From Iran to Egypt, to Albania ... it's Muslim 52 card pick-up

Egyptian demonstrators tear a portrait of President Hosni Mubarak during a protest against his rule in the northern port city of Alexandria on Thursday. Image Credit: AFP/Getty Images/Clarity Media

From Iran to Egypt, to Albania ... it's a Muslim-inspired game of 52 card pick-up

Just as the news was around a year ago, the cable news channels are a blaze with news of another citizen uprising against a decades long oppressive regime. Last year, it was the democracy "Green Movement" out of Iran against the religious Mullah ruling class. The last couple of days have been filled with Egypt's unrest against the secular tyranny of Mubarak with many wanting to fill the potential vacuumed with their own agendas ... from democracy to strong man rule to the Muslim idealism of Sharia Law. Tunisia, Albania, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Somalia, and Egypt (to mention a few) are all in a ruling class versus a country class (citizens) game of 52 card pick-up of revolt and the people being ruled need a beacon to point to in order to fuse the direction of this unrest.

How does this play in a world where the stalwart of democracy around the world - The United States - is ruled by as progressive apologists as it has ever been in its over 250 year history?

Where is the beacon of leadership toward freedom and democracy when the ruling class here is busy trying to fashion a government healthcare, free-market commerce, and environmental policy yoke around the necks of its voting populous that will limit the personal freedoms to all in this country?

Why are the current leaders in our executive branch of this 44th presidency playing around with its critical role in world leadership and abdicating its responsibility by having a foreign policy that is ambiguous?

Image Credit: Flickr.com

This excerpted and edited from Pajamas Media and Michael Ladeen -

Egypt: Revolution? By Whom? For What?

January 28, 2011 - by Michael Ledeen - posted at Pajamas Media

As I’ve remarked in the past–but you can’t say the truth too often, right? — nobody knows what a revolution looks like. And in fact that last clause may be very misleading, because there is no one thing that a revolution looks like. Some revolutions happen very quietly, like the Information Revolution.

----

You can’t judge a revolution by its theatrics. Something real has to happen, something beyond marching, chanting slogans, and making demands. Revolutions end systems of rule and replace them with new ones. Is that happening now in the Middle East? I think that the Green Movement in Iran is revolutionary, and that, if successful, it would end the Islamic Republic and replace it with a secular political system that separates mosque and state. I think that the efforts by Hezbollah to take over Lebanon also constitute an attempt at revolutionary change, because it would turn the secular Lebanese system into an Islamic Republic. It can go both ways.

----

[I] Remember my Grandma Mashe: “Things are never so bad they can’t get worse.”

So how are we to look at it all?

The basic point is that most everything and everywhere is up for grabs.

----

There are lots of different forces in play, and in many cases there is no way to know who will make what decisions, let alone what decisions they will make. Orders will be given, some of them will be obeyed while others will be ignored.

----

Nobody knows how this will play out. Not even the mullahs. Everyone’s in a big hurry, and lots of mistakes will be made.

And what about us?

We are supposed to be the revolutionaries, and we must support democratic revolution against tyranny. But we must not support phony democrats, and for the president to say “Egypt’s destiny will be determined by the Egyptian people,” or “everyone wants to be free” is silly and dangerous. Egypt’s destiny will be determined by a fight among Egyptian people, some of whom wish to be free and others who wish to install a tyranny worse than Mubarak’s. That’s the opposite of freedom. Think about the free elections in Gaza that brought the Hamas killers to power. For that matter, think about Khomeini, viewed at the time as a progressive democrat by many of the leading intellectual and political lights of the West, from Foucault to Andrew Young.

We should have been pressuring the friendly tyrants in the Middle East to liberalize their polities lo these many years. We should have done it in the shah’s Iran, and in Mubarak’s Egypt, and in Ben Ali’s Tunisia. It is possible to move peacefully from dictatorship to democracy (think Taiwan. Think Chile. Think South Africa). But we didn’t, in part because of the racist stereotype that goes under the label “the Arab street,” according to which the Arab masses are motivated above all by an unrelenting rage at Israel for its oppression of the beloved Palestinians. That myth went along with another: the belief that the culture of the Arab world (sometimes expanded to “the culture of the Muslim world”) was totally resistant to democracy. The tumult has nothing to do with Palestine/Israel and even a blind bat can see hundreds of thousands of Arabs fighting for democracy, as have their fellow Muslims in Iran.

