Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal

by Matt Taibbi / Rolling Stone

A power play is underway in the foreclosure arena, according to the New York Times.

On the one side is Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, who is conducting his own investigation into the era of securitizations – the practice of chopping up assets like mortgages and converting them into saleable securities – that led up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

On the other side is the Obama administration, the banks, and all the other state attorneys general.

This second camp has cooked up a deal that would allow the banks to walk away with just a seriously discounted fine from a generation of fraud that led to millions of people losing their homes.

The idea behind this federally-guided “settlement” is to concentrate and centralize all the legal exposure accrued by this generation of grotesque banker corruption in one place, put one single price tag on it that everyone can live with, and then stuff the details into a titanium canister before shooting it into deep space.


This is all about protecting the banks from future enforcement actions on both the civil and criminal sides. The plan is to provide year-after-year, repeat-offending banks like Bank of America with cost certainty, so that they know exactly how much they’ll have to pay in fines (trust me, it will end up being a tiny fraction of what they made off the fraudulent practices) and will also get to know for sure that there are no more criminal investigations in the pipeline. 

This deal will also submarine efforts by both defrauded investors in MBS and unfairly foreclosed-upon homeowners and borrowers to obtain any kind of relief in the civil court system. The AGs initially talked about $20 billion as a settlement number, money that would “toward loan modifications and possibly counseling for homeowners,” as Gretchen Morgenson reported the other day.

The banks, however, apparently “balked” at paying that sum, and no doubt it will end up being a lesser amount when the deal is finally done.

To give you an indication of how absurdly small a number even $20 billion is relative to the sums of money the banks made unloading worthless crap subprime assets on foreigners, pension funds and other unsuspecting suckers around the world, consider this: in 2008 alone, the state pension fund of Florida, all by itself, lost more than three times that amount ($62 billion) thanks in significant part to investments in these deadly MBS. 

So this deal being cooked up is the ultimate Papal indulgence. By the time that $20 billion (if it even ends up being that high) gets divvied up between all the major players, the broadest and most destructive fraud scheme in American history, one that makes the S&L crisis look like a cheap liquor store holdup, will be safely reduced to a single painful but eminently survivable one-time line item for all the major perpetrators.

But Schneiderman, who earlier this year launched an investigation into the securitization practices of Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and other companies, is screwing up this whole arrangement. Until he lies down, the banks don’t have a deal. They need the certainty of having all 50 states and the federal government on board, or else it’s not worth paying anybody off. To quote the immortal Tony Montana, “How do I know you’re the last cop I’m gonna have to grease?” They need all the dirty cops on board, or else the whole enterprise is FUBAR. 

In addition to the global settlement, Schneiderman is also blocking an individual $8.5 billion settlement for Countrywide investors. He has sued to stop that deal, claiming it could “compromise investors’ claims in exchange for a payment representing a fraction of the losses.”

If Schneiderman thinks $8.5 billion is an insufficient, fractional payoff just for defrauded Countrywide investors, then you can imagine how bad a $20 billion settlement for the entire industry would be for the victims.

In that particular Countrywide settlement deal, it looks like Bank of New York Mellon, the New York Fed, Pimco and other players negotiated on behalf of defrauded investors. They told the Times they were happy with the deal, but investors outside the talks told Gretchen they weren’t happy with the settlement. 

Schneiderman apparently listened to those voices instead of the Mellon-Fed-BofA crowd, which infuriated the insiders who struck the actual deal. In a remarkable quote given to the Times, Kathryn Wylde, the Fed board member who ostensibly represents the public, said the following about Schneiderman:

It is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.

This, again, is coming not from a Bank of America attorney, but from the person on the Fed board who is supposedly representing the public!

This quote leads one to wonder just what Wylde would consider “indefensible,” given that stealing is pretty much the worst thing that a bank can do — and these banks just finished the longest and most orgiastic campaign of stealing in the history of money. Is Wylde waiting for Goldman and Citi to blow up a skyscraper? Dump dioxin into an orphanage? It’s really an incredible quote.

The banks are going to claim that all they’re guilty of is bad paperwork. But while the banks are indeed being investigated for "paperwork" offenses like mass tax evasion (by failing to pay fees associated with mortgage registrations and deed transfers) and mass perjury (a la the “robo-signing” practices), their real crime, the one Schneiderman is interested in, is even more serious.

The issue goes beyond fraudulent paperwork to an intentional, far-reaching theft scheme designed to take junk subprime loans and disguise them as AAA-rated investments. The banks lent money to corrupt companies like Countrywide, who made masses of bad loans and immediately sold them back to the banks.

The banks in turn hid the crappiness of these loans via certain poorly-understood nuances in the securitization process – this is almost certainly where Scheniderman’s investigators are doing their digging – before hawking the resultant securities as AAA-rated gold to fools in places like the Florida state pension fund.

They did this for years, systematically, working hand in hand in a wink-nudge arrangement with clearly criminal enterprises like Countrywide and New Century. The victims were millions of investors worldwide (like the pensioners who saw their funds drop in value) and hundreds of thousands of individual homeowners, who were often sold trick loans and hustled into foreclosure when unexpected rate hikes kicked in.

