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Obama increasingly comes across as devious and dishonest.

By Peggy Noonan

Something’s happening to President Obama’s relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say, “Nothing new there,” but actually I think there is. I’m referring to the broad, stable, nonradical, non-birther right. Among them the level of dislike for the president has ratcheted up sharply the past few monthIt’s not due to the election, and it’s not because the Republican candidates are so compelling and making such brilliant cases against him. That, actually, isn’t happening.

What is happening is that the president is coming across more and more as a trimmer, as an operator who’s not operating in good faith. This is hardening positions and leading to increased political bitterness. And it’s his fault, too. As an increase in polarization is a bad thing, it’s a big fault.

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The shift started on Jan. 20, with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide birth-control services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? “You’re kidding me. That’s not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact, it’s not even constitutional!” Faced with the blowback, the president offered a so-called accommodation that even its supporters recognized as devious. Not ill-advised, devious. Then his operatives flooded the airwaves with dishonest—not wrongheaded, dishonest—charges that those who defend the church’s religious liberties are trying to take away your contraceptives.

What a sour taste this all left. How shocking it was, including for those in the church who’d been in touch with the administration and were murmuring about having been misled.

Events of just the past 10 days have contributed to the shift. There was the open-mic conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in which Mr. Obama pleaded for “space” and said he will have “more flexibility” in his negotiations once the election is over and those pesky voters have done their thing. On tape it looked so bush-league, so faux-sophisticated. When he knew he’d been caught, the president tried to laugh it off by comically covering a mic in a following meeting. It was all so . . . creepy.

 Best of the Web columnist James Taranto on whether voters who favored Obama in 2008 think the President is naïve.

I am not saying that the president has a terrible relationship with the American people. I’m only saying he’s made his relationship with those who oppose him worse.

In terms of the broad electorate, I’m not sure he really has a relationship. A president only gets a year or two to forge real bonds with the American people. In that time a crucial thing he must establish is that what is on his mind is what is on their mind. This is especially true during a crisis.

From the day Mr. Obama was sworn in, what was on the mind of the American people was financial calamity—unemployment, declining home values, foreclosures. These issues came within a context of some overarching questions: Can America survive its spending, its taxing, its regulating, is America over, can we turn it around?

That’s what the American people were thinking about.

But the new president wasn’t thinking about that. All the books written about the creation of economic policy within his administration make clear the president and his aides didn’t know it was so bad, didn’t understand the depth of the crisis, didn’t have a sense of how long it would last. They didn’t have their mind on what the American people had their mind on.

The president had his mind on health care. And, to be fair-minded, health care was part of the economic story. But only a part! And not the most urgent part. Not the most frightening, distressing, immediate part. Not the “Is America over?” part.

And so the relationship the president wanted never really knitted together. Health care was like the birth-control mandate: It came from his hermetically sealed inner circle, which operates with what seems an almost entirely abstract sense of America. They know Chicago, the machine, the ethnic realities. They know Democratic Party politics. They know the books they’ve read, largely written by people like them—bright, credentialed, intellectually cloistered. But there always seems a lack of lived experience among them, which is why they were so surprised by the town hall uprisings of August 2009 and the 2010 midterm elections.

If you jumped into a time machine to the day after the election, in November, 2012, and saw a headline saying “Obama Loses,” do you imagine that would be followed by widespread sadness, pain and a rending of garments? You do not. Even his own supporters will not be that sad. It’s hard to imagine people running around in 2014 saying, “If only Obama were president!” Including Mr. Obama, who is said by all who know him to be deeply competitive, but who doesn’t seem to like his job that much. As a former president he’d be quiet, detached, aloof. He’d make speeches and write a memoir laced with a certain high-toned bitterness. It was the Republicans’ fault. They didn’t want to work with him.

He will likely not see even then that an American president has to make the other side work with him. You think Tip O’Neill liked Ronald Reagan? You think he wanted to give him the gift of compromise? He was a mean, tough partisan who went to work every day to defeat Ronald Reagan. But forced by facts and numbers to deal, he dealt. So did Reagan.

An American president has to make cooperation happen.

But we’ve strayed from the point. Mr. Obama has a largely nonexistent relationship with many, and a worsening relationship with some.

