Archive for the ‘Markists – Markism’ Category

Senate Dems violate federal law: No plan for a budget plan

From Eric Odom, Liberty News Network

News is now breaking that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D) will refuse to draft a Democrat budget before the 2012 election. While it’s not surprising to see Democrats kick the can down the road, this move is likely to create a significant problem for Democrats attempting to run on the idea of leadership in government. A refusal to draft a budget before the November election is a confession that Democrats refuse to address our spending crises with any meaningful plan. Or any plan at all for that matter.

Even worse, this is an open announcement that if Democrats are allowed to stay in power, they will continue spending us into bankruptcy as a nation when they do not face immediate elections.

The “War on Women” Blows Up on the Regime Like a North Korean Rocket
Posted on April 13, 2012 by Conservative Byte

Yesterday the coordinated, phony “war on women” backfired, just as the North Korean missile did. But do you know Joe Biden is still out there talking about the war on women? He didn’t get the memo that the war on women blew up on them yesterday. He’s still out there saying it’s happening and it’s gonna get worse, and the Republicans are gonna get even meaner. Biden, by the way, gave one-and-a-half percent of his income to charity on his income tax. Employment statistics show that Obama’s war on the economy has hurt women the most. This is incontrovertible news, we’ve had it. This week there was an unexpected soft jobs report, unexpected rise in the number of applications for unemployment. Gas prices are creeping ever closer to a national average of four dollars a gallon.

Another report out proving Obamacare adds trillions to the deficit, in addition to being twice as expensive. His attack on the Supreme Court backfired, according to polling data. He was caught on a hot mic covering up and selling out the American people and allies to the Russians, promising flexibility on missile defense, after the elections. Tell Vladimir to hang with me, much more flexibility to get rid of our nukes after I win reelection. The Zimmerman affidavit, Alan Dershowitz says that the charging instrument here is so pathetic that it won’t get past the judge. Now, that depends on whether the judge has a backbone. More on that as the program unfolds.

Dozens of former high-level NASA astronauts and engineers and scientists have blasted the politicizing of global warming and have denounced the pseudoscience that NASA now peddles. There’s been a revolt inside NASA. The Buffett Rule finally now being called a gimmick by everybody. Everybody’s admitting it’s a gimmick. It’s not anywhere near serious. It’s not gonna raise any revenue. It’s not gonna close the deficit. It’s nothing other than a gimmick.

by Bob Livingston
With his approval ratings below 50 percent as an election looms, Congress gridlocked over his economy-destroying budget proposal and the prospect that his signature piece of legislation — Obamacare — is likely to get thrown out as unConstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, President Barack Obama and his minions have ratcheted up their tried and true modus operandi: thuggery.
This has long been common practice for Obama. His career was launched from the home of a convicted terrorist. His parents, friends and key influencers were socialists and communists. It is who he is.
Obama was first elected as a U.S. Senator from Illinois only after he and chief operative David Axelrod arranged to have the sealed divorce records of Obama’s opponents unsealed: first Democrat primary opponent Blair Hull’s, then Republican Jack Ryan’s.
Polls showed Hull enjoyed a healthy lead over Obama as late as one month before the primary. But then The Chicago Tribune — Alexrod’s former employer — began publishing stories accusing Hull of violent behavior in his marriage and claiming that an ex-wife had sought a protective order during their divorce. Finally, Hull and his ex-wife agreed to have the records unsealed; and another ex-wife, their children and a number of Hull’s acquaintances denied Hull was violent. But Hull’s poll numbers began to tank and Obama won the primary.
In the general election Obama faced Jack Ryan, husband of actress Jeri Ryan. During a child custody dispute some years prior to the election, Jeri Ryan had claimed that Jack Ryan made her accompany him to swingers clubs in New York and Paris. Axelrod obtained “leaked” copies of the couple’s Chicago divorce records and then The Tribune sent lawyers to California to request the sealed child custody case records be unsealed. Over the objections of both Ryans, the judge released the records. Shortly thereafter, Jack Ryan withdrew from the race.
During the 2008 Democrat Presidential primary, Obama operatives intimidated Hillary Clinton supporters and engaged in improper and possibly illegal activities to win the nomination, according to a former Clinton campaign worker. Michelle Thomas told WND that she received death threats and was called a racist for opposing Obama. She also accused the Obama campaign of stealing caucuses by throwing away votes and intimidating people trying to enter the caucus locations.
Thomas also believes the Obama campaign is behind the death of Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney, who was shot in his office days before the Democratic National Convention by Timothy D. Johnson, who was then killed by police after a car chase. The day before he was shot, Gwatney and Thomas had agreed that Gwatney would find a superdelegate from the Arkansas delegation to introduce a petition to have Clinton’s name placed in nomination for President.
Another Clinton supporter Thomas met with about introducing the petition, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, died mysteriously the next week.
“We found it quite a coincidence that Bill Gwatney was killed the day after we talked with him,” Thomas told WND. “And just a few days later that Tubbs Jones died suddenly of an aneurysm, after she had agreed to introduce our petition.”
Hollywood film producer Bettina Viviano told WND that she heard Bill Clinton say on a conference call during the 2008 primary that he believed Obama was ineligible to be President, and that he was prepared to go public with the information until Gwatney was murdered.
According to Viviano, a campaign staffer who was close to Hillary Clinton said Bill Clinton received a message after Gwatney’s death: “Shut up, Bill, or you’re next.” But Clinton, who was a friend of Gwatney’s, intended to speak out anyway until he received another message: “OK, it’s your daughter, now, we’ll go after.”
After receiving the threats directed toward Chelsea Clinton, Bill Clinton never said anything else about it, Viviano told WND.
The Obama Administration used thuggery to defeat a Texas bill that would have kicked the Transportation Security Administration out of the State’s airports,  ignored a judge’s order over offshore oil drilling permits and used intimidation to call the media off the story regarding Obama’s forged birth certificate and Selective Service registration form.
The Obama Justice Department is also reportedly set to sue Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz. Arpaio is investigating whether Obama’s birth certificate and Selective Service registration are forgeries and is also trying to find other missing Obama documents that would prove whether Obama is a U.S. citizen.
Obama’s comments on the Trayvon Martin shooting were designed to inflame an already volatile incident that already had race hucksters stoking a racial fire. His comments had the intended effect. Since then, there have been several incidents reported of blacks attacking whites in the name of Martin.
Now, with his freedom- and America-destroying Marxist agenda getting pushback from an awakening American populace, Obama is at it again. He’s taking on the Supreme Court.
During a press conference last week at the White House, Obama said:
We are confident that this will be over – that this will be upheld. I’m confident this will be upheld because it should be upheld. Again, that’s not just my opinion. That’s the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors, academics and judges… Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. I guess I would remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench is judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. For an unelected group of people to somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law is a good example of that, and I’m pretty sure this court will recognize that and not take that step… With respect to health care, I actually continue to be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law. The reason is, in accordance to precedent out there, it’s constitutional.
Obama is channeling his inner FDR. As President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought — with some success — to intimidate the Supreme Court after it began striking down sections of the New Deal by threatening to pack the court with more justices who would be favorable to New Deal legislation.
New Deal proponents accused the court of being obstructionist and political. That’s essentially Obama’s argument. He may also be laying the groundwork to ignore the court’s order. It wouldn’t be first time the Obama Administration had ignored a court’s order, and it wouldn’t be the first time a President had done so.
In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln ignored an opinion by Chief Justice Roger Taney that Lincoln had no lawful power to suspend habeas corpus. So if Obama does ignore the Supreme Court, he’ll be channeling his inner Lincoln.
But even more troubling is that in saying that the Supreme Court’s striking down of Obamacare would be unprecedented, Obama is just lying. It’s a wonder his pants aren’t on fire.
As a so-called “Constitutional scholar,” Obama has to know that the court has overturned laws passed by “a democratically elected Congress” 165 times (click here and see page 201). And it doesn’t matter whether the law was passed “by a strong majority” (although only in Obama’s mind is 219-212 partisan vote a strong majority), that doesn’t exempt it from judicial review.
“That the Supreme Court would declare as unconstitutional congressional ‘laws’ which illegally violated the Constitution was one of the benefits of the Constitution, which the Constitution’s advocates used to help convince the People to ratify the Constitution,” writes David Kopel in The Volokh Conspiracy. “In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton explained why unconstitutional actions of Congress are not real laws, and why the judiciary has a duty to say so… Because Hamilton was the foremost ‘big government’ advocate of his time, it is especially notable that he was a leading advocate for judicial review of whether any part of the federal government had exceeded its delegated powers.”
Obama’s actions make clear the reasons the Founding Fathers inserted the phrase “natural-born citizen” into the Constitutional requirements for President. They wanted a President who was loyal to “these United States” and the Constitution.
But Obama sees the Constitution and the rule of law as impediments to his Marxist, America-destroying agenda. He rose to the office like a Mafioso don. His political career was born in the home of convicted terrorist Bill Ayers (Obama’s mentor who also wrote Obama’s “biography” and says he wakes up every morning thinking he’s going to end capitalism and goes to bed every evening disappointed that he didn’t). Obama was fed from the pulpit of the racist preacher Jeremiah Wright. And rose to prominence with the help of a complicit — even sycophantic — mainstream media, with which he now enjoys a carrot-and-stick relationship.
If he came to power like a don, it should come as no surprise he is governing (or ruling, according to Valerie Jarrett) like one as well.