In a larger sense, even the (often irresponsible) people who simply bought more house than they could afford were victims of this scam. That's because in many of these cases, credit simply would not have been available to those people had the banks not first discovered a way to raise vast sums of money dumping crap loans on an unsuspecting market.

In other words: if Bank of America hadn’t found a way to sell worthless subprime loans as AAA paper to the Chinese and the Scandavians in May, you can be sure that it wouldn’t be going back to Countrywide in June to lend out more money for more subprime loans.

And Countrywide, in turn, wouldn’t then have been sending masses of reps out into the ghettoes to offer juicy home loans to undocumented immigrants and refis to confused old ladies on social security.

This is as bad as white-collar crime gets. But to Wylde, it doesn’t rise to the level of being “indefensible.” Until they do something worse than this, we apparently should support the banks, and make sure they don’t have to pay more than a fraction of what they made off of this kind of crime.

What is most amazing about Wylde’s quote is the clear implication that even a law enforcement official like Schneiderman should view it as his job to “do everything we can to support” Wall Street. That would be astonishing interpretation of what a prosecutor's duties are, were it not for the fact that 49 other Attorneys General apparently agree with her.

In Schneiderman we have at least one honest investigator who doesn’t agree, which is to his great credit. But everyone else is on Wylde’s side now. The Times story claims that HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and various Justice Department officials have been leaning on the New York AG to cave, which tells you that reining in this last rogue cop is now an urgent priority for Barack Obama.

Why? My theory is that the Obama administration is trying to secure its 2012 campaign war chest with this settlement deal. If Barry can make this foreclosure thing go away for the banks, you can bet he’ll win the contributions battle against the Republicans next summer.

Which is good for him, I guess. But it seems to me that it might be time to wonder if is this the most disappointing president we’ve ever had.

Video: MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan has a meltdown over the meltdown

Finally, someone at MSNBC has the balls to say on air what the root of the problems is in this country. Money and politics!

MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan is mad as hell about the U.S. financial crisis--and he's not gonna take it anymore!
While convening a roundtable discussion on the market meltdown on his eponymous MSNBC show on Tuesday, Ratigan exploded.

"We've got a real problem!" an exasperated Ratigan shouted. "This is a mathematical fact! Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America. Democrats aren't doing it, Republicans aren't doing it. An entire integrated system, financial system, trading system, taxing system, that was created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now. And we're sitting here arguing about whether we should do the $4 trillion plan that kicks the can down the road for the president for 2017, or burn the place to the ground, both of which are reckless, irresponsible, and stupid."


"I'm sorry to lose my temper," he continued. "But, I tell you what, I've been coming on TV for three years doing this, and the fact of the matter is that there's a refusal on both the Democratic and the Republican side of the aisle to acknowledge the mathematical problem, which is that the United States of America is being extracted."

Later, on the show's website, Ratigan called it his "epic 'Network' moment."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Lets Take A Moment To Dissect Bernake's Latest Zero Interest Rate Policy

by: Bruce Krasting / ZeroHedge.com

I had this to say last week:

The Fed could easily attempt to buy some market peace by issuing a statement that the policy of zero interest rates would be extended for a minimum period of one year. I consider this to be a “high probability" to happen in the next 30 days.

I got it right, but I got it completely wrong. I feared that the Fed could extend the ZIRP language for as long as a year. Not in my wildest dream did I think they could take the extremely risky move of guaranteeing that interest rates will remain at zero for another 24 months.

Having been shocked, my thoughts.


*This action is indefensible on economic merits. This move is not motivated by sound monetary policy. It’s motivated by politics. This is a payback to Obama. Shame on the Fed for mixing politics with money.

*We will not go two years with this monetary policy without inflation (measured by core) exceeding the previously stated commitment by Bernanke that policy would not be allowed to rise above 2%. Bernanke and the dove members that signed onto this policy have lied to the American people. Bernanke has done it on 60 Minutes. He has done it to Congress. Shame on all of them.

*The Fed has taken away its ability to react to a situation that would require them to tighten. We are now on a one-way street. There is no way to turn around anymore. I believe the Fed has abdicated its responsibilities under the dual mandate. The have no ability to react if inflation should pop up in a year from now. Even worse, they have no policy options should there be a run on the dollar. The possibility of a run on the buck has gone up exponentially as a result. Should that happen, the Fed will have left us economically defenseless. Shame on the Fed for making us more vulnerable to a speculative attack.

*The stock market run up this afternoon is the Bernanke Put at work. Lets be clear on the consequences of Perpetual ZIRP. From this day onward every buy and hold investor who acquires Treasury debt with maturities of less than five-years is GUARANTEED TO LOSE MONEY. So if you accept that, then stocks have to look better. Shame on the Fed for debasing money and punishing savers.
*We have only one monetary policy. Juice stock multiples. This is the farthest thing from “Progressive” economics as you can get. We have a policy in place that is designed to make wealthy people wealthier. At some point there will be a social cost to this. The fires and riots in London were triggered by a shooting. Underneath is a rage between haves and have nots. Shame on the Fed for rigging the outcome for fat cats. Double shame on them for when our streets are filled with rage.

