Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"My Comments"
We need your help!! Your ideas, any isssues!!
The 2010 campaign has started. Democrats are attempting to “permanently plant” the political ideas into the voters of America that the Republican Party is the “No” Party. If we fail to discredit the GOP as the "No" Party, and convince America that the Republican Party ideas are the "Yes" Party, we may fail as true Conservatives of tomorrow. Help us win on this issue. Help us elect true Conservatives of tomorrow.
We must respond NOW!
I am asking each of you to sit down and develop ideas as to what Republicans say, and/or what Democrats say; then compare as to what Republicans are trying to do in saving America’s fiscal and social ideals. See my personal examples.
Republicans say “NO” on higher individual health insurance premiums. Republicans say “Yes” on truly improving individual health insurance. Let’s start with by tort reform. In each and every state which has started any tort reform, insurance rates have been reduced.
Republicans say “NO” on higher group insurance health insurance premiums. Republicans say “Yes” to allow small businesses to participate in group insurance health insurance groups in the open markets. Republicans understand it is jobs first, and being able to by competitive in the open market.
Republicans say “NO” for higher taxes. Republicans say “Yes” to lower taxes. Lower taxes allow taxpayers to invest incomes and/or savings into more businesses, thus creating more jobs.
Republicans say “NO” on Medicare patient’s cuts. Republicans say “Yes” on maintaining Medicare without patient benefit cuts.
Republicans say “No” to ClimateGate, as many scientists have proven that Al “Gory’s” presentations are based on “junk” science. This has now been proven as radical left-wing hackers stole and destroyed thousands of e-mails and supporting documents which would have proven ClimateGate is a bogus fabrication, Republicans say “Yes” to protecting our environment, and allowing small businesses to remain and become competitive in the free market.
etc., etc., etc.
Please assist on this project! Send your own ideas! Together, we can and must win on these clear ideas.
Thank you for your assistance.
Oscar Y. Harward
oharward@carolina.rr.com
http://conservativechristianvoice.blogspot.com
"Daily Motivations"
"There are those who work all day. Those who dream all day. And those who spend an hour dreaming before setting to work to fulfill those dreams. Go into the third category because there's virtually no competition." -- Steven J Ross
Your ability to discipline yourself to set clear goals, and then to work toward them every day, will do more to guarantee your success than any other single factor. -- Brian Tracy
"We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us." -- Rabindranth Tagore
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
By My great power I have made the earth and all its people and every animal. (Jeremiah 27:5)
Much mystery (and ignorance) results from the fact that God's Spirit transcends our five senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. He can only be perceived by our spirit--that unseen part of us that is renewed at salvation.
David Livingstone was the first European to explore much of central Africa over one hundred fifty years ago. He led expeditions that pushed deep into the jungles and savannahs--often thousands of miles at a stretch.
While traveling along the Zambezi River in south-central Africa, Livingstone became the first European to set eyes on Victoria Falls. The massive falls plunge 360 feet to the earth below. Some in Livingstone's party might have thought they had discovered the world's greatest source of natural power. But as Livingstone knew, they had done no such thing.
When you discover what it means for the Holy Spirit to be active in your life, you experience a power greater than anything else. The power from a hydroelectric dam can light up a city. But the power of the Holy Spirit touches eternity itself. Unfortunately, to most people, this power is just as hidden and mysterious as Victoria Falls in the days before Livingstone.
Through your spirit you have a relationship with the living God, who is Spirit. We cannot touch Him physically, though we can be touched emotionally by Him. We cannot see Him, yet we can see His fingerprints in the world around us. We cannot hear His voice, though we can listen for His guidance.
Your View of God Really Matters …
Ask God to empower you by the unlimited power of His Holy Spirit to live a life pleasing and acceptable to Him today. Then, tomorrow, ask Him to do it again.
"The Patriot Post"
"We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles. The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Cartwright, 1824
"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." -- James Madison
"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, 'What should be the reward of such sacrifices?'" -- Samuel Adams
On Cross-Examination
ObamaCare is facing more unlikely opponents every day, including former DNC chief Howard Dean, a medical doctor. "You're going to be forced to buy health insurance from a company that is going to take an average of 27 percent of your money," Dean said, "and there is no choice about that. If you don't buy that insurance you are going to get a fine."
And Dean wasn't done. "This bill I think is more likely to make the crisis worse than it is better because it's so expensive," he said. And as a result, he concluded, "[H]onestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill." He even penned an op-ed in The Washington Post expounding on his opposition.
Granted, Dean wants something even more leftist than what the Senate is grinding out, but sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your friend.
This Week's 'Braying Jackass' Award
Barack Obama's teleprompter gave him a rather poor choice of words to describe the government's efforts to hijack health care: "We just had a very productive session about the final stages of health care reform in the Senate. And from the discussions we had, it's clear that we are on the precipice of an achievement that's eluded Congresses and presidents for generations, an achievement that will touch the lives of nearly every American."
That's only too true -- we are on the precipice. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines it as "1 : a very steep or overhanging place; 2 : a hazardous situation."
And about that precipice... Obama sat down for an interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson Wednesday, in which he warned, "If we don't pass" this gargantuan expansion of the federal government, "the federal government will go bankrupt." Didn't he just tell Republicans to "stop trying to frighten the American people"? But he continued, "This actually provides us the best chance of starting to bend the cost curve on the government expenditures in Medicare and Medicaid." Furthermore, he claimed, "[I]f we don't do this, nobody argues with the fact that health care costs are going to consume the entire federal budget."
So, spending $1 trillion dollars is going to keep the federal government from going bankrupt? The suspense is killing us -- will someone please nominate this guy for the Nobel Prize in Economics?
The BIG Lie
Where in the Constitution is the authority to mandate that Americans buy health insurance?
"Well, I just think the Constitution charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people." -- Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award
"A good, solid B-plus." That's the grade Barack Obama gives himself after 11 months in office when asked by Oprah Winfrey for her "White House Christmas Special." Talk about grade inflation. Obama hasn't accomplished any of his major policy goals, millions more Americans are unemployed than when he was sworn in, the economy remains shaky, and America's allies openly wonder about our international commitments. If that's B+ material, just imagine what an F looks like.
"The Web"
More question legality of Senate healthcare bill
Jim Brown - OneNewsNow
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=837658
A constitutional historian says American courts would have to overturn their last 80 years of jurisprudence to uphold the constitutionality of the healthcare bill in Congress.
Thirteen Republican attorneys general are threatening to file a lawsuit against the Democrats' healthcare bill if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) refuse to remove a provision being called the "Cornhusker Kickback" -- the nearly $100 million Medicaid deal Democratic Senator Ben Nelson secured for his home state of Nebraska. Ostensibly, the deal was in exchange for Nelson's vote -- the 60th of 60 needed -- favoring the legislation. As reported earlier, the senator's decision has angered many Nebraskans.
In a letter sent last week, the 13 attorneys general argue the provision is "constitutionally flawed" and violates the U.S. Constitution's protection against "arbitrary" legislation. Constitutional historian David Barton, the president of WallBuilders, also believes the provision is unconstitutional.
"I think there's huge constitutional problems with this thing," exclaims Barton, "and it may be that we see the power of Congress limited constitutionally through a number of different venues by these various lawsuits that are out there."
Barton notes that court challenges are looming over the bill's individual mandate, as well as its anti-trust provision that forces a government monopoly. Texas Governor Rick Perry has also threatened to file a lawsuit, arguing the bill violates states' rights outlined in the Tenth Amendment.
Just before Christmas, The Heritage Foundation also questioned the constitutional legality of the healthcare legislation, publishing a legal memorandum charging that the individual mandate "takes congressional power and control to a striking new level."
The letter to Senator Reid and Congresswoman Pelosi was signed by top prosecutors in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington state. Four of the Republican attorneys general are running for governor in their respective states.
Why the health care bill's benefits don't go into effect until 2014
Joseph Ashby
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/01/why_the_health_care_bills_bene.html
10. Canadian health boards wanted four more years of having somewhere to send their citizens to get medical care.
9. The benefits were supposed to start sooner but Senator Baucus had a few too many before writing the bill.
8. Harry Reid doesn’t care that 20.5 million people will lose health insurance between now and then.
7. To ensure Obama can run for reelection before the health care disaster hits (oh wait…not a joke).
6. To give the Democrats time to reinstall the inheritance tax before the death panels get going.
5. “To do it right.” -- Barack Obama (Good one Mr. President, who says you don’t have a sense of humor?)
4. Obama wants to acclimatize Americans to long wait times.
3. Because members of Congress know Chuck Norris is waiting for them.
2. The government needs a few extra years to cover the bribes used to get the bill passed.
1. Because 2014 is when the Stimulus spending will really start working.
A positive outlook!!
By ClarenceJaeger
And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men. - 1 Samuel 22:2
God uses broken things to accomplish His greatest work. This is how he let Saul prepare a situation whereby David was able to gather the following that helped him become their king. Today, God has let Bush and Obama do the same in preparing a situation of discontent. In this way He is preparing a following (tea party) that will elect Godly men and women to lead us back to our God inspired constitutional form of government.
Soooo, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!!!!
Third state dinner crasher involved
By EAMON JAVERS
It turns out that Michaele and Tareq Salahi weren’t the only uninvited guests at the White House state dinner in November.
According to the Secret Service, a third interloper at the dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been identified.
In a press release Monday afternoon, the Secret Service said that the person traveled from a local hotel, where the official Indian delegation was staying, and arrived at the dinner with the group, which was under the responsibility of the Department of State. The person went through “all required security measures” along with the rest of the official delegation at the hotel and boarded a bus or a van with the delegation guests to go to the White House.
“At present, there is nothing to indicate that this individual went through the receiving line or had contact with the president or first lady,” said the Secret Service. The release does not say whether this third person was questioned or charged.
The Secret Service release notes that unlike the rest of the members of the official delegation, the third individual was not entered into the White House’s WAVES visitor screening system. And it says that procedural changes have already been implemented to address foreign delegations under the responsibility of Department of State that are entering facilities secured by the Secret Service.
The press release confirmed reporting of author Ronald Kessler earlier in the day on Newsmax.com. Kessler is the author of “In the President’s Secret Service,” in which he argues that budget and workload constraints have led the Secret Service to begin “cutting corners” in presidential security.
In a story posted at 10:26 a.m., Kessler wrote that that the Secret Service re-examined video of arriving guests at the Indian dinner and attempted to match the images with the guest list. “The agency spotted an African-American man wearing a tuxedo who had not been invited,” Kessler wrote.
“He appeared to be with members of the Indian delegation. Checking further, agents found that a State Department official had picked him up, along with others from the Indian delegation, at the Willard InterContinental Hotel and had driven him from the hotel to the White House.”
DHS Plans to Catch Only One in Four Travelers Committing ‘Major’ Criminal Violations While Entering U.S. on International Fights in 2010
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/59213
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
(CNSNews.com) - Documents produced by the Department of Homeland Security indicate that in fiscal 2010 the department is planning to catch only 26 percent of travelers committing major criminal violations while seeking to enter the United States through international airports.
DHS documents also indicate that the department believes it will fail to screen against law enforcement databases 15 percent of travelers entering the United States in 2010 through all official ports of entry.
In fiscal 2008, according to DHS, the department caught only 25 percent of those committing “major violations” while entering the U.S. on international flights. It also planned to catch only 25% in fiscal 2009, which ended on Sept. 30. For fiscal 2010, which began on Oct. 1, DHS set it sites slightly higher, planning to catch 26 percent of “major” violators entering the U.S. on international flights while letting 74 percent get away.
DHS each year calculates what it calls the “air passenger apprehension rate for major violations.” This apprehension rate is used as one measure of whether the department is achieving its goal to “improve the targeting, screening, and apprehension of high-risk international cargo and travelers to prevent terrorist attacks, while providing processes to facilitate the flow of safe and legitimate trade and travel.”
The “major violations” that DHS believes 74 percent of perpetrators will get away with when entering the U.S. by air in 2010, according to a 3,493-page document the department presented to Congress to justify its annual budget, involve “serious criminal activity, including possession of narcotics, smuggling of prohibited products, human smuggling, weapons possession, fraudulent U.S. documents, and other offenses serious enough to result in arrest.”
DHS determines the percentage of “major” violators it catches entering the United States at international airports by subjecting a random sampling of passengers to intensified scrutiny designed to detect any offense they might be committing. “The sample rate is used to estimate the ‘expected’ number of major violations in the general population,” DHS explained in its budget justification. “The major violations found during the regular primary inspection process are then compared to the ‘expected’ number to compute the apprehension rate for major violations among air passengers traveling to the U.S.”
The justification for its 2010 budget that DHS presented to Congress said the department had apprehended 40.3 percent of those committing “major violations” entering the United States on international flights in fiscal 2007, but that the number dropped to only 25 percent in fiscal 2008. For fiscal 2009, the document said, the department set a goal of apprehending 25 percent again, and then raised the goal to 26 percent for fiscal 2010.
An annual performance review updated by DHS in May also said the department caught only 25% of those committing “major violations” while entering the U.S. by air in fiscal 2008 and that the department had set goals of apprehending 25 percent of such violators in 2009 and 26 percent in 2010.
A statement provided to CNSNews.com on September 11, 2009 by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the DHS agency responsible for screening international travelers entering the United States, said “the vast majority of passenger violations that fall into the ‘major violations’ category are narcotics violations.”
Another measure that DHS uses to determine whether it is achieving its goal of preventing terrorist attacks is called the “percent of individuals screened against law enforcement databases for entry into the United States.” The 3,493-page report DHS provided to Congress to justify its 2010 budget said, “This measure identifies the percent of individuals arriving at the ports of entry who have their names and other identification information checked against electronic law enforcement databases.”
According to the document, the department screened only 73.5% of international travelers arriving at all U.S. ports of entry in 2008, and set goals of screening 80 percent in fiscal 2009 and 85 percent in fiscal 2010.
In its annual financial report published on Nov. 16, DHS said it had done law-enforcement database screening on 83.4% of travelers entering the U.S. at official ports of entry in fiscal 2009 and was still planning to screen 85 percent in fiscal 2010—leaving 15 percent of travelers entering the United States unscreened.
A Homeland Security Department official, who spoke to CNSNews.com last week on the condition that his name not be used, said CBP screens 100 percent of international travelers entering the United States at international airports but is not as efficient in screening international travelers entering the country at land ports of entry.
Nonetheless, DHS officials told CNSNews.com that some individuals whose names are discovered on law enforcement databases before they board international flights to the United States are allowed to board the planes and fly to the United States. After they arrive, they are subjected to heightened scrutiny, sometimes being denied final entry into the country by CBP. DHS said individuals dealt with in this way are not included in its “air passenger apprehension rate”
“CBP officials are alerted to all travelers on the terrorist watch list, including those with outstanding criminal warrants, or criminal histories,” CBP told CNSNews.com in the September statement. “This screening is done prior to arrival at the U.S. port of entry. On arrival, such travelers are intercepted and their cases are handled immediately, removing them from the pool of passengers included in the air apprehension rate measure. This means that virtually all potential terrorists and criminal violators are interdicted in our first layer of enforcement, before the apprehension rate is determined.”
A Homeland Security Department official explained last week that international passengers who appear on the “No Fly” list are not allowed to board planes bound for the United States, but that officials at CBP’s National Targeting Center make judgment calls about whether other individuals “flagged” by the agency’s screening system will be permitted to board U.S. bound flights. The screening system checks names of passengers against multiple databases.
The official said that when passengers check-in for U.S. bound flights at foreign airports their names are automatically run against the “No Fly” list which is provided to the airlines. Then, depending on the system the airline is using, the passenger’s name is either instantly transmitted at check-in to CBP’s National Targeting Center or the airline provides CBP with a manifest of all passenger’s on a U.S.-bound flight either 60 minutes or 30 minutes before departure. CBP checks the names by computer and examines any that its system flags to determine whether the person in question should be allowed on the flight.
“The no-fly list is exactly that. They don’t get on a plane,” the DHS official said. “Everyone else that is on that plane and headed for the states, we get that information before the plane pushes back, we are starting our vetting against all these databases and they have different levels of complexity, depending on whose lists they are. So everyone is being vetted against those and that allows us to identify individuals that are coming to the United States that are interest to us for further screening.”
The DHS official stressed that passengers who are not on the “No Fly” list but appear on other databases that trigger more extensive screening after the passenger arrives at a U.S. airport are “not known terrorists” but have aroused the interest of the U.S. government for other reasons. “The individuals we are looking at are not known terrorists. They are not considered a threat to the country,” said the official. But because some law enforcement or federal agency is interested in them, CBP is “made aware of it so that we can talk to them when they do enter the United States.”
Some passengers may be flagged for fairly minor matters, the DHS official said. “I am from Michigan and I have a warrant for failure to appear and that shows up,” said the official, giving a hypothetical. “I am going to get talked to when I enter the United States because there is a law enforcement agency out there that has an interest in me. I am not a threat to national security. I am not on a no-fly list.”
When asked if people on the “No Fly” list were the only travelers automatically excluded from boarding international flights to the United States, the DHS official said travelers with invalid visas are also supposed to be automatically excluded from boarding flights to the United States.
The DHS official also said one reason the department sometimes waits until a passenger flagged by their screening system arrives in the United States before dealing with them is because the department has few resources and no jurisdiction in foreign countries.
“Most of our resources are at our ports of entry. That is where our officers have the authority and the ability to deal with these individuals,” said the official. “Just because someone is trying to get on a flight in a foreign country and they may have a past criminal history that is of interest, we have no authority to act on that at that time.”
The first line of defense in preventing bad actors from boarding planes to come to United States from foreign countries is the State Department, which is responsible for screening would-be travelers who apply for visas.
When CNSNews.com asked CBP in September why DHS’s annual performance report set a goal of apprehending only 26% of those committing “major violations” while entering the United States by air, CBP provided CNSNews.com with a written statement that said the apprehension rate is low because the majority of major violators are smuggling small amounts of drugs that are difficult to detect.
“CBP Officers are always attempting to catch 100% of the major violations occurring at the ports of entry,” said the statement. “This is extremely difficult to do since most major violations at the ports of entry are narcotics violations and narcotics smugglers are very inventive at finding new ways to hide contraband.”
The statement said the DHS conducts a “thorough physical inspection” of a random sampling of passengers to estimate the rate of major violations being committed by those arriving at U.S. international airports.
