultaneously announced he would be appearing on Letterman in New York on the same day that he said he could not work a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu if Israel into his schedule.  But now the White House is bad-mouthing Governor Romney and the media is covering Obama’s inept back. Hello? What am I missing? Americans get attacked, Barack Hussein Obama apologizes, Romney calls Obama on it and the media says Romney made a gaffe?  And want him to apologize… What?

Again… Ronald Reagan said “Peace through strength!”  Mitt Romney is following suit!  Obama and Hillary are still apologizing… the last time we had very similar circumstances was when the last appeasement president, Jimmy Carter, was in the White House and Iranian terrorists took over the American Embassy in Iran.  The American people elected Ronald Reagan soon thereafter and all the prisoners were quickly released… something that weak Carter could not negotiate.  Hmmm… sounding familiar?

If you are interested in the truth or at least both sides of an argument make sure that you add Fox News, The Blaze now on Dish 212 and a variety of perspectives from online blogs to your news intake… If you are watching and getting all your news from  CNN, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC or MSNBC you are only seeing the news from a left-wing perspective and from what you can see from above… a lot is missing or skewed.

REPORT: Obama administration was warned about attacks, did nothing

Friday, May 4, 2012

We Were Warned

Click on the "PLAY" button to watch the video: Reagan Vs. Obama - Social Economics 101

Video: Reagan Warned Us About Obama

OBAMA TO OFFICIALLY LAUNCH CAMPAIGN ON KARL MARX'S BIRTHDAY

YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP!

Obama will officially launch his 2012 re-election campaign, and no I'm not kidding, on Karl Marx's birthday, May 5th! First, we learn that Earth Day was started on the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the Communist butcher and founder of the USSR, now we learn that Barack Obama, America's first Marxist president, is launching his campaign on the father of communism's birthday? Come on, now. This is just too appropriate! How fitting!

Coincidence? Stupid oversight? Or, an intentional middle-finger in the face of the American people? You be the judge!

Less Government = More Freedom

Election 2012… We Can’t Afford 4-More Years!

Is Romney Conservative Enough?

As Newt Gingrich suspended his campaign for the GOP nominee for President he said he is often asked, “Is Romney conservative enough?”

His answer is: “Compared to Barack Obama, the most radical president in U.S. history? We are not talking about Mitt Romney running against Ronald Reagan… We are talking about Mitt Romney running against Barack Obama.”  The answer is clear!

We are also talking about freedom vs. nanny state, free-market capitalism vs. socialism and hope vs. mediocrity.

If you love America at this point the goal has to be voting and supporting Mitt Romney to beat Barack Hussein Obama in 2012, and to surround Romney with a fiscally and socially sound and conservative House and Senate, no matter who else you wanted as your first pick for the GOP nominee. 

4-more-years of Obama will turn us into the bankrupt United Socialist States of America and/or a minor player in a New World Economic Order run by the United nations.  Staying home and not working for or at least voting for Romney is a vote for Obama… it is how we ended up with Jimmy Carter. Conservatives and Independents who were disappointed that Reagan did not get the nomination that time around were disappointed so stayed home… Carter (who looks moderate against Obama) won.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Will 'Obamacare' Suffer a Carter Race Card Backlash? - Updated

Could anti-Semitic leftist former President Carter’s ridiculous comments about racism be the final nail in the Coffin of ObamaCare??


The national debate over health care reform has careered into the bumpy terrain of race.

Former President Jimmy Carter, some black lawmakers and some newspaper columnists have begun to call President Obama's opponents racist -- or fueled by racism -- and they are asserting that race is the underlying cause of much of the criticism of the president.

Obama's opponents, in turn, are charging the president's supporters with playing the race card -- using the issue of race for political gain.
"What Democrats are trying to do is shame white independents, who voted for President Obama in 2008 but are now uneasy about his policies, into supporting these policies to prove they are not racist," said Republican pollster and strategist David E. Johnson, who worked on Bob Dole's 1988 presidential campaign. Read The Full Article

EXCLUSIVE: Wilson: Carter's racism claims a distraction – former President Carter is the only person that has authored two books on his “must read list” – a bit scary!!

Dems and Liberals – Stop with the Race Card and the Political Correctness Game!!