----

It’s quite clear that Obama is totally bamboozled. He has no culture to deal with this situation, nor does Hillary.

----

Does the intelligence community have people who know in detail who is who in the tumults? Historically we haven’t been great at this — the intelligence failures at the time of the Iranian revolution could fill a fat volume, with another needed to chronicle the failures during the following 31 years — but we’ve got a lot of Arabists and we may be lucky enough to have a few very good ones.

If we do, and if [Leon] Panetta and General Clapper know who they are, then we can try to pick and choose, supporting real democrats and thwarting the likes of al Baradei, the love child of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Tehran crowd. Surely we know who he is. We should broadcast it.

----

Let’s hope there’s someone who can grab the president’s ears and explain the rules and the players. But the winning gambit — finally support democratic revolution in Iran — isn’t even being discussed. Paradoxically, this is a very good moment to endorse the Green Movement. I mean, if we’re going to praise the Tunisian and Egyptian freedom fighters, all the more reason to hail the true martyrs in Iran, currently being slaughtered in the country’s prisons at the blood-curdling rate of three per day. And that’s only the officially acknowledged executions.

So, having failed to do what we should have done for the past many decades, we should stick to what got us here: support democratic revolution. But not false revolutionaries. Remember Grandma.

Reference Here>>

Our leaders should be showing leadership to the world in our foreign policy and support for more of we enjoy over the powers of tyranny and Sharia Law to the masses and show the way to a better life based on freedom.

It is a game of 52 card pick-up, and as we can see with this Carter's Second Term over the last two years ... both here and throughout the Muslim world. We can be thankful that in this country we still have a modicum of public policy power through the ballot box and not violence.

The 44th President's Penultimate State Of The Union Speech

President Barack Obama delivering his State of the Union address in Washington, D.C. Tuesday's speech was his second State of the Union address. Image Credit: Getty Images via Clarity Media

The 44th President's Penultimate State Of The Union Speech

Barack Obama gave his second speech to the Congress reviewing his view on where our country is today and updating his call to spend more money during the next year. If we are lucky, this will be the next to the last "State Of The Union" speech he will be required to deliver.

Barack Obama became our nation's 44th President just two years ago and decided to outspend any other of the previous 43 presidents through increasing the budgets of the operation of all government agencies by over 25% in an economy that was only growing an anemic 2.1% over this same period. He also passed a one-time emergency stimulus spending bill that boosted the spending of all of the agencies by about an additional 25% making the increase during these two years of around 50%.

In his speech, he said he recognizes that the American people sent a message to have government spending become under control so he proposed that the Congress freeze spending at current levels for the next five years. Sadly, this would suggest not to cut the 25% of continued increased spending he has placed on all of us while our economy may only grow at between 2-3% during the same time period.

He claimed that our nation is facing a "Sputnik" moment (where the country recognizes it is behind the successes of other nations)and called for increased government investments/spending in education, innovation, and infrastructure (like high-speed trains - all the while AMTRAK looses over 1 Billion dollars as it grows to new ridership rates). Do not forget to raise the debt ceiling to 14 Billion while your at it!

Last November, the President's party saw congressional election losses that have not been seen in over 70 years and State government losses that could be claimed as the most sweeping ... ever. The President at the time of the election last November 2010 mentioned that he and his Democrat political party suffered a shellacking but in this latest speech, while speaking words that, for the first time, did not mention George Bush and the previous administration, put forth more of the same expansion of government spending and control through regulation and additional paperwork. He still wants to keep the expansion of government ownership of the nation's healthcare system.

Our country can not afford the agenda of President Barack Obama and the country knows it. If we wish to be able to experience the blessings of self-government, we will need to change the leadership in the executive branch and stop the progressive movement. Last night, we all may have just witnessed the penultimate State Of The Union speech of this 44th presidency ... Carter's Second Term.