“We track the ‘results’ for this measure by taking a true random sampling of arriving passengers and conducting a thorough physical inspection of them, their luggage, and travel documents to identify all violations in our sample,” said the statement. “This information is used to develop a statistically valid estimate of the number of violations occurring in the group of travelers arriving at the port of entry. We then compare the violations we actually find to this estimate to determine the overall apprehension rate.”
IVANA TRUMP ESCORTED OFF PLANE: NAPOLITANO DECLARES 'THE SYSTEM WORKED'
http://www.anncoulter.com/
In response to a Nigerian Muslim trying to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, the government will now prohibit international travelers from going to the bathroom in the last hour before the plane lands.
Terrorists who plan to bomb planes during the first seven hours of the eight-hour flight, however, should face no difficulties, provided they wait until after the complimentary beverage service has been concluded.
How do they know Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab didn't wait until the end of the flight to try to detonate explosives because he heard the stewardess announce that the food service was over and seats would have to be placed in their upright position? I can't finish my snack? This plane is going down!
Also prohibited in the last hour of international flights will be: blankets, pillows, computers and in-flight entertainment. Another triumph in Janet Napolitano's "Let's stay one step behind the terrorists" policy!
For the past eight years, approximately 2 million Americans a day have been subjected to humiliating searches at airport security checkpoints, forced to remove their shoes and jackets, to open their computers, and to remove all liquids from their carry-on bags, except minuscule amounts in marked 3-ounce containers placed in Ziploc plastic bags -- folding sandwich bags are verboten -- among other indignities.
This, allegedly, was the price we had to pay for safe airplanes. The one security precaution the government refused to consider was to require extra screening for passengers who looked like the last three-dozen terrorists to attack airplanes.
Since Muslims took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, every attack on a commercial airliner has been committed by foreign-born Muslim men with the same hair color, eye color and skin color. Half of them have been named Mohammed.
An alien from the planet "Not Politically Correct" would have surveyed the situation after 9/11 and said: "You are at war with an enemy without uniforms, without morals, without a country and without a leader -- but the one advantage you have is they all look alike. ... What? ... What did I say?"
The only advantage we have in a war with stateless terrorists was ruled out of order ab initio by political correctness.
And so, despite 5 trillion Americans opening laptops, surrendering lip gloss and drinking breast milk in airports day after day for the past eight years, the government still couldn't stop a Nigerian Muslim from nearly blowing up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day.
The "warning signs" exhibited by this particular passenger included the following:
His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
He's Nigerian.
He's a Muslim.
His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
He boarded a plane in Lagos, Nigeria.
He paid nearly $3,000 in cash for his ticket.
He had no luggage.
His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Two months ago, his father warned the U.S. that he was a radical Muslim and possibly dangerous.
If our security procedures can't stop this guy, can't we just dispense with those procedures altogether? What's the point exactly?
(To be fair, the father's warning might have been taken more seriously if he had not simultaneously asked for the U.S. Embassy's Social Security number and bank routing number in order to convey a $28$ million inheritance that was trapped in a Nigerian bank account.)
The warning from Abdulmutallab's father put his son on some list, but not the "no fly" list. Apparently, it's tougher to get on the "no fly" list than it was to get into Studio 54 in the '70s. Currently, the only people on the "no fly" list" are the Blind Sheik and Sean Penn.
The government is like the drunk looking for his keys under a lamppost. Someone stops to help, and asks, "Is this where you lost them?" No, the drunk answers, but the light's better here.
The government refuses to perform the only possibly effective security check -- search Muslims -- so instead it harasses infinitely compliant Americans. Will that help avert a terrorist attack? No, but the Americans don't complain.
The only reason Abdulmutallab didn't succeed in bringing down an airplane with 278 passengers was that: (1) A brave Dutchman leapt from his seat and extinguished the smoldering Nigerian; and (2) the Nigerian apparently didn't have enough detonating fluid to cause a powerful explosion.
In addition to the no blanket, no computer, no bathroom rule, perhaps the airlines could add this to their preflight announcement about seat belts and emergency exits: "Should a passenger sitting near you attempt to detonate an explosive device, you may be called upon to render emergency assistance. Would you be willing to do so under those circumstances? If not we will assign you another seat ...."
"The e-mail Bag"
I thought you might like to know "How to Recognize a Gay Terrorist"
http://www.meridix.com/forum_thread.php?liveid=bsports1&Thread_ID=972&page=1
His name is: "YOMAMA BIN SHOPPIN"
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100105
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"Daily Motivations"
"Old times never come back and I suppose it's just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year, and that's better." -- George Edward Woodberry
"How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar." -- Trina Paulus
Lead Right
Make sure they have the “tools” they need.
Imagine this scenario: We’re out in the middle of a field. I’m the supervisor and I give you an assignment to dig a trench. After explaining why the trench is necessary, I give you the go-ahead to start digging. You immediately inquire, “Where’s the back hoe?” I respond, “It’s in the shop.” You then ask, “So how am I supposed to dig this trench?” I hand you a shovel, and then I leave. I return two hours later and find that you haven’t made much progress. You’re tired and frustrated … and I’m ticked off.
A far-fetched story? Maybe so! But it does make a simple and important point: it’s tough for people to do a good job – to do their best work – when they don’t have the “tools” (resources) they need. That’s something your team members may be facing more often than you think. And as a leader, you need to do your best to do something about it.
Ask yourself, What do my people need in order to meet or exceed my expectations? Better yet, ASK THEM! Maybe it’s a new piece of equipment – or the fixing/updating of an existing one. Perhaps it’s a new software program, additional training, or an expanded supplies inventory. Or it could be that what they really need is more time, more help, or more information.
Whatever your team needs, get it for them. And if you can’t, tell them why, look for other ways to support their efforts, and appreciate the fact that many of their achievements are happening in spite of how they are equipped rather than because of it.
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of highest privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory. (Romans 5:2)
Faith is essential to the Christian life. But until we realize our faith is in the God who never changes, we will tend to walk by sight.
All of us have natural, everyday faith. This is the faith we exhibit in the ordinary things we do. When we sip a glass of water, we trust that it is pure. When we board an airplane, we have faith that the builders, the air traffic controllers, and the pilot know what they are doing. This type of faith comes from our senses. If the water looks odd or smells funny, we do not drink it. If the pilot reeks of alcohol, we do not board the plane.
But spiritual faith does not depend on our senses. It is based on God's consistent and trustworthy character. As George Mueller, 19th century British social reformer, explained, "Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible. There is no glory for God in that which is humanly possible. Faith begins where man's power ends."
Although our circumstances may appear hopeless and our feelings may tell us to give up, we must not allow ourselves to be limited by the visible world. Instead, we should place our trust in the God who never changes.
Yet many times our faith extends only as far as we can see. An African impala antelope can jump higher than ten feet and a distance of more than thirty feet. Yet these magnificent creatures can be kept in an enclosure behind a three-foot wall. The reason? The antelope will not jump if it cannot see where its feet will fall. The impala's dependency on its senses robs it of its freedom.
We, also, are often limited by our need to see before we will believe. Instead, we must improve our spiritual vision so that the walls of fear and doubt cannot doom us to a life of spiritual mediocrity.
Your View of God Really Matters …
If you really believed that God never changes, how would that affect the way you trust Him for the things you cannot see, or the circumstances you don't understand?
"The Patriot Post"
"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Washington, 1796
"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison
Editorial Exegesis
"The White House thinks it can jawbone banks into lending to people they don't want to lend to. We've been down this road before, and it led all the way to the 2007 financial meltdown. The president on Monday gave a tongue-lashing to the 'fat-cat bankers on Wall Street,' as he called them the day before. He wants them to make more loans to small businesses and consumers to give the economy a boost. But should banks be lending just because a politician tells them to? We tried this before. Indeed, it's the very source of the financial and economic calamity of the past two years. President Obama may think dressing down the top dogs at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and others is good politics. But it's demoralizing and will only lead to more bank write-offs, more bank failures and less lending. ... In this, President Obama is treading the very same ground as President Clinton and President Bush in pushing banks to make risky loans they shouldn't make. And it will have the same dire results.. For those who don't remember, the federal government became more involved than ever in determining how banks make their loans -- and to what customers -- thanks to the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of the wreckage of the Great Depression. They were followed by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 and the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992. Go back to the 1970s and early 1990s you'll see that, just as today, bankers were criticized heavily for their alleged racism and lack of concern for the poor. President after president lambasted them for not lending more to support presidential social policies. By 2000, President Clinton's HUD required half of Fannie Mae's loan originations to go to poor and moderate-income borrowers -- whether they could pay on the loans or not. It marked the triumph of leftist politics over financial common sense. This is how the subprime meltdown, the source of our current financial troubles, came about. Not by 'greedy' banks or by 'deregulation.'" -- Investor's Business Daily
Upright
"Every day that President Obama pushes for the government take over of health care he injures families by the thousands across America. Every day that President Obama contemplates the idea of spending trillions more of yours and my tax dollars, the less the chances of his being able to reduce the non-voluntary unemployment/under-employment rates that are now drastically impacting one out of every five families in America." -- columnist Kevin McCullough
"As the Democrats inexorably slog toward the finish line, lugging and wrenching their malformed health care bill, the most passionate debate has been on contentious issues like abortion, the public option, and Medicare cuts. Yet the overriding danger of the Senate bill and its House counterpart is the massive government bureaucracies that will emerge as the legislation takes effect. The Democrats' colossal experiment threatens to unleash forces that will ultimately overwhelm the doctor-patient relationship, ration our health care, and stifle innovation and excellence in the medical field. A massive government bureaucracy soon acquires a life of its own, with dominion over its constituency that no politician dares attempt to rein in." -- columnist Joseph Smith
"The more the government grabs and spends, the less chance there is that jobs will be created." -- Human Events editor Jed Babbin
"From now on, when you hear Obama speak, try replacing 'let me be clear' with 'let me lie to you,' and see if it makes more sense." -- columnist Jacob Sullum
"I assume we're supposed to be too dense to remember that [Obama's] stimulus spending to date hasn't created jobs and that most of it hasn't even been used for that purpose. So when this administration says its first priority is reducing debt, understand we are being played -- by consummate cynics." -- columnist David Limbaugh
"[I]t just so happens that with the exception of nuclear power -- which most greens still won't support -- global warming fuels nearly every progressive ambition. Wealth transfers from rich to poor nations: Check. The rise of 'global governance' and the decline of American sovereignty: Check. A secular fatwa not only to erode capitalism but to intrude on every aspect of our lives (Greenpeace offers a guide to carbon-neutral sex): Check. Weaning us off of oil (which, don't let the Goregonauts fool you, was a priority back when we were still worried about global cooling): Check. The checks go on for as far as the eye can see, and we will be writing them for years to come." -- columnist Jonah Goldberg
"Right now, if you don't like the local grade school, you move to the next town. If you're sick of Massachusetts taxes, you move to New Hampshire. Where do you move to if you don't like 'global governance'? What polling station do you go to to vote it out?" -- columnist Mark Steyn
The Demo-gogues
Completely delusional: "Good, solid B-plus. B-plus because of the things that are undone. ... Health care is not yet signed. If I get health care passed, we tip into A-minus." -- Barack Obama grading himself on nearly one year of destroying the country
The truth comes out: "We would do almost anything to pass a health care bill." -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
How reassuring: "I would say to the senator from Arizona [McCain] that I am in the dark almost as much as he is, and I am in the leadership. Most of us know the fundamentals, but we don't know the important details." -- Senate Whip Dick Durbin, the #2 Democrat, on the mystery contents of Harry Reid's health care bill
"Let's be clear" means a lie is coming: "Let's be clear here. Seven presidents have tried to reform a health care system that everyone acknowledges is broken. Seven presidents have failed up until this point. We are now that close to having a bill that does all the things that I said and most experts said needed to be done when we started this process. It is not only deficit neutral, but will actually bring down the deficit according to the Congressional Budget Office." -- Barack Obama
Wolf in sheep's clothing? "I'm going to be in a position where I can say what I've wanted to say all along: that I'm ready to vote for health care reform." -- Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who wants the public option and Medicare expansion out of the bill
Looking in the mirror? "[O]ne of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war. There was a tendency to say, 'We can go in. We can kick some tail. This is some glorious exercise.' When in fact, this is a tough business." -- Barack Obama, hitting the military in what sounds like a criticism of himself
He ran to take over Wall Street: "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of, you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street." -- Barack Obama
Village Idiots
Who cares about climate facts: "It is said that the science around climate change is not as certain as its proponents allege. It doesn't need to be. What is beyond debate, however, is that there is a huge amount of scientific support for the view that the climate is changing and as a result of human activity. Therefore, even purely as a matter of precaution, given the seriousness of the consequences if such a view is correct, and the time it will take for action to take effect, we should act. Not to do so would be grossly irresponsible." -- former British Prime Minister Tony Blair
"Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years." -- Al Bore, citing a scientist who later said he didn't know where Gore got that information
Consensus? "[E]verybody agrees that the recession is over." -- White House economic adviser Larry Summers
But is it really? "Of course not. For the people on Main Street and throughout this country, they are still suffering, the unemployment rate is still 10 percent." -- White House economic adviser Christina Romer
Confessions: "At 71, my mind is so old, I can't remember if I have Alzheimer's, or ... what's the other one?" -- CNN founder Ted Turner
Hollywonks: "[Greed and imperialism (read: capitalism)] tends to destroy the environment and so on. And here they are doing the same thing on another pristine planet that we've done here on earth. So it's a way, sort of looking back at ourselves from this other world and seeing what we're doing here." -- director James Cameron on his epic sci-fi flick "Avatar" due out Friday
"The Web"
UpTimeAmerica
http://www.uptimeamerica.com/video.asp
Best of 2009: Daniel Hannan’s viral European parliament speech
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/12/31/best-of-2009-daniel-hannans-viral-european-parliament-speech/
Go to http://conservativechristianvoice.blogspot.com for Alan Jackson's "I Come To The Garden Alone"
I Come To The Garden Alone
One of my all time favorite hymns this song "In The Garden" has
touched my heart for years. I've not always nor even now really know all the words but these key lines have stuck with me always. "I come to the garden alone While the dew is still on the roses" and "And He walks with me, and He talks with me, And He tells me I am His own; And the joy we share as we tarry there, None other has ever known."
Today I made a realization - wow, Faith had another one of those eye
openers, which does happen occasionally. For as long as I can remember some of my most special, most peaceful times of my life have been spent "In the Garden". And even more so "While the dew is still on the roses" early in the morning while most everyone else is still sleeping "alone" - I am a morning person. But, was I alone? No, some of my closest talks with Our Father have been right there, setting in the dirt, pulling weeds or digging plants to move to a new location, planting seeds in hopes and dreams of what would grow from them. Even during the long years of my life when I wasn't living for God - He was there in the garden with me. I was never "alone".
There are some very important scriptures in the bible connected with gardens. Of course most everyone, believer and non-believers know the "story" of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Genesis 2:8-10 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden;
We also most all know what happened after that - Adam and Eve messed up! Result of which God had created the most beautiful of gardens but we humans didn't listen and ended up where we are now. Most believers are or should be if not already, trying to get back to that garden.
Now, I may be off the mark here but seems to me that "The Garden"
must have been pretty important to God. He did all that work the first 6 days, rested on the 7th and sometime in there He planted a garden to put man in… Sounds important to me! The word "garden" alone is in the King James Version of the bible 59 times, (if you don't believe me click here, I've listed them for you or you can do your own search) lot of stuff going on in "gardens" in those days. Just a little side note here, the word "satan" is only mentioned 49 times won't bother listing those as he's not important if your living for God you have power over him.
(ok, I know he is mentioned by other names but working the numbers here for effect and sure there are
many "gardens" that although mentioned are not pulled up by the word "garden").
Some very very interesting information I learned today though is even
though it doesn't say "garden" in the scripture one of the most touching times in history happened in a garden, Gethsemane.
*Gethsemane (an oil press), garden across the Kidron Valley on the Mount of Olives (Hebrew Har ha-Zetim), a mile-long ridge paralleling the eastern part of Jerusalem, where Jesus is said to have prayed on the night of his arrest before his Crucifixion. The name Gethsemane (Hebrew gat shemanim, "oil press") suggests that the garden was a grove of olive trees in which was located an oil press. Encyclopædia Britannica
Matthew 26
36 Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.
37 And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy.
38 Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.
39 And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.
40 And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?
41 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
42 He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.
43 And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy.
44 And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.
45 Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
46 Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.
47 And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.
Not once but three times, less than 24 hours before His "Death" Jesus
prayed to Our Father, His Father in a garden. Is it important that Jesus choose a garden to do this? Most likely not, but one of those questions to ask when we meet Him for sure. But then maybe it is. Jesus asked His disciples to "watch with" Him. Yet they fell asleep. Now, if they were in a more "uncomfortable" spot might they not have fallen asleep? "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." He didn't say just if your uncomfortable watch and pray, He said do it in this garden.
Jesus is asking His Father to not let what is about to happen (His Death)
but at the same time is prepared to do Our Father's will. But even in those final hours He is giving "us" a chance, all we had to do was "watch and pray". Just as in the Garden of Eden we failed again. Jesus went to His death on The Cross-for us, not himself, not for Our Father God but for us. Are we in the garden alone now? Are we watching and praying as He asked? I love my time in the garden with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. My lowest times in my life have been when I couldn't for some reason be in the garden. My highest times have been while in the garden, listening and talking with Our Father. Is this coincidence? Or is it God speaking to me - we are to be like Jesus! Jesus did choose a garden to spend some of his last hours on earth, in earthly form, in a garden. I think it's pretty cool and look forward even more to spring when I can once again be in the garden,
not alone but with Our Father.
John 20:15-17
Jesus saith unto her,
Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?
She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him,
Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou
hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary.
She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni;
which is to say, Master.
Jesus saith unto her,
Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
Doesn't say "garden" but if Mary thought Jesus was a gardener then would lead me to believe they were in a garden again - ummm He pops in to deliever one more message before ascending to Heaven.
song playing:
IN THE GARDEN
Words & Music: C. Austin Miles
I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
Refrain
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.
He speaks, and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.
Refrain
I’d stay in the garden with Him
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.
Refrain
My prayer for all who read this and all who don't. May Our Father bless us all with the glory of His love, may He never leave us alone in the garden, may He walk with us and talk with us for eternity. May satan know he has no chance as we have the power of the Lord. May Our Lord Jesus Christ show us the paths to take and guide our steps along the cobblestones. Blessed Father thank you for all you have done for us, thank you for giving us the chance to share time in the garden with You, thank you for being Our Father. In Jesus' name I pray, AMEN.