Really, he cannot win the coming election. But the Republicans, still, can lose it. At this point in the column we usually sigh.

by Berry Johnson

Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn paid an impromptu visit to Occupy Wall Street in New York City Friday, bestowing their advice to a gaggle of elated protesters.  Ayers and Dohrn, former leaders of the violent leftist Weather Underground group, were greeted like rock stars at the camp. A reception, you’ll soon hear, they wouldn‘t want to give the nation’s military members.

The couple passed along protesting and anti-military nuggets of wisdom to the youngsters who received it in good spirits. For example, the former confidants to President Obama made sure to mention that America is “a declining power” that must depend on “a militarized 1%.”

Dohrn didn’t parse words:

“In a declining empire, which, you know, the United States is, lets agree, the United States is a declining economic and political power even while its a veralent and expanding military power, a very dangerous combination.  But in that, I just want to suggest that I think that what looks very strong is often very weak.  It is very weak. Even though, this military force, the United States is Sparta. Yes, in many ways, national security … its all The United States seems to have to offer. It isn’t jobs or healthcare or public education or public parks or public libraries, it’s security, security, security.  We don’t want that kind of a future, Occupy doesn’t want that kind of a future.” [Emphasis added]

On that note, Ayers lamented the special treatment American military members receive on domestic flights. He recalled his flight to New York and how service members were allowed to board first:

“We are living in a militarized society. That, that, it’s clear what the message is from power.  The message is that Occupy represents violence, and marginalization and insanity, when in reality it’s the 1% that represents violence, and insanity and militarism.  We’ve got a militarized society and its become so common sense that, getting on the airplane coming out here, the first thing they said was let all the, uhh, let all the ya know, uniformed military get on first and thank you for your service.  And I said as I always do: let’s let the teachers and nurses get on first and thank them for their service.  I mean, why is it that everything military has got to be good and everything that has to do with actual work, real work, not jobs, real work for people, that stuff gets discouraged and marginalized.” [Emphasis added]

Capitalism took it on the chin as well.  A recent Blaze article by Madeleine Morgenstern highlighted Ayers stating his everyday dream: “Today I’m going to end capitalism.”  But what you have not heard is what Ayers said beforehand.

“We have to begin to imagine a world without war, a world without prisons, a world without borders,” he explained before adding, “We can’t imagine a world without Capitalism!?  What the F–k would that look like?”

“But actually, I can imagine it, and I want you to imagine it.”

Dohrn went on to say the U.S. should cancel all student debt.

But the pair didn’t end their theorizing there. In fact, they even went on to broach Obama’s controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright. According to Dohrn, Wright is an “incredible guy”:

“Take Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the last election, right?   An incredible guy.  … He has had this absolutely exemplary life in the church and what happens to him?  He’s in a nano second demonized, just boom, like that. … So invite him to Occupy is what I’m saying.  His way was he belonged to a very big community.

“He’s a deep and fabulous guy,” Dohrn concluded, “so invite him to speak.”

You can see it all for yourself below (content warning for language):

 

by Gary Price

Today we mourn the passing of an old friend by the name of Common Sense.

Common Sense lived a long life but died from heart failure at the brink of the millennium. No one really knows how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He selflessly devoted his life to service in schools, hospitals, homes, factories and offices, helping folks get jobs done without fanfare and foolishness.

For decades, petty rules, silly laws and frivolous lawsuits held no power over Common Sense. He was credited with cultivating such valued lessons as to know when to come in out of the rain, the early bird gets the worm, and life isn’t always fair.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you earn), reliable parenting strategies (the adults are in charge, not the kids), and it’s okay to come in second.

A veteran of the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and the Technological Revolution, Common Sense survived cultural and educational trends including feminism, body piercing, whole language and “new math.”

But his health declined when he became infected with the “If-it-only-helps-one-person-it’s-worth-it” virus. In recent decades his waning strength proved no match for the ravages of overbearing federal regulation.

He watched in pain as good people became ruled by self-seeking lawyers and enlightened auditors. His health rapidly deteriorated when schools endlessly implemented zero tolerance policies, reports of six-year-old boys charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, a teen suspended for taking a swig of mouthwash after lunch, and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student. It declined even further when schools had to get parental consent to administer aspirin to a student but cannot inform the parent when the female student is pregnant or wants an abortion.

