Nearly 50 future Libyan leaders (terrorists like Ghaddafi?) have trained as astronauts at the U.S. National Space & Rocket Center’s Space Camp since 2009, and media coverage and a film of the students’ experiences have helped ease U.S.-Libya tensions and inspired other Muslim-majority nations to pursue the program. (Oh really? So why is the Lockerbie bomber not in jail?)
The Libyan Space Camp program, now in its second year, was developed through a unique relationship among the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, NASA, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, the Libyan General People’s Committee for Foreign Liaison and the Libyan General People’s Committee for Education and Scientific Research. (Riiiight, and Libya is renowned for its scientific achievements)

The chronicles of the 24 participants in the 2009 Space Camp were documented and made into the film One Small Step, One Giant Leap. And hundreds of young Libyans have now applied to Space Camp.”The 2010 Libyan Space Camp, July 16–25, was followed August 1–6 by a Space Camp adventure for a dozen

Moroccan students. The two student groups from North Africa joined other young people from around the world in Huntsville, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, to participate in simulated space shuttle missions, training simulators, rocket building and launches, scientific experiments and lectures on space exploration. They also met and received graduation certificates from four-time NASA shuttle commander Robert “Hoot” Gibson.

In August 2009, the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli sent the first group of 24 Libyan students, along with two teachers and a professional Libyan-American film crew that included two Libyan student interns, on their way to Huntsville.They were the first group from North Africa to attend Space Camp and only the second group from an Arab country since 1982, when Space Camp was founded to promote the study of math, science and technology, teamwork, decisionmaking and leadership.(So how many American kids don’t get to go now to make room for the Muslims?)
This year, 24 Libyan students aged 14–18 participated, traveling with the same Libyan-American film director, members of Al Shababiya Television, and a representative of the Libyan General People’s Committee for Education and Scientific Research.

In international and technical teams, the students were presented with challenges that included what to do with a damaged fuselage, miscalibrated steering mechanisms and punctured air filtration systems. Together, they applied advanced principles of physics, chemistry and mathematics to solve some of the same problems experienced by U.S. and Russian astronauts on the International Space Station and during the historic Apollo 13 mission. (Just what they need to know. Maybe they can apply it in their bomb making school for American airplanes)

The students’ training has helped expand their educational and professional interests at home and abroad. Since attending Space Camp, one 2009 Libyan student participant is seeking a career in aeronautics and flight communications by studying at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Another received a full scholarship to Harvard University in Massachusetts. (One less scholarship for Americans)

Libya and Morocco plan Space Camp programs in summer 2011, Lawrence said, and U.S. officials in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt are seeking to establish programs. (I bet they are) AMERICA.gov H/T Creeping Sharia

CEOs of large organizations all face the same problem – driving their agendas in organizations too diverse and geographically dispersed to manage directly.

They hire competent managers for their units, set goals and establish clear metrics for evaluating performance. As in politics, competition in business is tough, and CEOs must set ethical boundaries for their managers’ conduct.

In all this, the CEO’s personal conduct is critical.

Early in his presidency, Mr. Obama flaunted American constitutional tradition by pushing through major social legislation, ObamaCare, without a bipartisan compromise and consensus. And he relied on a legislative sleight of hand to pass the Senate.
The Obama Credo of Management: We’ll do as we please, stop us if you can.
Simply, Mr. Obama’s hard left agenda requires him to treat the Constitution and Congress as mere inconveniences – expediency is his ethical standard.