ObamaCare Repeal Watch - It's 21 For 12

Over the last two years, we have watched an out of control Congress run roughshod over the American people and our Constitution. We watched the healthcare reform bill pass the U.S. Congress, which will destroy our Healthcare system. Watching all of this insanity, we realized that we can no longer sit on the sidelines and allow our country to continue to fall short of its potential greatness. To help restore America, we created Generation America and Generation America Voice. Image Credit: Generation America Voice and the 21-12 Project

ObamaCare Repeal Watch - It's 21 For '12

The 112th Congress in one of it's first actions of duty, voted to repeal ObamaCare by a wide margin. In fact, the repeal vote received more votes in passing than the ObamaCare bill received for its passage into law. The vote count aided by the landslide election last November of 63 new Republican Party congressmen and the help from 3 Democrat Party congressmen came in at 245 for repeal to 189 against repeal ... a good day for America and a potential step back from a Government Payer (single-payer) health care system - the eventual goal of ObamaCare.

So now it is 21 for '12 in order to have the repeal bill be seen on the floor of the Senate ... the next step toward the repeal process. There are 21 Democrat Party Senators who will be up for election in the next election cycle in the year 2012. Assuming that all Republican Senators would vote to repeal ObamaCare, it would only require 4 Democrat Party Senators to join the Republicans to move this process to the desk of the 44th President of the United States.

It is important to all of those who wish to maintain the decision-making power over the health of their lives (and this is not the only decision-making power at risk in the law that was passed by the 111th Congress we currently refer to as ObamaCare).

To help organize the efforts of the nearly 70% of all Americans who are against the present health care law passed by the 111th Congress, entitled "The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act of 2010", an alternative advocacy group that counters the efforts of AARP has been established. This group is called Generation America Voice and the effort to organize all who wish to protect their rights this ObamaCare law intends to take away is named Project 21-12!

This excerpted and edited from Generation America Voice -

Project 21-12 - OUR PLAN:

Project 21-12 is Generation America’s plan to Repeal ObamaCare.

The new Republican House of Representatives have voted to repeal ObamaCare. The repeal effort now moves to the Senate. Many political observers predict that this is where it will stall and die. To the contrary, we believe that through a simple plan of action, the Senate can be motivated to pass this bill and ObamaCare will be repealed.

There are 21 Democratic Senators who voted FOR ObamaCare and all of them are up for reelection in 2012, thus Project 21-12. The project is an outreach to these 21 Democrat Senators in an attempt to inform them about the terrible harm this bill does to older Americans and the economic catastrophe that ObamaCare will create. We believe that these Senators, as they have the opportunity to reflect on ObamaCare and the negative effects we are already seeing, will listen to reason and reconsider their original support of ObamaCare.

All of Washington, including these 21 Senators fully understands the historic exceelection this past November. They follow the public opinion polls that reflect resounding dissatisfaction with ObamaCare. Many of these Senators are worried and understand that they will have a very difficult time retaining their seats if they continue to support ObamaCare.

What excites us about this plan is its simplicity. The Republicans will control 47 Senate seats. We only need 4 Democrats to change their vote to repeal ObamaCare. This can be done.
Reference Here>>

It is funny that people believe that a "Single-Payer" system is best for all. Have they ever asked themselves the following questions?:

1) Where does the money come from to pay the provider?

2) If the Government is paying the provider, who does the provider answer to - the patient or the payer?

3) If the Government payer also collects taxes on people when they die through Estate Taxes, doesn't this fact set up an additional conflict of interest?

4) Can the cost be reduced when additional people in the payer process are placed between the provider and the patient?

5) Can insurance companies really reduce additional costs if they can not compete in all 50 states (currently restricted by imposed laws)?

I am sure you and others who have pondered this issue have a few good questions for people who feel that a single-payer approach is the ideal to consider ... but this is just a start. These questions do not even address the Constitutional individual freedoms that are erased if a single-payer process were to be established.

Remember ... we Americans do have actual power over those who believe they are members of the ruling class. Get involved in the 21-12 Project and just see where this ride takes us on the path to Repeal And Replace here during Carter's Second Term.