Newscom

Heritage Foundation says: Flawed Baucus Bill Is Not the Roadmap -Baucas Plan is the same old same old… just calling things by different names. So they are still selling us!!

Dick Morris says: BEWARE THE PUBLIC OPTION TRAP

As any good Persian rug dealer knows, you have to hold back a bargaining chit so that you can whip it out at the very end to tie down the sale. That's how Obama is playing the so-called public option in his health care program. His plan seems to be to combine its abandonment with some form of tort reform and try to buy off some Republicans - maybe only Maine's Olympia Snowe - to give moderate Democrats enough confidence in the veneer of bi-partisanship to win their backing for his bill.
But it's a fraud and a trick.

Here's why:
(a) Whether or not there is a public option makes no difference in the fundamental objection most elderly have to the bill - that it guts Medicare and Medicaid. All of the bills now under consideration cut these two programs by one half of a trillion dollars. And all of them require the medical community to serve thirty to fifty million new patients without any concomitant growth in the number of doctors or nurses. These cuts and shortages will lead to draconian rationing of medical care for the elderly, whether under a public option or not.

(b) The most likely proposal is to replace the public option with some form of buyer's co-op. But since there is no currently existing co-op to serve as a vehicle for health insurance, it would have to be formed. By who? The government, of course. That would mean, as a practical matter, that the "co-op option" would be a government run plan for several years. In fact, they may not get around to setting up a co-op at all.

(c) The other alternative, mentioned by Senator Snowe herself, would be for a "trigger" mechanism. This provision would require the creation of a public alternative to private insurance plans if, after a specified period of time, they did not lower rates to a pre-determined level. Given the escalation of health care costs, it is almost inevitable that this provision would lead to a government plan. And, anyway, who says that the government insurance option would be more successful in reducing costs?

But Obama has to at least appear to be willing to compromise, so he has invented the idea of re-packaging the public option in order to seem to be flexible.

The key, here, is not to be distracted by the debate over the public option. It matters very much to private insurance companies whether the government becomes their competitor, but, for the elderly (and the near-elderly), the key concern is not the public option by the rationing and cuts projected under the program.

In the Clinton Administration, we worked hard to kill the proposed Medicare cuts and are no less committed to stopping them in the Obama presidency. That they were once proposed by the right and are now being pushed by the left makes no difference. A cut is a cut is a cut. And Medicare should not be cut.

David Horowitz Calls Carter Anti-Semite - Osama Calls Him Friend


Hmmmm.... Perhaps people who live in Glass Houses should not throw stones.... Jimmy... Nancy... Van... Mr. President

I'm surprised and disappointed, Bill Cosby has fallen for Carter's 'Criticism is Racism' lie, or perhaps he has just been racked over the coals by liberal leaders of his own community, who hold their people down and spread the racism doctrine, one time too many??

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power/the Daily Thought Pad

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Jeffrey Bell: Kemp Brought America Back from 1970s

Dole and Kemp

Bob Dole and Jack Kemp 1996 Race

Kemp and Reagan 

A Young Jack Kemp with Ronald Reagan 1967

There were two big ideas that changed the world in the 1980s: Supply-side economics and a bold strategy for winning the Cold War. One was the handiwork of Jack Kemp, the other of Ronald Reagan.

It’s important to understand that the first, introduced into American politics by a then-young Kemp in the 1970s, preceded the second. No look back on the life of Jack Kemp is complete without the recognition that, without Kemp’s success, the Reagan-led peaceful victory in the Cold War could never have happened.

Restoration of strong economic growth while ending double-digit inflation was a vital political and psychological building block to Reagan’s optimistic, pro-active strategy in the Cold War. It facilitated a massive defense buildup while generating the domestic political strength that Reagan needed during the confrontational phase of his foreign policy in the early and mid-1980s.

As the magnitude of the Reagan economic expansion became clear, it revived the worldwide charisma of capitalism from its low point in the 1970s. This unexpected resurrection of capitalism demoralized the global left. It also paved the way for Mikhail Gorbachev’s conciliatory foreign and domestic policy and his announcement in 1988, Reagan’s final year in office, that the Soviet Union would carry out a complete unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan. Nobody predicted it at the time, but this was the critical first step in ending the Cold War and in the unraveling of the Soviet empire which quickly followed.