For example, unable to obtain Congressional ascent, even among moderate Democrats, for limits on CO2 emissions and other environmental goals, the EPA – at his public behest – has written regulations imposing new and onerous requirements on business.
The Obama Credo of Management: We’ll do as we please, stop us if you can.
His failure as a CEO, now with grave political consequences, was to impose no limits on managers’ behavior and implement adequate controls – mechanisms for the CEO to monitor the performance of units and head off emerging threats to the survival of the organization. Regarding the latter, of paramount importance is to insulate the president from any fallout from their actions.
Cabinet secretaries and agency heads took their cues from the boss – at State, Justice and the IRS senior management would have had us believe they were unaware of what was happening in Benghazi, with the Associated Press, or at the Cincinnati Office of the IRS. And the president only learns about many problems when reported in the news?
Mr. Obama simply has been too busy giving speeches, raising money, and trying to turn every event to political advantage to keep tabs on his managers, as any good CEOs would do.
CEOs periodically meet with their principal managers – in groups and where necessary individually – to probe their tactics, offer assistance from their own wealth of experience, and discern areas where managers may be planting problems that will burgeon into crisis.
Failing at this, the president has managed to continence management failures that cost the lives of Americans abroad, weaken our national security, rock public confidence in government, and threaten our constitutionally guaranteed liberties.
Mr. Obama has a lot in common with one predecessor, Jimmy Carter – both failed as CEOs. The man from Plains is a decent and ethical man but micromanaged too much, whereas Mr. Obama acquired his moral compass in the Windy City and simply can’t manage at all.
Americans should not be surprised. Mr. Obama came to Washington with profound campaign skills but virtually no record as a legislator or manager. He spent seven years in the Illinois Senate as a virtual non-participant, bored and seeking higher office, and his four years in the U.S. Senate running for president.
Americans turned to him, because they were justifiably disappointed with President Bush and tagged John McCain with the blame.
Prior to his presidency, Americans never observed Mr. Obama running anything, other than a campaign. He had not been a governor or a congressional committee chair. In military terms, we made him a five star general before even serving as a lieutenant.
By his own actions, he is arrogantly ambitions but sadly incompetent. He has corrupted the foundations of our Republic, and for that he gets a failing grade.
Peter Morici is an economist and professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and widely published columnist. Follow him on Twitter @PMorici1.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/05/17/obama-is-failing-as-ceo-america-inc/#ixzz2U7VQ8NBa

Benghazi whistleblower Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau, is expected to level the allegation that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut his department out of the chain of reporting and decision-making. His testimony is set to begin on Wednesday before Chairman Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

But there’s another official Fox News is reporting on.

Fox News has also learned that another official from the counterterrorism bureau — independently of Thompson — voiced the same complaint about Clinton and Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy to trusted national security colleagues back in October.

Thompson considers himself a whistle-blower whose account was suppressed by the official investigative panel that Clinton convened to review the episode, the Accountability Review Board (ARB). Thompson’s lawyer, Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney, has further alleged that his client has been subjected to threats and intimidation by as-yet-unnamed superiors at State, in advance of his cooperation with Congress.

…
“You should have seen what (Clinton) tried to do to us that night,” the second official in State’s counterterrorism bureau told colleagues back in October. Those comments would appear to be corroborated by Thompson’s forthcoming testimony.

The State Department said these allegations are “100 percent false.”

Daniel Benjamin, who ran the department’s Counterterrorism Bureau at the time, also put out a statement Monday morning. He said, “I ran the bureau then, and I can say now with certainty, as the former Coordinator for Counterterrorism, that this charge is simply untrue. Though I was out of the country on official travel at the time of the attack, I was in frequent contact with the Department. At no time did I feel that the Bureau was in any way being left out of deliberations that it should have been part of.”

He said that his bureau was a “central participant in the interagency discussion about the longer-term response to Benghazi.” He said “at no time was the Bureau sidelined or otherwise kept from carrying out its tasks.”

Well, let’s see here. The State Department, Hillary Clinton in particular, went along with YouTube video being the reason for the Benghazi attacks, even though they would later claim they never did. In fact, she still wouldn’t rule that out when she was before the Senate earlier this year. This really brings into question anything anyone in that Department says that is in favor of the current administration’s “official story.”

Tim Brown is the Editor of Freedom Outpost and a regular contributor to The D.C. Clothesline.