LENIN SAID “IF YOU ARE A SOCIALIST THEN YOU ARE A COMMUNIST”

Rep. Allen West’s remark that up to 80 members of the House are communists was a reference to the membership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which was founded by a U.S. socialist group, the Democratic Socialists of America.

Some Caucus members still demonstrate a close working relationship with the socialist group.

West’s spokesman, Tim Edson, clarified in a statement today that West was referring to the Congressional Progressive Caucus in his talk with voters last night in Palm City, Fla.

Edson declared that the Florida Republican “stands by his words.”

“But the words the media needs to pay attention to are the words of the members of the Progressive Caucus,” the spokesman said. “They speak for themselves. Call it what you may, but these House members are clearly not proponents of capitalism, free markets or individual economic freedom. Website hosted by socialists

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, or CPC, boasts more than 80 members.

In the January/February 1998 issue of the Chicago DSA’s New Ground publication, Ron Baiman identified Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an avowed socialist, and Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts as leaders of the Progressive Caucus in Congress, which DSA “helped to organize.”

Until November 2002, the website of the Progressive Caucus was hosted by the DSA. WND reported as early as 1998 on the progressive congressional faction. Eventually the website being hosted by the socialist organization and the list of CPC names was moved to Sanders’ website and later to its own site.

The issue of the CPC being hosted on the DSA website rose again in June 2000 in connection with a heated dispute on the House floor between Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and David R. Obey, D- Wis., over the “merits of the F-22 fighter plane.”

When Cunningham stood to defend himself, he threw into his argument the fact the DSA website had a link to the CPC, which DeFazio then led.

In 2000, the relationship between the CPC and DSA was an open secret.

In an Aug. 10, 2000, letter to the editor published in The Kentucky Post, it was reported that then-Democratic Rep. Ken Lucas had received campaign funds from Democratic Reps. Marcy Kaptur, John Lewis, George Miller, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel, “among others on the far-left.” The writer remarked that “those five names stand out because they are all members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus – a group closely aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America.”

The CPC still had not moved to its own website on April 23, 2002. Balint Vazsonyi responded thusly in the Washington Times to the hypothetical question, “‘What?’ I hear you say. ‘Socialists in the Congress of the United States?’”

Dozens, dear reader, dozens. And they make no secret of it. Although of late it has been refurbished and the address altered, they have their own Web site. They call themselves members of the Progressive Caucus, until recently an arm of the Democratic Socialists of America, itself an arm of the Socialist International. The Progressive Caucus may be a separate entity now, but the details of its program, as advertised on the Web site (dsausa.org/pc/pc.caucus.html), are indistinguishable from that of the Socialist International.

To their credit, they make no secret of it. Only the rest of us prefer not to believe it.

In a follow-up article in November 2002, Vazsonyi dug deeper into the continued presence of the CPC on the DSA website. He discussed the issue of constitutionality and the ramifications of the relationship:

The Socialist International carries the torch for Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Josef Stalin. Pay no attention to the desperate attempts by socialists to distance themselves from Stalin. For our purposes, it suffices to observe that every single tenet of the Socialist International is the exact opposite of the principles upon which America was founded, and which define the U.S. Constitution.

For our purposes, it suffices also to observe that members of the U.S. Congress are required to furnish an oath whereby they will preserve, protect, and defend said Constitution.

The CPC moved its website in late 2002.

‘Socialists active in Congress’

In October 2009, the DSA newsletter reported that 70 congressional Democrats were active members.

The group also claimed 11 socialists sit on the House Judiciary Committee.

The DSA makes clear its preference for working within the Democratic Party for the change it seeks.

“Many socialists have seen the Democratic Party, since at least the New Deal, as the key political arena in which to consolidate this coalition, because the Democratic Party held the allegiance of our natural allies,” the group states in the “Where we stand” section of its website.

“Through control of the government by the Democratic Party coalition, led by anti-corporate forces, a progressive program regulating the corporations, redistributing income, fostering economic growth and expanding social programs could be realized.”

In addition to a national program of “massive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector,” the DSA also calls for a breaking down the American-style notions of nationalism and national sovereignty.

“A program of global justice can unite opponents of transnational corporations across national boundaries around a common program to transform existing international institutions and invent new global organizations designed to ensure that wages, working conditions, environmental standards and social rights are ‘leveled up’ worldwide,” the group says on its website. “The basis of cooperation for fighting the transnationals must be forged across borders from its inception. Economic nationalism and other forms of chauvinism will doom any expanded anti-corporate agenda.”

It also states in the group’s mission statement: “A democratic socialist politics for the 21st century must promote an international solidarity dedicated to raising living standards across the globe, rather than ‘leveling down’ in the name of maximizing profits and economic efficiency. Equality, solidarity, and democracy can only be achieved through international political and social cooperation aimed at ensuring that economic institutions benefit all people. Democratic socialists are dedicated to building truly international social movements – of unionists, environmentalists, feminists, and people of color – that together can elevate global justice over brutalizing global competition.”

Communist anthem

While the DSA tries to paint distinctions between its brand of socialism and communism, before scrubbing its website, the site included a song list that included:

“The Internationale,” the worldwide anthem of communism and socialism.
“Red Revolution,” sung to the tune of “Red Robin,” with these lyrics: “When the Red Revolution brings its solution along, along, there’ll be no more lootin’ when we start shootin’ that Wall Street throng.”
“Are You Sleeping, Bourgeoisie?” Lyrics include: “Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie. And when the revolution comes, We’ll kill you all with knives and guns, Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie.”
The DSA is a political action committee and bills itself as the heir to the defunct Socialist Party of America. Its chief organizing objective is to work within the Democratic Party as the primary, but not sole, method of achieving public ownership of private property and the means of production.

“Stress our Democratic Party strategy and electoral work,” explains an internal organizing document obtained by WND. “The Democratic Party is something the public understands, and association with it takes the edge off. Stressing our Democratic Party work will establish some distance from the radical subculture and help integrate you to the milieu of the young liberals.”

Close working relationship

Demonstrating the close relationship between the DSA and the Progressive Caucus, in October 2010 WND reported the Democratic chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee was caught on tape meeting with DSA leaders to discuss how the group can cooperate to strengthen President Obama and advance their “one-world” plans.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who has a long history with the DSA, was recorded promoting a “one-world” government while asking the socialist group to organize against the war in Afghanistan and in support of Obama’s policies.

Conyers was a special guest at a two-day convention in Detroit in March 1982 that resulted in the formation of DSA.

Conyers has spoken at numerous DSA events, including at the socialist group’s national dinner in 2008, where he was the keynote.

Conyers was one of 13 founders of Congressional Black Caucus, which long has promoted far-left causes. He is the most prominent lawmaker lobbying to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted murderer of a Philadelphia police officer. He has advocated on behalf of the Marxist Nicaraguan Sandinista dictatorship and has called for the U.S. to end its sanctions against Fidel Castro’s communist regime. The Democratic Socialists of America released in its newsletter a list of members of the U.S. Congress who are members of the organization:

Co-Chairs
Hon. Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07)
Hon. Lynn Woolsey (CA-06)

Vice Chairs

Hon. Diane Watson (CA-33)
Hon. Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18)
Hon. Mazie Hirono (HI-02)
Hon. Dennis Kucinich (OH-10)

Senate Members

Hon. Bernie Sanders (VT)