If Reagan had not adopted Kemp’s economic program as his own, he almost certainly would not have been elected president in the first place. More than any other factor, Jack Kemp’s agenda ended the fixation on disasters of the 1970s that had left the U. S. economy, American morale, and the Republican Party at historic lows.

Even today’s financial meltdown, painful and scary as it is, pales in comparison to the demoralizing decade of the 1970s. It’s hard to convey how bad the 1970s were to anyone born after 1950.

Kent State. Arab oil embargo. Stagflation. Watergate. Impeachment. Fall of Saigon. Interminable lines at gas stations. Explosion of the welfare rolls. Explosion of the rate of violent crime. Explosion of divorce, abortion, and births out of wedlock. Eurocommunism. Armed Communist takeovers of Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Granada, Laos and Cambodia, as well as South Vietnam. The Red Army invasion of Afghanistan. The fall of the Shah of Iran and the subsequent imprisonment of more than 100 American foreign service officers to be publicly humiliated, every day, in Tehran for nearly 15 months.

Have I left anything out? Yes. For four years we had a president, Jimmy Carter, who presided over flop after flop, fiasco after fiasco, never showing the slightest awareness of personal accountability or the slightest alteration in a demeanor of smug, superior self-congratulation.

Because of the collapse of the Nixon administration, Republicans blamed themselves for all this. So did the vast majority of voters. Following the 1974 elections, the Republican Party had 144 representatives, 38 senators, and 12 governors. Here is the list of states that Republicans still ran in 1975, in the sense of possessing the governorship and both houses of the legislature: Kansas. Two years later, Carter completed the dismantling of the GOP by ousting Gerald Ford from the White House, while the colossal post-1974 Democratic dominance in Congress and the states stayed roughly the same.

Think the Republican Party is in bad shape today? You should have seen it then. In the wake of stagflation, Watergate, and America’s first lost war—all either starting or ending in ignominy in the Nixon-Ford years — early GOP recovery was far from a betting favorite.

It happened because of two men, Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. It is because of them — their leadership, their determination, their creativity — that for Republicans, the bleak 1970s turned out to be in a deep sense the best of times,

exceeded in their ultimate positive impact only by the founding of the party and the rise of Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s. I had the good fortune to work closely with both of these extraordinary men in this, their most politically creative period.

To say we now know all about Ronald Reagan is tempting, but as yet far from accurate. Although virtually no one realized it at the time — I count myself among the ignorant — in retrospect Reagan had nearly unerring political and policy judgment, yet zero desire — perhaps minus desire — to call attention to his own shrewdness. He was accused of living in a Hollywood-inspired dream world, and maybe he did. But the more we learn of him from the release of his notebooks and private papers, the more we sense that Reagan was a deeply intuitive politician who knew how to mold reality until it resembled his dreams.

Like the Hollywood movies of the 1940s, every one of Ronald Reagan’s dreams had a happy ending for America. Jack Kemp, a native of Southern California, was a star quarterback for the Buffalo Bills of the American Football League who retired after the 1969 season to run for Congress as a Republican from the blue-collar Buffalo suburbs. He upset an incumbent Democratic congressman in 1970 at the age of 35 and was easily re-elected until he vacated his seat to run for President in 1988. Defeated for the nomination, he served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993 and was the Republican Party nominee for Vice President, running unsuccessfully with Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole against President Bill Clinton in 1996.

But this thumbnail biography, impressive as it is, gives the merest hint of the impact Kemp had on his party, his country, and the world. He achieved by far the most positive impact on global economic policy of any legislator of the past century.

From his earliest days in the House of Representatives, Kemp asked penetrating questions to knowledgeable people about all sorts of issues. His interests ranged widely across foreign policy and social issues as well as economics. But as with many men and women who entered politics in the 1970s, he found himself drawn inexorably to the crisis of stagflation and monetary breakdown that overshadowed those times.

Pessimism about the free market was pervasive. In 1971, Kemp’s first year in Congress, a center-right Republican president, Richard Nixon, severed the post-World War II link of the dollar to gold, imposed wage and price controls on the economy, and proclaimed “We are all Keynesians now.” The Club of Rome issued a widely celebrated report predicting a dim global future of shrinking natural resources and limits to growth.