The Daily Beast reports that one of the Benghazi fall guys is refusing to take the fall.
Raymond Maxwell was put on indefinite leave by the State Department after its Administrative Review Board (ARB) investigation of Benghazi for reasons that are still unknown to him. The person he claims made the decision to cast him out was Cheryl Mills–Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff and counsel at the State Department.
It is the second time Mills’ name has turned up during scrutiny of the State Department’s response to the attack.
According to a new report by Josh Rogin: “On the day after the unclassified version of the ARB’s report was released in December, Mills called Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones and directed her to have Maxwell leave his job immediately.”
Maxwell has now been sitting at home waiting for some formal action on his case for five months. And because he has not been fired, he cannot contest his treatment.
The question Maxwell wants answered is why was he kicked out of his job–Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs–while his supervisor, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Beth Jones, was not. In effect, Maxwell has been punished for something in which he had no involvement. He claims to have made no decisions with regard to security in Libya.
He is speaking out now, he tells the Daily Beast, “to restore my honor.”
Three different officials told Rogin that security decisions about Benghazi were made at the Assistant Secretary level by Beth Jones and Liz Dibbie, neither of whom have been disciplined. That seems to be at odds with the findings of the ARB report (at least the declassified one) which faulted, “Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department.” Jones and Dibbie were the “senior levels” of those two bureaus, not Maxwell and the three others who lost their positions.
According to an unnamed State Department official, there was a deal agreed to between Clinton’s adviser Cheryl Mills and Assistant Secretary Jones. The deal was that Maxwell would be transferred to a new job once the scrutiny on Benghazi died down. But Mills reneged on the deal and instead put Maxwell on the administrative leave he has now been on for five months.
This is the second time that Cheryl Mills’ name has come up in less than flattering circumstances relating to the Benghazi attack. Earlier this months, Gregory Hicks testified before Congress that Mills had called him to demand a report on a meeting Hicks had with Rep. Jason Chaffetz. Here is the exchange:

Last week, Rep. Issa subpoenaed one of the authors of the ARB report, Ambassador Thomas Pickering. However, since Maxwell is not mentioned in the unclassified version of the report, it is unclear whether Pickering will be able to answer questions about his situation.
Regardless, Maxwell’s decision to challenge Clinton suggests that there may indeed be much more to the Benghazi scandal than is yet known.

As the Congress and (in some cases) the mainstream media do their job and investigate these scandals there are soft rumblings of the “I” word coming from the right wing blogisphere and from Republicans in Congress (Note: The “I” word is not the new politically correct way to say Islamist terrorists–It means impeachment). Allow me to suggest that what we know so far does not even approach “I” word levels, and even if they do Impeachment would be a horrible option for the Country and for the Party.

The last two President’s who approached impeachment level were Nixon and Clinton, both of whom went way over the line to break the law. Clinton committed perjury, something to which he eventually admitted after DNA testing. Nixon may have survived Watergate if there wasn’t an audio record of his crimes (the tapes). This is an administration that is careful to protect its senior leaders by putting very little in writing. Heck the Attorney General didn’t even put it writing that he recused himself from the IRS case even though he is required to by law.

But let us say that eventually it proven the scandals were directly ordered by the President (a long shot but suppose). On Benghazi it can be proven the president lied for political purposes (he would not be the first) but the only one really culpable would be Hillary Clinton who lied to Congress which (whether she was under oath or not), is a crime. The AP scandal may prove to be immoral, but doesn’t seem like a crime because the DOJ got a court order. The IRS scandal probably has the biggest chance of toppling an administration, the real question is even if it is proven to be directed by Obama, is impeachment the best option?

Not necessarily for a host of reasons. The first would be these three horrible words, “President Joe Biden.” Imagine the SCHMOTUS, this gaffe-meister making foreign policy decisions/statements– there would have been no surge in Afghanistan, we would be living with a nuclear Iran, and Bin Laden would still be alive. Although it might be funny if he had a summit with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il and said, “Come on Kim, stand up and take a bow–What am I saying, you are standing!”

A Joe Biden led domestic policy would be just as bad, perhaps the government would even waste money on pamphlets teaching women to protect themselves by emptying their shot guns through closed doors.

Don’t worry America, this will never happen. Let’s take this scenario a bit further. Say Obama is implicated directly in the IRS scandal and there is a smoking gun. Let’s say he is impeached by the House and there is a trial in the Senate, there is no way a Senate which when you include the one socialist/independent has 56 votes on the President’s side is going to come up with the 67 votes to toss him out of office and give the reins to Biden.