House Members

Hon. Neil Abercrombie (HI-01)
Hon. Tammy Baldwin (WI-02)
Hon. Xavier Becerra (CA-31)
Hon. Madeleine Bordallo (GU-AL)
Hon. Robert Brady (PA-01)
Hon. Corrine Brown (FL-03)
Hon. Michael Capuano (MA-08)
Hon. André Carson (IN-07)
Hon. Donna Christensen (VI-AL)
Hon. Yvette Clarke (NY-11)
Hon. William “Lacy” Clay (MO-01)
Hon. Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05)
Hon. Steve Cohen (TN-09)
Hon. John Conyers (MI-14)
Hon. Elijah Cummings (MD-07)
Hon. Danny Davis (IL-07)
Hon. Peter DeFazio (OR-04)
Hon. Rosa DeLauro (CT-03)
Rep. Donna F. Edwards (MD-04)
Hon. Keith Ellison (MN-05)
Hon. Sam Farr (CA-17)
Hon. Chaka Fattah (PA-02)
Hon. Bob Filner (CA-51)
Hon. Barney Frank (MA-04)
Hon. Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11)
Hon. Alan Grayson (FL-08)
Hon. Luis Gutierrez (IL-04)
Hon. John Hall (NY-19)
Hon. Phil Hare (IL-17)
Hon. Maurice Hinchey (NY-22)
Hon. Michael Honda (CA-15)
Hon. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02)
Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30)
Hon. Hank Johnson (GA-04)
Hon. Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Hon. Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI-13)
Hon. Barbara Lee (CA-09)
Hon. John Lewis (GA-05)
Hon. David Loebsack (IA-02)
Hon. Ben R. Lujan (NM-3)
Hon. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14)
Hon. Ed Markey (MA-07)
Hon. Jim McDermott (WA-07)
Hon. James McGovern (MA-03)
Hon. George Miller (CA-07)
Hon. Gwen Moore (WI-04)
Hon. Jerrold Nadler (NY-08)
Hon. Eleanor Holmes-Norton (DC-AL)
Hon. John Olver (MA-01)
Hon. Ed Pastor (AZ-04)
Hon. Donald Payne (NJ-10)
Hon. Chellie Pingree (ME-01)
Hon. Charles Rangel (NY-15)
Hon. Laura Richardson (CA-37)
Hon. Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34)
Hon. Bobby Rush (IL-01)
Hon. Linda Sánchez (CA-47)
Hon. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09)
Hon. José Serrano (NY-16)
Hon. Louise Slaughter (NY-28)
Hon. Pete Stark (CA-13)
Hon. Bennie Thompson (MS-02)
Hon. John Tierney (MA-06)
Hon. Nydia Velazquez (NY-12)
Hon. Maxine Waters (CA-35)
Hon. Mel Watt (NC-12)
Hon. Henry Waxman (CA-30)
Hon. Peter Welch (VT-AL)
Hon. Robert Wexler (FL-19)

Democracy is indispensable to socialism. V.I. Lenin

Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx

The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin

PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY OFFERING ‘REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM’ COURSE — AND WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE THE SYLLABUS – WHY?

Portland State University is offering a number of controversial courses this semester, the likes of which include “Revolutionary Marxism: Theory and Practice,“ and ”Art Within Activism” (though students are also welcome to take “Exploring Buffy the Vampire Slayer”).
The “Revolutionary Marxism” course is introduced in what appears to be the syllabus:
The onset of the Arab Spring, revolts in European capitals against austerity, and the emergence of Occupy Wall Street here in the US have made the need for understanding revolutionary political theories [more] urgent than ever.
This course is designed to introduce students to the basic concepts of Marxist thought with an emphasis on the practical applications of Marxist Theory in local political struggle.  We will focus on four major areas throughout the semester, including the Fundamentals of Marxist Theory, Marxism and Oppression, Revolutionary Practice, and The Future of Socialism.  In exploring these four areas of focus, the course will compare and contrast revolutionary Marxism to Stalinism, reformist socialism, leading academic interpretations of Marxism, as well as other radical leftist ideologies. [Emphasis added]
The course’s instructors, Grant Booth and Wael Elasady, are both admitted socialists.  They define the course’s goals as:
1.  Students will learn the fundamentals of Marxist theory
2.  Students will apply a Marxist analysis to current events
3.  Students will apply Marxist theory to local political and community organizing
Moreover, students will seemingly be required to forge a “community connection” with a local community/political organization from a specified list.  Some of the “approved” organizations include: Occupy PSU, Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights, Occupy Portland, Portland Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions Coalition (BDS), Jobs with Justice, and the May Day Coalition.

It is projected that 1.8 Million People will loose their jobs.
The coal industry will suffer the same fate as Osama bin Laden under new climate regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the head of the United Mine Workers of America said this week.

“The Navy SEALs shot Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and Lisa Jackson shot us in Washington,” Cecil Roberts, president of the powerful union, said during an interview Tuesday on the West Virginia radio show MetroNews Talkline.

EPA administrator, over the proposed regulations, which would limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants. Opponents of the regulations, including Roberts, say the new rules would be the death knell of the coal industry.
New coal-fired power plants would have to install technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions in order to comply with the rules. The technology, known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), “is not commercially available,” Roberts said.

“This rule is an all-out, in my opinion, decision by the EPA that we’re never going to have another coal-fired facility in the United States that’s constructed,” Roberts said.

The union chief used colorful language to underscore his pointEPA administrator, over the proposed regulations, which would limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants. Opponents of the regulations, including Roberts, say the new rules would be the death knell of the coal industry.
New coal-fired power plants would have to install technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions in order to comply with the rules. The technology, known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), “is not commercially available,” Roberts said.

“This rule is an all-out, in my opinion, decision by the EPA that we’re never going to have another coal-fired facility in the United States that’s constructed,” Roberts said.

The union chief used colorful language to underscore his point.

“I noticed this past week the vice president was talking about the campaign and he mentioned that Osama Bin Laden was dead and General Motors was alive,” Roberts said. “He should have gone on to say that the coal industry is not far behind with respect to what happened with Osama Bin Laden.”

While the United Mine Workers of America likely won’t actively oppose President Obama’s reelection bid, Roberts said the new EPA regulation could prevent the union from endorsing the president.

“That’s something that we have not done yet and may not do because of this very reason. Our people’s jobs are on the line,” Roberts said, adding that Obama has “done a lot of great things for the country.”

Roberts’s comments underscore the vehement opposition to the new EPA regulations in coal states whose economies rely heavily on the fossil fuel.

The rules would require new power plants that burn fossil fuels to release no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt‐hour.

The agency said new natural-gas plants will be able to meet the standard without adding any additional technology. But new coal plants would need to add new technology like CCS, in which carbon dioxide emissions are collected and sequestered in the ground rather than released into the atmosphere.

The rules give new coal-fired power plants flexibility to meet the standard. Instead of meeting the standard on an annual basis, new coal plants that install CCS can use a 30-year average of their carbon dioxide emissions, according to EPA.

The proposed standards come as plans to build new coal plants have been waylaid by competition from inexpensive natural gas — which is undergoing a production boom — and other factors.

Environmental groups have cheered the regulations, with Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune noting that they will “make it nearly impossible to build a new coal plant.”

Roberts, in Tuesday’s interview with host Hoppy Kercheval, took aim at the Sierra Club, arguing the environmental group’s campaign to shut down coal plants is killing jobs.

“This is a broader problem for me than it is for the Sierra Club or the EPA,” Roberts said. “And I’m convinced, Hoppy, that if you give the Sierra Club enough money, they could shut your job down. I don’t know how they’d do it, but they’d figure out a way.”

We have stuck together since the late 1950′s for the sake of the kids, but the whole of the 2008 election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:
–Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

–We don’t like redistributive taxes so you can keep them.
–You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.
–Since you hate guns and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.
–We’ll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and you can go with wind, solar and biodiesel.
–You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell. You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.

–We’ll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.
–You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps users, homeless, homeboys, hippies, druggies and illegal aliens.
–We’ll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO’s and rednecks.
–We’ll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood .

–You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.
–You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we’ll help provide them security.

–We’ll keep our Judeo-Christian values.
–You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness and Shirley McLaine. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

–We’ll keep the SUV’s, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

–You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors.
–We’ll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.
–We’ll keep “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “The National Anthem.”
–I’m sure you’ll be happy to substitute “Imagine”, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”, “Kum Ba Ya” or “We Are the World”.

–We’ll practice trickle down economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.

–Since it often so offends you, we’ll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I’ll bet you answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Barbara Streisand, Jane Fonda, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid with you.

P.S.S. And you won’t have to press 1 for English when you call our country

Since Occupy Wall Street seemingly went into hibernation (we note seemingly because the movement keeps popping up despite what some national outlets are reporting), The Blaze has brought you plenty of analysis theorizing that the spring could be an even bigger time for the movement. Now, it looks like those theories have been confirmed: the unions and other leftists have announced a “99% spring.”

“We are at a crossroads as a country,” a letter on the site dedicated to the new movement says. “We have a choice to make. Greater wealth for a few or opportunity for many. Tax breaks for the richest or a fair shot for the rest of us. A government that can be bought by the highest bidder, or a democracy that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

It continues: “The choice is in our hands. This spring, we will act on that choice and rise up in the tradition of our forefathers and foremothers. We will not be complicit with the suffering in our families for another year. We will prepare ourselves for sustained non-violent direct action.”

That “preparation” looks like a week-long training session from April 9-15. But not just any training session, this training session will be held across the country and will reportedly feature meetings in “places of worship:”

From April 9-15 we will gather across America, 100,000 strong, in homes, places of worship, campuses and the streets to join together in the work of reclaiming our country. We will organize trainings toTell the story of our economy: how we got here, who’s responsible, what a different future could look like, and what we can do about it
Learn the history of non-violent direct action, and
Get into action on our own campaigns to win change.
“This spring we rise!” the website declares. “We will reshape our country with our own hands and feet, bodies and hearts. We will take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, one state at a time.”