Finally, Common Sense lost his will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband, churches became businesses, criminals received better treatment than victims, and federal judges stuck their noses in everything from Boy Scouts to professional sports.

As the end neared, Common Sense drifted in and out of logic but was kept informed of developments, regarding questionable regulations for asbestos, low flow toilets, “smart” guns, the nurturing of Prohibition Laws and mandatory air bags.

Finally when told that the homeowners association restricted exterior furniture only to that which enhanced property values, he breathed his last.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by three stepbrothers: Rights, Tolerance and Whiner.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

In August of 1965, a reported act of police brutality touched off riots that consumed the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts for five days. When it was over, more than 34 people were dead, at least 1,000 were wounded and $200 million in property was destroyed by looting and fire.

Twenty-seven years later, the acquittal of four officers in the beating of Rodney King sparked more rioting in Los Angeles that lasted three days and resulted in the death of 54 people and destruction of $1 billion in property.

This is what can happen when social order breaks down. The “riot beast,” as some people call it, grows quickly and can suck in innocent bystanders as easily as it can the fringe criminal element just looking for an opportunity to strike.

Do you know what to do if a riot begins in your area? It’s not always possible to avoid a riot, as most of those injured or killed are innocents caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there are a few things you can do to help protect yourself from getting caught up in the worst of it:

• Be prepared. If you know that tensions are brewing to such an extent that a riot is possible, but you can’t avoid the area, try to be as inconspicuous as possible. Wear clothes that make you look like part of the crowd, but take care not to wear colors that could signal allegiance to one group or gang.
• Plan possible escape routes for the duration of your journey outside.
• Keep cash on hand to arrange for transportation or pay off looters.
• Remain calm. Riots bring intense emotions to the surface, and you have to keep your emotions in check. Think rationally at all times.
• Get inside and stay inside. Stay away from windows and doors, try to get into the middle of the structure to put as many walls as possible between yourself and any bullets fired from outside, and lock all entrances into the building. Keep in mind you need to have at least two escape routes. If rioters gain entry to your building, leave in a hurry and try to find law enforcement authorities.
• Stay on the sidelines.
• If you’re caught up in a riot, don’t take sides. Try to be inconspicuous and move slowly, but purposefully, to the outside of the mob.
• Move away from the riot. The longer you spend in it the greater the chance you will be injured or killed. But move out slowly. Think of it as escaping the undertow, and move toward the outside so you can find an alley, side street or doorway to get into.
• Avoid major roadways, as this is where the crowd is liable to be the greatest.
• Avoid public transportation. The stations may be particularly dangerous because of the chance of large crowds and difficult egress.
• Don’t stop your car. Drive away from the riot and don’t stop until you are in a safe place with no other people, except maybe law enforcement, nearby. If people try to block your course, honk your horn and continue driving carefully through them.
• If you’re in the midst of a riot and police begin using chemicals, such as teargas, try to stay out of the line of fire. Try to stay away from the front lines, which will bear the brunt of a police action. If the air gets thick with chemicals, get low for fresh air.
• Do your best to stay on your feet. If you fall, you are likely to be trampled. If you do fall, curl into a ball and protect your face and vital organs.

Should you believe that riots or looters may soon affect your neighborhood, you may deem it prudent to leave your home until the situation stabilizes. Most people think that simply locking their doors and leaving is sufficient. But this won’t keep out rioters who are not bound by the rule of law and certainly don’t respect the locks on your doors and windows. So you need to prepare your home to make it as looter-proof as possible before you leave. To do it properly, you will have to have prepared in advance by purchasing and storing the needed materials.

You’ve probably seen video or photographs of homes along the coast being prepared for the onslaught of a hurricane. Keep this visual in mind as you begin to make your home looter-proof.

Plywood over the windows and doors will confound most looters because the riots that fuel the looting are generally somewhat spontaneous. It’s difficult to remove plywood covers without the proper tools, and the odds are against looters carrying pry bars, hammers and screwdrivers when a riot breaks out. Don’t forget to cover skylights and other soft points as well.