T H E G A R D E N - Come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses...
Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009
Washington, DC
http://www..judicialwatch.org/news/2009/dec/judicial-watch-announces-list-washington-s-ten-most-wanted-corrupt-politicians-2009
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in alphabetical order, includes:
Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 "Ten Most Corrupt" list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him. In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat. In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against Dodd for undervaluing a property he owns in Ireland on his Senate Financial Disclosure forms. Judicial Watch's complaint forced Dodd to amend the forms. However, press reports suggest the property to this day remains undervalued. Judicial Watch also alleges in the complaint that Dodd obtained a sweetheart deal for the property in exchange for his assistance in obtaining a presidential pardon (during the Clinton administration) and other favors for a long-time friend and business associate. The false financial disclosure forms were part of the cover-up. Dodd remains the head the Senate Banking Committee.
Senator John Ensign (R-NV): A number of scandals popped up in 2009 involving public officials who conducted illicit affairs, and then attempted to cover them up with hush payments and favors, an obvious abuse of power. The year's worst offender might just be Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign. Ensign admitted in June to an extramarital affair with the wife of one of his staff members, who then allegedly obtained special favors from the Nevada Republican in exchange for his silence. According to The New York Times: "The Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee are expected to conduct preliminary inquiries into whether Senator John Ensign violated federal law or ethics rules as part of an effort to conceal an affair with the wife of an aide…" The former staffer, Douglas Hampton, began to lobby Mr. Ensign's office immediately upon leaving his congressional job, despite the fact that he was subject to a one-year lobbying ban. Ensign seems to have ignored the law and allowed Hampton lobbying access to his office as a payment for his silence about the affair. (These are potentially criminal offenses.) It looks as if Ensign misused his public office (and taxpayer resources) to cover up his sexual shenanigans.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): Judicial Watch is investigating a $12 million TARP cash injection provided to the Boston-based OneUnited Bank at the urging of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. As reported in the January 22, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department indicated it would only provide funds to healthy banks to jump-start lending. Not only was OneUnited Bank in massive financial turmoil, but it was also "under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives' use." Rep. Frank admitted he spoke to a "federal regulator," and Treasury granted the funds. (The bank continues to flounder despite Frank's intervention for federal dollars.) Moreover, Judicial Watch uncovered documents in 2009 that showed that members of Congress for years were aware that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing fast and loose with accounting issues, risk assessment issues and executive compensation issues, even as liberals led by Rep. Frank continued to block attempts to rein in the two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs). For example, during a hearing on September 10, 2003, before the House Committee on Financial Services considering a Bush administration proposal to further regulate Fannie and Freddie, Rep. Frank stated: "I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two Government Sponsored Enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury." Frank received $42,350 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 1989 and 2008. Frank also engaged in a relationship with a Fannie Mae Executive while serving on the House Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner: In 2009, Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004 on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 185 member countries that oversees the global financial system. (Did we mention Geithner now runs the IRS?) It wasn't until President Obama tapped Geithner to head the Treasury Department that he paid back most of the money, although the IRS kindly waived the hefty penalties. In March 2009, Geithner also came under fire for his handling of the AIG bonus scandal, where the company used $165 million of its bailout funds to pay out executive bonuses, resulting in a massive public backlash. Of course as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner helped craft the AIG deal in September 2008. However, when the AIG scandal broke, Geithner claimed he knew nothing of the bonuses until March 10, 2009. The timing is important. According to CNN: "Although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told congressional leaders on Tuesday that he learned of AIG's impending $160 million bonus payments to members of its troubled financial-products unit on March 10, sources tell TIME that the New York Federal Reserve informed Treasury staff that the payments were imminent on Feb. 28. That is ten days before Treasury staffers say they first learned 'full details' of the bonus plan, and three days before the [Obama] Administration launched a new $30 billion infusion of cash for AIG." Throw in another embarrassing disclosure in 2009 that Geithner employed "household help" ineligible to work in the United States, and it becomes clear why the Treasury Secretary has earned a spot on the "Ten Most Corrupt Politicians in Washington" list.
Attorney General Eric Holder: Tim Geithner can be sure he won't be hounded about his tax-dodging by his colleague Eric Holder, US Attorney General. Judicial Watch strongly opposed Holder because of his terrible ethics record, which includes: obstructing an FBI investigation of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory; rejecting multiple requests for an independent counsel to investigate alleged fundraising abuses by then-Vice President Al Gore in the Clinton White House; undermining the criminal investigation of President Clinton by Kenneth Starr in the midst of the Lewinsky investigation; and planning the violent raid to seize then-six-year-old Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint in order to return him to Castro's Cuba. Moreover, there is his soft record on terrorism. Holder bypassed Justice Department procedures to push through Bill Clinton's scandalous presidential pardons and commutations, including for 16 members of FALN, a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that orchestrated approximately 120 bombings in the United States, killing at least six people and permanently maiming dozens of others, including law enforcement officers. His record in the current administration is no better. As he did during the Clinton administration, Holder continues to ignore serious incidents of corruption that could impact his political bosses at the White House. For example, Holder has refused to investigate charges that the Obama political machine traded VIP access to the White House in exchange for campaign contributions – a scheme eerily similar to one hatched by Holder's former boss, Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Holder Justice Department also came under fire for dropping a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. On Election Day 2008, Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary garb threatened voters as they approached polling stations. Holder has also failed to initiate a comprehensive Justice investigation of the notorious organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which is closely tied to President Obama. There were allegedly more than 400,000 fraudulent ACORN voter registrations in the 2008 campaign. And then there were the journalist videos catching ACORN Housing workers advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration, and child prostitution laws. Holder's controversial decisions on new rights for terrorists and his attacks on previous efforts to combat terrorism remind many of the fact that his former law firm has provided and continues to provide pro bono representation to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Holder's politicization of the Justice Department makes one long for the days of Alberto Gonzales.
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)/ Senator Roland Burris (D-IL): One of the most serious scandals of 2009 involved a scheme by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to sell President Obama's then-vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. Two men caught smack dab in the middle of the scandal: Senator Roland Burris, who ultimately got the job, and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, emissaries for Jesse Jackson Jr., named "Senate Candidate A" in the Blagojevich indictment, reportedly offered $1.5 million to Blagojevich during a fundraiser if he named Jackson Jr. to Obama's seat. Three days later federal authorities arrested Blagojevich. Burris, for his part, apparently lied about his contacts with Blagojevich, who was arrested in December 2008 for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat. According to Reuters: "Roland Burris came under fresh scrutiny…after disclosing he tried to raise money for the disgraced former Illinois governor who named him to the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama…In the latest of those admissions, Burris said he looked into mounting a fundraiser for Rod Blagojevich -- later charged with trying to sell Obama's Senate seat -- at the same time he was expressing interest to the then-governor's aides about his desire to be appointed." Burris changed his story five times regarding his contacts with Blagojevich prior to the Illinois governor appointing him to the U.S. Senate. Three of those changing explanations came under oath.
President Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to run an ethical and transparent administration. However, in his first year in office, the President has delivered corruption and secrecy, bringing Chicago-style political corruption to the White House. Consider just a few Obama administration "lowlights" from year one: Even before President Obama was sworn into office, he was interviewed by the FBI for a criminal investigation of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's scheme to sell the President's former Senate seat to the highest bidder. (Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and slumlord Valerie Jarrett, both from Chicago, are also tangled up in the Blagojevich scandal.) Moreover, the Obama administration made the startling claim that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House. The Obama White House believes it can violate the privacy rights of American citizens without any legal consequences or accountability. President Obama boldly proclaimed that "transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," but his administration is addicted to secrecy, stonewalling far too many of Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act requests and is refusing to make public White House visitor logs as federal law requires. The Obama administration turned the National Endowment of the Arts (as well as the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program) into propaganda machines, using tax dollars to persuade "artists" to promote the Obama agenda. According to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the idea emerged as a direct result of the Obama campaign and enjoyed White House approval and participation. President Obama has installed a record number of "czars" in positions of power. Too many of these individuals are leftist radicals who answer to no one but the president. And too many of the czars are not subject to Senate confirmation (which raises serious constitutional questions). Under the President's bailout schemes, the federal government continues to appropriate or control -- through fiat and threats -- large sectors of the private economy, prompting conservative columnist George Will to write: "The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption." Government-run healthcare and car companies, White House coercion, uninvestigated ACORN corruption, debasing his office to help Chicago cronies, attacks on conservative media and the private sector, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors – this is Obama's "ethics" record -- and we haven't even gotten through the first year of his presidency.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): At the heart of the corruption problem in Washington is a sense of entitlement. Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel. Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Pentagon in 2008 that suggest Pelosi has been treating the Air Force like her own personal airline. These documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, include internal Pentagon email correspondence detailing attempts by Pentagon staff to accommodate Pelosi's numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft as well as the speaker's 11th hour cancellations and changes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also came under fire in April 2009, when she claimed she was never briefed about the CIA's use of the waterboarding technique during terrorism investigations. The CIA produced a report documenting a briefing with Pelosi on September 4, 2002, that suggests otherwise. Judicial Watch also obtained documents, including a CIA Inspector General report, which further confirmed that Congress was fully briefed on the enhanced interrogation techniques. Aside from her own personal transgressions, Nancy Pelosi has ignored serious incidents of corruption within her own party, including many of the individuals on this list. (See Rangel, Murtha, Jesse Jackson, Jr., etc.)
Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the rest of the PMA Seven: Rep. John Murtha made headlines in 2009 for all the wrong reasons. The Pennsylvania congressman is under federal investigation for his corrupt relationship with the now-defunct defense lobbyist PMA Group. PMA, founded by a former Murtha associate, has been the congressman's largest campaign contributor. Since 2002, Murtha has raised $1.7 million from PMA and its clients. And what did PMA and its clients receive from Murtha in return for their generosity? Earmarks -- tens of millions of dollars in earmarks. In fact, even with all of the attention surrounding his alleged influence peddling, Murtha kept at it. Following an FBI raid of PMA's offices earlier in 2009, Murtha continued to seek congressional earmarks for PMA clients, while also hitting them up for campaign contributions. According to The Hill, in April, "Murtha reported receiving contributions from three former PMA clients for whom he requested earmarks in the pending appropriations bills." When it comes to the PMA scandal, Murtha is not alone. As many as six other Members of Congress are currently under scrutiny according to The Washington Post. They include: Peter J. Visclosky (D-IN.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-VA), Norm Dicks (D-WA.), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), C.W. Bill Young (R-FL.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS.). Of course rather than investigate this serious scandal, according to Roll Call House Democrats circled the wagons, "cobbling together a defense to offer political cover to their rank and file." The Washington Post also reported in 2009 that Murtha's nephew received $4 million in Defense Department no-bid contracts: "Newly obtained documents…show Robert Murtha mentioning his influential family connection as leverage in his business dealings and holding unusual power with the military."
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): Rangel, the man in charge of writing tax policy for the entire country, has yet to adequately explain how he could possibly "forget" to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his off-shore rental property. He also faces allegations that he improperly used his influence to maintain ownership of highly coveted rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, and misused his congressional office to fundraise for his private Rangel Center by preserving a tax loophole for an oil drilling company in exchange for funding. On top of all that, Rangel recently amended his financial disclosure reports, which doubled his reported wealth. (He somehow "forgot" about $1 million in assets.) And what did he do when the House Ethics Committee started looking into all of this? He apparently resorted to making "campaign contributions" to dig his way out of trouble. According to WCBS TV, a New York CBS affiliate: "The reigning member of Congress' top tax committee is apparently 'wrangling' other politicos to get him out of his own financial and tax troubles...Since ethics probes began last year the 79-year-old congressman has given campaign donations to 119 members of Congress, including three of the five Democrats on the House Ethics Committee who are charged with investigating him." Charlie Rangel should not be allowed to remain in Congress, let alone serve as Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and he knows it. That's why he felt the need to disburse campaign contributions to Ethics Committee members and other congressional colleagues.
The Ethics of Profiling
Terrorists are usually Muslim. Let’s recognize that and act on it.
by Nicholas Guariglia
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-ethics-of-profiling/
In the wake of al-Qaeda’s failed Christmas Day plot to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253, several security discussions, once thought closed, ought to be reopened. Among them: this nation’s aversion to “profiling” our adversaries. Opponents of profiling cite the slippery-slope possibilities. We could slide into discriminatory behavior, they forewarn. We must guard against anti-Muslim sentiment, they insist. These worries, however, are likely misplaced. Profiling our enemies wherever they may be — most imperatively, at the location and moment of attack — is not only logical, but ethical.
This year alone, there was the Long Island convert who took aim at Penn Station. There was the Arkansas convert who attacked a Little Rock military recruitment center, killing one U.S. soldier and wounding another. There was the prison convert from Illinois who tried to blow up a federal building in Springfield. A businessman from Chicago tried to attack a Danish newspaper and was later charged with assisting the gunmen who slaughtered dozens in Mumbai, India. An Afghan national, Mr. Zazi, targeted Manhattan landmarks for destruction. A Jordanian national, Mr. Smadi, tried to bring down a skyscraper in Dallas. Shirwa Ahmed and company traveled from suburban Minneapolis to kill innocents in Somalia. Ramy Zamzam and friends left Washington, D.C., likely to do the same in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Then there was November’s massacre at Ford Hood and December’s near-disaster aboard Flight 253.
All these suspects share several common characteristics: 1) they were relatively wealthy; 2) they were highly educated; and 3) they were all Muslim. Stating this aloud does not make one a racist. It proves one to be an empiricist.
Profiling potential threats based upon what someone may believe is not racist. Beliefs, thoughts, and doctrines have nothing to do with “race” — Islam isn’t a race, after all. Our enemies are Arab and Pashtun, African and Asian, brown and sometimes white, men and sometimes women. It is their Islamist fanaticism which binds them together in their epic struggle against the West. They mean what they say and say what they mean. Recognizing this as fact is an essential prerequisite.
A wiser national posture would involve transcending phony multicultural etiquette. On the New York City subway system, there are signs imploring citizens to “remain vigilant” and “report suspicious activity.” This is well and good, but we undermine such vigilance when the federal government itself is beholden to politically correct feel-good nonsense.
But why is our government so hesitant to trust us? Haven’t we proven our tolerance and magnanimity already? After 9/11, was there any sustained retaliatory violence against Muslims? Is there much concrete anti-Muslim backlash today? Did we put Muslims in concentration camps, as Bruce Willis does in The Siege — or as FDR did to Japanese-Americans during World War II? I see Muslims every day. I’ve never seen anyone bother or heckle them. By any historical standard, our national reaction to Islamic terrorism has been tame and prudent.
Americans aren’t asking for a green light to discriminate against Muslims. We simply want security officials to stop asking Grandma to take her clothes off at the airport. The government is willfully violating the privacy and liberties of hundreds of millions of law-abiding citizens, all out of fear of appearing to undercut our own notions of tolerance and diversity — notions our adversaries exploit. Such exploitation makes profiling all the more necessary and morally urgent. Al-Qaeda has been known to use men of varying nationalities — the most recent example, a baby-faced Nigerian — in order to “throw off” our collective suspicions. By profiling suspected terrorists in an intelligent manner, we are simply keeping pace with al-Qaeda’s deadly trickery.
Profiling does not promote bigotry or ignorance either. To the contrary, profiling helps fight ignorance — in that it necessitates greater knowledge about the enemy. Profiling requires Americans to become more learned about Islamic terrorism, which is a good thing, an ethical thing. How many Americans, for instance, could tell the difference between a Sunni jihadist and a Shiite jihadist, or between Arabic and Farsi?
Such knowledge is important, particularly for the civilian who must determine whether or not to act in order to prevent an attack. It’s important for citizens to be able to distinguish between a Hezbollah operative and an al-Qaeda operative, to be able to differentiate between an Abu Sayyaf operative and a Jemmah Islamiyah operative. Americans ought to know what would-be suicide bombers look like on the day of martyrdom (they’re usually clean-shaven and wear Western clothing).
When the government encourages a culture that scorns such profiling, we end up with ignoramuses confusing Sikhism with Salafism, accusing Indian Punjabis of being terrorists because they’re brown, wear turbans, and have beards — and consequently making a mess of it all. In other words, only educated profiling can end racist profiling. It should be encouraged of citizens and institutionalized, in some manner, by the government.
Clinton foundation draws eclectic donor list
By SHARON THEIMER
http://townhall.com/news/business/2010/01/02/clinton_foundation_draws_eclectic_donor_list?page=full&comments=true
Former President Bill Clinton's charity drew an international roster of donors last year, ranging from Norway and Oman to foreign lotteries, businessmen and celebrities, a contributor list released under an ethics promise by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton showed.
A donor rundown disclosed on New Year's Day by the William J. Clinton Foundation shows that in all, Norway has given $10 million to $25 million to the charity since its founding roughly a decade ago. Oman donated $1 million to $5 million over the years. The list gave cumulative donation totals and didn't say how much each contributor gave last year.
The foundation provided The Associated Press with a donor list Friday morning under the heading "William J. Clinton Foundation Publishes Names of 2009 Contributors on Foundation Web site" but later said the disclosure, which included many more foreign governments, covered donors dating back to the charity's inception, and that it wouldn't say who gave in 2009. The foundation changed course Friday afternoon and updated the list to specify 2009 donors.
The Clintons agreed to annually disclose the names of donors to the foundation to address concerns about potential conflicts of interest between the former president's fundraising abroad and his wife's role in helping direct Obama administration foreign policy.
Then-President-elect Barack Obama made the disclosure a condition of his selection of Hillary Rodham Clinton for the post, and the two senior lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, D-Mass., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said when the first list was released in December 2008 that the disclosure "is designed to establish greater transparency and predictability with regard to the activities of the Clinton Foundation in the context of Sen. Clinton's service as secretary of state."
The William J. Clinton Foundation works in the United States and around the world on such issues as health care, particularly HIV/AIDS; climate change, and economic development. It also runs the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Ark., which includes Clinton's presidential library.
"I am deeply grateful to the many generous contributors who made it possible for my foundation to accomplish so much in 2009, including increasing the number of people on lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment, helping cities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and inspiring millions of children to lead healthier lives," Bill Clinton said in a written statement.
Several foreign governments that appeared in the foundation's first disclosure in December 2008 didn't give last year, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Brunei.