So just who exactly is behind this? The letter contains “signers” that will be familiar to you. Or at least their organizations will. And it’s a buffet of far leftists, unions, and even the communist group Working Families Party. Oh, and of course Van Jones:

Sarita Gupta
Jobs With Justice
Bob King
United Auto Workers
George Goehl
National Peoples Action
Ai-jen Poo
National Domestic Workers Alliance
Justin Ruben
MoveOn.org
Mary Kay Henry
Service Employees International Union
Van Jones and Natalie Foster
Rebuild the Dream
Phil Radford
Greenpeace
Leo Gerard
United Steel Workers
Daniel Cantor
Working Families Party
Bruce Klipple
United Electrical Workers Union
But while Bob King of the United Auto Workers (UAW) is a signer of the letter, might the union be behind it more than it’s letting on? It would seem so. The Daily Caller was able to download a cache of files from the UAW website last week that point to a high level of organizing:

[A] series of files The Daily Caller downloaded from the United Auto Workers website indicate that the organized labor powerhouse is behind the effort.
The files, downloaded Sunday, include campaign talking points, a fill-in-the-blank press release template for participating organizations and an advance look at the social media campaign the organizers plan for Facebook and Twitter.
Also included is a “FYI” letter designed for endorsers to distribute, complete with a blank space at the top of the list of participating groups. Filling in a given organization’s name lends the impression that it, not the UAW, is the campaign’s driving force.
A Google cache indicates that the files were available on an unprotected area of the UAW’s web server at least as early as February 16. They disappeared from public view Monday.
Also interesting? It appears the domain for the 99% Spring was registered by the leftist group MoveOn.org (also a signer of the letter).

“We will rise this spring, because we DO hold these truths to be self evident,” the 99% Spring site concludes, “that all men and women are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Get ready.

‘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.

*********************

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.

Obama Gives Billions to the Muslim Brotherhood & Al-Qaeda-The Arab Spring and Our Money
Aren’t you glad you and your neighbors are doing so well that we can afford to give Billions of Dollars in aid and debt forgiveness to Egypt and Tunisia who are not being TAKEN OVER BY THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND AL QAEDA!

One of the leading MB leaders in Egypt, Sobhi Saleh said, “The Muslim Brotherhood would apply Islamic sharia if it came to power”. Further, Sheikh Hazem Abu Ismail of the MB, has announced he will run for the Presidential seat in Egypt. His platform will include such notable goals as “implementation of Islamic sharia law and cancellation the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.” And Obama promised to send our money to Egypt now to support the “Arab Spring” adventures into Democracy? Hell0! How much democracy is there in the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran? What makes anyone think Egypt and Tunisia will be any different?

Sharia Law and Democracy: (For WHO?)

Here are a few gems of democracy and protected freedoms of Sharia Law:

Islam allows husbands to hit their wives even if the husbands merely fear highhandedness in their wives. I bet NOW can’t wait for this one! Highhandedness, that is a good catch-all phrase…
Islam commands that drinkers and gamblers should be whipped. Maybe not a real bad idea but unfortunately some would enjoy it!
The Prophet ordered that their hands and legs should be cut off and their eyes should be branded with heated pieces of iron, and that their cut hands and legs should not be cauterized, till they died. (Sura 5:33—34) And Holder and Obama sued the State of Arizona because the State had to buy its lethal injection drugs outside of the US since there wasn’t any here. Maybe Jan Brewer should just brand they eyes with heated pieces of iron next time!
Islam commands that homosexuals must be executed. Talk about liberty, freedom and tolerance. Boy those Muslims are much more tolerant than those nasty Christians. And everyone here thinks Proposition 8 in California was bad!
Islam orders unmarried fornicators to be whipped and adulterers to be stoned to death. Well, there wouldn’t be a lot of Congressmen and women left nor a few Presidents, governors, etc… The rock business would be a new start-up and maybe stimulate the economy! Wonder where Wiener’s wiener would fit in here?
Islam orders death for Muslim and possible death for non—Muslim critics of Muhammad and the Quran and even sharia itself. Now there is real religious freedom and tolerance. So, those of you who believe that Christians are safe under Sharia Law, are in for a big surprise… The very existence of Christianity to Muslims is not only offensive but intolerable.
Islam commands offensive and aggressive and unjust jihad. Conquered women and children can be enslaved; the captured marriages are considered annulled upon capture; and, Muslim men can immediately take the captured women for their wives.
Every time Obama gives away your money to support “democracy” in the Middle East, just remember what this really means. He is “investing” you money in the establishment of a world-wide Sharia movement that will most assuredly ensnare this planet if not stopped. There is no mention of peaceful coexistence in Sharia. There is no equality for women. There are no Gay Rights, There is no freedom of expression. In short, the spread and infestation of Sharia into the world and the US is the antithesis of the US Constitution.

Unfortunately Obama is not stupid. He is not guessing what underlies the Arab Spring movements and what is coming in behind these changes. He knows full well that the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda will be the big winners. By the time the next President is sworn in, he or she could be facing 4-8 more Islamic Republics similar to Iran with Iran having nuclear capabilities. God save this country. He is the only One who can… Do we deserve it?

RD Pierini

by Dan Gainor
Apparently, megalomaniacs need schedulers.
Just ask George Soros. The left-wing billionaire is helping fund two major conferences that start on the same day, in two different locations just a three hours apart by car. Two liberal events packed into one long weekend. God created the world in six days. Apparently, Soros, who sees himself as “some kind of god,”needs just a long weekend to start remaking today’s world in his image.
The emphasis of both conferences is a familiar one to American voters – change. Soros wants to begin changing the global economy in one event. In the other, his flunkies want to “Change the world. Change the media.”

Now that is change you can believe in. Sadly, those who actually report the news must believe in it because they sure as heck aren’t reporting on Soros or either event. And that’s even though staffers or even executives from Reuters, the Financial Times, NPR, PBS, The Washington Post and other major media outlets are speaking at one event or the other.
The first gathering in Bretton Woods, N.H., is an economic conference Soros once described as “a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order.” In October 2009, Soros committed $50 million to the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). A week later, the glib lefty investor wrote a column calling for a new Bretton Woods event, to recreate the one that helped design the post-WWII economy. Only he wants this one to knock America down a peg or three.
Now, it’s been a little over a year later and the group he funded is making King George’s wish come true – bringing together a whole slew of important people to discuss how to change the global economy. In Soros speak, that means “establish new international rules” and “reform the currency system.”
The announced speakers include a lot of prominent lefties, globalists and economists on the board of the organization he has throwing the event – more than two-thirds of the overall total have ties to Soros. To underscore their connection to history, INET is hosting the conference at the Mount Washington Resort, the very same hotel that held the first gathering.
INET Executive Robert Johnson defended his event in a March 31 interview with Lou Dobbs. Johnson, a former managing director at Soros Fund Management, who is on the Board of Directors for the Soros-funded Economic Policy Institute, avoided saying “Soros” despite Dobbs mentioning Johnson’s boss several times. In his last response, he tried to rationalize the Soros connection, by saying “I have a group of funders including George Soros.” With $50 million, Soros alone makes a pretty big group. Of course, Soros will also be speaking in Bretton Woods about “The Emerging Economic and Political Order.”
Just down the road in Boston, a Soros-funded media conference is trying to manipulate that emerging order as well. Close to 350 left-wingers from a variety of organizations are gathering there for the National Conference for Media Reform.
That “change the world” conference includes two commissioners from the FCC, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Bernie Sanders, four Democratic representatives, the head of Columbia University, and assorted left-wing journalist types, from Salon’s Glenn Greenwald to disgraced former MSNBC host David Shuster, who now works for a Soros-funded investigative operation.
The rest of the list reads like a “Who’s Who” of left-wing organizations and talking heads, including the president of PBS, a senior vice president with American Public Media, an Al Jazeera English executive, the president of the Newspaper Guild – CWA and Washington Post columnist Rob Pegoraro. Many others have Soros connections, such as:
Common Cause, which has been going after conservative Supreme Court justices who have some connection to the Koch brothers. Common Cause seems immune to similar investigations of their own gravy train.
Columbia Journalism Review’s Dean Starkman. He is chief of the review’s “The Audit” section and a 2006 Katrina Media Fellow with the Open Society Institute, the primary Soros charitable foundation.
Free Press, which is holding the conference. Free Press has received more than $1 million from Soros since 2003 and has 18 presenters pushing for things like “strong public media” or an extremely expensive national broadband plan they quaintly describe as “universal access to communications.”
Think Progress’s Koch-hating Lee Fang. Think Progress is a project of Democrat John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, which was founded with Soros money. Fang is on the panel for: “Real Issues vs. Astroturf: Confronting the Koch Brothers,” and makes the laughable claim “this is not about liberals versus conservatives” when the entire goal of the left is to shut down the Kochs to defund the right.
Everywhere you they go in Boston, they’ll be making more left turns than NASCAR. It’s an event filled with lefties dissatisfied that the news media aren’t even more liberal, and their goal will be to make that happen. Whether it’s “Beyond Pronouns: Creating Real Stories About Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People” or pushing for illegal immigrant rights, the conference is a predictable liberal take on pretty much everything.
But the over-arching theme is getting government to fix the media. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, whose school also includes the well-known and partly Soros-funded Columbia School of Journalism, is one of several speakers advocating for increased government funding for media. He called for federal funding of the media in a 2010 Wall Street Journal piece with the terrifying headline: “Journalism Needs Government Help.” Bollinger pushed for the creation of a public media that combines NPR, PBS and Voice of America. He also wants to “end to the regulation of ‘indecent’ language and images in broadcast programming” and return to the Fairness Doctrine.
Two other speakers, Free Press founder Robert McChesney and co-author John Nichols, have been pushing for $35 billion a year to fund media. Though their solution has gone from $20 billion a year for three years to $35 billion indefinitely, they are consistent in wanting U.S. media to be more like it is in Europe and oppose the “fantasy of a free-market solution.”
That’s not surprising. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who is speaking at both conferences, is wildly critical of people who support free markets, or what he calls “free market fundamentalists.” Free markets are directly in opposition with the Soros-funded group think that sees Big Government as merely a starting point for Ever Bigger Government.
This weekend, we get two visions of taxpayer-funded solution, only most in the news media are too short-sighted to see them.
Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. He writes frequently for Fox News Opinion. He can also be contacted on FaceBook and Twitter as dangainor.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/04/06/george-soros-events-weekend-aim-remake-financial-order-media-wheres-reporting/#ixzz1lc4lNfpq