*Zero interest rates also means Zero risk. I think the change in Fed language will exacerbate recent short-term funding liquidity. I think we will see this appear (again) sooner versus later. I think Zero interest rates discourages leveraged investing. This policy will dry up liquidity in the asset backed market (Shadow banking system). I'm looking for evidence of this in the Euro Dollar funding markets. I am also looking for it to occur in the Term Commercial Paper market. Shame on the Fed for setting us up for this systemic risk.

*Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Indonesia are going to scream bloody murder over perpetual ZIRP. Russia is likely to get downright ugly with their rhetoric. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took this opportunity to vote with their feet and just abandon the dollar as a reserve holding. China will also make noise. They will make more calls for a new international currency to replace the dollar. The Central bankers in Japan and Switzerland are puking in the trashcan over this. Bernanke is exporting US deflation to them. Shame on the Fed for pursuing Beggar my neighbor policies. They deserve all the global criticism they are about to get.

*Bernanke bills himself as a student of the Depression. He has said over and over that he would not make the mistakes that the Fed made in 1937 when a tightening of monetary policy triggered another wave of deflation. I think the history books will look at the Fed and August of 2011 and draw a similar conclusion. At a critical time in history the Fed has taken action. The mistake of 72 years ago DID cause a recession that lasted a few years. The mistakes of 2011 will mark a point in history where America turned a corner downward. One that will take a few decades to recover from. The history books will shame Ben.

A 634 Point Stock Market Crash And 8 More Reasons Why You Should Be Deeply Concerned That The U.S. Government Has Lost Its AAA Credit Rating

article from: theeconomiccollapseblog.com


Are you ready for part two of the global financial collapse?  Many now fear that we may be on the verge of a repeat of 2008 after the events of the last several days.  On Friday, Standard & Poor's stripped the U.S. government of its AAA credit rating for the first time in history.  World financial markets had been anticipating a potential downgrade, but that still didn't stop panic from ensuing as this week began.  On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 634.76 points, which represented a 5.5 percent plunge.  It was the largest one day point decline and the largest one day percentage decline since December 1, 2008.  Overall, stocks have fallen by about 15 percent over the past two weeks.  When Standard & Poor's downgraded long-term U.S. government debt from AAA to AA+, it was just one more indication that faith in the U.S. financial system is faltering.  Previously, U.S. government debt had a AAA rating from S&P continuously since 1941, but now that streak is over.   Nobody is quite sure what comes next.  We truly are in unprecedented territory.  But one thing is for sure - there is a lot of fear in the air right now.


So exactly what caused S&P to downgrade U.S. government debt?

Well, it was the debt ceiling deal that broke the camel's back.

According to S&P, the debt ceiling deal "falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics."

As I have written about previously, the debt ceiling deal was a complete and total joke, and S&P realized this.

Forget all of the huge figures that the mainstream media has been throwing at you concerning this debt ceiling deal.  The only numbers that matter are for what happens before the next election.

The only way that the current debt ceiling deal will last beyond the 2012 election is if Obama is still president, the Democrats still control the Senate and the Republicans still control the House.  If any of those things change, this deal ceiling deal is dead as soon as the election is over.

Even if all of those things remain the same, there is still a very good chance that we would see dramatic changes to the deal after the next election.

So in evaluating this "deal", the important thing is to look at what is going to happen prior to the 2012 election.

When we examine this "deal" that way, what does it look like?

Well, Barack Obama and the Democrats get the debt ceiling raised by over 2 trillion dollars and will not have to worry about it again until after the 2012 election.

The Republicans get 25 billion dollars in "savings" from spending increases that will be cancelled.

The "Super Congress" that is supposed to be coming up with the second phase of the plan may propose some additional "spending cuts" that would go into effect before the 2012 election, but that seems unlikely.

So in the final analysis, the Democrats won the debt ceiling battle by a landslide.

25 billion dollars is not even 1 percent of the federal budget.  The U.S. national debt continues to spiral wildly out of control, and our politicians could not even cut the budget by one percent.

Somehow our politicians believed that the rest of the world would be convinced that they were serious about cutting the budget, but it turns out that global financial markets are tired of getting fooled.

It has gotten to the point where now even the big credit rating agencies are being forced to do something.

Not that they really have much credibility left.  Everyone still remembers all of those AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities that imploded during the last financial crisis.  The reality is that the big credit rating agencies are a bad joke at this point.

Several smaller credit rating agencies have already significantly slashed the credit rating of the U.S. government.  But a lot of pressure had been put on the "big three" to keep them in line.

But now things have gotten so ridiculous that S&P felt forced to make a move.

Sadly, our politicians are still trying to maintain the charade that everything is okay.  Barack Obama says that financial markets "still believe our credit is AAA and the world's investors agree".

Once again, Barack Obama is dead wrong.

The truth is that the credit rating for the U.S. government should have been slashed significantly a long time ago.  This move by S&P was way, way overdue.

Moody's might be the next one to issue a downgrade.  At the moment, Moody's says that it will not be downgrading U.S. debt for now, but Moody's also says that it has serious doubts about the enforceability of the "budget cuts" in the debt ceiling deal.

This crisis is just beginning.  It is going to play out over time, and it is going to be very messy.

The following are 8 more reasons why you should be deeply concerned that the U.S. government has lost its AAA credit rating....