Kemp’s rise from working-class origins to football fame and a seat in Congress left him with a far different view of America’s economic potential. It undoubtedly helped that, like Reagan, he radiated the self-confidence of a high achiever from outside politics at a time when conventional politics had become sterile.

The backbencher from Buffalo found himself drawn to a small contrarian band of economists, journalists, and political activists. It was a group that was often at each other’s throats but was united by a desire to break free from the pessimism that pervaded conventional economics throughout the 1970s.

The late conservative Keynesian economist Herbert Stein, who had chaired Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisors and whose son is the writer and comedian Ben Stein, gave us the sobriquet “supply siders,” to distinguish us from the “demand side” views of both Keynesians and monetarists. It was not meant to be flattering, but we accepted the label anyway as a reasonable capsule of what was different about our views.

Kemp was the undisputed quarterback but proved willing on occasion to switch to the role of referee when that was needed. It often was.

From early on, supply siders focused on the need for tax cuts. An early package of Kemp tax proposals focused on multiple credits and deductions for capital investment.

But in 1976 Kemp decided to simplify things by offering an across-the-board 30 percent reduction in income tax rates. The new bill was written to mimic the Kennedy tax cut that passed and was signed into law by President Johnson in 1964 and became fully effective a few months later on New Year’s Day of 1965. Most congressional Republicans, including 1964 presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, had charged fiscal irresponsibility and opposed the tax cut, which was followed by several years of accelerated growth and higher-than-expected Federal revenues.

In 1977, the Kemp bill became Kemp-Roth by gaining the co-sponsorship of Sen. William Roth of Delaware, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. To get Roth to sign on, Kemp agreed to stretch out implementation to three years, 10 percent a year. This reassured fiscal conservatives and broadened rank-and-file congressional backing. Kemp convinced Republican national chairman Bill Brock to make Kemp-Roth a key GOP plank in the 1978 congressional elections. A diluted version of the bill actually passed Congress in 1978, only to be vetoed by President Carter. But supply siders scored their first big legislative victory when Carter was maneuvered into signing a cut in the top capital gains tax rate from 49 to 28 percent.

The tax cut had added significance because it was the handiwork of Wisconsin Congressman William Steiger, a respected young GOP moderate who had several years of seniority on Kemp. Increasingly, Kemp-Roth appeared capable of uniting the right, center and left of the Republican Party and attracting some conservative Democratic backing as well.

Getting Reagan to make it the centerpiece of his campaign, however, was a complex process that culminated with success in 1979, but left his campaign team with multiple wounds that never fully healed on the personal level.

The resistance was never from Reagan himself. He was attracted to Kemp-Roth from the moment it was unveiled, and endorsed it often in his speeches and radio commentaries. But as the frontrunner for the 1980 nomination, Reagan had attracted a cross-section of elite Republican economic advisers, nearly all of whom thought in then-prevalent demand-side terms. This translated into their fear that a massive personal income tax cut would put too many dollars into the pockets of American taxpayers, causing these taxpayers to bid up prices, which in turn would cause a damaging spike in inflation. They were dismissive of Say’s Law, promulgated by a 19th-century French economist who argued that stimulating increased supply would of itself create a corresponding demand.

Ultimately the gridlock in Reagan’s camp was broken on the political side. Reagan’s campaign manager and chief strategist was John Sears, a canny, pragmatic veteran of the 1968 Nixon campaign and manager of Reagan’s surprisingly strong 1976 primary challenge against President Ford. Sears’ greatest fear was the possibility that Kemp, at the time 44 years old to Reagan’s 68, would enter the 1980 primaries and divert conservative votes toward a younger and more programmatic alternative, potentially costing Reagan the nomination. Sears was attracted to the supply-side agenda on substantive,

future-oriented grounds, but he probably would not have overcome elite opposition to highlighting the supply-side agenda had it been a political vehicle for anyone other than the attractive and articulate Kemp. Sears persuaded Reagan to offer Kemp a prominent role in the campaign as “economic spokesman,” and Kemp endorsed Reagan as the “oldest and wisest” of those in the 1980 race.