In releasing the list Friday, the foundation didn't identify individual contributors' employers, nationalities or any other details. It gave only cumulative ranges rather than precise donations, and didn't provide a fundraising total. But it did say that more than 90 percent of the gifts it received last year were in donations of $250 or less. The foundation has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years.
The 2009 donors included three who ranked as the foundation's all-time biggest givers, topping $25 million each since Bill Clinton founded the charity: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Canadian mining tycoon and Radcliffe Foundation chief executive Frank Giustra, and UNITAID.
Bill Clinton joined Giustra on a 2005 trip to Kazakhstan; within days after the pair met with Kazakhstan's president, Giustra's business lined up preliminary deals giving it rights to buy into uranium projects controlled by a Kazakhstan state-owned enterprise. Bill
Clinton has said he had nothing to do with that.
In UNITAID's case, almost all of the money simply passed through the foundation to buy commodities, the foundation said.
AUSAID, the Australian government's overseas aid program, was also a 2009 giver. It donated $10 million to $25 million to the foundation over the years.
Those donating last year whose cumulative contributions total $5 million to $10 million include COPRESIDA, a Dominican Republic government agency formed to fight AIDS, whose donation of $5 million to $10 million passed through the foundation for commodity procurement; the Elton John AIDS Foundation; the Netherlands' Nationale Postcode Loterij, and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative - Canada.
The foundation has attracted at least one seemingly unlikely ally over the years, the list shows. Conservative Richard Scaife, who bankrolled anti-Clinton investigations in the 1990s, gave it $100,000 to $250,001 before 2009. As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton called the activities of Scaife and others part of "a vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."
Among the donors last year:
_ Alltel Corp., which has given $1 million to $5 million in all.
_ Saudi Arabian businessman Nasser Al-Rashid and Argentine entrepreneur Gerardo Werthein, head of the Argentine Olympic Committee. Each gave $1 million to $5 million.
_ The Coca-Cola Co. and the Swedish Postcode Lottery, which each donated $1 million to $5 million since the foundation started.
_ The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which gave $250,001 to $500,000 over the years.
_ Gustavo Cisneros and the Venevision entertainment company, whose enterprises include a TV network in Venezuela. They gave $250,001 to $500,000 in all. Cisneros is chief executive of Venevision parent the Cisneros Group; serves on the board of directors of the international Barrick Gold Corp.; and is on the Council on Foreign Relations International Advisory Board.
_ International online retailer Alibaba Group, which gave $100,001 to $250,000 in all.
_ Saudi businessman Hamza B. Al-Kholi, whose companies operate in the Middle East, Europe and United States in such industries as hotels and resorts, real estate development, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food, banking, aviation and telecommunications. He gave at least $100,000.
_ Professional golf's PGA Tour Inc., which donated $50,001 to $100,000 overall.
_ Celebrity businessman Donald Trump, who gave $50,001 to $100,000 in all.
_ Automaker Nissan North America Inc. and the Metropolitan National Bank, which each has given $25,000 to $50,000 total.
_ Bug Works Pest Control Co., demonstrating the wide range of donors, gave $1,001 TO $5,000.
The Clinton Family Foundation and Bill Clinton also gave in 2009; the donations total $1 million to $5 million over the years.
The Clintons were under no legal obligation to identify foundation donors. Presidents typically do not disclose the names of those who give to their foundations, even when the givers include foreign governments. Former President George W. Bush hasn't said who is contributing to construction of his presidential library in Texas, for example.
In addition to providing a foundation donor list, the Clintons agreed that new donations from foreign governments would be examined by government ethics officers. An Obama spokesman said at the time that the agreement would meet the incoming president's transparency promise and help to avoid potential conflicts of interest.
The White House had no comment Friday on the new disclosures.
"The e-mail Bag"
Homeland Security
Just wanted to let you know that the New Homeland Security Bill has passed. Things will be different now and Internet surfing as you know it will be tracked by what the FBI calls a 'nointrusive method.' The FBI says you will hardly notice anything different.
For a demonstration, click on the link below:
http://users.chartertn.net/tonytemplin/FBI_eyes/
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"Daily Motivations"
"Old times never come back and I suppose it's just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year, and that's better." -- George Edward Woodberry
"How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar." -- Trina Paulus
Lead Right
Make sure they have the “tools” they need.
Imagine this scenario: We’re out in the middle of a field. I’m the supervisor and I give you an assignment to dig a trench. After explaining why the trench is necessary, I give you the go-ahead to start digging. You immediately inquire, “Where’s the back hoe?” I respond, “It’s in the shop.” You then ask, “So how am I supposed to dig this trench?” I hand you a shovel, and then I leave. I return two hours later and find that you haven’t made much progress. You’re tired and frustrated … and I’m ticked off.
A far-fetched story? Maybe so! But it does make a simple and important point: it’s tough for people to do a good job – to do their best work – when they don’t have the “tools” (resources) they need. That’s something your team members may be facing more often than you think. And as a leader, you need to do your best to do something about it.
Ask yourself, What do my people need in order to meet or exceed my expectations? Better yet, ASK THEM! Maybe it’s a new piece of equipment – or the fixing/updating of an existing one. Perhaps it’s a new software program, additional training, or an expanded supplies inventory. Or it could be that what they really need is more time, more help, or more information.
Whatever your team needs, get it for them. And if you can’t, tell them why, look for other ways to support their efforts, and appreciate the fact that many of their achievements are happening in spite of how they are equipped rather than because of it.
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of highest privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory. (Romans 5:2)
Faith is essential to the Christian life. But until we realize our faith is in the God who never changes, we will tend to walk by sight.
All of us have natural, everyday faith. This is the faith we exhibit in the ordinary things we do. When we sip a glass of water, we trust that it is pure. When we board an airplane, we have faith that the builders, the air traffic controllers, and the pilot know what they are doing. This type of faith comes from our senses. If the water looks odd or smells funny, we do not drink it. If the pilot reeks of alcohol, we do not board the plane.
But spiritual faith does not depend on our senses. It is based on God's consistent and trustworthy character. As George Mueller, 19th century British social reformer, explained, "Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible. There is no glory for God in that which is humanly possible. Faith begins where man's power ends."
Although our circumstances may appear hopeless and our feelings may tell us to give up, we must not allow ourselves to be limited by the visible world. Instead, we should place our trust in the God who never changes.
Yet many times our faith extends only as far as we can see. An African impala antelope can jump higher than ten feet and a distance of more than thirty feet. Yet these magnificent creatures can be kept in an enclosure behind a three-foot wall. The reason? The antelope will not jump if it cannot see where its feet will fall. The impala's dependency on its senses robs it of its freedom.
We, also, are often limited by our need to see before we will believe. Instead, we must improve our spiritual vision so that the walls of fear and doubt cannot doom us to a life of spiritual mediocrity.
Your View of God Really Matters …
If you really believed that God never changes, how would that affect the way you trust Him for the things you cannot see, or the circumstances you don't understand?
"The Patriot Post"
"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Washington, 1796
"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison
Editorial Exegesis
"The White House thinks it can jawbone banks into lending to people they don't want to lend to. We've been down this road before, and it led all the way to the 2007 financial meltdown. The president on Monday gave a tongue-lashing to the 'fat-cat bankers on Wall Street,' as he called them the day before. He wants them to make more loans to small businesses and consumers to give the economy a boost. But should banks be lending just because a politician tells them to? We tried this before. Indeed, it's the very source of the financial and economic calamity of the past two years. President Obama may think dressing down the top dogs at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and others is good politics. But it's demoralizing and will only lead to more bank write-offs, more bank failures and less lending. ... In this, President Obama is treading the very same ground as President Clinton and President Bush in pushing banks to make risky loans they shouldn't make. And it will have the same dire results.. For those who don't remember, the federal government became more involved than ever in determining how banks make their loans -- and to what customers -- thanks to the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of the wreckage of the Great Depression. They were followed by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 and the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992. Go back to the 1970s and early 1990s you'll see that, just as today, bankers were criticized heavily for their alleged racism and lack of concern for the poor. President after president lambasted them for not lending more to support presidential social policies. By 2000, President Clinton's HUD required half of Fannie Mae's loan originations to go to poor and moderate-income borrowers -- whether they could pay on the loans or not. It marked the triumph of leftist politics over financial common sense. This is how the subprime meltdown, the source of our current financial troubles, came about. Not by 'greedy' banks or by 'deregulation.'" -- Investor's Business Daily
Upright
"Every day that President Obama pushes for the government take over of health care he injures families by the thousands across America. Every day that President Obama contemplates the idea of spending trillions more of yours and my tax dollars, the less the chances of his being able to reduce the non-voluntary unemployment/under-employment rates that are now drastically impacting one out of every five families in America." -- columnist Kevin McCullough
"As the Democrats inexorably slog toward the finish line, lugging and wrenching their malformed health care bill, the most passionate debate has been on contentious issues like abortion, the public option, and Medicare cuts. Yet the overriding danger of the Senate bill and its House counterpart is the massive government bureaucracies that will emerge as the legislation takes effect. The Democrats' colossal experiment threatens to unleash forces that will ultimately overwhelm the doctor-patient relationship, ration our health care, and stifle innovation and excellence in the medical field. A massive government bureaucracy soon acquires a life of its own, with dominion over its constituency that no politician dares attempt to rein in." -- columnist Joseph Smith
"The more the government grabs and spends, the less chance there is that jobs will be created." -- Human Events editor Jed Babbin
"From now on, when you hear Obama speak, try replacing 'let me be clear' with 'let me lie to you,' and see if it makes more sense." -- columnist Jacob Sullum
"I assume we're supposed to be too dense to remember that [Obama's] stimulus spending to date hasn't created jobs and that most of it hasn't even been used for that purpose. So when this administration says its first priority is reducing debt, understand we are being played -- by consummate cynics." -- columnist David Limbaugh
"[I]t just so happens that with the exception of nuclear power -- which most greens still won't support -- global warming fuels nearly every progressive ambition. Wealth transfers from rich to poor nations: Check. The rise of 'global governance' and the decline of American sovereignty: Check. A secular fatwa not only to erode capitalism but to intrude on every aspect of our lives (Greenpeace offers a guide to carbon-neutral sex): Check. Weaning us off of oil (which, don't let the Goregonauts fool you, was a priority back when we were still worried about global cooling): Check. The checks go on for as far as the eye can see, and we will be writing them for years to come." -- columnist Jonah Goldberg
"Right now, if you don't like the local grade school, you move to the next town. If you're sick of Massachusetts taxes, you move to New Hampshire. Where do you move to if you don't like 'global governance'? What polling station do you go to to vote it out?" -- columnist Mark Steyn
The Demo-gogues
Completely delusional: "Good, solid B-plus. B-plus because of the things that are undone. ... Health care is not yet signed. If I get health care passed, we tip into A-minus." -- Barack Obama grading himself on nearly one year of destroying the country
The truth comes out: "We would do almost anything to pass a health care bill." -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
How reassuring: "I would say to the senator from Arizona [McCain] that I am in the dark almost as much as he is, and I am in the leadership. Most of us know the fundamentals, but we don't know the important details." -- Senate Whip Dick Durbin, the #2 Democrat, on the mystery contents of Harry Reid's health care bill
"Let's be clear" means a lie is coming: "Let's be clear here. Seven presidents have tried to reform a health care system that everyone acknowledges is broken. Seven presidents have failed up until this point. We are now that close to having a bill that does all the things that I said and most experts said needed to be done when we started this process. It is not only deficit neutral, but will actually bring down the deficit according to the Congressional Budget Office." -- Barack Obama
Wolf in sheep's clothing? "I'm going to be in a position where I can say what I've wanted to say all along: that I'm ready to vote for health care reform." -- Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who wants the public option and Medicare expansion out of the bill
Looking in the mirror? "[O]ne of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war. There was a tendency to say, 'We can go in. We can kick some tail. This is some glorious exercise.' When in fact, this is a tough business." -- Barack Obama, hitting the military in what sounds like a criticism of himself
He ran to take over Wall Street: "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of, you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street." -- Barack Obama
Village Idiots
Who cares about climate facts: "It is said that the science around climate change is not as certain as its proponents allege. It doesn't need to be. What is beyond debate, however, is that there is a huge amount of scientific support for the view that the climate is changing and as a result of human activity. Therefore, even purely as a matter of precaution, given the seriousness of the consequences if such a view is correct, and the time it will take for action to take effect, we should act. Not to do so would be grossly irresponsible." -- former British Prime Minister Tony Blair
"Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years." -- Al Bore, citing a scientist who later said he didn't know where Gore got that information
Consensus? "[E]verybody agrees that the recession is over." -- White House economic adviser Larry Summers
But is it really? "Of course not. For the people on Main Street and throughout this country, they are still suffering, the unemployment rate is still 10 percent." -- White House economic adviser Christina Romer
Confessions: "At 71, my mind is so old, I can't remember if I have Alzheimer's, or ... what's the other one?" -- CNN founder Ted Turner
Hollywonks: "[Greed and imperialism (read: capitalism)] tends to destroy the environment and so on. And here they are doing the same thing on another pristine planet that we've done here on earth. So it's a way, sort of looking back at ourselves from this other world and seeing what we're doing here." -- director James Cameron on his epic sci-fi flick "Avatar" due out Friday
"The Web"
UpTimeAmerica
http://www.uptimeamerica.com/video.asp
Best of 2009: Daniel Hannan’s viral European parliament speech
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/12/31/best-of-2009-daniel-hannans-viral-european-parliament-speech/
Go to http://conservativechristianvoice.blogspot.com for Alan Jackson's "I Come To The Garden Alone"
I Come To The Garden Alone
One of my all time favorite hymns this song "In The Garden" has
touched my heart for years. I've not always nor even now really know all the words but these key lines have stuck with me always. "I come to the garden alone While the dew is still on the roses" and "And He walks with me, and He talks with me, And He tells me I am His own; And the joy we share as we tarry there, None other has ever known."
Today I made a realization - wow, Faith had another one of those eye
openers, which does happen occasionally. For as long as I can remember some of my most special, most peaceful times of my life have been spent "In the Garden". And even more so "While the dew is still on the roses" early in the morning while most everyone else is still sleeping "alone" - I am a morning person. But, was I alone? No, some of my closest talks with Our Father have been right there, setting in the dirt, pulling weeds or digging plants to move to a new location, planting seeds in hopes and dreams of what would grow from them. Even during the long years of my life when I wasn't living for God - He was there in the garden with me. I was never "alone".
There are some very important scriptures in the bible connected with gardens. Of course most everyone, believer and non-believers know the "story" of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Genesis 2:8-10 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden;
We also most all know what happened after that - Adam and Eve messed up! Result of which God had created the most beautiful of gardens but we humans didn't listen and ended up where we are now. Most believers are or should be if not already, trying to get back to that garden.
Now, I may be off the mark here but seems to me that "The Garden"
must have been pretty important to God. He did all that work the first 6 days, rested on the 7th and sometime in there He planted a garden to put man in… Sounds important to me! The word "garden" alone is in the King James Version of the bible 59 times, (if you don't believe me click here, I've listed them for you or you can do your own search) lot of stuff going on in "gardens" in those days. Just a little side note here, the word "satan" is only mentioned 49 times won't bother listing those as he's not important if your living for God you have power over him.
(ok, I know he is mentioned by other names but working the numbers here for effect and sure there are
many "gardens" that although mentioned are not pulled up by the word "garden").
Some very very interesting information I learned today though is even
though it doesn't say "garden" in the scripture one of the most touching times in history happened in a garden, Gethsemane.
*Gethsemane (an oil press), garden across the Kidron Valley on the Mount of Olives (Hebrew Har ha-Zetim), a mile-long ridge paralleling the eastern part of Jerusalem, where Jesus is said to have prayed on the night of his arrest before his Crucifixion. The name Gethsemane (Hebrew gat shemanim, "oil press") suggests that the garden was a grove of olive trees in which was located an oil press. Encyclopædia Britannica
Matthew 26
36 Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.
37 And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy.
38 Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.
39 And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.
40 And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?
41 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
42 He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.
43 And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy.
44 And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.
45 Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
46 Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.
47 And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.
Not once but three times, less than 24 hours before His "Death" Jesus
prayed to Our Father, His Father in a garden. Is it important that Jesus choose a garden to do this? Most likely not, but one of those questions to ask when we meet Him for sure. But then maybe it is. Jesus asked His disciples to "watch with" Him. Yet they fell asleep. Now, if they were in a more "uncomfortable" spot might they not have fallen asleep? "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." He didn't say just if your uncomfortable watch and pray, He said do it in this garden.
Jesus is asking His Father to not let what is about to happen (His Death)
but at the same time is prepared to do Our Father's will. But even in those final hours He is giving "us" a chance, all we had to do was "watch and pray". Just as in the Garden of Eden we failed again. Jesus went to His death on The Cross-for us, not himself, not for Our Father God but for us. Are we in the garden alone now? Are we watching and praying as He asked? I love my time in the garden with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. My lowest times in my life have been when I couldn't for some reason be in the garden. My highest times have been while in the garden, listening and talking with Our Father. Is this coincidence? Or is it God speaking to me - we are to be like Jesus! Jesus did choose a garden to spend some of his last hours on earth, in earthly form, in a garden. I think it's pretty cool and look forward even more to spring when I can once again be in the garden,
not alone but with Our Father.
John 20:15-17
Jesus saith unto her,
Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?
She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him,
Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou
hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary.
She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni;
which is to say, Master.
Jesus saith unto her,
Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
Doesn't say "garden" but if Mary thought Jesus was a gardener then would lead me to believe they were in a garden again - ummm He pops in to deliever one more message before ascending to Heaven.
song playing:
IN THE GARDEN
Words & Music: C. Austin Miles
I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
Refrain
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.
He speaks, and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.
Refrain
I’d stay in the garden with Him
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.
Refrain
My prayer for all who read this and all who don't. May Our Father bless us all with the glory of His love, may He never leave us alone in the garden, may He walk with us and talk with us for eternity. May satan know he has no chance as we have the power of the Lord. May Our Lord Jesus Christ show us the paths to take and guide our steps along the cobblestones. Blessed Father thank you for all you have done for us, thank you for giving us the chance to share time in the garden with You, thank you for being Our Father. In Jesus' name I pray, AMEN.
T H E G A R D E N - Come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses...
Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009
Washington, DC
http://www..judicialwatch.org/news/2009/dec/judicial-watch-announces-list-washington-s-ten-most-wanted-corrupt-politicians-2009
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in alphabetical order, includes:
Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 "Ten Most Corrupt" list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him. In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat. In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against Dodd for undervaluing a property he owns in Ireland on his Senate Financial Disclosure forms. Judicial Watch's complaint forced Dodd to amend the forms. However, press reports suggest the property to this day remains undervalued. Judicial Watch also alleges in the complaint that Dodd obtained a sweetheart deal for the property in exchange for his assistance in obtaining a presidential pardon (during the Clinton administration) and other favors for a long-time friend and business associate. The false financial disclosure forms were part of the cover-up. Dodd remains the head the Senate Banking Committee.
Senator John Ensign (R-NV): A number of scandals popped up in 2009 involving public officials who conducted illicit affairs, and then attempted to cover them up with hush payments and favors, an obvious abuse of power. The year's worst offender might just be Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign. Ensign admitted in June to an extramarital affair with the wife of one of his staff members, who then allegedly obtained special favors from the Nevada Republican in exchange for his silence. According to The New York Times: "The Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee are expected to conduct preliminary inquiries into whether Senator John Ensign violated federal law or ethics rules as part of an effort to conceal an affair with the wife of an aide…" The former staffer, Douglas Hampton, began to lobby Mr. Ensign's office immediately upon leaving his congressional job, despite the fact that he was subject to a one-year lobbying ban. Ensign seems to have ignored the law and allowed Hampton lobbying access to his office as a payment for his silence about the affair. (These are potentially criminal offenses.) It looks as if Ensign misused his public office (and taxpayer resources) to cover up his sexual shenanigans.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): Judicial Watch is investigating a $12 million TARP cash injection provided to the Boston-based OneUnited Bank at the urging of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. As reported in the January 22, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department indicated it would only provide funds to healthy banks to jump-start lending. Not only was OneUnited Bank in massive financial turmoil, but it was also "under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives' use." Rep. Frank admitted he spoke to a "federal regulator," and Treasury granted the funds. (The bank continues to flounder despite Frank's intervention for federal dollars.) Moreover, Judicial Watch uncovered documents in 2009 that showed that members of Congress for years were aware that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing fast and loose with accounting issues, risk assessment issues and executive compensation issues, even as liberals led by Rep. Frank continued to block attempts to rein in the two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs). For example, during a hearing on September 10, 2003, before the House Committee on Financial Services considering a Bush administration proposal to further regulate Fannie and Freddie, Rep. Frank stated: "I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two Government Sponsored Enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury." Frank received $42,350 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 1989 and 2008. Frank also engaged in a relationship with a Fannie Mae Executive while serving on the House Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner: In 2009, Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004 on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 185 member countries that oversees the global financial system. (Did we mention Geithner now runs the IRS?) It wasn't until President Obama tapped Geithner to head the Treasury Department that he paid back most of the money, although the IRS kindly waived the hefty penalties. In March 2009, Geithner also came under fire for his handling of the AIG bonus scandal, where the company used $165 million of its bailout funds to pay out executive bonuses, resulting in a massive public backlash. Of course as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner helped craft the AIG deal in September 2008. However, when the AIG scandal broke, Geithner claimed he knew nothing of the bonuses until March 10, 2009. The timing is important. According to CNN: "Although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told congressional leaders on Tuesday that he learned of AIG's impending $160 million bonus payments to members of its troubled financial-products unit on March 10, sources tell TIME that the New York Federal Reserve informed Treasury staff that the payments were imminent on Feb. 28. That is ten days before Treasury staffers say they first learned 'full details' of the bonus plan, and three days before the [Obama] Administration launched a new $30 billion infusion of cash for AIG." Throw in another embarrassing disclosure in 2009 that Geithner employed "household help" ineligible to work in the United States, and it becomes clear why the Treasury Secretary has earned a spot on the "Ten Most Corrupt Politicians in Washington" list.
Attorney General Eric Holder: Tim Geithner can be sure he won't be hounded about his tax-dodging by his colleague Eric Holder, US Attorney General. Judicial Watch strongly opposed Holder because of his terrible ethics record, which includes: obstructing an FBI investigation of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory; rejecting multiple requests for an independent counsel to investigate alleged fundraising abuses by then-Vice President Al Gore in the Clinton White House; undermining the criminal investigation of President Clinton by Kenneth Starr in the midst of the Lewinsky investigation; and planning the violent raid to seize then-six-year-old Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint in order to return him to Castro's Cuba. Moreover, there is his soft record on terrorism. Holder bypassed Justice Department procedures to push through Bill Clinton's scandalous presidential pardons and commutations, including for 16 members of FALN, a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that orchestrated approximately 120 bombings in the United States, killing at least six people and permanently maiming dozens of others, including law enforcement officers. His record in the current administration is no better. As he did during the Clinton administration, Holder continues to ignore serious incidents of corruption that could impact his political bosses at the White House. For example, Holder has refused to investigate charges that the Obama political machine traded VIP access to the White House in exchange for campaign contributions – a scheme eerily similar to one hatched by Holder's former boss, Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Holder Justice Department also came under fire for dropping a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. On Election Day 2008, Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary garb threatened voters as they approached polling stations. Holder has also failed to initiate a comprehensive Justice investigation of the notorious organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which is closely tied to President Obama. There were allegedly more than 400,000 fraudulent ACORN voter registrations in the 2008 campaign. And then there were the journalist videos catching ACORN Housing workers advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration, and child prostitution laws. Holder's controversial decisions on new rights for terrorists and his attacks on previous efforts to combat terrorism remind many of the fact that his former law firm has provided and continues to provide pro bono representation to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Holder's politicization of the Justice Department makes one long for the days of Alberto Gonzales.
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)/ Senator Roland Burris (D-IL): One of the most serious scandals of 2009 involved a scheme by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to sell President Obama's then-vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. Two men caught smack dab in the middle of the scandal: Senator Roland Burris, who ultimately got the job, and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, emissaries for Jesse Jackson Jr., named "Senate Candidate A" in the Blagojevich indictment, reportedly offered $1.5 million to Blagojevich during a fundraiser if he named Jackson Jr. to Obama's seat. Three days later federal authorities arrested Blagojevich. Burris, for his part, apparently lied about his contacts with Blagojevich, who was arrested in December 2008 for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat. According to Reuters: "Roland Burris came under fresh scrutiny…after disclosing he tried to raise money for the disgraced former Illinois governor who named him to the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama…In the latest of those admissions, Burris said he looked into mounting a fundraiser for Rod Blagojevich -- later charged with trying to sell Obama's Senate seat -- at the same time he was expressing interest to the then-governor's aides about his desire to be appointed." Burris changed his story five times regarding his contacts with Blagojevich prior to the Illinois governor appointing him to the U.S. Senate. Three of those changing explanations came under oath.
President Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to run an ethical and transparent administration. However, in his first year in office, the President has delivered corruption and secrecy, bringing Chicago-style political corruption to the White House. Consider just a few Obama administration "lowlights" from year one: Even before President Obama was sworn into office, he was interviewed by the FBI for a criminal investigation of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's scheme to sell the President's former Senate seat to the highest bidder. (Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and slumlord Valerie Jarrett, both from Chicago, are also tangled up in the Blagojevich scandal.) Moreover, the Obama administration made the startling claim that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House. The Obama White House believes it can violate the privacy rights of American citizens without any legal consequences or accountability. President Obama boldly proclaimed that "transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," but his administration is addicted to secrecy, stonewalling far too many of Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act requests and is refusing to make public White House visitor logs as federal law requires. The Obama administration turned the National Endowment of the Arts (as well as the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program) into propaganda machines, using tax dollars to persuade "artists" to promote the Obama agenda. According to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the idea emerged as a direct result of the Obama campaign and enjoyed White House approval and participation. President Obama has installed a record number of "czars" in positions of power. Too many of these individuals are leftist radicals who answer to no one but the president. And too many of the czars are not subject to Senate confirmation (which raises serious constitutional questions). Under the President's bailout schemes, the federal government continues to appropriate or control -- through fiat and threats -- large sectors of the private economy, prompting conservative columnist George Will to write: "The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption." Government-run healthcare and car companies, White House coercion, uninvestigated ACORN corruption, debasing his office to help Chicago cronies, attacks on conservative media and the private sector, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors – this is Obama's "ethics" record -- and we haven't even gotten through the first year of his presidency.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): At the heart of the corruption problem in Washington is a sense of entitlement. Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel. Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Pentagon in 2008 that suggest Pelosi has been treating the Air Force like her own personal airline. These documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, include internal Pentagon email correspondence detailing attempts by Pentagon staff to accommodate Pelosi's numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft as well as the speaker's 11th hour cancellations and changes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also came under fire in April 2009, when she claimed she was never briefed about the CIA's use of the waterboarding technique during terrorism investigations. The CIA produced a report documenting a briefing with Pelosi on September 4, 2002, that suggests otherwise. Judicial Watch also obtained documents, including a CIA Inspector General report, which further confirmed that Congress was fully briefed on the enhanced interrogation techniques. Aside from her own personal transgressions, Nancy Pelosi has ignored serious incidents of corruption within her own party, including many of the individuals on this list. (See Rangel, Murtha, Jesse Jackson, Jr., etc.)
Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the rest of the PMA Seven: Rep. John Murtha made headlines in 2009 for all the wrong reasons. The Pennsylvania congressman is under federal investigation for his corrupt relationship with the now-defunct defense lobbyist PMA Group. PMA, founded by a former Murtha associate, has been the congressman's largest campaign contributor. Since 2002, Murtha has raised $1.7 million from PMA and its clients. And what did PMA and its clients receive from Murtha in return for their generosity? Earmarks -- tens of millions of dollars in earmarks. In fact, even with all of the attention surrounding his alleged influence peddling, Murtha kept at it. Following an FBI raid of PMA's offices earlier in 2009, Murtha continued to seek congressional earmarks for PMA clients, while also hitting them up for campaign contributions. According to The Hill, in April, "Murtha reported receiving contributions from three former PMA clients for whom he requested earmarks in the pending appropriations bills." When it comes to the PMA scandal, Murtha is not alone. As many as six other Members of Congress are currently under scrutiny according to The Washington Post. They include: Peter J. Visclosky (D-IN.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-VA), Norm Dicks (D-WA.), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), C.W. Bill Young (R-FL.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS.). Of course rather than investigate this serious scandal, according to Roll Call House Democrats circled the wagons, "cobbling together a defense to offer political cover to their rank and file." The Washington Post also reported in 2009 that Murtha's nephew received $4 million in Defense Department no-bid contracts: "Newly obtained documents…show Robert Murtha mentioning his influential family connection as leverage in his business dealings and holding unusual power with the military."
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): Rangel, the man in charge of writing tax policy for the entire country, has yet to adequately explain how he could possibly "forget" to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his off-shore rental property. He also faces allegations that he improperly used his influence to maintain ownership of highly coveted rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, and misused his congressional office to fundraise for his private Rangel Center by preserving a tax loophole for an oil drilling company in exchange for funding. On top of all that, Rangel recently amended his financial disclosure reports, which doubled his reported wealth. (He somehow "forgot" about $1 million in assets.) And what did he do when the House Ethics Committee started looking into all of this? He apparently resorted to making "campaign contributions" to dig his way out of trouble. According to WCBS TV, a New York CBS affiliate: "The reigning member of Congress' top tax committee is apparently 'wrangling' other politicos to get him out of his own financial and tax troubles...Since ethics probes began last year the 79-year-old congressman has given campaign donations to 119 members of Congress, including three of the five Democrats on the House Ethics Committee who are charged with investigating him." Charlie Rangel should not be allowed to remain in Congress, let alone serve as Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and he knows it. That's why he felt the need to disburse campaign contributions to Ethics Committee members and other congressional colleagues.
The Ethics of Profiling
Terrorists are usually Muslim. Let’s recognize that and act on it.
by Nicholas Guariglia
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-ethics-of-profiling/
In the wake of al-Qaeda’s failed Christmas Day plot to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253, several security discussions, once thought closed, ought to be reopened. Among them: this nation’s aversion to “profiling” our adversaries. Opponents of profiling cite the slippery-slope possibilities. We could slide into discriminatory behavior, they forewarn. We must guard against anti-Muslim sentiment, they insist. These worries, however, are likely misplaced. Profiling our enemies wherever they may be — most imperatively, at the location and moment of attack — is not only logical, but ethical.
This year alone, there was the Long Island convert who took aim at Penn Station. There was the Arkansas convert who attacked a Little Rock military recruitment center, killing one U.S. soldier and wounding another. There was the prison convert from Illinois who tried to blow up a federal building in Springfield. A businessman from Chicago tried to attack a Danish newspaper and was later charged with assisting the gunmen who slaughtered dozens in Mumbai, India. An Afghan national, Mr. Zazi, targeted Manhattan landmarks for destruction. A Jordanian national, Mr. Smadi, tried to bring down a skyscraper in Dallas. Shirwa Ahmed and company traveled from suburban Minneapolis to kill innocents in Somalia. Ramy Zamzam and friends left Washington, D.C., likely to do the same in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Then there was November’s massacre at Ford Hood and December’s near-disaster aboard Flight 253.
All these suspects share several common characteristics: 1) they were relatively wealthy; 2) they were highly educated; and 3) they were all Muslim. Stating this aloud does not make one a racist. It proves one to be an empiricist.
Profiling potential threats based upon what someone may believe is not racist. Beliefs, thoughts, and doctrines have nothing to do with “race” — Islam isn’t a race, after all. Our enemies are Arab and Pashtun, African and Asian, brown and sometimes white, men and sometimes women. It is their Islamist fanaticism which binds them together in their epic struggle against the West. They mean what they say and say what they mean. Recognizing this as fact is an essential prerequisite.
A wiser national posture would involve transcending phony multicultural etiquette. On the New York City subway system, there are signs imploring citizens to “remain vigilant” and “report suspicious activity.” This is well and good, but we undermine such vigilance when the federal government itself is beholden to politically correct feel-good nonsense.
But why is our government so hesitant to trust us? Haven’t we proven our tolerance and magnanimity already? After 9/11, was there any sustained retaliatory violence against Muslims? Is there much concrete anti-Muslim backlash today? Did we put Muslims in concentration camps, as Bruce Willis does in The Siege — or as FDR did to Japanese-Americans during World War II? I see Muslims every day. I’ve never seen anyone bother or heckle them. By any historical standard, our national reaction to Islamic terrorism has been tame and prudent.
Americans aren’t asking for a green light to discriminate against Muslims. We simply want security officials to stop asking Grandma to take her clothes off at the airport. The government is willfully violating the privacy and liberties of hundreds of millions of law-abiding citizens, all out of fear of appearing to undercut our own notions of tolerance and diversity — notions our adversaries exploit. Such exploitation makes profiling all the more necessary and morally urgent. Al-Qaeda has been known to use men of varying nationalities — the most recent example, a baby-faced Nigerian — in order to “throw off” our collective suspicions. By profiling suspected terrorists in an intelligent manner, we are simply keeping pace with al-Qaeda’s deadly trickery.
Profiling does not promote bigotry or ignorance either. To the contrary, profiling helps fight ignorance — in that it necessitates greater knowledge about the enemy. Profiling requires Americans to become more learned about Islamic terrorism, which is a good thing, an ethical thing. How many Americans, for instance, could tell the difference between a Sunni jihadist and a Shiite jihadist, or between Arabic and Farsi?
Such knowledge is important, particularly for the civilian who must determine whether or not to act in order to prevent an attack. It’s important for citizens to be able to distinguish between a Hezbollah operative and an al-Qaeda operative, to be able to differentiate between an Abu Sayyaf operative and a Jemmah Islamiyah operative. Americans ought to know what would-be suicide bombers look like on the day of martyrdom (they’re usually clean-shaven and wear Western clothing).
When the government encourages a culture that scorns such profiling, we end up with ignoramuses confusing Sikhism with Salafism, accusing Indian Punjabis of being terrorists because they’re brown, wear turbans, and have beards — and consequently making a mess of it all. In other words, only educated profiling can end racist profiling. It should be encouraged of citizens and institutionalized, in some manner, by the government.
Clinton foundation draws eclectic donor list
By SHARON THEIMER
http://townhall.com/news/business/2010/01/02/clinton_foundation_draws_eclectic_donor_list?page=full&comments=true
Former President Bill Clinton's charity drew an international roster of donors last year, ranging from Norway and Oman to foreign lotteries, businessmen and celebrities, a contributor list released under an ethics promise by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton showed.
A donor rundown disclosed on New Year's Day by the William J. Clinton Foundation shows that in all, Norway has given $10 million to $25 million to the charity since its founding roughly a decade ago. Oman donated $1 million to $5 million over the years. The list gave cumulative donation totals and didn't say how much each contributor gave last year.
The foundation provided The Associated Press with a donor list Friday morning under the heading "William J. Clinton Foundation Publishes Names of 2009 Contributors on Foundation Web site" but later said the disclosure, which included many more foreign governments, covered donors dating back to the charity's inception, and that it wouldn't say who gave in 2009. The foundation changed course Friday afternoon and updated the list to specify 2009 donors.
The Clintons agreed to annually disclose the names of donors to the foundation to address concerns about potential conflicts of interest between the former president's fundraising abroad and his wife's role in helping direct Obama administration foreign policy.
Then-President-elect Barack Obama made the disclosure a condition of his selection of Hillary Rodham Clinton for the post, and the two senior lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, D-Mass., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said when the first list was released in December 2008 that the disclosure "is designed to establish greater transparency and predictability with regard to the activities of the Clinton Foundation in the context of Sen. Clinton's service as secretary of state."
The William J. Clinton Foundation works in the United States and around the world on such issues as health care, particularly HIV/AIDS; climate change, and economic development. It also runs the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Ark., which includes Clinton's presidential library.
"I am deeply grateful to the many generous contributors who made it possible for my foundation to accomplish so much in 2009, including increasing the number of people on lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment, helping cities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and inspiring millions of children to lead healthier lives," Bill Clinton said in a written statement.
Several foreign governments that appeared in the foundation's first disclosure in December 2008 didn't give last year, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Brunei.
In releasing the list Friday, the foundation didn't identify individual contributors' employers, nationalities or any other details. It gave only cumulative ranges rather than precise donations, and didn't provide a fundraising total. But it did say that more than 90 percent of the gifts it received last year were in donations of $250 or less. The foundation has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years.
The 2009 donors included three who ranked as the foundation's all-time biggest givers, topping $25 million each since Bill Clinton founded the charity: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Canadian mining tycoon and Radcliffe Foundation chief executive Frank Giustra, and UNITAID.