Ranking Member Elijah Cummings and other Democrats in the minority of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have made an attempt to whitewash apparent felonies committed by the Department of Justice during Operation Fast and Furious:

Democrats looking into Operation Fast and Furious say a yearlong investigation has turned up no evidence that the flawed gun smuggling probe was conceived or directed by high-level political appointees at Justice Department headquarters.

The probe, the Democrats say, was just one of four such operations that were part of a misguided five-year-long effort, during both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, in the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives against firearms trafficking along the Southwest border.

“Operation Fast and Furious was the latest in a series of fatally flawed operations run by ATF agents in Phoenix and the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s Office,” the report from Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says.

Senator Charles Grassley, who has helped lead the investigation of the gunwalking plot, reacted angrily to the minority report:

The idea that senior political appointees have clean hands in these gunwalking scandals doesn’t pass the laugh test, especially considering we’ve seen less than 10 percent of the pages that the Justice Department has provided the Inspector General. They ignored the warning signs and failed to put a stop to it or hold anyone accountable. Lanny Breuer is a senior political appointee, and he admits to knowing about gunwalking as early as April 2010. Documents turned over late Friday night indicate he was still discussing plans to let guns cross the border with Mexican officials on the same day the Department denied to me in writing that ATF would ever let guns walk. He stood mute as this administration fought tooth and nail to keep any of this information from coming out for a year. It will take a lot more than a knee-jerk defense from their political allies in Congress to restore public trust in the leadership of the Justice Department. The American people want to see those who failed to act be held accountable.

What Cummings and his political allies intentionally avoided in their report is that the three other operations were not gunwalking operations. They were interdiction efforts that involved small-scale controlled buys done in conjunction with Mexican law enforcement. These operations were designed to lead to the arrest of straw purchasers and gun smugglers, and resulted in relatively quick arrests after smaller weapons shipments were transferred. Furthermore, the weapons were interdicted either before they left the United States, or by Mexican authorities lying in wait on the other side of the border.

Operation Fast and Furious was conducted after the ATF determined that the tactics used in these operations during the Bush administration were too risky to continue.

But instead of modifying the failed parts of the previous efforts, the Eric Holder Department of Justice instigated an entirely different and purposefully deadly plot. They introduced a gunwalking operation that moved thousands of weapons without the permission or cooperation of Mexican authorities. It is more accurately described as a DOJ-sanctioned gun-smuggling plot to arm the Sinaloa cartel.

Mexican authorities were purposefully deceived by the Justice Department. To maintain the secrecy of the plot and to avoid tipping off Mexican authorities, ATF liaisons working with the Mexican government were lied to about the operation by their supervisors.

The plot actually prevented federal agents from making arrests. In one particularly telling incident, the ATF’s Bill Newell forced John Dodson, an ATF agent, to provide the weapons to a gun smuggler with his own hands in order to “dirty him up” in hopes he wouldn’t reveal the plot he was vocally criticizing to his superiors.

We know from documentation that Newell had direct conversations with personnel in the White House’s National Security Council about Operation Fast and Furious.

We know that U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke, who was responsible for overseeing the program for the Department of Justice, was the architect of Democrat gun-banning schemes dating back 23 years, including the 1994 “assault weapons ban” that sunset in 2004.

Burke’s deputy Patrick Cunningham, chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid testifying against himself, fearing criminal prosecution for his role in the gunwalking plot.Emails that were part of a 500-page DOJ document dump this past Friday indicate that Attorney General Eric Holder’s Deputy Chief of Staff Monty Wilkinson was informed that BORTAC Agent Brian Terry was killed with two guns walked in Operation Fast and Furious less than 24 hours after the shooting. Further, the documentary evidence shows that Wilkinson scheduled a call with Burke the next day to get a briefing. This suggests that Wilkinson was getting the details of how Operation Fast and Furious led to Brian Terry’s death. Wilkinson would have been profoundly incompetent had he not briefed Attorney General Holder on the incident immediately thereafter.

In testimony in front of Congress on May 3, 2011, Holder insisted he’d only heard of Operation Fast and Furious “a few weeks” before he testified; a story he later change to “a few months.” But documentary evidence shows he began receiving memos about Fast and Furious in July 2010, six months before the firefight that ended Agent Terry’s life.

Now, the emails released last week strongly suggest that Holder was aware of Operation Fast and Furious within hours of Brian Terry’s death. Considering the evidence, the most logical conclusion is that Attorney General Holder lied in his testimony in front of Congress.

The report released by Cummings and his allies doesn’t offer the slightest interest in finding answers to the most basic questions about the plot:

Who came up with the idea of allowing guns to be purchased by straw purchasers and then “walked” across the border by smugglers?
Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Justice?
Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Homeland Security?
Is Operation Fast and Furious the only operation of its type, or were there similar operations in Texas, Florida, and other states, as evidence suggests?
What, precisely, did Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and Janet Napolitano know about Operation Fast and Furious, and when did they know it?
The Holder Justice Department — and in all likelihood the Obama White House — conspired to violate the Arms Export Control Act and the Kingpin Act. They are accessories in the deaths of more than 300 Mexican civilians and BORTAC agent Brian Terry.

They then attempted to execute a cover-up of the plot by blocking a Congressional investigation at every turn, which seems to beg for RICO prosecution.

Email communications between officials of this administration show that they hoped to use the violence committed by the weapons they smuggled into Mexico in order to call for stringent restrictions on the rights of American citizens.

Grassley is correct: the report does not appear able to pass any test of credibility based on the already available evidence.

We’ve covered the Catholic Church’s ongoing battle with the Obama administration over contraception health care mandates for quite some time. Over the weekend, though, the stand-off took an unusual turn, as Catholic churches across America read a letter to congregants that perfectly encapsulated the church’s stance against the impending federal requirements.

The Church’s vocal arguments against the Obama administration are centered upon a Health and Human Services Department requirement that employers must include contraception and abortion-inducing drugs in health-care coverage. While this requirement doesn’t apply to houses of worship, it will force Catholic colleges, hospitals and other Christian groups to provide these drugs despite their faith-based opposition to them.

Many of these organizations, despite not being, themselves, churches, are intrinsically rooted in religious belief systems that stand firmly opposed to medications and procedures that would terminate the life of an unborn child. These deeply-rooted moral codes, which drive the groups’ work, will be impeded, Catholic leaders say, should the Obama administration continue with its planned mandate.

Recently, the federal government made one small concession surrounding the requirement, as officials decided to give church-affiliated hospitals and organizations another year before they will be forced to comply with the coverage restrictions.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan (AP)
“In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, recently said.

Over the weekend, the Catholic Church’s letter went beyond simply issuing oppositional rhetoric to media. Instead, priests read an open note to congregations across the country, dubbing the administration‘s take on women’s health and religious violations as an attack on their faith. In the letter, Bishops highlighted what they called “an alarming and serious matter,“ as their words contended that the federal government has ”dealt a heavy blow” to the Catholic population.
While there were some variations in the letter, as it was personalized by each Bishop, here’s the text that was sent out by the Bishop of Marquette (Michigan):

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just been dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers,
including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.
In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.
We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture,
only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less.
And therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend visiting www.usccb.org/conscience,to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the Obama Administration’s decision.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
+Alexander K. Sample
Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample
Bishop of Marquette
This is the latest development in the spat between the federal government and the Catholic Church. While contraception is a major problem dividing the two parties, other developments have added to the relational deterioration. Among the developments, the Department of Health and Human Services decided to end funding to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last year.
Rather than continuing to allocate money to a special program the bishops group oversaw to assist victims of modern-day slavery (i.e. human trafficking), the administration, instead, chose to give the funds to three non-Catholic groups. The bishops conference had refused to refer trafficking victims to receive contraceptives or abortions, so the American Civil Liberties Union sued and HHS decided to provide funds to groups that would refer women for these services.