However, if the house would move in that direction, Barack Obama ceases to be a scandal-ridden President and becomes a martyr to Republican obstructionism. The GOP will become the racist party that threw out the first African-American president. Any voters on the fence would go Democrat just based on that meme.

On the other side, if Obama is proven to be behind the IRS and other scandals a weakened Obama is still much better than a Biden. It is also better than the charges of obstructionism and racism that would be sure to come with any House action.

Thinking longer term if Obama is implicated in these scandals and stays in office he would be too weakened to push through his radical freedom stealing agenda during the remaining 921 days of his administration. Additionally it will make ripe campaign fodder for the senate and house campaigns in 2014 and the Presidential campaign of 2016.

Any talk of Obama impeachment is way premature, but even if Obama is directly tied to these scandals impeachment would be bad for the United States

Remember all the headlines during the election, wondering what happened to the Tea Party, the liberal crowing that it had gone silent?
NPR, February 2012: “Strong in 2010, Where Is the Tea Party Now?” – “what’s most striking about the movement this election has been its notable absence.” Mother Jones, “The Tea Party is Dead.” .” ABC: “What Happened to the Tea Party?” New York Times, June 2012: “The Movement Has Fizzled Out.”
Remember how odd it was hear conservative pundits saying, ‘our voters would crawl over broken glass to vote against Obama’, while pollsters correctly predicted that Republican turnout would be nowhere near what it was in 2010? Remember 2010, when the Tea Party grassroots roared? Remember 2012, when the Tea Party was missing?
Obama lost Democrat votes in the 2012 election. He won because Republicans stayed home. Democrats got their vote out, we didn’t. The contrast between Republican turnout in 2010 and 2012 can be summed up in two words: Tea Party.
Now we know the answer to all those questions about what happened to the Tea Party. It was busy being abused and silenced by the Obama Administration IRS.
You think it coulda had an effect on the election results?

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/squelching_
the_tea_party_gave_obama_the_election.html#ixzz2U7P0vd7S
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I’ve been reading a lot of Karl Marx lately, as well as a number of books and articles on the early decades of the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, for a large term paper due in one of my political science classes. The thesis of my paper is that Stalinism is the logical conclusion to Marxian socialism. The abbreviated logic is that the many holes and open ends in Marxist theory, combined with the oppressive growth of the state under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, render the conversion from socialism to stateless communism to be impossible. The state will not wither away as workers enjoy new freedom, but rather will grow into a totalitarian one at their expense.

“On [Dr. Goebbels’] assertion that Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between Communism and the Hitler faith was very flight, a faction war opened with whizzing beer glasses” (from a November 1924 New York Times article, cited in The Soviet Story).

In my research I’ve found an overwhelming number of similarities and downright parallels between communism and Nazism, but what I found most striking were the three main differences between the two, which ultimately convinced me that Communism and Nazism are but two sides to the same utopian totalitarian coin.

1. A superior human being. Karl Marx offers in The German Ideology a glimpse of a utopia where the post-revolutionary proletariat is so productive that men are free to fish in the morning, hunt in the afternoon, and write literary and political criticisms in the evening. From this, Trotsky expanded the utopia to include the idea of the New Soviet Man who
“will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman” (from Literature and Revolution).
Basically, the revolutionary proletarians will be such hard workers and so dedicated to the Marxian revolution that they will physically and mentally evolve into super-humans. The Nazis, on the other hand, worshiped the Aryan as the next super-human. In contrast to the Soviet superhero being more evolved due to class consciousness and dedication, the Aryan will advance because he is genetically (racially) superior to other humans and through selective breeding will continue to far surpass the others.

2. Private property and state control. In a May 1, 1927 speech Adolf Hitler said,
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
The Soviet state confiscated the overwhelming majority of private property, encompassing real estate (land), industry/businesses, and physical objects like machines and tools. Turning these items into state property, the Communist party-state planned the economy and dictated production. The Nazi state never did away with capitalism, nor did it abolish private property, but rather marginally tolerated them for the sake of benefiting the state. The Nazi party-state instead planned the economy and left it to the industrialists and business people to make it happen within heavy regulations imposed by the government. This merger between corporate and state power was the socialism Hitler was after, with the benefit of German citizens derived from the economic outputs of the corporate/state marriage.