#1 The U.S. dollar and U.S. government debt are at the very heart of the global financial system.  This credit rating downgrade just doesn't affect the United States - it literally shakes the financial foundations of the entire world.

#2 As the stock market crashes, investors are flocking to U.S. Treasuries right now.  However, once the current panic is over the U.S. could be faced with increased borrowing costs.  The credit rating downgrade is a signal to investors that they should be receiving a higher rate of return for investing in U.S. government debt.  If interest rates on U.S. government debt do end up going up, that is going to make it more expensive for the U.S. government to borrow money.  The higher interest on the national debt goes, the more difficult it is going to become to balance the budget.

#3 We could literally see hundreds of other credit rating downgrades now that long-term U.S. government debt has been downgraded.  For example, S&P has already slashed the credit ratings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from AAA to AA+.  S&P has also already begun to downgrade the credit ratings of states and municipalities.  Nobody is quite sure when we are going to see the dominoes stop falling, and this is not going to be a good thing for the U.S. economy.

#4 10-year U.S. Treasuries are the basis for a whole lot of other interest rates throughout our economy.  If we see the rate for 10-year U.S. Treasuries go up significantly, it will suddenly become a lot more expensive to get a car loan or a home loan.

#5 The current financial panic caused by this downgrade is hitting financial stocks really hard.  The big banks led the decline back in 2008, and it looks like it might be happening again.  Just check out what CNN says happened to financial stocks on Monday....

Financial stocks were among the hardest hit, with Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) plunging 20%, and Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) dropped roughly 15%.

#6 China is freaking out. China's official news agency says that China "has every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets".  If China starts dumping U.S. government debt that would make things a lot worse.

#7 There are already calls for the Federal Reserve to step in and do something.  If the U.S. economy drops into another recession, will we see more quantitative easing?  It seems like we have reached a point where the Fed is constantly in "emergency mode".

#8 The U.S. national debt continues to get worse by the day.  Just check out what economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff recently told NPR....

"If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That's the fiscal gap"

Dick Cheney once said that "deficits don't matter", but the truth is that all of the debt we have been piling up for decades is now catching up with us.

The United States is in such a huge amount of financial trouble that it is hard to put into words.  The days of easy borrowing for the U.S government are starting to come to an end.  We have been living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and it has fueled a tremendous amount of "prosperity", but now the party is ending.

A whole lot of financial pain is on the horizon. 

Please prepare for the hard times that are coming.

The Execution of SEAL Team Six

by: Ann Barnhardt

You're damn right I said it.  

On May 5th I had an email conversation with a retired military man with spook contacts. All were in total agreement that the Bin Laden episode was pure theater. The SEALS were sent into a compound as evidenced by the lost chopper on site. But Osama Bin Laden wasn't in that compound. Osama Bin Laden has been dead for years. Bin Laden had a genetic condition that caused renal failure (this genetic condition is common among deeply inbred Saudi arab muslims). Bin Laden had been on dialysis BEFORE 9/11. Dialysis is difficult enough for people in first world countries who can have it done in outstanding facilities. Bin Laden was having it done either in caves or in homes post 9/11. People in renal failure having dialysis done in fricking caves do NOT live for ten more years. Period. There was no dialysis equipment found in the compound the SEALS raided on May 2. Of course there wasn't. Bin Laden wasn't in that compound because Bin Laden has been dead for years.

 
This is why the "body" was declared "positively identified" faster than any known DNA testing process in existence - and this DNA testing was carried out not in a lab mind you, but inside Chinook and/or V-22 Osprey helos en route to the USS Carl Vinson. The body was then dumped into the Indian Ocean in a mad dash to ensure that "burial" took place within 24 hours of death in order to "honor" musloid burial traditions. Not a single picture of the so-called "Bin Laden corpse" has ever been released - and never will.
The entire Bin Laden episode was stagecraft. It was pure theater that was designed to give Obama a boost in the polls and give distraction and cover. Distract from what? Cover from what?
 
April 20, 2011: The release date of Dr. Jerome Corsi's book, "Where's the Birth Certificate" is announced as May 17, and pre-sales begin on Amazon.com. Corsi's work is known to be extremely thorough and meticulous. Within hours, Corsi's book is #1 on Amazon.com - fully 28 days before its release. The Obama regime is panicked.
 
April 27, 2011: In order to diffuse and undercut the Corsi book, the Obama regime releases a PDF image purported to be a scan of his original long-form Hawaiian birth certificate. Within hours, thousands of graphic designers, many of whom are self-professed Obama voters and supporters, isolate and demonstrate with dozens of objective proof sets that the PDF released by the Obama regime is not just a forgery, but an astoundingly incompetent and obvious forgery.
 