Sheriff Dupnick And The Malice Of The Accusatory Left

Politically Frustrated: Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik could not hide his anger at the 'vitriol' that he said may have caused the already-unstable gunman to react by going on a shooting rampage as he spoke at a press conference. Image Credit: Reuters

Sheriff Dupnik And The Malice Of The Accusatory Left

It is definitely tragic that a young man, born of politically connected parents, who had a history of arrests for acting out, without developing a record, showed up at a public meeting set by a recently re-elected Congresswoman and with malice in his heart started pouring bullets into those that had gathered to share thoughts about their community.

What has nearly the same level of malice is the initial and continuing statements of those in our country who are politically left, liberal, progressive, and of the Democrat Political Party.

Within two hours of this tragic event (as pointed out by news commentator, Sean Hannity), perpetrated by the then unidentified Jared Lee Loughner, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman penned:

We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist.
----
You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.
Reference Here>>

Further, and this might be a bit more troubling, Clarence Dupnik, the Pima County Sheriff started to appear on news programs to talk about the law enforcement efforts to take control and report the facts of what transpired on the ground ... began to make accusations in the same tone set by Paul Krugman, an OP-ED columnist, but in the context of an official on the scene.

Sheriff Dupnik sparked much of the accusatory debate during a press conference Saturday evening in which he blamed talk radio and television for a decline of discourse in America.

"I think the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business and what (we) see on TV and how our youngsters are being raised, that this has not become the nice United States of America that most of us grew up in. And I think it's time that we do the soul-searching," the Sheriff said.

On Sunday, Dupnik didn't back down.

"I think we're the tombstone of the United States of America," Dupnik said of The Grand Canyon State, which a day earlier he called the “Mecca” of hatred and bigotry. "To try to inflame the public on a daily basis 24 hours a day, seven days a week has impact on people, especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with."
Reference Here>>

"The sheriff out there in Tucson, I think he's got it right," Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the assistant minority whip, told "Fox News Sunday." "Words do have consequences. And I think that we have to really -- this is nothing new. I've been saying this for a long time now."

"I think the sheriff was right," added Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"Bob, when you and I grew up, we grew up listening to essentially three major news outlets: NBC, ABC, and of course, CBS. We listened to people like Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid, and Huntley-Brinkley, and they saw their job as to inform us of the facts and we would make a conclusion," Hoyer said. "Far too many broadcasts now and so many outlets have the intent of inciting, and inciting people to opposition, to anger, to thinking the other side is less than moral. And I think that is a context in which somebody who is mentally unbalanced can somehow feel justified in taking this kind of action. And I think we need to all take cognizance of that and be aware that what we say can, in fact, have consequences."

The context of all of the support statements for the Sheriff of Pima County do nothing to recognize the unique situation the Sheriff had placed himself. He was booked to speak about the unfolding event and facts surrounding this targeted act of murder and violence and he freely went on to speculate as to the cause of the acts of the person the police had in custody based upon (self-admitted by the Sheriff, when asked by Fox News Anchor, Megyn Kelly) no facts ... and no proof. Clarence Dupnik - Pima County Sheriff stated that this was his opinion as a person that spent 50 years in law enforcement but that in this specific case he currently had no facts for his opinion.

Arizona shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner in a photo released by the Pima County Sheriff's Department. The man allegedly responsible for last Saturday’s shooting spree that left six people dead, a U.S. congresswoman clinging to life, and 13 other people injured appeared in court Monday to hear formal charges against him, in one of the first steps of what is likely to be a complex and extended legal process. Here, Mr. Loughner is happy that the press, the Sheriff of Pima County, and leaders in the Democrat Political Party are working hard to bring him excuses for his mass-murderous act while he builds a defense to escape the death penalty. Image Credit: Pima County Sheriff's Department