Then there’s gay marriage — another contentious issue. The administration’s stance of not defending traditional marriage also contradicts Catholic teaching.

As for the health care regulation — a tenet that abortion-rights groups heralded when it was introduced last summer — there’s no telling how the situation will end, as the Church seems adamant about its refusal to complyIn September, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the regulation “an unprecedented attack on religious liberty.” In November, The Catholic Advocate PAC launched an attack campaign against the Obama administration as well. To these responses, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said late last year that the Church’s “conscience thing” puts woman at risk (yes, she’s a Catholic).

In the end, there will be dire results, it seems, should the administration proceed as planned.

“In general, the narcissist is very impatient, easily bored, with strong attention deficits unless and until he is the topic of discussion. He acts bored, disdainful, even angry, if he feels that they are intruding on his precious time and, thus, abusing him. One can publicly dissect all aspects of the intimate life of a narcissist without repercussions, providing the discourse is not “emotionally tinted”.” They are usually very thin-skinned – just ask Governor Jan Brewer!

By Dr. Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. (8/13/2008) via Global Politician

Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist. Granted, only a qualified mental health diagnostician (which I am not) can determine whether someone suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and this, following lengthy tests and personal interviews. But, in the absence of access to Barack Obama, one has to rely on his overt performance and on testimonies by his closest, nearest and dearest.

Narcissistic leaders are nefarious and their effects pernicious. They are subtle, refined, socially-adept, manipulative, possessed of thespian skills, and convincing. Both types equally lack empathy and are ruthless and relentless or driven.

Perhaps it is time to require each candidate to high office in the USA to submit to a rigorous physical and mental checkup with the results made public.

I. Upbringing and Childhood

Obama’s early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations. Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. Then, his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia: a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995.

Pathological narcissism is a reaction to prolonged abuse and trauma in early childhood or early adolescence. The source of the abuse or trauma is immaterial: the perpetrators could be dysfunctional or absent parents, teachers, other adults, or peers.

II. Behavior Patterns

The narcissist:

* Feels grandiose and self-important (e.g., exaggerates accomplishments, talents, skills, contacts, and personality traits to the point of lying, demands to be recognised as superior without commensurate achievements);

* Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion;

* Firmly convinced that he or she is unique and, being special, can only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-status people (or institutions);

* Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation – or, failing that, wishes to be feared and to be notorious (Narcissistic Supply);

* Feels entitled. Demands automatic and full compliance with his or her unreasonable expectations for special and favourable priority treatment;

* Is “interpersonally exploitative”, i.e., uses others to achieve his or her own ends;

* Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with, acknowledge, or accept the feelings, needs, preferences, priorities, and choices of others;

* Constantly envious of others and seeks to hurt or destroy the objects of his or her frustration. Suffers from persecutory (paranoid) delusions as he or she believes that they feel the same about him or her and are likely to act similarly;

* Behaves arrogantly and haughtily. Feels superior, omnipotent, omniscient, invincible, immune, “above the law”, and omnipresent (magical thinking). Rages when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted by people he or she considers inferior to him or her and unworthy.

Narcissism is a defense mechanism whose role is to deflect hurt and trauma from the victim’s “True Self” into a “False Self” which is omnipotent, invulnerable, and omniscient. This False Self is then used by the narcissist to garner narcissistic supply from his human environment. Narcissistic supply is any form of attention, both positive and negative and it is instrumental in the regulation of the narcissist’s labile sense of self-worth.

Perhaps the most immediately evident trait of patients with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is their vulnerability to criticism and disagreement. Subject to negative input, real or imagined, even to a mild rebuke, a constructive suggestion, or an offer to help, they feel injured, humiliated and empty and they react with disdain (devaluation), rage, and defiance.

From my book “Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited”:

“To avoid such intolerable pain, some patients with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) socially withdraw and feign false modesty and humility to mask their underlying grandiosity. Dysthymic and depressive disorders are common reactions to isolation and feelings of shame and inadequacy.”

Due to their lack of empathy, disregard for others, exploitativeness, sense of entitlement, and constant need for attention (narcissistic supply), narcissists are rarely able to maintain functional and healthy interpersonal relationships.

Many narcissists are over-achievers and ambitious. Some of them are even talented and skilled. But they are incapable of team work because they cannot tolerate setbacks. They are easily frustrated and demoralized and are unable to cope with disagreement and criticism. Though some narcissists have meteoric and inspiring careers, in the long-run, all of them find it difficult to maintain long-term professional achievements and the respect and appreciation of their peers. The narcissist’s fantastic grandiosity, frequently coupled with a hypomanic mood, is typically incommensurate with his or her real accomplishments (the “grandiosity gap”).

An important distinction is between cerebral and somatic narcissists. The cerebrals derive their Narcissistic Supply from their intelligence or academic achievements and the somatics derive their Narcissistic Supply from their physique, exercise, physical or sexual prowess and romantic or physical “conquests”.

Another crucial division within the ranks of patients with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is between the classic variety (those who meet five of the nine diagnostic criteria included in the DSM), and the compensatory kind (their narcissism compensates for deep-set feelings of inferiority and lack of self-worth).
Obama displays the following behaviors, which are among the hallmarks of pathological narcissism:

* Subtly misrepresents facts and expediently and opportunistically shifts positions, views, opinions, and “ideals” (e.g., about campaign finance, re-districting). These flip-flops do not cause him overt distress and are ego-syntonic (he feels justified in acting this way). Alternatively, reuses to commit to a standpoint and, in the process, evidences a lack of empathy.

Ignores data that conflict with his fantasy world, or with his inflated and grandiose self-image. This has to do with magical thinking. Obama already sees himself as president because he is firmly convinced that his dreams, thoughts, and wishes affect reality. Additionally, he denies the gap between his fantasies and his modest or limited real-life achievements (for instance, in 12 years of academic career, he hasn’t published a single scholarly paper or book).

- Feels that he is above the law, incl. and especially his own laws.

- Talks about himself in the 3rd person singluar or uses the regal “we” and craves to be the exclsuive center of attention, even adulation

- Have a messianic-cosmic vision of himself and his life and his “mission”.

- Sets ever more complex rules in a convoluted world of grandiose fantasies with its own language (jargon)

- Displays false modesty and unctuous “folksiness” but unable to sustain these behaviors (the persona, or mask) for long. It slips and the true Obama is revealed: haughty, aloof, distant, and disdainful of simple folk and their lives.

- Sublimates aggression and holds grudges.

- Behaves as an eternal adolescent (e.g., his choice of language, youthful image he projects, demands indulgence and feels entitled to special treatment, even though his objective accomplishments do not justify it).

III. Body Language

Many complain of the incredible deceptive powers of the narcissist. They find themselves involved with narcissists (emotionally, in business, or otherwise) before they have a chance to discover their true character. Shocked by the later revelation, they mourn their inability to separate from the narcissist and their gullibility.

Narcissists are an elusive breed, hard to spot, harder to pinpoint, impossible to capture. Even an experienced mental health diagnostician with unmitigated access to the record and to the person examined would find it fiendishly difficult to determine with any degree of certainty whether someone suffers from a full fledged Narcissistic Personality Disorder or merely possesses narcissistic traits, a narcissistic style, a personality structure (“character”), or a narcissistic “overlay” superimposed on another mental health problem.

Moreover, it is important to distinguish between traits and behavior patterns that are independent of the patient’s cultural-social context (i.e., which are inherent, or idiosyncratic) and reactive patterns, or conformity to cultural and social morals and norms. Reactions to severe life crises or circumstances are also often characterized by transient pathological narcissism, for instance (Ronningstam and Gunderson, 1996). But such reactions do not a narcissist make.

When a person belongs to a society or culture that has often been described as narcissistic by scholars (such as Theodore Millon) and social thinkers (e.g., Christopher Lasch) how much of his behavior can be attributed to his milieu and which of his traits are really his?

The Narcissistic Personality Disorder is rigorously defined in the DSM IV-TR with a set of strict criteria and differential diagnoses.

Narcissism is regarded by many scholars to be an adaptative strategy (“healthy narcissism”). It is considered pathological in the clinical sense only when it becomes a rigid personality structure replete with a series of primitive defence mechanisms (such as splitting, projection, projective identification, or intellectualization) and when it leads to dysfunctions in one or more areas of the patient’s life.

Pathological narcissism is the art of deception. The narcissist projects a False Self and manages all his social interactions through this concocted fictional construct.

When the narcissist reveals his true colors, it is usually far too late. His victims are unable to separate from him. They are frustrated by this acquired helplessness and angry at themselves for having they failed to see through the narcissist earlier on.

But the narcissist does emit subtle, almost subliminal, signals (“presenting symptoms”) even in a first or casual encounter. Compare the following list to Barack Obama’s body language during his paublic appearances.