April 27 through May 2: The Obama regime is now in a blind panic. Deeming it too risky, instead of commissioning the forged birth certificate from document and photo illustration experts within the CIA or NSA, the Obama regime instead farmed the project off on someone inside the White House with a functional but middling knowledge of photo illustration programs. To the thoroughly inexpert eyes of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett, the forged certificate file appeared extremely convincing, and was thus released with fanfare. Within hours, they knew that they had not only made a mistake, but a massive mistake that could land them all in prison. The forger was so incompetent that he/she didn’t even flatten the image thus compressing and masking the component layers before posting it. And that was just the tip of the iceberg of glaring flaws and errors. The mainstream press was, so far, completely complicit in the cover-up of the forgery, but Rathergate proved that if the forgery debunking generated any mainstream traction whatsoever, the end could come swiftly. The Obama regime needed a big distraction and they needed it fast. They had been planning on holding the staged Bin Laden capture and killing until 2012 – for the thick of the campaign, and perhaps as an “October Surprise”, but it would have to be moved up to now.
 
May 2, 2011: The Bin Laden operation occurs. In all likelihood, a low-to-mid level Taliban or insurgent leader is killed.
 
May 3, 2011: Within hours, Vice President Joe Biden destroys any notions of OPSEC and bellows to the entire world in public remarks at a dinner at the Ritz Carlton that the Bin Laden raid was carried out by “the SEALS”. Within hours Obama regime had gleefully leaked that the raid was carried out by “SEAL Team 6”, also known as DEVGRU. Up until this point in history, all DEVGRU activities and information had been highly classified. Now the term “SEAL Team 6” was blasted across every newspaper in the world, with Disney even moving to trademark the name. The Obama regime wanted the ENTIRE WORLD to know the name “SEAL Team 6”.
 
May 5, 2011: As I said earlier, I conversed with retired military contact with spook contacts regarding the obvious theatrics of the Bin Laden episode and the need for a cover-up by the Obama regime. The conversation ended with the following exchange:
 
Ann: I’m on the US Military casualty email list. It would be NO PROBLEM to “hide” casualties. It’s a steady stream out of Afghanistan.
 
Contact: look for training accidents in the eastern mountains.
 
May 6, 2011: Obama travels to Ft. Campbell, KY to openly “meet and congratulate” SEAL Team 6 members. This receives huge press coverage, and the press declares the incident “a huge boost [for Obama] going into 2012.” Video citation here:




August 6, 2011: A Chinook helo is shot down in Tangi, Wardak Province, Afghanistan. Within hours, before family notifications could possibly have been completed, global press accounts positively confirm that 22 of the 30 Americans killed were not just SEALS, but members of SEAL Team 6. Again, DEVGRU operations have been, up until now, highly classified. Today, the Obama regime made a point of immediately revealing the unit identities of the SPECOPS forces among the dead.

In the past, DEVGRU men and other SPECOPS men have been killed in action, but their missions were so secret and so crucial to OPSEC that their deaths were covered-up by the government and attributed to such things as “training accidents” and the like – and I have no problem with that. These men understand going in to intense units such as DEVGRU that OPSEC is paramount, that they will never be publicly acknowledged for their heroism, and that if they are killed or captured in action, the government will lie about that in order to protect OPSEC and to prevent the enemy from gaining a propaganda and morale coup. Compare that reality with what happened today. The Obama regime distributed this information, and the Obama regime’s lapdog press instantly splashed headlines declaring this as the Taliban’s “REVENGE” for the “death of Bin Laden.” As I write this now, the Drudge Report headline in bright red reads, “REVENGE: SEALS WHO GOT OSAMA KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN.”
 
I’ll say what everyone else is thinking but is too scared to say. The Obama regime is almost certainly directly complicit in these deaths. The time, location and most especially, the PASSENGERS in the Chinook were passed to the Taliban. Additionally, you can’t take out a Chinook with small arms fire or even standard RPGs such as the Taliban use. The Taliban needed serious weaponry to take this helo down, and that serious weaponry needed to be in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time, ready to fire.
 
Why would the Obama regime kill Americans?
 
I think the question is, why WOULDN’T the Obama regime kill Americans?
 
The Obama regime is composed of Marxist-Leninist psychopaths. A glancing, superficial survey of 20th century history shows one glaring fact above all others: MARXISTS MURDER PEOPLE WITHOUT COMPUNCTION. Marxists also hate Americans, by definition. Three tacks:
 
1. The men on board the Chinook may have been some of the same men who participated or had direct knowledge of the staged Bin Laden raid and were killed to permanently silence them.
 
2. These DEVGRU men were killed to send a signal to the surviving DEVGRU men who carried out the Bin Laden raid to keep their mouths shut.
 
3. Certainly, the release of the unit identity of the dead within hours – before even family notification could have been made (which requires an IN PERSON visit to the family, remember) was an obvious bow to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the entire muslim world. This event was INSTANTLY propagandized by the Obama media as “revenge” exacted for Bin Laden’s death. And remember, Bin Laden has been dead for many years. The raid of May 2 was pure stagecraft to distract the world from the release of the forged Obama birth certificate.
 
I am not a conspiracy theorist. I can’t stand Alex Jones or any 9/11 truther. I have turned down dozens of interviews with such types. In fact, I am a huge believer in the Lex Parsimoniae, which is sometimes called “Occam’s Razor”, which states that the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one. I teach this as part of my job, namely that the cattle markets are neither manipulated nor impossible to operate within at a profit. The reality is that the cattle industry participants do not make money because they are functionally incompetent. It is very, very simple. True conspiracies are very rare.
 