From then on, the alliance for supply side between the movie star and the quarterback was unbreakable, and together they accomplished a reduction in the top income tax rate from 70 percent (its level in 1980) to 28 percent in 1988. As taxpayers know, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama have done their best to push marginal income tax rates back up to as much as 40 percent, and this battle will never truly end.But one thing did end. In the wake of the Reagan-Kemp tax revolution, the steeply progressive income tax -- once as high as 91 percent in this country and as recently as 1979 still at an amazing 98 percent in Great Britain -- a cornerstone of the worldwide economic left was no longer viable. Dynamiting of this cornerstone helped end not just Soviet-style communism, but old-fashioned confiscatory socialism as a live option in the democratic world as well.

One of the most revealing tests of a historic political leader is whether major unfulfilled elements of his or her agenda stay alive following the leader’s departure from the scene. Reagan passes this test in spades, perhaps most strikingly when one of his central goals, decentralization of the Federal welfare entitlement, was signed into law by a Democratic president in 1996, nearly eight years after the end of the Reagan era.

For Jack Kemp, a major Republican failing was political outreach to minorities, particularly black and Hispanic voters. By his advocacy of tax-favored enterprise zones and urban homesteading, and his close collaboration with such prominent minority legislators as Congressmen Robert Garcia of the South Bronx and Walter Fauntroy of the District of Columbia, Kemp was a pioneer in left-right, white-black and white-Hispanic coalition building. His strategy was not to play down conservative doctrine in the manner of a liberal Republican, but to adapt conservative beliefs to the needs of these communities. At a time when minorities are a growing share of the national vote and the Republican share of this vote more dismal than ever, either Republicans will find a way to revive Kemp-style conservative outreach or resign themselves once again to their own version of minority status.

Even today’s financial crisis, on one level an undeniable threat to the revitalization of capitalism that the political achievements of Reagan, Kemp, and Margaret Thatcher made possible, is a vindication of Kemp and the supply siders of the 1970s. It is sometimes forgotten that the origin of supply-side economics was intertwined not with tax policy, but with the 1971 breakdown of the Bretton Woods monetary system which provided a residual link of the dollar to gold. It was the double-digit inflation that ignited in the wake of the Nixon administration’s “liberation” of the dollar that pushed millions of middle-class taxpayers into marginal tax brackets never designed for them. This in turn helped create the mass base of the tax revolution that took off in the late 1970s.

The most important article about early supply-side theory appeared in Irving Kristol’s Public Interest magazine in 1975. Written by Wall Street Journal editorial writer Jude Wanniski, it was titled “The Mundell-Laffer Hypothesis.”

I remember avidly reading it as a frazzled director of research at Reagan’s exploratory campaign committee in Washington, preparing issue papers for the1976 nomination fight. The article was almost exclusively about monetary policy, most immediately the dangers of fiat money in the newly created “dollar standard.” Columbia professor Robert Mundell, along with Arthur Laffer the academic godfather of the supply side, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1999 not for fiscal studies but for his groundbreaking work in monetary policy.

A long-time advocate of fixed currency exchange rates, the Canadian Mundell is today widely credited as the prime architect of the Euro and as a major behind-the-scenes adviser to the top economic policymakers of the People’s Republic of China. It seems logical to wonder if it is an accident that this increasingly important nation in today’s global economy, holding in Beijing dollar-denominated debt instruments in the amount of two trillion dollars as their national monetary reserve, has consistently opposed floating exchange rates and recently singled out for blame the distorting role of the dollar — a single nation’s debt — as the world’s official reserve currency.

Regardless of where this interesting new debate leads, it is patently absurd to allow Barack Obama and Lawrence Summers to treat a pure crisis of monetary policy centered in the liquidity of the global banking system as a repudiation of (take your pick) modern capitalism, American-style entrepreneurship, or of private American medicine. Jack Kemp, who lost his courageous battle with cancer amid all the prayers of his many friends, fellow agitators, and admirers, could have told you that in 1977.

By: Jeffrey Bell, a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, was national campaign coordinator of Kemp for President in 1988.

Source:  Newsmax

Posted:  Knowledge Creates Power

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Apologists

For 50 minutes, Obama sat mute, as a Marxist thug from Nicaragua delivered his diatribe, charging America with a century of terrorist aggression in Central America.