After all of these days since the act of mass-murder had been carried out by Jared Lee Loughner, we now know through various reports that he had been arrest several times for making threats against others at college, he was registered politically as an Independent, he smoked dope regularly, that he erected a human skull bearing satanic alter in the backyard of his parents home, his mother, Amy, works for the Pima County board of supervisors, he was the only child in the Loughner family, he posted a series of rambling YouTube videos in which he speaks of mind control, dreaming and a "new currency", he was a model student when it came to attendance, he didn't perform well on tests, he handed in an assignment with geometric doodles instead of answers, he listed on his YouTube profile page his favorite books as "Animal Farm," "Brave New World" and "Mein Kampf", he apparently met Congresswoman Gabby Giffords once in 2007, and described her as "stupid and unintelligent", he was a deeply disturbed young man who’d been wandering the neighborhood he grew up in with an especially strange look in his eyes in recent days, neighbors say Jared’s mother is very friendly and outgoing, although his father, Randy, is “very aggressive, very angry all the time about petty things according to neighbors, and lastly ... Pima Community College suspended Jared Lee Loughner in September after administrators grew disturbed over one of his Internet posts, and told his parents he would need a mental health clearance if he wanted to return.

No where is there a background that would suggest the "vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business and what (we) see on TV and how our youngsters are being raised, that this has not become the nice United States of America that most of us grew up in" as the rhetoric of the politically left, liberal, progressive, and of the Democrat Political Party has asserted has any basis in fact.

"We must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his [or her] actions." - Ronald Reagan

The Pima County Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, should lose his position as sheriff for his unprofessional approach to talking with the media. He has proven that he can not be trusted in an environment that requires nuance, discernment, and the ability to relate to all of the citizens he is responsible to protect. To listen to him ... the only people he feels comfortable representing are the philosophically Big, Bigger, Biggest Government type of people.

Please do not ask how this situation might square with the Sheriff's perspective on what may ... or may not constitute freedom of speech here during the politically divisive 44th Presidency - Carter's Second Term.

The Bankruptcy Beat Goes On In A Bad Obama Economy

Image Credit: citytowninfo.com

The Bankruptcy Beat Goes On In A Bad Obama Economy

All of the government "stimulus" and government spending in the world can not repair a free market economy.

The number of Americans filing for bankruptcy in 2010 ticked up 9% over the previous year to more than 1.53 million, industry groups said Monday.

The number of consumers filing for bankruptcy has increased each year since 2005, when bankruptcy laws were revamped to make bankruptcy more difficult, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute and the National Bankruptcy Research Center.

This 2010 figure of reported bankruptcies far outpaces the 1,407,788 total consumer filings that were recorded during 2009, a trend that the American Bankruptcy Institute attributes to high debt and a stagnant economy.

"The steady climb of consumer filings notwithstanding the 2005 bankruptcy law restrictions demonstrate that families continue to turn to bankruptcy as a result of high debt burdens and stagnant income growth," ABI Executive Director Samuel Gerdano said in a statement. "We expect that consumer filings will continue to rise in 2011."

With a total of 118,146 bankruptcy filings, December 2010 was a particularly bad month for consumers, an increase of 3% over November's level.
(ht: CNNMoney)

The Obama administration combined with entrenched ruling class politicians that have run Washington federal politics over these last several decades is finally coming to roost here in 2011 as the national debt exceeds 14 Trillion dollars.

using a total population of 333,000,000 (333 Million - 1/3 of a Billion) for ease of mathematics ... a Trillion dollars is 1,000 Billion dollars, and a Billion dollars is equal to a contribution of $3.00 for each and every person wither the person is 9 months, or 90 years old. Using this base of logic, each and every human being in the United States owes the federal government over $42,000 in order to wipe out the current level of debt.

The debt is growing at over 4 Billion dollars a day or by the end of today YOU will have to add another $12.00 to the $42,000 that you and everyone else owes to wipe out the debt our representatives are piling onto us at this moment.

Bankruptcy is a default against a personal debt and everyone owed looses their time and money they invested in meeting the wants and needs of the person who is declaring bankruptcy. The federal debt is still owed to everyone ... and by everyone else.

Translate this to California's debt of 28 Billion dollars the math does not get any better. At an estimated population of 37 million as of July 2009 which will translate to $27.03 for every Billion dollars of debt. Using this logic - each and every Californian is in debt $27.03 for every Billion dollars X 28 Billion = $756.76.