Bill Clinton joined Giustra on a 2005 trip to Kazakhstan; within days after the pair met with Kazakhstan's president, Giustra's business lined up preliminary deals giving it rights to buy into uranium projects controlled by a Kazakhstan state-owned enterprise. Bill
Clinton has said he had nothing to do with that.
In UNITAID's case, almost all of the money simply passed through the foundation to buy commodities, the foundation said.
AUSAID, the Australian government's overseas aid program, was also a 2009 giver. It donated $10 million to $25 million to the foundation over the years.
Those donating last year whose cumulative contributions total $5 million to $10 million include COPRESIDA, a Dominican Republic government agency formed to fight AIDS, whose donation of $5 million to $10 million passed through the foundation for commodity procurement; the Elton John AIDS Foundation; the Netherlands' Nationale Postcode Loterij, and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative - Canada.
The foundation has attracted at least one seemingly unlikely ally over the years, the list shows. Conservative Richard Scaife, who bankrolled anti-Clinton investigations in the 1990s, gave it $100,000 to $250,001 before 2009. As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton called the activities of Scaife and others part of "a vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."
Among the donors last year:
_ Alltel Corp., which has given $1 million to $5 million in all.
_ Saudi Arabian businessman Nasser Al-Rashid and Argentine entrepreneur Gerardo Werthein, head of the Argentine Olympic Committee. Each gave $1 million to $5 million.
_ The Coca-Cola Co. and the Swedish Postcode Lottery, which each donated $1 million to $5 million since the foundation started.
_ The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which gave $250,001 to $500,000 over the years.
_ Gustavo Cisneros and the Venevision entertainment company, whose enterprises include a TV network in Venezuela. They gave $250,001 to $500,000 in all. Cisneros is chief executive of Venevision parent the Cisneros Group; serves on the board of directors of the international Barrick Gold Corp.; and is on the Council on Foreign Relations International Advisory Board.
_ International online retailer Alibaba Group, which gave $100,001 to $250,000 in all.
_ Saudi businessman Hamza B. Al-Kholi, whose companies operate in the Middle East, Europe and United States in such industries as hotels and resorts, real estate development, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food, banking, aviation and telecommunications. He gave at least $100,000.
_ Professional golf's PGA Tour Inc., which donated $50,001 to $100,000 overall.
_ Celebrity businessman Donald Trump, who gave $50,001 to $100,000 in all.
_ Automaker Nissan North America Inc. and the Metropolitan National Bank, which each has given $25,000 to $50,000 total.
_ Bug Works Pest Control Co., demonstrating the wide range of donors, gave $1,001 TO $5,000.
The Clinton Family Foundation and Bill Clinton also gave in 2009; the donations total $1 million to $5 million over the years.
The Clintons were under no legal obligation to identify foundation donors. Presidents typically do not disclose the names of those who give to their foundations, even when the givers include foreign governments. Former President George W. Bush hasn't said who is contributing to construction of his presidential library in Texas, for example.
In addition to providing a foundation donor list, the Clintons agreed that new donations from foreign governments would be examined by government ethics officers. An Obama spokesman said at the time that the agreement would meet the incoming president's transparency promise and help to avoid potential conflicts of interest.
The White House had no comment Friday on the new disclosures.
"The e-mail Bag"
Homeland Security
Just wanted to let you know that the New Homeland Security Bill has passed. Things will be different now and Internet surfing as you know it will be tracked by what the FBI calls a 'nointrusive method.' The FBI says you will hardly notice anything different.
For a demonstration, click on the link below:
http://users.chartertn.net/tonytemplin/FBI_eyes/
Monday, January 4, 2010
ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100104
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"My Comments"
Everyone wants a 2010 Hooters Calender.
http://geekdrop.com/content/free-hooters-calendar-2010
"Daily Motivations"
"The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you." -- John E. Southard
Although your customers won't love you if you give bad service, your competitors will! -- Kate Zabriskie
"The past does not define you, the present does." -- Jillian Michaels
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. (Galatians 5:16)
I like to compare the Christian battle against sin to an individual swimming upstream against a surging current. His progress is slow and tortuous; he is constantly swept backward by powerful undercurrents. Hovering near the swimmer is a speedboat with a powerful motor. He can continue to try to swim upstream or he can choose to climb aboard the speedboat, which can easily whisk him up the river.
We have a similar choice. When battling evil spiritual forces, worldly influences, and our own fleshly temptations, we can either fail miserably by fighting temptation in our own efforts or defeat that sin-current that drags us down by living in the unlimited power of the Holy Spirit.
Peter explains, "By His divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know Him, the One who called us to Himself by means of His marvelous glory and excellence. " (2 Peter 1:3) We do not have to clean up our messy lives before we invite God in; rather we appropriate God's holiness through His Holy Spirit living His life within us.
The Scriptures assure us "that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us---whatever we ask---we know that we have what we asked of Him." (I John 5:14-15 NIV)
We can become holy vessels of the all-powerful God by committing to live holy lives through being filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Your View of God Really Matters …
Are you tired of struggling to live the Christian life? Get in the boat! Let God's awesome Spirit live through you every moment of every day. Then, and only then, will you have the power to live in obedience and joy.
"The Patriot Post"
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
- Abraham Lincoln
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States." -- Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, 1787
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785
Lie of the Day
http://www.lauraingraham.com/
“We will not rest until we find all who were involved” -- President Barack Obama, on the failed terrorist attempt to blow up a Delta Airlines plane on Christmas Day.
The Founding Fathers on Jesus, Christianity and the Bible
Charles Carroll
SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; SELECTED AS DELEGATE TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION; FRAMER OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS; U. S. SENATOR
On the mercy of my Redeemer I rely for salvation and on His merits, not on the works I have done in obedience to His precepts.22
Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, He had conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation and on myself in permitting me, under circumstances of mercy, to live to the age of 89 years, and to survive the fiftieth year of independence, adopted by Congress on the 4th of July 1776, which I originally subscribed on the 2d day of August of the same year and of which I am now the last surviving signer.23
I, Charles Carroll. . . . give and bequeath my soul to God who gave it, my body to the earth, hoping that through and by the merits, sufferings, and mediation of my only Savior and Jesus Christ, I may be admitted into the Kingdom prepared by God for those who love, fear and truly serve Him.24
Endnotes
22. From an autograph letter in our possession written by Charles Carroll to Charles W. Wharton, Esq., September 27, 1825.
23. Lewis A. Leonard, Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (New York: Moffit, Yard & Co, 1918), pp. 256-257.
24. Kate Mason Rowland, Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890), Vol. II, pp. 373-374, will of Charles Carroll, Dec. 1, 1718 (later replaced by a subsequent will not containing this phrase, although he reexpressed this sentiment on several subsequent occasions, including repeatedly in the latter years of his life).
"The Web"
TSA Nominee Corrects Record on 'Inconsistencies' to Congress
AP
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/01/white-house-defends-tsa-nominee/
President Obama's pick to lead the Transportation Security Administration has provided Congress inconsistent reports about running background checks on his then-estranged wife's boyfriend.
HONOLULU -- President Obama's pick to lead the Transportation Security Administration has provided Congress inconsistent reports about -- and regrets for --running background checks on his then-estranged wife's boyfriend two decades ago.
Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent whose nomination has been delayed by Republicans for unrelated concerns, wrote to senators in November to correct what he called a distortion of his record. The delayed nomination has received renewed attention since the failed Christmas Day attack on an airliner bound from Amsterdam to Detroit.
"I am distressed by the inconsistencies between my recollection and the contemporaneous documents, but I assure you that the mistake was inadvertent, and that I have at all times taken full responsibility for what I know to have been a grave error in judgment," he wrote in a letter to Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins.
"This incident was over 20 years ago, I was distraught and concerned about my young son, and never in my career since has there been any recurrence of this sort of conduct."
In an October affidavit for the Senate committee, he initially said he asked a San Diego police employee to run a background check on his then-estranged wife's boyfriend and was censured by his FBI superiors 20 years ago for what he said was an isolated instance.
But a day after the committee approved his nomination and sent it to the full Senate, he wrote to the senators and told them that he was incorrect; he said he twice ran background checks himself.
In the letter correcting the record, Southers also said he downloaded law enforcement records and shared them. He said he forgot the incident in 1987 or 1988.
The letter was first reported by The Washington Post's Web site on Thursday. The letter, which was distributed to all members of the homeland security committee and whose contents were verified to The Associated Press by a Democratic source, was dated Nov. 20.
Lieberman aide Leslie Phillips said the independent who caucuses with Democrats continues to support Southers.
"Twenty years ago, Mr. Southers committed a serious error in judgment," Phillips said. "He admitted that error and was disciplined for it. He went on to develop broad knowledge and build an excellent reputation in the areas of security and law enforcement. Mr. Southers was forthcoming about his past censure during his nomination process and about errors he made in recalling the details."
White House officials lined up behind Southers' nomination to head a Department of Transportation agency that lacked a confirmed chief when a suspected terrorist failed in his attempt to destroy an airplane on Christmas Day.
"Southers has never tried to hide this incident and has expressed that these were errors he made in judgment that he deeply regretted and an error that he made in an account of events that happened over 20 years ago," said Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman traveling with Obama on vacation in Hawaii.
"Southers' nomination has not been held up over this as he has been entrusted with significant and increasing responsibilities in the area of homeland security over the years since, but he is being held up by Senator DeMint over a political issue."
Southers' nomination was delayed by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who fears TSA employees would join unions with Southers support. Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, said he would force a vote on Southers by the full Senate in the new year, his spokesman said.
Southers' nomination secured the backing from former colleagues, including the Republican governor of California who nominated him as his No. 2 homeland security adviser and has known Southers for 30 years, back to his days as a Santa Monica police officer.
"Erroll brings vast homeland security experience at the federal, state and local levels, along with hands on airport security expertise," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "California is safer and better prepared because of his hard work and dedication. Erroll is a committed public servant and highly qualified for the role."
"He is a man of unquestioned integrity who, for the past 30 years, has dedicated his life to public service," wrote Ronald Iden, now chief security officer for the Walt Disney Co., who brought Southers on as his deputy at the California homeland security office in 2004. His was among the letters sent to the Senate in support of Southers' nomination.
Southers is currently the assistant chief of the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department. He previously taught at the University of Southern California, was a security consultant and a police officer.
Counterterror agency never tried to follow up on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab clues before Flight 253
BY James Gordon Meek
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/12/31/2009-12-31_failure_to_communicate_bumbling_counterterror_agency_never_tried_to_follow_up_on.html
Arbogast/AP
Terror watchdogs at teh National Counter-Terrorism Center (below) in Tysons Corner, Va., failed to heed red flags about underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to bring down Flight 253.
Wilson/Getty/Getty Images
WASHINGTON - Counterterror officials were told the accused Christmas bomber had possible ties to "Yemen-based extremists" a month before he tried to blow up a jetliner, the Daily News has learned.
The nations's terror watchdogs have been assailed as incompetent in the wake of the near-massacre of almost 300 people by the young Nigerian jihadist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The failure to follow up on the extremist warning is one more blunder in the series of errors.
Instead of reviewing his active U.S. visa, scouring intelligence databases for more dirt on him or checking to see if he bought any plane tickets to America, the name was simply filed away at the National Counter-terrorism Center (NCTC), red-faced officials said yesterday.
Because no one took a closer look, the sum total of intelligence in his file appeared to be what Abdulmutallab's prominent banker father Umaru told State Department diplomats and CIA officers in Nigeria.
"Information at post suggests subject may be involved with Yemen-based extremists," the cable from the diplomats in Abuja to Washington said. "Abdulmutallab has traveled previously to UK [United Kingdom], Rome, Togo and Dubai, UAE [United Arab Emirates]," continued the cable, The News learned.
Yet officials insist analysts in Washington didn't have any legal cause to scrutinize Abdulmutallab.
Though the Nigerian was linked to extremists in Yemen, an Al Qaeda hotbed, "his father never said he was a jihadist," explained one U.S. intelligence official. "Sometimes there is no smoking gun."
But there were plenty of clues: Intelligence that Al Qaeda was plotting a Christmastime spectacular and that an unnamed Nigerian figured in evildoers' plans are among those also unearthed in recent days.
The screwups allowed Abdulmutallab, 23, to get on a plane to Detroit with a powder-liquid explosive stitched into his underwear by an Al Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen. He could not successfully set off the bomb, but he has turned PresidentoObama's government upside down.
The Department of Homeland Security, the Directorate of National Intelligence and the NCTC - all created after 9/11 to prevent future attacks - are in a finger-pointing fight with the State Department and CIA over who failed to connect the dots this time.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair agreed with Obama that the answer is all of them.
The post-9/11 security buildup has made America safer, but "it is clear that gaps remain and they must be fixed," Blair said in a statement.
The latest flap involves a "finished" CIA report from its Nigeria station. It wasn't shared with the terror center as quickly as the embassy's version, which reached the analysts Nov. 20, one day after the father met with U.S. officials.
Had the terror center obtained the report, they might have forced a review of Abdulmutallab's visa or put him on the no-fly list, said a second intelligence official, fuming at the CIA.
"NCTC can only act on information they are actually given," the official said. "CIA sat on its cable for five weeks."
But the first U.S. official shot back that terror center analysts could have searched a computer file that had the raw CIA report and contained the same account from the elder Abdulmutallab as the State Department version.
"Nothing in it talks about terrorist planning," the official said.
An NCTC spokesman did not return several calls for comment.
Both cables listed Abdulmutallab's name, birth date and passport number and the fear he had hooked up with extremists - but not the fact he had an active U.S. visa allowing him to come and go as he pleased.
Flight 253 Eyewitness: Authorities Are Lying About Terror Attack
Aaron Foley
MLive.com
http://www.prisonplanet.com/flight-253-eyewitness-authorities-are-lying-about-terror-attack.html
Following up on a visit from FBI officials about an eyewitness account first described to MLive.com, Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell described the visit in comment sections across MLive on Wednesday.
Haskell and his wife, Lori, were aboard Flight 253 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to destroy the plane. They say another man tried to help Abdulmutallab board the plane in Amsterdam.
Haskell had two detailed posts in two different stories. Here is Part One, originally posted here:
“Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain.
Ever since I got off of Flight 253 I have been repeating what I saw in US Customs. Specifically, 1 hour after we left the plane, bomb sniffing dogs arrived. Up to this point, all of the passengers on Flight 253 stood in a small area in an evacuated luggage claim area of an airport terminal. During this time period, all of the passengers had their carry on bags with them. When the bomb sniffing dogs arrived, 1 dog found something in a carry on bag of a 30 ish Indian man. This is not the so called “Sharp Dressed” man. I will refer to this man as “The man in orange”. The man in orange, who stood some 20ft away from me the entire time until he was taken away, was immediately taken away to be searched and interrogated in a nearby room. At this time he was not handcuffed. When he emerged from the room, he was then handcuffed and taken away. At this time an FBI agent came up to the rest of the passengers and said the following (approximate quote) “You all are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. I am sure many of you saw what just happened (Referring to the man in orange) and are smart enough to read between the lines and figure it out.” We were then marched out of the baggage claim area and into a long hallway. This entire time period and until we left customs, no person that wasn’t a law enforcement personnel or a passenger on our flight was allowed anywhere on our floor of the terminal (or possibly the entire terminal) The FBI was so concerned during this time, that we were not allowed to use the bathroom unless we went alone with an FBI agent, we were not allowed to eat or drink, or text or call anyone. I have been repeating this same story over the last 5 days. The FBI has, since we landed, insisted that only one man was arrested for the airliner attack (contradicting my account). However, several of my fellow passengers have come over the past few days, backed up my claim, and put pressure on FBI/Customs to tell the truth. Early today, I heard from two different reporters that a federal agency (FBI or Customs) was now admitting that another man has been held (and will be held indefinitely) since our flight landed for “immigration reasons.” Notice that this man was “being held” and not “arrested”, which was a cute semantic ploy by the FBI to stretch the truth and not lie.
Just a question, could that mean that the man in orange had no passport?
However, a few hours later, Customs changed its story again. This time, Mr. Ron Smith of Customs, says the man that was detained “had been taken into custody, but today tells the news the person was a passenger on a different flight.” Mr. Ron Smith, you are playing the American public for a fool. Lets take a look at how plausible this story is (After you’ve already changed it twice). For the story to be true, you have to believe, that:
1. FBI/Customs let passengers from another flight co-mingle with the passengers of flight 253 while the most important investigation in 8 years was pending. I have already stated that not one person who wasn’t a passenger or law enforcement personnal was in our area the entire time we were detained by Customs.
2. FBI/Customs while detaining the flight 253 passengers in perhaps the most important investigation since the last terrorist attack, and despite not letting any flight 253 passenger drink, eat, make a call, or use the bathroom, let those of other flights trample through the area and possibly contaminate evidence.
3. You have to believe the above (1 and 2) despite the fact that no flights during this time allowed passengers to exit off of the planes at all and were detained on the runway during at least the first hour of our detention period.
4. You have to believe that the man that stood 20 feet from me since we entered customs came from a mysterious plane that never landed, let its passengers off the plane and let this man sneak into our passenger group despite having extremely tight security at this time (i.e. no drinking even).
5. FBI/Customs was hauling mysterious passengers from other flights through the area we were being held to possibly comtaminate evidence and allow discussions with suspects on Flight 253 or to possibly allow the exchange of bombs, weapons or other devices between the mysterious passengers from other flights and those on flight 253.
Seriously Mr. Ron Smith, how stupid do you think the American public is?
Mr. Ron Smith’s third version of the story is an absolute inplausible joke. I encourage you, Mr. Ron Smith, to debate me anytime, anywhere, and anyplace in public to let the American people see who is credible and who is not.
I ask, isn’t this the more plausible story:
1. Customs/FBI realized that they screwed up and don’t want to admit that they left flight 253 passengers on a flight with a live bomb on the runway for 20 minutes.
2. Customs/FBI realized that they screwed up and don’t want to admit that they left flight 253 passengers in customs for 1 hour with a live bomb in a carry on bag.
3. Customs/FBI realize that the man in orange points to a greater involvement then the lone wolf theory that they have been promoting.
Mr. Ron Smith I encourage you to come out of your cubicle and come up with a more plausible version number 4 of your story.”
Haskell continued his comment in a different post on MLive.