After Daniel Ortega finished spitting in our face, accusing us of inhumanity toward Fidel Castro's Cuba, Obama was asked his thoughts.

"I thought it was 50 minutes long. That's what I thought."

Hillary Clinton was asked to comment: "I thought the cultural performance was fascinating," she cooed.

Pressed again on Ortega's vitriol, Hillary replied: "To have those first-class Caribbean entertainers all on one stage and to see how much was done in such a small amount of space. I was overwhelmed."

Thus the nation that won the Cold War, contained the cancer of Castroism in Cuba, liberated Grenada, blocked communist takeovers of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, and poured scores of billions in aid into this region was left undefended by its own leaders at the Summit of the Americas.

Nor was this the only unanswered insult. Hugo Chavez, who has called Obama an "ignoramus" and Bush "El Diablo," walked over to a seated U.S. president and handed him the anti-American tract "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent."

The book blames Latin America's failures on white Europeans.

It opens, "Renaissance Europeans ventured across the oceans and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations."

Civilizations? Before Pizarro and Cortez, the Inca and Aztec empires these conquistadors overthrew were into human sacrifice.

Evo Morales, the Aymaran president of Bolivia, who is using the race card against Bolivians of European descent, implied a U.S. role in an assassination plot against him.

Argentina's Cristina Kirchner, who allegedly received black-bag money from Chavez, ripped into America for its role in the 1980s. Under Reagan, America aided Britain in the Falklands War, after the Argentine junta invaded the islands, and assisted the Contras in their war of national liberation to oust Ortega's Sandinistas.

Again, Obama offered no defense of his country.

President Lula da Silva of Brazil, who blames the world financial crisis on "white, blue-eyed bankers," told Obama that any future Summit of the Americas without the Castro brothers was unacceptable.

Perhaps Obama believes in turn-the-other-cheek diplomacy, though it is hard to find much success in history for such a policy. Perhaps pacifism is in his DNA. Perhaps he shares the indictment of America that is part of the repertoire of every Latin demagogue.

Whatever his motive, in Trinidad, there were not two sides to the story. There were the trashers of America on the Latino left and a U.S. president who wailed plaintively, "I'm thankful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was 3 months old."

But, the Bay of Pigs, had it succeeded, would have given Cubans 50 years of freedom instead of the brutal dictatorship they have had to endure. And it took place four months before Barack was born.

Obama's silence -- signifying, as it does, assent -- in the face of attacks on his country is of a piece with the "contrition tour" of his secretary of state.

"Clinton Scores Points by Admitting Past U.S. Errors," was the headline over Saturday's New York Times story by Mark Landler:

"It has become a recurring theme of Hillary Rodham Clinton's early travels as the chief diplomat of the United States: She says that American policy on a given issue has failed, and her foreign listeners fall all over themselves in gratitude.

"On Friday, Mrs. Clinton said ... that the uncompromising policy of the Bush administration toward Cuba had not worked. ...

"The contrition tour goes beyond Latin America. In China, Mrs. Clinton told audiences that the United States must accept its responsibility as a leading emitter of greenhouse gases. In Indonesia, she said the American-backed policy of sanctions against Myanmar had not been effective. And in the Middle East, she pointed out that ostracizing the Iranian government had not persuaded it to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions."

Sandler wrote that Hillary brought to mind Bill Clinton:

"On a single trip to Africa in 1998 ... Bill Clinton apologized for American participation in slavery; American support of brutal African dictators; American 'neglect and ignorance' of Africa; American failure to intervene sooner in the Rwandan genocide of 1994; American 'complicity' in apartheid ... ."

Yet, as C.S. Lewis reminds us in "God in the Dock," "The first and fatal charm of national repentance is ... the encouragement it gives us to turn from the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing -- but, first, of denouncing -- the conduct of others."

Bewailing the policies of Bush as failures and standing mute in the face of attacks on his country and predecessors may come back to bite Obama.

For when Jimmy Carter assumed a posture of moral superiority over LBJ and Richard Nixon, by declaring, "We have gotten over our inordinate fear of communism," it came back to bite him, good and hard.

Pat Buchanan :: Townhall.com Columnistby Pat Buchanan

Posted:  Knowledge Creates Power