If you have a large screened or glassed-in porch, the best bet is to secure the small door that allows access to the home. Sacrifice the glass or screen on the porch.

Garage doors can be problematic to cover. If you have a metal garage door, you probably should just trust it to keep out looters. A wooden door can be breached with a swift kick to one of the panels. Cover each of the panels with plywood as if they were glass.

The plywood you use should be at least 3/8 inch thick. Any less and you may as well have no protection at all. Use screws to secure the wood. The screws should be 1½ to 2 inches in length.

If your home is boarded up and other homes in the neighborhood are not, yours will likely be spared in lieu of the easier pickings.

If your house is hooked to natural gas or a propane tank, turn off the gas at the gas meter and water at the main valve. Turn off the electricity at the breaker or fuse box.

The economy will “crater” by August if pump prices continue to increase, warned Newt Gingrich on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

“The price of gasoline is becoming a genuine crisis for many American families,” the former House Speaker and presidential candidate said. “If it continues to go higher, it will crater the economy by August because people will have no discretionary income.
The White House has said there are no “quick fixes” to rising costs.

In another interview Sunday morning, this one with ABC News, Gingrich said the president has “a goal getting us to pay European-level prices” for gas.

“This president and his secretary of anti-energy, Dr. Chu, have as a goal getting us to pay European-level prices of $8 or $9,” Gingrich said to ABC.

Congressman Allen West (R-FL) released this statement today after voting no on the extension of the Payroll Tax Cut:

“Americans are exhausted, out of work and many have simply lost hope in the political system. They have been struggling now with nearly five consecutive years of record job stagnation, increased foreclosure rates and an economy that continues to struggle.

All of these reasons are why I cannot in good faith vote for this payroll tax cut deal. It is not that I don’t believe Americans should have relief in their paychecks or be afforded a safety net of unemployment insurance, it is because, unlike some on Capitol Hill, I am looking beyond this election cycle.

I am looking at the ramifications of adding billions of American taxpayer’s dollars to a trillion dollar deficit with no answers as to how or when we will pay for this bill.

I am looking beyond immediate gratification and instead looking at an American political system willing to cave to political pressure to give Americans a temporary Band-Aid that in the long run only makes things worse for their future.

The facts are simple.  This supposed payroll tax decrease is really a backdoor tax increase on homeowners and first time homebuyers. The deal is being paid for by added fees on FHA- backed loans. Homeowners with FHA- backed mortgages represent more than one-third of mortgages in the United States. Those Middle Class Americans will be footing the bill for this political gimmick.

Homebuyers with a $200,000 standard 30- year loan will have to pay an extra $10,000 over the course of their loan. It would take roughly 250 paychecks with $40 extra from the payroll tax holiday to pay for the added increase to the life of an FHA-backed mortgage loan. That represents ten years of consecutive employment.

In addition, some may argue the payroll tax deal will not affect Social Security. This could not be further from the truth. The federal government’s general operating account will be used to compensate for the lost revenue in the Social Security Trust Fund, which will increase the deficit and add to the nation’s debt.

My position on the Payroll Tax Extension has not changed. In December of 2011, I supported a responsible one- year extension that was fully paid for, and would have put money back in the pockets of American workers while protecting homeowners, Social Security, and not adding to the deficit and our ever-increasing national debt.

This current deal is not good policy – but it is political posturing.

The payroll tax cut deal is a result of politicians telling Americans what they want to hear, while seriously harming them and our nation in the long run. Americans sent a new wave of leaders to Capitol Hill in 2010 to stand up for conservative principles and turn this country around. I will continue to be a voice for those Americans.”

*Please see this CBS News Special Investigation on the “real way” the payroll tax deal is being paid for.

‘Progressive’ government mouthpiece routinely attacks Alex Jones, Ron Paul

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, February 13, 2012

An investigation by the Daily Caller has confirmed that the leftist organization Media Matters, which routinely attacks Alex Jones and Infowars, is an Obama administration front that strategizes with the White House on a weekly basis on how to influence and direct the media.