These are:

“Haughty” body language. The narcissist adopts a physical posture which implies and exudes an air of superiority, seniority, hidden powers, mysteriousness, amused indifference, etc. Though the narcissist usually maintains sustained and piercing eye contact, he often refrains from physical proximity (he is “territorial”).

The narcissist takes part in social interactions, even mere banter, condescendingly, from a position of supremacy and faux “magnanimity and largesse”. But he rarely mingles socially and prefers to remain the “observer”, or the “lone wolf”.

Entitlement markers. The narcissist immediately asks for “special treatment” of some kind. Not to wait his turn, to have a longer or a shorter therapeutic session, to talk directly to authority figures (and not to their assistants or secretaries), to be granted special payment terms, to enjoy custom tailored arrangements – or to get served first.

The narcissist is the one who vocally and demonstratively demands the undivided attention of the head waiter in a restaurant, or monopolizes the hostess, or latches on to celebrities in a party. The narcissist reacts with rage and indignantly when denied his wishes and if treated equally with others whom he deems inferior.

Idealization or devaluation. The narcissist instantly idealizes or devalues his interlocutor. This depends on how the narcissist appraises the potential his converser has as a Narcissistic Supply Source. The narcissist flatters, adores, admires and applauds the “target” in an embarrassingly exaggerated and profuse manner or sulks, abuses, and humiliates her.

Narcissists are polite only in the presence of a potential Supply Source. But they are unable to sustain even perfunctory civility and fast deteriorate to barbs and thinly-veiled hostility, to verbal or other violent displays of abuse, rage attacks, or cold detachment.

The “membership” posture. The narcissist always tries to “belong”. Yet, at the very same time, he maintains his stance as an outsider. The narcissist seeks to be admired for his ability to integrate and ingratiate himself without investing the efforts commensurate with such an undertaking.

For instance: if the narcissist talks to a psychologist, the narcissist first states emphatically that he never studied psychology. He then proceeds to make seemingly effortless use of obscure professional terms, thus demonstrating that he mastered the discipline all the same, as an autodidact, which proves that he is exceptionally intelligent or introspective.

In general, the narcissist always prefers show-off to substance. One of the most effective methods of exposing a narcissist is by trying to delve deeper. The narcissist is shallow, a pond pretending to be an ocean. He likes to think of himself as a Renaissance man, a Jack of all trades. The narcissist never admits to ignorance in any field yet, typically, he is ignorant of them all. It is surprisingly easy to penetrate the gloss and the veneer of the narcissist’s self-proclaimed omniscience.

Bragging and false autobiography. The narcissist brags incessantly. His speech is peppered with “I”, “my”, “myself”, and “mine”. He describes himself as intelligent, or rich, or modest, or intuitive, or creative but always excessively, implausibly, and extraordinarily so.

The narcissist’s biography sounds unusually rich and complex. His achievements incommensurate with his age, education, or renown. Yet, his actual condition is evidently and demonstrably incompatible with his claims. Very often, the narcissist lies or his fantasies are easily discernible. He always name-drops and appropriates other people’s experiences and accomplishments.

Emotion-free language. The narcissist likes to talk about himself and only about himself. He is not interested in others or what they have to say, unless they constitute potential Sources of Supply and in order to obtain said supply. He acts bored, disdainful, even angry, if he feels that they are intruding on his precious time and, thus, abusing him.

In general, the narcissist is very impatient, easily bored, with strong attention deficits unless and until he is the topic of discussion. One can publicly dissect all aspects of the intimate life of a narcissist without repercussions, providing the discourse is not “emotionally tinted”.

If asked to relate directly to his emotions, the narcissist intellectualizes, rationalizes, speaks about himself in the third person and in a detached “scientific” tone or composes a narrative with a fictitious character in it, suspiciously autobiographical. Narcissists like to refer to themselves in mechanical terms, as efficient automata or machines.

Seriousness and sense of intrusion and coercion. The narcissist is dead serious about himself. He may possess a subtle, wry, and riotous sense of humor, scathing and cynical, but rarely is he self-deprecating. The narcissist regards himself as being on a constant mission, whose importance is cosmic and whose consequences are global. If a scientist, he is always in the throes of revolutionizing science. If a journalist, he is in the middle of the greatest story ever. If a novelist, he is on his way to a Booker or Nobel prize.

This self-misperception is not amenable to light-headedness or self-effacement. The narcissist is easily hurt and insulted (narcissistic injury). Even the most innocuous remarks or acts are interpreted by him as belittling, intruding, or coercive. His time is more valuable than others’ therefore, it cannot be wasted on unimportant matters such as mere banter or going out for a walk.

Any suggested help, advice, or concerned inquiry are immediately cast by the narcissist as intentional humiliation, implying that the narcissist is in need of help and counsel and, thus, imperfect and less than omnipotent. Any attempt to set an agenda is, to the narcissist, an intimidating act of enslavement. In this sense, the narcissist is both schizoid and paranoid and often entertains ideas of reference.

These, the lack of empathy, the aloofness, the disdain, the sense of entitlement, the constricted sense of humor, the unequal treatment and the paranoia render the narcissist a social misfit. The narcissist is able to provoke in his milieu, in his casual acquaintances, even in his psychotherapist, the strongest, most avid and furious hatred and revulsion. To his shock, indignation and consternation, he invariably induces in others unbridled aggression.

He is perceived to be asocial at best and, often, antisocial. This, perhaps, is the strongest presenting symptom. One feels ill at ease in the presence of a narcissist for no apparent reason. No matter how charming, intelligent, thought provoking, outgoing, easy going and social the narcissist is – he fails to secure the sympathy of others, a sympathy he is never ready, willing, or able to reciprocate.
IV. Narcissistic and psychopathic Leaders

The narcissistic or psychopathic leader is the culmination and reification of his period, culture, and civilization. He is likely to rise to prominence in narcissistic societies.

The malignant narcissist invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and this is further exacerbated by the trappings of power. The narcissist’s grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience are supported by real life authority and the narcissist’s predilection to surround himself with obsequious sycophants.

The narcissist’s personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as “victims of persecution”.

The narcissistic leader fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, mythology. The leader is this religion’s ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.

The narcissistic leader is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people – or humanity at large – should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, the narcissistic leader became a distorted version of Nietzsche’s “superman”.

But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral.

In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things “natural” – or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to as “nature” is not natural at all.

The narcissistic leader invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial – though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols – not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.

In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.

Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism – and the cult’s leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.

Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the “old ways” – against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon a narcissistic (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.

Minorities or “others” – often arbitrarily selected – constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is “wrong”. They are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan, they are part of the establishment, they are “decadent”, they are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, origin … They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenceless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure. Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy.

This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm – together with Stalin – as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls.

The narcissistic leader prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime – the narcissistic leader having died, been deposed, or voted out of office – it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely-held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. “Earth shattering” and “revolutionary” scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.

It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It must accord with the self-image of the narcissist. It must abet and sustain his grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform with the narcissistic narrative.

Thus, a narcissist who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite – is highly unlikely to use violence at first.

The pacific mask crumbles when the narcissist has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, the prime sources of his narcissistic supply – have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, the narcissist strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. “The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)”, “they don’t really know what they are doing”, “following a rude awakening, they will revert to form”, etc.

When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail – the narcissist is injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized – is now discarded with contempt and hatred.

This primitive defense mechanism is called “splitting”. To the narcissist, things and people are either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. A narcissistic leader is likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they intended to kill him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, or the country, etc.

The “small people”, the “rank and file”, the “loyal soldiers” of the narcissist – his flock, his nation, his employees – they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated – is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of the narcissist. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.

DISCLAIMER

I am not a mental health professional. Still, I have dedicated the last 12 years to the study of personality disorders in general and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) in particular. I have authored nine (9) books about these topics, one of which is a Barnes and Noble best-seller (“Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited”). My work is widely cited in scholarly tomes and publications and in the media. My books and the content of my Web site are based on correspondence since 1996 with hundreds of people suffering from the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (narcissists) and with thousands of their family members, friends, therapists, and colleagues.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain – How the West Lost the East as well as many other books and ebooks about topics in psychology, relationships, philosophy, economics, and international affairs. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, Global Politician, PopMatters, eBookWeb , and Bellaonline, and as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent. He was the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101. Visit Sam’s Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com You can download 30 of his free ebooks in http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/freebooks.html.

Comments by Guadalupe Pena

So, it turns out that the cool cat billed as “No Drama Obummer” by his sycophants is actually quite the drama queen. While the White House publicly pretends to ignore conservative detractors of his administration, Chief Touchy-Touchy seems to be personally consumed by our critiques. Obummer had himself a mini-”Toddlers and Tiaras”-style meltdown with Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer after landing in Phoenix for a post-State of the Union dog-and-pony show. As Brewer told pool reporters on the scene, he took umbrage at Brewer’s recent memoir. She minced no words on the cover: “Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America’s Border.”

by Becket Adams
George Soros is no stranger to Blaze readers. The billionaire currency speculator and philanthropist has long been in the news, especially since the fateful day in 1992 when he helped crash England’s economy. In fact, since that day, he has been commonly referred to as “the man who broke the bank of England.”