This entire Obama situation is a conspiracy, and I say that without the slightest hesitation. Obama is not a citizen of the United States, he is a puppet front for a cabal of Marxist-Leninsts including Soros, Ayers, Dohrn, Strong, Jarrett and many, many others. These people are enemies of the United States. These people are deeply psychologically damaged, and are capable of ordering people murdered in order to protect themselves and increase their own power. The three dead homosexual black men from Trinity United Church of Christ, Young, Bland and Spencer, all of whom were sexually linked to Barack Obama, were probably the first people specifically murdered by the Obama regime. The hundreds of Mexicans and the two American agents Terry and Zapata were murdered by Operation Fast and Furious in order to advance and increase the power of the Obama regime. These SEALS and the others on board that Chinook today were almost certainly betrayed and murdered by the Obama regime.
 
Why did the Obama regime immediately reveal the unit identity of the SPECOPS forces involved in the first place, despite the fact that DEVGRU was highly classified? Why was the personnel composition of the Chinook released IMMEDIATELY today after the helo went down – before even family notifications could be made? WHY? Why would you hand your enemy, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, a massive propaganda coup? WHY?
 
I’ll tell you why. Because the Obama regime IS THE ENEMY. They are Marxist tyrants who hold the lives of Americans not just cheap, but in scathing contempt. They will say anything, they will do anything, and they will murder ANYONE in order to protect themselves and consolidate and increase their power. Please, I beg you, for the love of God and all that is good in this world, read the history of the Soviet Union. Read about Lenin and Stalin and how they murdered people without any hesitation. Read about how Hitler was constantly ordering the murder of his own officers. Read about Communist China. Read about Mao and the millions upon tens of millions of murders he ordered. Read about the killing fields of the Communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia led by Pol Pot. PLEASE. Marxists MURDER PEOPLE. That is what they do. The Obama regime is MARXIST to the bone. If the Obama regime is not stopped, the 30 Americans murdered today in Afghanistan will be just the beginning. I promise you that.
 
Here, again, is the clip of Larry Grathwohl, who infiltrated the Weather Underground Marxist terrorist organization in the 1970s. The Weather Underground was founded by Obama’s political godfather, communist mentor (along with Frank Marshall Davis), murderer, and ghostwriter of “Dreams From My Father”, Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn. In this interview, taped in 1980 while Obama was still just an unknown undergrad foreign scholarship student at Occidental College, Grathwohl describes the leadership of the Weather Underground (which is Ayers and Dohrn) discussing what will be done with the “unreformable, diehard capitalists” once they have overthrown the government of the United States. The answer is extermination in camps in the Southwest. The estimated total that would need to be killed? 25 million, which was 10% of the population at the time. Ayers & Dohrn already have overthrown the government of the United States via their puppet protégé, Barack Obama. They have guaranteed that the economy will collapse. The only thing left for them to do is suspend the Constitution and open the camps. I’ll see you there.

The Committee of 13

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
August 4, 2011



The so-called debt ceiling crisis has nothing to do with the government running out of money. It is about the creation of a super committee, a council of thirteen, designed to circumvent Congress and ignore the will of the American people.

The ruling elite have a plan to take America down. The takedown has a timeline, a schedule, and it has been interrupted and set back by Congress. Despite the fact Congress usually does whatever the globalists tell them to do, certain members hold up the agenda by holding hearings and introducing resolutions on everything from the Federal Reserve to the globalist wars in the Middle East, South Asia and now Africa.


The handpicked “super Congress” – six members from the Senate, six from the House, and the president forming a committee or gang of 13 – will now push through the elite’s agenda behind closed doors in direct violation of the Constitution.

Like the Supreme Soviet, the Council of 13 will take on the trappings of democracy – because the committee was proposed by elected officials, namely Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his counterpart Majority Leader Harry Reid with the consent House Speaker John Boehner – but will act as dictatorship by committee. If allowed to stand, the United States will have its own Central Committee, just like the former Soviet Union.

The Constitution allows each house of Congress to set its own rules. Early on, debate and filibuster were added to the rules. The Committee of 13, however, will strip Congress of its power to filibuster. It will prevent the Speaker from stopping a vote in the House. It will fast-track the entire globalist agenda – from carbon taxes to the total destruction of the Second Amendment. It will end amendments to laws and only allow an up or down vote on legislation. It will turn Congress into a rubber stamp even more than it is already.

In their wisdom, the framers envisioned the House as a place of heated debate and the Senate as more staid place where rhetoric would cool down. It has its origins in the concept integral to our political system that the rights of the minority must be protected from the force of the majority. The idea and practice of a super Congress, a Committee of 13, puts an end to this tradition. It is a totalitarian steamroller.

By voting for the so-called debt ceiling bill, both houses of Congress are voting to legitimize the Soviet-style super committee of 13 globalist grocery clerks. It is another step by the elite to throw the Constitution under the bus.

As a first step, the Gang of 13 will impose taxation as a solution to the astronomical debt placed on the American people by the international bankers who own the private Federal Reserve. A super committee will be required to keep the debt and debt slavery scam going now that an increasing number of Americans understand that the Fed is nothing but a money printing machine designed to devalue the worth of our currency under the guise of stimulating the economy and the perpetually unfulfilled promise to create jobs and prosperity.