Media Matters has habitually attempted to denigrate and smear Alex Jones and his message of liberty, by dismissing Jones as a crazed “conspiracy theorist” and then connecting him to other targets of their attacks, people like Ron Paul, Glenn Beck, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Lou Dobbs and the Fox News network.

Media Matters also recently defended Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security by impugning an Infowars storyabout the DHS targeting white middle class Americans as terrorists, and then deriding other media networks for also covering the issue.

The organization has also routinely carried smear attacks implying that questioning the official story behind 9/11 is some kind of thought crime, despite the fact that six of the ten 9/11 commissioners have disputed the government’s account.

A new investigation into Media Matters by the Daily Caller has revealed that the organization conducts “a weekly strategy call with the White House” and that an Obama administration representative meets with Media Matters reps at the Common Purpose Project meeting at the Capitol Hilton on 16th Street in Washington every Tuesday evening.

“Media Matters has been in regular contact with political operatives in the Obama administration,” states the report. “According to visitor logs, on June 16, 2010, (David) Brock and then-Media Matters president Eric Burns traveled to the White House for a meeting with Valerie Jarrett, arguably the president’s closest adviser. Recently departed Obama communications director Anita Dunn returned to the White House for the meeting as well.”

Media Matters brags about how it works with the White House to control big media networks. “We were pretty much writing their prime time,” a former Media Matters employee said of the cable channel MSNBC. “But then virtually all the mainstream media was using our stuff.”

The group also targets journalists who refuse to be water carriers for Media Matters’ propaganda. “If you hit a reporter, say a beat reporter at a regional newspaper,” a Media Matters source said, “all of a sudden they’d get a thousand hostile emails. Sometimes they’d melt down. It had a real effect on reporters who weren’t used to that kind of scrutiny.”

The investigation also reveals that current Media Matters head David Brock lives in paranoia that “right-wing assassins” want to kill him and is regularly surrounded by bodyguards. Brock also carries a gun despite Media Matters’ vehement support for gun control po

• As we have previously reported, Media Matters barely even attempts to hide the fact that it is a mouthpiece for the Obama administration and the political elite.

Media Matters is tied at the hip with Think Progress as part of John D. Podesta’s Progressive Media propaganda campaign, described as a “war room for promoting the foreign and domestic policies of Barack Obama.” Podesta, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, also helped found Media Matters. The organization also received a $1 million contribution from billionaire globalist George Soros back in 2010.

Podesta, who headed up Barack Obama’s presidential transition team, founded The Center for American Progress, which is tasked with “driving the White House’s message and agenda”.

According to SourceWatch, “CAP’s Progressive Media project emerged as a major communications war room on behalf of Obama’s domestic and foreign policy agenda and CAP became a strong advocate for escalation in Afghanistan. Progressive Media is run through the Center for American Project Action Fund, the more political 501(c)4 arm of CAP. It coordindates closely with the Common Purpose Project, an effort to create message discipline among the pro-Obama organizations, with a direct tie to the White House.”

Media Matters’ sister organization Think Progress, also founded under the umbrella of Podesta’s Center for American Progress, has aggressively attacked Alex Jones, even blaming him for influencing Richard Poplawski in the 2009 murder of three Pittsburgh police officers, despite the fact that numerous other leftist media organizations were forced to retract the baseless claim.

Media Matters has now been completely exposed as little more than an attack dog for the Obama administration. The fact that Alex Jones is regularly smeared by this organization proves that Infowars is hitting the establishment where it hurts and taking flak from the very top of the power structure.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Harvard University Professor Alan Dershowitz recently warned Democrats that they will lose the presidential election this year if they stick with Media Matters for America.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/13/dershowitz-warns-democrats-to-drop-media-matters/?cmpid=NL_FNTopHeadlines_20120213#ixzz1mK009gvy

by Human events

Philadelphia City Council Passes Resolution Welcoming Sharia Law

By Maia Szalavitz

From the perspective of drug warriors, the criminal laws against drug possession are all that protect Americans from a deluge of drugs, an orgy of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine use that would kill children, destroy productivity and basically leave America a smoking hulk of wasteland populated by brain-dead zombies.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/23/portugals-drug-experience-new-study-confirms-decriminalization-was-a-success/#ixzz1lVvmbelf