Soros is shrewd, he has a keen eye for investments, and he knows how to read the marketplace. Therefore, when he makes a prediction, it might be safe to say that it’s worth a listen. After all, his predictions (among other things) helped make him the multi-billionaire that he is today.

So you might want to pay attention to a recent story from The Daily Beast claiming that George Soros is nervous about the future of the global economy and that he warns of dark things to come.

“At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” Soros said.

As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil,” writes John Arlidge. “Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America [Soros] predicts riots in the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties [emphases added]. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.”

And to add a little color, Aldridge notes Soros says it all while “peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead.”

“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros told Newsweek. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”As mentioned in the above, and as The Daily Beast points out, Soros’ warning is probably based on his natural market instincts as well as personal experience.

“I did survive a personally much more threatening situation, so it is emotional, as well as rational,” Soros said in reference to his personal experiences with both Nazi and Communist occupations.

“The collapse of the Soviet system was a pretty extraordinary event, and we are currently experiencing something similar in the developed world, without fully realizing what’s happening,” Soros said.

“Unrestrained competition can drive people into actions that they would otherwise regret,” Soros said. “The tragedy of our current situation is the unintended consequence of imperfect understanding. A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.”

Wait a minute. Soros believes that the economic meltdown was the result of not just poor investment but honest-to-God “evil”?

“That’s correct,” Soros affirmed.

Soros continued in this vein, each prediction getting darker and grimmer than the last.

He believes that the EU must be held together because “if you have a disorderly collapse of the euro, you have the danger of a revival of the political conflicts that have torn Europe apart over the centuries—an extreme form of nationalism, which manifests itself in xenophobia, the exclusion of foreigners and ethnic groups.”

“In Hitler’s time, that was focused on the Jews,” Soros said. “Today, you have that with the Gypsies, the Roma, which is a small minority, and also, of course, Muslim immigrants.”

It is “now more likely than not” that Greece will formally default in 2012, Soros said. For this, he blames the EUs’ leadership and believes that eurozone leaders only know how to “do enough to calm the situation, not to solve the problem.”

Soros then went on to talk about how the Occupy Wall Street movement has added to the ever-changing dynamics in the world economy. Debt, Wall Street and capitalism have been put under intense scrutiny and people are becoming increasingly angry.

As this anger intensifies, will the inevitable result be a spontaneous eruption of violence and riots?

“Yes, yes, yes,” Soros says, almost “gleefully.”

However, according to Soros, worse than the riots and violence will be the government reaction.

“It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States,” Soros said.

Perhaps because he sees such a dark future for the West, Soros has staked his “hopes” for the global economy in Middle East and the “democracies” that are springing up over there.

“While the developed world is in a deep crisis, the future for the developing world is very positive,” Soros said. “The aspiration of people for an open society is very inspiring. You have people in Africa lining up for many hours when they are given an opportunity to vote. Dictators have been overthrown. It is very encouraging for freedom and growth.”

Soros insists the key to avoiding cataclysm in 2012 is not to let the crises of 2011 go to waste, writes John Arlidge.

“In the crisis period, the impossible becomes possible,” Soros said. “The European Union could regain its luster. I’m hopeful that the United States, as a political entity, will pass a very severe test and actually strengthen the institution.”

President Barack Obama denied a permit for TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline and will let the company file a revised route that avoids an environmentally sensitive area in Nebraska.

The decision by the State Department today was praised by environmentalists, who said the pipeline would add to U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, and was decried by the U.S. oil and gas industry and Republican lawmakers, who had pushed President Barack Obama to approve the project as a way create jobs.Obama acted before a Feb. 21 deadline Congress set after Obama in November postponed a decision while a revised Nebraska route is reviewed. TransCanada said the 1,661-mile (2,673- kilometer) project would carry 700,000 barrels of crude a day from Alberta’s oil to refineries on the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast, crossing six U.S. states and create 20,000 jobs.

“I’m disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my administration’s commitment to American-made energy,” Obama said today in a statement. “We will continue to look for new ways to partner with the oil and gas industry to increase our energy security.”

TransCanada fell 47 cents to $41.27 at 3:24 p.m. in New York, and earlier today touched $39.74.

Canada Backs Pipeline

Canada will continue to support TransCanada Corp.’s plans to build the Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird said, adding that it is in the best interests of both Canada and the United States.

“The Department of State recommended to President Obama that the presidential permit for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline be denied and, that at this time, the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline be determined not to serve the national interest,” according to an e-mailed statement. “The president concurred.”

The denial of the permit application doesn’t preclude any subsequent permit applications for similar projects, according to the State Department’s statement.

Environmentalists said the pipeline will add to greenhouse- gas emissions tied to climate change and endanger drinking water supplies in Nebraska. They have staged demonstrations outside the White House and vowed to withhold financial support to Obama’s presidential campaign if he approves the pipeline.

The entire purpose of the pipeline is to move Canadian oil to the crude refineries in the Gulf so that it can be shipped overseas,” Jeremy Symons, a National Wildlife Federation vice president, said today in a phone interview. “If the pipeline is built, Canada gets the jobs, China gets the oil and American families get the oil spills.”

Protests in Nebraska and at the White House focused on the risks of a spill tainting the Ogallala aquifer in the state’s Sand Hills region. TransCanada has discussed alternate routes with state officials that would pose less risk to drinking-water supplies.

“We’re glad Keystone hasn’t been approved, but we’d like to see the pipeline rejected outright,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, in a phone interview. He said producing petroleum from oil sands releases more greenhouse gases and requires more water than conventional oil production.

Harper to Obama: I’ve got plenty of buyers for our oil

Canada has patiently waited for Americans to help themselves improve our energy policy by installing a pipeline from Canada’s oil sands to our refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, but this week Prime Minister Stephen Harper signaled that their patience has limits.  Speaking to CTV, Harper reminded the US that they have a very thirsty China as a potential customer, too:

Canada could sell its oil to China and other overseas markets with or without approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in the United States, says Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

In a year-end television interview, Harper indicated he had doubts the $7-billion pipeline would receive political approval from U.S. President Barack Obama, and that Canada should be looking outside the United States for markets.

“I am very serious about selling our oil off this continent, selling our energy products off to Asia. I think we have to do that,” Harper said in the Monday interview with CTV National News.

Harper’s comments were released a day after the White House sent signals it might kill TransCanada’s oil sands pipeline if it is forced to make a decision on the project in 60 days, saying there wasn’t sufficient time to complete a new environmental review.

Clearly, Harper isn’t enamored with Barack Obama’s stalling on the Keystone XL pipeline.  Kelly McParland got the same impression, and writes at the National Post that Harper kept it friendly but made no mistake about playing political and economic hardball if Obama continues to stall:

Stephen Harper sent a none-too-subtle shot across the bow of  our American friends and allies Monday when he indicated he’s dead keen on selling Canadian oil to buyers in Asia. He didn’t put it in so many words, but  he was telling Washington this: “You don’t want our oil, no problem. We’ve got lots of markets across the Pacific where we don’t have to beg to get a sale.”

It was a timely message and a good one for the Prime Minister to send. There is no need to be rude to the U.S., which is and always will be Canada’s best market. But there’s also no need to sit around and wait for the political circus in Washington to pause long enough to recognize the attractiveness of the opportunity Canada is offering. Given the state of absurdity that has the U.S. capital in its grip, there’s no telling how long that could take.

Of course, the compromise in the Senate over the payroll tax “holiday” would have solved the Keystone XL issue, or at least forced Obama to bite the bullet and make a decision on it.  Unfortunately, the House GOP has thrown that solution into doubt with its rebuke of their GOP colleagues in the Senate this week.  McParland aces the description of the standoff:

The ins and outs are too complex to get into, but it comes down to this: President Barack Obama wants to extend a tax break he introduced to offset the effects of the recession. Despite supporting tax cuts, Republicans don’t want him to get credit for this one. So they’re opposing the extension, even though they support it. In search of a compromise, the Senate voted on the weekend to extend the break for just two months, meaning everyone could go home for Christmas and renew the battle later. But Republicans in the House couldn’t bring themselves to accept the deal approved by Republicans in the Senate, insisting the extension should be for a full year, not just two months. But rather than vote down the deal — which would let Obama blame Republicans for refusing a tax cut, they simply refused to vote at all. The just cancelled a vote scheduled for Monday, and did nothing at all. Nice work, guys. Another vote was held Tuesday, which led to a House demand for negotiations, but the Senate has already left town.

Meanwhile, China is growing thirstier, and Canada grows impatient to sell its bountiful oil to someone who really wants it.  Maybe everyone should concentrate on the real economic benefits of the Keystone XL pipeline instead of the illusory differences between a 2- and 12-month extension of a tax holiday that produced no economic stimulus at all over the past year.