It is contempt for the Constitution and the intellectual and spiritual laziness of our so-called representatives that has allowed this atrocious state of affairs to exist under the excuse of confronting a debt the American people do not owe.

Direct political action will be required to put and end to this monstrosity. Short of that, we can expect another dagger to be stuck in the heart of our liberty as the global elite continue step by step to build their authoritarian control structure designed to turn the earth into a sprawling slave labor gulag and plantation.

Is Super Congress Constitutional?

Sadly, our Constitution is quickly becoming IRRELEVANT! It seems like around every turn this administration has made a conscience effort to trample on our beloved Constitution.

Yesterday we had the Vice-President Joe Biden call the Tea party a bunch of "terrorists".

Imagine that, the Vice-President calling a group of people who have set out to help preserve the fabric upon which this country was created a bunch of "terroists". (With all due respect Mr. Vice-President, neither you, nor anyone else in Washington could find a bunch of terroist if they hung themselves from the lightpole in front of your house.)

This administration has had only one goal from the first day of power and that is to shred the Constitution as quickly as possible. I am here to tell you that when it is time for Obama to leave office you will not recognize the Constitution. The man promised you "Change", he just did not tell you what kind of "Change" our country would be getting.


This latest disregard for the Constitution comes in the way of the forming of this new "Super Congress" I believe that Judge Napalitano does a great job of describing just how the creation of this new legislative body is unconstitutional.

“The deal would take power from congress and give it to this group. It would fundamentally change the way in which our government works.” – Judge Napalitano



President at the Bat?

Viewers may better understand this clip if you knew the original poem upon which this is based - "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Thayer - often considered one of baseball's greatest writings.

Obama's Afghanistan Plan and the Realities of Withdrawal

By Nathan Hughes


U.S. President Barack Obama announced June 22 that the long process of drawing down forces in Afghanistan would begin on schedule in July. Though the initial phase of the drawdown appears limited, minimizing the tactical and operational impact on the ground in the immediate future, the United States and its allies are now beginning the inevitable process of removing their forces from Afghanistan. This will entail the risk of greater Taliban battlefield successes.

The Logistical Challenge

Afghanistan, a landlocked country in the heart of Central Asia, is one of the most isolated places on Earth. This isolation has posed huge logistical challenges for the United States. Hundreds of shipping containers and fuel trucks must enter the country every day from Pakistan and from the north to sustain the nearly 150,000 U.S. and allied forces stationed in Afghanistan, about half the total number of Afghan security forces.

Supplying a single gallon of gasoline in Afghanistan reportedly costs the U.S. military an average of $400, while sustaining a single U.S. soldier runs around $1 million a year (by contrast, sustaining an Afghan soldier costs about $12,000 a year).

These forces appear considerably lighter than those in Iraq because Afghanistan’s rough terrain often demands dismounted foot patrols. Heavy main battle tanks and self-propelled howitzers are thus few and far between, though not entirely absent. Afghanistan even required a new, lighter and more agile version of the hulking mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle known as the M-ATV (for “all-terrain vehicle”).

Based solely on the activity on the ground in Afghanistan today, one would think the United States and its allies were preparing for a permanent presence, not the imminent beginning of a long-scheduled drawdown (a perception the United States and its allies have in some cases used to their advantage to reach political arrangements with locals). An 11,500-foot all-weather concrete and asphalt runway and an air traffic control tower were completed this February at Camp Leatherneck and Camp Bastion in Helmand province. Another more than 9,000-foot runway was finished at Shindand Air Field in Herat province last December.

(click here to enlarge image)

Meanwhile, a so-called iron mountain of spare parts needed to maintain vehicles and aircraft, construction and engineering equipment, generators, ammunition and other supplies — even innumerable pallets of bottled water — has slowly been built up to sustain day-to-day military operations. There are fewer troops in Afghanistan than the nearly 170,000 in Iraq at the peak of operations and considerably lighter tonnage in terms of armored vehicles. But short of a hasty and rapid withdrawal reminiscent of the chaotic American exit from Saigon in 1975 (which no one currently foresees in Afghanistan), the logistical challenge of withdrawing from Afghanistan — at whatever pace — is perhaps even more daunting than the drawdown in Iraq. The complexity of having nearly 50 allies with troops in country will complicate this process.

Moreover, coalition forces in Iraq had ready access to well-established bases and modern port facilities in nearby Kuwait and in Turkey, a long-standing NATO ally. Though U.S. and allied equipment comes ashore on a routine basis in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, the facilities there are nothing like what exists in Kuwait. Routes to bases in Afghanistan are anything but short and established, with locally contracted fuel tankers and other supplies not only traveling far greater distances but also regularly subject to harassing attacks. They are inherently vulnerable to aggressive interdiction by militants fighting on terrain far more favorable to them, and to politically motivated interruptions by Islamabad. The American logistical dependence on Pakistani acquiescence cannot be understated. Most supplies transit the isolated Khyber Pass in the restive Pakistani Federally Administered Tribal Areas west of Islamabad. As in Iraq, the United States does have an alternative to the north. But instead of Turkey it is the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), which runs through Central Asia and Russia (Moscow has agreed to continue to expand it) and entails a 3,200-mile rail route to the Baltic Sea and ports in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