“For the last five days I have been reporting my story of the so called “sharp dressed man.” For those of you who haven’t read my account, it involves a sharp dressed “Indian man” attempting to talk a ticket agent into letting a supposed “Sudanese refugee” (The terrorist) onto flight 253 without a passport. I have never had any idea how it played out except to note that the so called “Sudanese reefugee” later boarded my flight and attempted to blow it up and kill me. At no time did my story involve, or even find important whether the terrorist actually had a passport. The importance of my story was and always will be, the attempt with an accomplice (apparently succesful) of a terrorist with all sorts of prior terrorist warning signs to skirt the normal passport boarding procedures in Amsterdam. By the way, Amsterdam security did come out the other day and admit that the terrorist did not have to “Go through normal passport checking procedures”.
Amsterdam security, please define to the American public “Normal passport boarding procedures”.
You see the FBI would have the American public believe that what was important was whether the terrorist in fact had a passport.
Seriously think about this people. You have a suicide bomber who had recently been to Yemen to but a bomb, whose father had reported him as a terrorist, who supposedly was on some kind of U.S. terror watchlist, and most likely knew the U.S. was aware of these red flags. Yet, he didn’t go through “Normal passport checking procedures.” What does that mean? Maybe that he flashed a passport to some sort of sympathetic security manager in a backroom to avoid a closer look at the terrorist’s “red flags”? What is important is that the terrorist avoided using normal passport checking procedures (apparently successfully) in order to avoid a closer look into his red flags. Who cares if he had a passport. The important thing is that he didn’t want to show it and somehow avoided a closer inspection and “normal passport checking procedures.” Each passport comes with a bar code on it that can be scanned to provide a wealth of information about the individual. I would bet that the passport checking procedures for the terrorist did not include a bar code scan of his passport (which could have revealed damning information about the terrorist).
Please note that there is a very easy way to verify the veracity of my prior “sharp dressed man” account. Dutch police have admitted that they have reviewed the video of the “sharp dressed man” that I referenced. Note that it has not been released anywhere, You see, if my eye witness account is false, it could easily be proven by releasing the video. However, the proof of my eyewitness account would also be verified if I am telling the truth and I am. There is a reason we have only heard of the video and not seen it. dutch authorities, “RELEASE THE VIDEO!” This is the most important video in 8 years and may be all of two minutes long. Show the entire video and “DO NOT EDIT IT”! The American public deserves its own chance to attempt to identify the “sharp dressed man”. I have no doubt that if the video indicated that my account was wrong, that the video would have already swept over the entire world wide web.
Instead of the video, we get a statment that the video has been viewed and that the terrorist had a passport. Each of these statements made by the FBI is a self serving play on semantics and each misses the importance of my prior “sharp dressed man” account. The importance being that the man “Tried to board the plane with an accomplice and without a passort”. The other significance is that only the airport security video can verify my eyewitness account and that it is not being released.
Who has the agenda here and who doesn’t? Think about that for a minute.”
Taliban claim blast that killed 8 Americans
AMIR SHAH- Associated Press Writer
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Headlines/Default.aspx?id=834250
KABUL- The Taliban claimed responsibility Thursday for a homicide bombing at a base in eastern Afghanistan that killed eight American civilians and one Afghan, the worst loss of life for the U.S. in the country since October. A U.S. congressional official said CIA employees are believed to be among the victims.
Separately, four Canadian soldiers and a journalist imbedded in their unit were killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan's south, the bloodiest single incident suffered by that country's military in 2009.
Michelle Lang, a 34-year-old health reporter with the Calgary Herald, was the first Canadian journalist to die in Afghanistan. She arrived in the country just two weeks ago.
It was not immediately clear how the homicide bomber at the base at the edge of Khost city was able to circumvent security.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement that an Afghan National Army officer wearing a suicide vest entered the base Wednesday and blew himself up inside the gym. A U.S. official who was briefed on the blast also said it took place in the gym.
Khost is the capital of Khost province, which borders Pakistan and is a Taliban stronghold.
The U.S. official said eight American civilians and one Afghan were killed; it was not clear if the Afghan victim was military or civilian. Six Americans were wounded, the official said.
The CIA has not yet commented on or confirmed the deaths.
There was no independent confirmation that the bomber was a member of the Afghan military. Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said no Afghan National Army soldiers are at the base, named FOB Chapman.
But an Afghan official in Khost said about 200 Afghans have been contracted by the U.S. to take care of security at the base. They are usually deployed on the outer ring of its walls, although some work inside, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
"It's not the first time that Afghan forces have conducted such an attack to kill Americans or foreigners," the Taliban statement said, citing the killing of an American soldier and the wounding of two Italians this week in Badghis province. NATO has provided no details of that incident, but Afghan Gen. Jalander Shah Bahnam said an Afghan soldier opened fire on a base in the province's Bala Murghab district.
The congressional official in Washington said it was not clear how many of the victims in Khost were assigned to the CIA.
A senior State Department official said all of the victims were civilians. A former senior CIA officer who was stationed at the base said a combination of agency officers and contractors operated out of the remote outpost with the military and other agencies. He said contractors also might be among those who died.
All the U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.
NATO said only that the base is used by provincial reconstruction teams, which consist of both soldiers and civilians, and other personnel.
A spokesman in Kabul for the international coalition force said no U.S. or NATO troops were killed in the afternoon explosion. The attack was the bloodiest for Americans since eight soldiers were killed in an insurgent attack on a base in eastern Afghanistan on Oct. 3.
In the south, NATO said the four Canadian troops and the reporter died when their armored vehicle hit a bomb while on an afternoon patrol south of Kandahar city. It was the third-deadliest day for Canadians in Afghanistan since the war began.
Michelle Lang "was one of those journalists who always wanted to get to the bottom of every story so this was an important trip for her," said a Calgary Herald colleague, Colette Derworiz.
The military has not disclosed the names of the Canadian troops because relatives have not all been notified.
"We are all very saddened to hear this tragic news," Alberta Health and Wellness Minister Ron Liepert said in a statement. "Michelle covered health issues with professionalism, accuracy and thoroughness. She was tenacious in her quest to inform Albertans, and for her diligence she was very well respected."
Brig. Gen. Daniel Menard, commander of coalition forces in Kandahar, said the soldiers were conducting a community security patrol in order to gather information about daily life in the area and how to maintain security.
Wednesday's attack was the second lethal strike against Canadian forces in a week. One Canadian soldier and an Afghan soldier were killed Dec. 23 during a foot patrol in Panjwayi district of Kandahar province. According to figures compiled by The Associated Press, the latest casualties bring to 32 the number of Canadian forces killed in Afghanistan this year; in all, 138 have died in the war.
Separately Wednesday, NATO questioned Afghan reports that international troops killed 10 civilians, including children, in a weekend attack that prompted hundreds of angry Afghan protesters to burn an effigy of President Barack Obama and chant "death" to America.
The head of an investigative team appointed by President Hamid Karzai told The Associated Press that eight students between the ages of 12 and 14 were among the dead discovered in a village house in a remote section of Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan. NATO said late Wednesday that while there was no direct evidence to substantiate the claims, the international force had requested and welcomed a joint investigation to reach an "impartial and accurate determination" of what happened in the attack.
Conflicting accounts of what occurred during the fighting in Kunar's Narang district prompted an emotional outcry over civilian deaths, one of the most sensitive issues for international troops fighting the more than eight-year-old war. Although insurgents are responsible for the deaths of far more civilians, those blamed on coalition forces spark the most resentment and undermine the fight against militants. With 37,000 more U.S. and NATO troops being deployed to the battle zone, concern over civilian casualties is unlikely to ease anytime soon.
Several hundred Afghans demonstrated in Kabul and in the eastern city of Jalalabad, where the likeness of Obama, adorned with a small American flag, was burned on a pole held above demonstrators.
Cheney: Obama Pretends We're Not at War
http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/cheney-obama-terrorism-airliner/2009/12/30/id/345040?s=al&promo_code=947A-1
HONOLULU, Hawaii – Republican heavyweights steered a political storm toward Barack Obama's Hawaiian beachside retreat Wednesday, branding the US president soft on terror after a Christmas Day airliner attack.
Obama foes seized on the aftermath of the thwarted plot to attack Obama's entire national security policy and closing Guantanamo Bay, escalating a fight sparked as the president faces his first big test in confronting terrorism.
The row juxtaposed Obama's measured crisis management and capacity to overcome an early administration misstep on the attack with Republican assaults that painted Democrats weak on national security -- a potent past tactic.
It also raised the question of whether Republicans had rebuilt credibility with the public on national security, which appeared to hurt the party in the 2008 elections after grinding years of war and challenged US power.
"In the Obama administration, protecting the rights of terrorists has been more important than protecting the lives of Americans," said Newt Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker and possible 2012 presidential candidate.
"That must now change decisively," Gingrich said a letter to supporters.
John Boehner, current Republican leader in the House of Representatives issued a statement criticizing Obama for treating suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a criminal rather than a mortal enemy of the United States.
"We're fighting a war on terror, and this was a terrorist act," Boehner said, striking a Republican theme critical of Obama's use of a mix of civilian courts and military tribunals to try terror suspects.
Former vice president Dick Cheney also weighed in, with a hard hitting statement to the Politico website.
"(We) are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren't, it makes us less safe," Cheney said.
"Why doesn't he want to admit we're at war? It doesn't fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office."
The White House has sparred with Cheney before, and given he left office with approval ratings of below 30 percent, appears to relish the fight.
"It is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the administration than condemning the attackers," said White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer in a blog post.
"This President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action," Pfeiffer said.
"Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from Al-Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country.
"It seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President."
Republicans pounced on an early misstep on the Christmas Day attack on a Northwest jet, after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the "system worked" -- apparently referring to aviation security measures following the attack.
But given the fact a known extremist was able to board a US airliner with high explosives concealed in his underwear, the comment appeared jarring.
Obama's denunciation on Tuesday of "systemic failures" in the intelligence system seemed partly aimed at squelching controversy over Napolitano's comment and to show he was in charge of fixing the problems.
With advanced telecommunications technology, a president can conduct his job anywhere in the world at any time. But the fact Obama has been relaxing in his native Hawaii, and not in Washington, may also have helped Republicans.
Obama broke his silence on the attack with a televised statement on Monday, attempting to portray calm and urgency.
But when Obama made a second statement on US intelligence glitches on Tuesday there was not time to rig up the Marine base hosting the appearance for live television.
As a result, the president's voice was broadcast on television at first using an audio feed -- contributing to an impression he was far away from the action in Washington.
Democrats cried foul when Republicans complained at the weekend that Obama, enjoying an energetic holiday of golf, tennis and workouts was guilty of a presidential vacuum over the attacks.
But they used identical tactics when former president George W. Bush retreated to his ranch during a presidency punctuated by national security crises -- though Obama has so far had much less vacation time.
"The e-mail Bag"
Morris, an 82 year-old man, went to the doctor to get a physical. A few days later, the doctor saw Morris walking down the street with a gorgeous young woman on his arm. A couple of days later, the doctor spoke to Morris and said, 'You're really doing great, aren't you?' Morris replied, 'Just doing what you said, Doc: 'Get a hot mamma and be cheerful.'' The doctor said, 'I didn't say that. I said, 'You've got a heart murmur; be careful.'
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"My Comments"
Everyone wants a 2010 Hooters Calender.
http://geekdrop.com/content/free-hooters-calendar-2010
"Daily Motivations"
"The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you." -- John E. Southard
Although your customers won't love you if you give bad service, your competitors will! -- Kate Zabriskie
"The past does not define you, the present does." -- Jillian Michaels
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. (Galatians 5:16)
I like to compare the Christian battle against sin to an individual swimming upstream against a surging current. His progress is slow and tortuous; he is constantly swept backward by powerful undercurrents. Hovering near the swimmer is a speedboat with a powerful motor. He can continue to try to swim upstream or he can choose to climb aboard the speedboat, which can easily whisk him up the river.
We have a similar choice. When battling evil spiritual forces, worldly influences, and our own fleshly temptations, we can either fail miserably by fighting temptation in our own efforts or defeat that sin-current that drags us down by living in the unlimited power of the Holy Spirit.
Peter explains, "By His divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know Him, the One who called us to Himself by means of His marvelous glory and excellence. " (2 Peter 1:3) We do not have to clean up our messy lives before we invite God in; rather we appropriate God's holiness through His Holy Spirit living His life within us.
The Scriptures assure us "that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us---whatever we ask---we know that we have what we asked of Him." (I John 5:14-15 NIV)
We can become holy vessels of the all-powerful God by committing to live holy lives through being filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Your View of God Really Matters …
Are you tired of struggling to live the Christian life? Get in the boat! Let God's awesome Spirit live through you every moment of every day. Then, and only then, will you have the power to live in obedience and joy.
"The Patriot Post"
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
- Abraham Lincoln
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States." -- Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, 1787
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785
Lie of the Day
http://www.lauraingraham.com/
“We will not rest until we find all who were involved” -- President Barack Obama, on the failed terrorist attempt to blow up a Delta Airlines plane on Christmas Day.
The Founding Fathers on Jesus, Christianity and the Bible
Charles Carroll
SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; SELECTED AS DELEGATE TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION; FRAMER OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS; U. S. SENATOR
On the mercy of my Redeemer I rely for salvation and on His merits, not on the works I have done in obedience to His precepts.22
Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, He had conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation and on myself in permitting me, under circumstances of mercy, to live to the age of 89 years, and to survive the fiftieth year of independence, adopted by Congress on the 4th of July 1776, which I originally subscribed on the 2d day of August of the same year and of which I am now the last surviving signer.23
I, Charles Carroll. . . . give and bequeath my soul to God who gave it, my body to the earth, hoping that through and by the merits, sufferings, and mediation of my only Savior and Jesus Christ, I may be admitted into the Kingdom prepared by God for those who love, fear and truly serve Him.24
Endnotes
22. From an autograph letter in our possession written by Charles Carroll to Charles W. Wharton, Esq., September 27, 1825.
23. Lewis A. Leonard, Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (New York: Moffit, Yard & Co, 1918), pp. 256-257.
24. Kate Mason Rowland, Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890), Vol. II, pp. 373-374, will of Charles Carroll, Dec. 1, 1718 (later replaced by a subsequent will not containing this phrase, although he reexpressed this sentiment on several subsequent occasions, including repeatedly in the latter years of his life).
"The Web"
TSA Nominee Corrects Record on 'Inconsistencies' to Congress
AP
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/01/white-house-defends-tsa-nominee/
President Obama's pick to lead the Transportation Security Administration has provided Congress inconsistent reports about running background checks on his then-estranged wife's boyfriend.
HONOLULU -- President Obama's pick to lead the Transportation Security Administration has provided Congress inconsistent reports about -- and regrets for --running background checks on his then-estranged wife's boyfriend two decades ago.
Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent whose nomination has been delayed by Republicans for unrelated concerns, wrote to senators in November to correct what he called a distortion of his record. The delayed nomination has received renewed attention since the failed Christmas Day attack on an airliner bound from Amsterdam to Detroit.
"I am distressed by the inconsistencies between my recollection and the contemporaneous documents, but I assure you that the mistake was inadvertent, and that I have at all times taken full responsibility for what I know to have been a grave error in judgment," he wrote in a letter to Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins.
"This incident was over 20 years ago, I was distraught and concerned about my young son, and never in my career since has there been any recurrence of this sort of conduct."
In an October affidavit for the Senate committee, he initially said he asked a San Diego police employee to run a background check on his then-estranged wife's boyfriend and was censured by his FBI superiors 20 years ago for what he said was an isolated instance.
But a day after the committee approved his nomination and sent it to the full Senate, he wrote to the senators and told them that he was incorrect; he said he twice ran background checks himself.
In the letter correcting the record, Southers also said he downloaded law enforcement records and shared them. He said he forgot the incident in 1987 or 1988.
The letter was first reported by The Washington Post's Web site on Thursday. The letter, which was distributed to all members of the homeland security committee and whose contents were verified to The Associated Press by a Democratic source, was dated Nov. 20.
Lieberman aide Leslie Phillips said the independent who caucuses with Democrats continues to support Southers.
"Twenty years ago, Mr. Southers committed a serious error in judgment," Phillips said. "He admitted that error and was disciplined for it. He went on to develop broad knowledge and build an excellent reputation in the areas of security and law enforcement. Mr. Southers was forthcoming about his past censure during his nomination process and about errors he made in recalling the details."
White House officials lined up behind Southers' nomination to head a Department of Transportation agency that lacked a confirmed chief when a suspected terrorist failed in his attempt to destroy an airplane on Christmas Day.
"Southers has never tried to hide this incident and has expressed that these were errors he made in judgment that he deeply regretted and an error that he made in an account of events that happened over 20 years ago," said Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman traveling with Obama on vacation in Hawaii.
"Southers' nomination has not been held up over this as he has been entrusted with significant and increasing responsibilities in the area of homeland security over the years since, but he is being held up by Senator DeMint over a political issue."
Southers' nomination was delayed by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who fears TSA employees would join unions with Southers support. Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, said he would force a vote on Southers by the full Senate in the new year, his spokesman said.
Southers' nomination secured the backing from former colleagues, including the Republican governor of California who nominated him as his No. 2 homeland security adviser and has known Southers for 30 years, back to his days as a Santa Monica police officer.
"Erroll brings vast homeland security experience at the federal, state and local levels, along with hands on airport security expertise," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "California is safer and better prepared because of his hard work and dedication. Erroll is a committed public servant and highly qualified for the role."
"He is a man of unquestioned integrity who, for the past 30 years, has dedicated his life to public service," wrote Ronald Iden, now chief security officer for the Walt Disney Co., who brought Southers on as his deputy at the California homeland security office in 2004. His was among the letters sent to the Senate in support of Southers' nomination.
Southers is currently the assistant chief of the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department. He previously taught at the University of Southern California, was a security consultant and a police officer.
Counterterror agency never tried to follow up on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab clues before Flight 253
BY James Gordon Meek
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/12/31/2009-12-31_failure_to_communicate_bumbling_counterterror_agency_never_tried_to_follow_up_on.html
Arbogast/AP
Terror watchdogs at teh National Counter-Terrorism Center (below) in Tysons Corner, Va., failed to heed red flags about underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to bring down Flight 253.
Wilson/Getty/Getty Images
WASHINGTON - Counterterror officials were told the accused Christmas bomber had possible ties to "Yemen-based extremists" a month before he tried to blow up a jetliner, the Daily News has learned.
The nations's terror watchdogs have been assailed as incompetent in the wake of the near-massacre of almost 300 people by the young Nigerian jihadist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The failure to follow up on the extremist warning is one more blunder in the series of errors.