3. Imperial expansion. Marx reinterpreted Hegel’s theory of dialectics (opposing forces or viewpoints) to form historical materialism, which argues that history is the story of class struggle (The Communist Manifesto, Section I). The struggle and victory of one class over another is what makes history move from one stage to another. The first stages were primitive communism—as practiced by the early peoples—then slave society—as practiced by the ancient empires like Rome and the Greeks—and feudalism. The world is currently in the capitalist stage, at the end of which the proletariat will rise up and usher in the socialist stage, which will pave the way for the stateless, moneyless utopia of communism.

The Russian Revolution/Civil War and later the Chinese Revolution/Civil War solidified the idea that the proletariat was beginning to complete its historical mission. However, beyond Russia, no other country in the world became Marxist all by itself (except tiny Cuba). Because the proletarians were lagging in rising up, it was the job of the Soviet Union to make revolution happen worldwide. The USSR heavily funded Mao’s Communist army in China during the Chinese Civil War. Later, the USSR and China either sent combat troops into or provided financial and material support to every militant Marxist movement in the world. All the European countries that became Communist after World War II made the transformation at Soviet gunpoint.

Lenin’s idea was that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would spread revolution across the world (implying that Moscow would be the world’s capital). While Lenin and Stalin were intent on conquering the world for Communism to establish one giant Communist society, Hitler’s aim was to conquer the world and liquidate the undesirables for the benefit of the Aryan people of the worldwide Nazi German Empire

When comparing these three differences in the Soviet and National Socialist ideologies, they start to appear only superficially different. They start to appear like… tyranny and genocide.

“Until its complete extermination or loss of national status, this racial trash always becomes the most fanatical bearer there is of counter-revolution, and it remains that. That is because its entire existence is nothing more than a protest against a great historical revolution… The next world war will cause not only reactionary classes and dynasties, but also entire reactionary peoples, to disappear from the earth. And that too is progress.” –Friedrich Engels (from The Magyar Struggle)

“The classes and the races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way…. They must perish in the revolutionary holocaust.” -Karl Marx (from The People’s Paper, April 16, 1856)

Read more: http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/05/new-benghazi-whistleblowers-stevens-was-involved-in-buyback-of-stinger-missiles-from-al-qaeda/#ixzz2U48uVvZC

What is Happening

Got it I’m out

This ‘incident’ caused the USAF to ground its fleet of F-15′s.

Just when it looks like it’s going to be just another ‘average day at the office’..!

What caused the mid-air break up?

The main “longeron” (stringer) behind the cockpit failed due to corrosion.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time …or the wrong place at the wrong time (the pilot)…

When the BS about the ‘wood’ came up as an excuse from the Obama regime to attack Gibson Guitars, the corrupt media never mentioned that Gibson’s competitors used the exact same wood and faced no problems from the government.

Gibson CEO Henry Juskiewicz became widely known after he reacted to the raid by protesting his company’s innocence of running afoul of arcane restrictions (the case here hinged on the degree the wood was finished in India, not whether it was endangered or illegally harvested) in the pages of national newspapers and in Senate hearings held by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Late last year Gibson settled with Department of Justice.
CEO Henry Juszkiewicz commented, “We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted, and a matter that could have been addressed with a simple contact by a caring human being representing the Government. Instead, the Government used violent and hostile means with the full force of the U.S. Government and several armed law enforcement agencies costing the taxpayer millions of dollars and putting a job-creating U.S. manufacturer at risk and at a competitive disadvantage. This shows the increasing trend on the part of the Government to criminalize rules and regulations and treat U.S. businesses in the same way drug dealers are treated. This is wrong and it is unfair. I am committed to working hard to correct the inequity that the law allows and ensure there is fairness, due process, and the law is used for its intended purpose of stopping bad guys and stopping the very real deforestation of our planet.”