Instead of reviewing his active U.S. visa, scouring intelligence databases for more dirt on him or checking to see if he bought any plane tickets to America, the name was simply filed away at the National Counter-terrorism Center (NCTC), red-faced officials said yesterday.
Because no one took a closer look, the sum total of intelligence in his file appeared to be what Abdulmutallab's prominent banker father Umaru told State Department diplomats and CIA officers in Nigeria.
"Information at post suggests subject may be involved with Yemen-based extremists," the cable from the diplomats in Abuja to Washington said. "Abdulmutallab has traveled previously to UK [United Kingdom], Rome, Togo and Dubai, UAE [United Arab Emirates]," continued the cable, The News learned.
Yet officials insist analysts in Washington didn't have any legal cause to scrutinize Abdulmutallab.
Though the Nigerian was linked to extremists in Yemen, an Al Qaeda hotbed, "his father never said he was a jihadist," explained one U.S. intelligence official. "Sometimes there is no smoking gun."
But there were plenty of clues: Intelligence that Al Qaeda was plotting a Christmastime spectacular and that an unnamed Nigerian figured in evildoers' plans are among those also unearthed in recent days.
The screwups allowed Abdulmutallab, 23, to get on a plane to Detroit with a powder-liquid explosive stitched into his underwear by an Al Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen. He could not successfully set off the bomb, but he has turned PresidentoObama's government upside down.
The Department of Homeland Security, the Directorate of National Intelligence and the NCTC - all created after 9/11 to prevent future attacks - are in a finger-pointing fight with the State Department and CIA over who failed to connect the dots this time.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair agreed with Obama that the answer is all of them.
The post-9/11 security buildup has made America safer, but "it is clear that gaps remain and they must be fixed," Blair said in a statement.
The latest flap involves a "finished" CIA report from its Nigeria station. It wasn't shared with the terror center as quickly as the embassy's version, which reached the analysts Nov. 20, one day after the father met with U.S. officials.
Had the terror center obtained the report, they might have forced a review of Abdulmutallab's visa or put him on the no-fly list, said a second intelligence official, fuming at the CIA.
"NCTC can only act on information they are actually given," the official said. "CIA sat on its cable for five weeks."
But the first U.S. official shot back that terror center analysts could have searched a computer file that had the raw CIA report and contained the same account from the elder Abdulmutallab as the State Department version.
"Nothing in it talks about terrorist planning," the official said.
An NCTC spokesman did not return several calls for comment.
Both cables listed Abdulmutallab's name, birth date and passport number and the fear he had hooked up with extremists - but not the fact he had an active U.S. visa allowing him to come and go as he pleased.
Flight 253 Eyewitness: Authorities Are Lying About Terror Attack
Aaron Foley
MLive.com
http://www.prisonplanet.com/flight-253-eyewitness-authorities-are-lying-about-terror-attack.html
Following up on a visit from FBI officials about an eyewitness account first described to MLive.com, Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell described the visit in comment sections across MLive on Wednesday.
Haskell and his wife, Lori, were aboard Flight 253 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to destroy the plane. They say another man tried to help Abdulmutallab board the plane in Amsterdam.
Haskell had two detailed posts in two different stories. Here is Part One, originally posted here:
“Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain.
Ever since I got off of Flight 253 I have been repeating what I saw in US Customs. Specifically, 1 hour after we left the plane, bomb sniffing dogs arrived. Up to this point, all of the passengers on Flight 253 stood in a small area in an evacuated luggage claim area of an airport terminal. During this time period, all of the passengers had their carry on bags with them. When the bomb sniffing dogs arrived, 1 dog found something in a carry on bag of a 30 ish Indian man. This is not the so called “Sharp Dressed” man. I will refer to this man as “The man in orange”. The man in orange, who stood some 20ft away from me the entire time until he was taken away, was immediately taken away to be searched and interrogated in a nearby room. At this time he was not handcuffed. When he emerged from the room, he was then handcuffed and taken away. At this time an FBI agent came up to the rest of the passengers and said the following (approximate quote) “You all are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. I am sure many of you saw what just happened (Referring to the man in orange) and are smart enough to read between the lines and figure it out.” We were then marched out of the baggage claim area and into a long hallway. This entire time period and until we left customs, no person that wasn’t a law enforcement personnel or a passenger on our flight was allowed anywhere on our floor of the terminal (or possibly the entire terminal) The FBI was so concerned during this time, that we were not allowed to use the bathroom unless we went alone with an FBI agent, we were not allowed to eat or drink, or text or call anyone. I have been repeating this same story over the last 5 days. The FBI has, since we landed, insisted that only one man was arrested for the airliner attack (contradicting my account). However, several of my fellow passengers have come over the past few days, backed up my claim, and put pressure on FBI/Customs to tell the truth. Early today, I heard from two different reporters that a federal agency (FBI or Customs) was now admitting that another man has been held (and will be held indefinitely) since our flight landed for “immigration reasons.” Notice that this man was “being held” and not “arrested”, which was a cute semantic ploy by the FBI to stretch the truth and not lie.
Just a question, could that mean that the man in orange had no passport?
However, a few hours later, Customs changed its story again. This time, Mr. Ron Smith of Customs, says the man that was detained “had been taken into custody, but today tells the news the person was a passenger on a different flight.” Mr. Ron Smith, you are playing the American public for a fool. Lets take a look at how plausible this story is (After you’ve already changed it twice). For the story to be true, you have to believe, that:
1. FBI/Customs let passengers from another flight co-mingle with the passengers of flight 253 while the most important investigation in 8 years was pending. I have already stated that not one person who wasn’t a passenger or law enforcement personnal was in our area the entire time we were detained by Customs.
2. FBI/Customs while detaining the flight 253 passengers in perhaps the most important investigation since the last terrorist attack, and despite not letting any flight 253 passenger drink, eat, make a call, or use the bathroom, let those of other flights trample through the area and possibly contaminate evidence.
3. You have to believe the above (1 and 2) despite the fact that no flights during this time allowed passengers to exit off of the planes at all and were detained on the runway during at least the first hour of our detention period.
4. You have to believe that the man that stood 20 feet from me since we entered customs came from a mysterious plane that never landed, let its passengers off the plane and let this man sneak into our passenger group despite having extremely tight security at this time (i.e. no drinking even).
5. FBI/Customs was hauling mysterious passengers from other flights through the area we were being held to possibly comtaminate evidence and allow discussions with suspects on Flight 253 or to possibly allow the exchange of bombs, weapons or other devices between the mysterious passengers from other flights and those on flight 253.
Seriously Mr. Ron Smith, how stupid do you think the American public is?
Mr. Ron Smith’s third version of the story is an absolute inplausible joke. I encourage you, Mr. Ron Smith, to debate me anytime, anywhere, and anyplace in public to let the American people see who is credible and who is not.
I ask, isn’t this the more plausible story:
1. Customs/FBI realized that they screwed up and don’t want to admit that they left flight 253 passengers on a flight with a live bomb on the runway for 20 minutes.
2. Customs/FBI realized that they screwed up and don’t want to admit that they left flight 253 passengers in customs for 1 hour with a live bomb in a carry on bag.
3. Customs/FBI realize that the man in orange points to a greater involvement then the lone wolf theory that they have been promoting.
Mr. Ron Smith I encourage you to come out of your cubicle and come up with a more plausible version number 4 of your story.”
Haskell continued his comment in a different post on MLive.
“For the last five days I have been reporting my story of the so called “sharp dressed man.” For those of you who haven’t read my account, it involves a sharp dressed “Indian man” attempting to talk a ticket agent into letting a supposed “Sudanese refugee” (The terrorist) onto flight 253 without a passport. I have never had any idea how it played out except to note that the so called “Sudanese reefugee” later boarded my flight and attempted to blow it up and kill me. At no time did my story involve, or even find important whether the terrorist actually had a passport. The importance of my story was and always will be, the attempt with an accomplice (apparently succesful) of a terrorist with all sorts of prior terrorist warning signs to skirt the normal passport boarding procedures in Amsterdam. By the way, Amsterdam security did come out the other day and admit that the terrorist did not have to “Go through normal passport checking procedures”.
Amsterdam security, please define to the American public “Normal passport boarding procedures”.
You see the FBI would have the American public believe that what was important was whether the terrorist in fact had a passport.
Seriously think about this people. You have a suicide bomber who had recently been to Yemen to but a bomb, whose father had reported him as a terrorist, who supposedly was on some kind of U.S. terror watchlist, and most likely knew the U.S. was aware of these red flags. Yet, he didn’t go through “Normal passport checking procedures.” What does that mean? Maybe that he flashed a passport to some sort of sympathetic security manager in a backroom to avoid a closer look at the terrorist’s “red flags”? What is important is that the terrorist avoided using normal passport checking procedures (apparently successfully) in order to avoid a closer look into his red flags. Who cares if he had a passport. The important thing is that he didn’t want to show it and somehow avoided a closer inspection and “normal passport checking procedures.” Each passport comes with a bar code on it that can be scanned to provide a wealth of information about the individual. I would bet that the passport checking procedures for the terrorist did not include a bar code scan of his passport (which could have revealed damning information about the terrorist).
Please note that there is a very easy way to verify the veracity of my prior “sharp dressed man” account. Dutch police have admitted that they have reviewed the video of the “sharp dressed man” that I referenced. Note that it has not been released anywhere, You see, if my eye witness account is false, it could easily be proven by releasing the video. However, the proof of my eyewitness account would also be verified if I am telling the truth and I am. There is a reason we have only heard of the video and not seen it. dutch authorities, “RELEASE THE VIDEO!” This is the most important video in 8 years and may be all of two minutes long. Show the entire video and “DO NOT EDIT IT”! The American public deserves its own chance to attempt to identify the “sharp dressed man”. I have no doubt that if the video indicated that my account was wrong, that the video would have already swept over the entire world wide web.
Instead of the video, we get a statment that the video has been viewed and that the terrorist had a passport. Each of these statements made by the FBI is a self serving play on semantics and each misses the importance of my prior “sharp dressed man” account. The importance being that the man “Tried to board the plane with an accomplice and without a passort”. The other significance is that only the airport security video can verify my eyewitness account and that it is not being released.
Who has the agenda here and who doesn’t? Think about that for a minute.”
Taliban claim blast that killed 8 Americans
AMIR SHAH- Associated Press Writer
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Headlines/Default.aspx?id=834250
KABUL- The Taliban claimed responsibility Thursday for a homicide bombing at a base in eastern Afghanistan that killed eight American civilians and one Afghan, the worst loss of life for the U.S. in the country since October. A U.S. congressional official said CIA employees are believed to be among the victims.
Separately, four Canadian soldiers and a journalist imbedded in their unit were killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan's south, the bloodiest single incident suffered by that country's military in 2009.
Michelle Lang, a 34-year-old health reporter with the Calgary Herald, was the first Canadian journalist to die in Afghanistan. She arrived in the country just two weeks ago.
It was not immediately clear how the homicide bomber at the base at the edge of Khost city was able to circumvent security.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement that an Afghan National Army officer wearing a suicide vest entered the base Wednesday and blew himself up inside the gym. A U.S. official who was briefed on the blast also said it took place in the gym.
Khost is the capital of Khost province, which borders Pakistan and is a Taliban stronghold.
The U.S. official said eight American civilians and one Afghan were killed; it was not clear if the Afghan victim was military or civilian. Six Americans were wounded, the official said.
The CIA has not yet commented on or confirmed the deaths.
There was no independent confirmation that the bomber was a member of the Afghan military. Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said no Afghan National Army soldiers are at the base, named FOB Chapman.
But an Afghan official in Khost said about 200 Afghans have been contracted by the U.S. to take care of security at the base. They are usually deployed on the outer ring of its walls, although some work inside, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
"It's not the first time that Afghan forces have conducted such an attack to kill Americans or foreigners," the Taliban statement said, citing the killing of an American soldier and the wounding of two Italians this week in Badghis province. NATO has provided no details of that incident, but Afghan Gen. Jalander Shah Bahnam said an Afghan soldier opened fire on a base in the province's Bala Murghab district.
The congressional official in Washington said it was not clear how many of the victims in Khost were assigned to the CIA.
A senior State Department official said all of the victims were civilians. A former senior CIA officer who was stationed at the base said a combination of agency officers and contractors operated out of the remote outpost with the military and other agencies. He said contractors also might be among those who died.
All the U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.
NATO said only that the base is used by provincial reconstruction teams, which consist of both soldiers and civilians, and other personnel.
A spokesman in Kabul for the international coalition force said no U.S. or NATO troops were killed in the afternoon explosion. The attack was the bloodiest for Americans since eight soldiers were killed in an insurgent attack on a base in eastern Afghanistan on Oct. 3.
In the south, NATO said the four Canadian troops and the reporter died when their armored vehicle hit a bomb while on an afternoon patrol south of Kandahar city. It was the third-deadliest day for Canadians in Afghanistan since the war began.
Michelle Lang "was one of those journalists who always wanted to get to the bottom of every story so this was an important trip for her," said a Calgary Herald colleague, Colette Derworiz.
The military has not disclosed the names of the Canadian troops because relatives have not all been notified.
"We are all very saddened to hear this tragic news," Alberta Health and Wellness Minister Ron Liepert said in a statement. "Michelle covered health issues with professionalism, accuracy and thoroughness. She was tenacious in her quest to inform Albertans, and for her diligence she was very well respected."
Brig. Gen. Daniel Menard, commander of coalition forces in Kandahar, said the soldiers were conducting a community security patrol in order to gather information about daily life in the area and how to maintain security.
Wednesday's attack was the second lethal strike against Canadian forces in a week. One Canadian soldier and an Afghan soldier were killed Dec. 23 during a foot patrol in Panjwayi district of Kandahar province. According to figures compiled by The Associated Press, the latest casualties bring to 32 the number of Canadian forces killed in Afghanistan this year; in all, 138 have died in the war.
Separately Wednesday, NATO questioned Afghan reports that international troops killed 10 civilians, including children, in a weekend attack that prompted hundreds of angry Afghan protesters to burn an effigy of President Barack Obama and chant "death" to America.
The head of an investigative team appointed by President Hamid Karzai told The Associated Press that eight students between the ages of 12 and 14 were among the dead discovered in a village house in a remote section of Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan. NATO said late Wednesday that while there was no direct evidence to substantiate the claims, the international force had requested and welcomed a joint investigation to reach an "impartial and accurate determination" of what happened in the attack.
Conflicting accounts of what occurred during the fighting in Kunar's Narang district prompted an emotional outcry over civilian deaths, one of the most sensitive issues for international troops fighting the more than eight-year-old war. Although insurgents are responsible for the deaths of far more civilians, those blamed on coalition forces spark the most resentment and undermine the fight against militants. With 37,000 more U.S. and NATO troops being deployed to the battle zone, concern over civilian casualties is unlikely to ease anytime soon.
Several hundred Afghans demonstrated in Kabul and in the eastern city of Jalalabad, where the likeness of Obama, adorned with a small American flag, was burned on a pole held above demonstrators.
Cheney: Obama Pretends We're Not at War
http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/cheney-obama-terrorism-airliner/2009/12/30/id/345040?s=al&promo_code=947A-1
HONOLULU, Hawaii – Republican heavyweights steered a political storm toward Barack Obama's Hawaiian beachside retreat Wednesday, branding the US president soft on terror after a Christmas Day airliner attack.
Obama foes seized on the aftermath of the thwarted plot to attack Obama's entire national security policy and closing Guantanamo Bay, escalating a fight sparked as the president faces his first big test in confronting terrorism.
The row juxtaposed Obama's measured crisis management and capacity to overcome an early administration misstep on the attack with Republican assaults that painted Democrats weak on national security -- a potent past tactic.
It also raised the question of whether Republicans had rebuilt credibility with the public on national security, which appeared to hurt the party in the 2008 elections after grinding years of war and challenged US power.
"In the Obama administration, protecting the rights of terrorists has been more important than protecting the lives of Americans," said Newt Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker and possible 2012 presidential candidate.
"That must now change decisively," Gingrich said a letter to supporters.
John Boehner, current Republican leader in the House of Representatives issued a statement criticizing Obama for treating suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a criminal rather than a mortal enemy of the United States.
"We're fighting a war on terror, and this was a terrorist act," Boehner said, striking a Republican theme critical of Obama's use of a mix of civilian courts and military tribunals to try terror suspects.
Former vice president Dick Cheney also weighed in, with a hard hitting statement to the Politico website.
"(We) are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren't, it makes us less safe," Cheney said.
"Why doesn't he want to admit we're at war? It doesn't fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office."
The White House has sparred with Cheney before, and given he left office with approval ratings of below 30 percent, appears to relish the fight.
"It is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the administration than condemning the attackers," said White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer in a blog post.
"This President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action," Pfeiffer said.
"Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from Al-Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country.
"It seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President."
Republicans pounced on an early misstep on the Christmas Day attack on a Northwest jet, after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the "system worked" -- apparently referring to aviation security measures following the attack.
But given the fact a known extremist was able to board a US airliner with high explosives concealed in his underwear, the comment appeared jarring.
Obama's denunciation on Tuesday of "systemic failures" in the intelligence system seemed partly aimed at squelching controversy over Napolitano's comment and to show he was in charge of fixing the problems.
With advanced telecommunications technology, a president can conduct his job anywhere in the world at any time. But the fact Obama has been relaxing in his native Hawaii, and not in Washington, may also have helped Republicans.
Obama broke his silence on the attack with a televised statement on Monday, attempting to portray calm and urgency.
But when Obama made a second statement on US intelligence glitches on Tuesday there was not time to rig up the Marine base hosting the appearance for live television.
As a result, the president's voice was broadcast on television at first using an audio feed -- contributing to an impression he was far away from the action in Washington.
Democrats cried foul when Republicans complained at the weekend that Obama, enjoying an energetic holiday of golf, tennis and workouts was guilty of a presidential vacuum over the attacks.
But they used identical tactics when former president George W. Bush retreated to his ranch during a presidency punctuated by national security crises -- though Obama has so far had much less vacation time.
"The e-mail Bag"
Morris, an 82 year-old man, went to the doctor to get a physical. A few days later, the doctor saw Morris walking down the street with a gorgeous young woman on his arm. A couple of days later, the doctor spoke to Morris and said, 'You're really doing great, aren't you?' Morris replied, 'Just doing what you said, Doc: 'Get a hot mamma and be cheerful.'' The doctor said, 'I didn't say that. I said, 'You've got a heart murmur; be careful.'
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