(click here to enlarge image)

Given the extraordinary distances involved, the metrics for defining whether something is worth the expense of shipping back from Afghanistan are unforgiving. Some equipment will be deemed too heavily damaged or cheap and will be sanitized if necessary and discarded. Much construction and fortification has been done with engineering and construction equipment like Hesco barriers (which are filled with sand and dirt) that will not be reclaimed, and will continue to characterize the landscape in Afghanistan for decades to come, much as the Soviet influence was perceivable long after their 1989 withdrawal. Much equipment will be handed over to Afghan security forces, which already have begun to receive up-armored U.S. HMMWVs, aka “humvees.” Similarly, some 800,000 items valued at nearly $100 million have already been handed over to more than a dozen Iraqi military, security and government entities.

Other gear will have to be stripped of sensitive equipment (radios and other cryptographic gear, navigation equipment, jammers for improvised explosive devices, etc.), which is usually flown out of the country due to security concerns before being shipped overland. And while some Iraqi stocks were designated for redeployment to Afghanistan or prepared for long-term storage in pre-positioned equipment depots and aboard maritime pre-positioning ships at facilities in Kuwait, most vehicles and supplies slated to be moved out of Afghanistan increasingly will have to be shipped far afield. This could be from Karachi by ship or to Europe by rail even if they are never intended for return to the United States.

Security Transition

More important than the fate of armored trucks and equipment will be the process of rebalancing forces across the country. This will involve handing over outposts and facilities to Afghan security forces, who continue to struggle to reach full capability, and scaling back the extent of the U.S. and allied presence in the country. In Iraq, and likely in Afghanistan, the beginning of this process will be slow and measured. But its pace in the years ahead remains to be seen, and may accelerate considerably
.

(click here to enlarge image)

The first areas slated for handover to Afghan control, the provinces of Panjshir, Bamiyan and Kabul — aside the restive Surobi district, though the rest of Kabul’s security effectively has been in Afghan hands for years — and the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, Lashkar Gah and Mehtar Lam have been relatively quiet places for some time. Afghan security forces increasingly have taken over in these areas. As in Iraq, the first places to be turned over to indigenous security forces already were fairly secure. Handing over more restive areas later in the year will prove trickier.

This process of pulling back and handing over responsibility for security (in Iraq often termed having Iraqi security forces “in the lead” in specific areas) is a slow and deliberate one, not a sudden and jarring maneuver. Well before the formal announcement, Afghan forces began to transition to a more independent role, conducting more small-unit operations on their own. International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops slowly have transitioned from joint patrols and tactical overwatch to a more operational overwatch, but have remained nearby even after transitions formally have taken place.

Under the current training regime, Afghan units continue to require advice and assistance, particularly with matters like intelligence, planning, logistics and maintenance. The ISAF will be cautious in its reductions for fear of pulling back too quickly and seeing the situation deteriorate — unless, of course, Obama directs it to conduct a hastier pullback.

As in Afghanistan, in Iraq the process of drawing down and handing over responsibility in each area was done very cautiously. There was a critical distinction, however. A political accommodation with the Sunnis facilitated the apparent success of the Iraqi surge — something that has not been (and cannot be) replicated in Afghanistan. Even with that advantage, Iraq remains in an unsettled and contentious state. The lack of any political framework to facilitate a military pullback leaves the prospect of a viable transition in restive areas where the U.S. counterinsurgency-focused strategy has been focused tenuous at best — particularly if timetables are accelerated.

In June 2009, U.S. forces in Iraq occupied 357 bases. A year later, U.S. forces occupied only 92 bases, 58 of which were partnered with the Iraqis. The pace of the transition in Afghanistan remains to be seen, but handing over the majority of positions to Afghan forces will fundamentally alter the situational awareness, visibility and influence of ISAF forces.

Casualties and Force Protection

The security of the remaining outposts and ensuring the security of U.S. and allied forces and critical lines of supply (particularly key sections of the Ring Road) that sustain remaining forces will be key to crafting the withdrawal and pulling back to fewer, stronger and more secure positions. As that drawdown progresses — and particularly if a more substantive shift in strategy is implemented — the increased pace begins to bring new incentives into play. Of particular note will be both a military and political incentive to reduce casualties as the endgame draws closer.

The desire to accelerate the consolidation to more secure positions will clash with the need to pull back slowly and continue to provide Afghan forces with advice and assistance. The reorientation may expose potential vulnerabilities to Taliban attack in the process of transitioning to a new posture. Major reversals and defeats for Afghan security forces at the hands of the Taliban after they have been left to their own devices can be expected in at least some areas and will have wide repercussions, perhaps even shifting the psychology and perception of the war.

When ISAF units are paired closely with Afghan forces, those units have a stronger day-to-day tactical presence in the field, and other units are generally operating nearby. So while they are more vulnerable and exposed to threats like IEDs while out on patrol, they also — indeed, in part because of that exposure — have a more alert and robust posture. As the transition accelerates and particularly if Washington accelerates it, the posture and therefore the vulnerabilities of forces change.

Force protection remains a key consideration throughout. The United States gained considerable experience with that during the Iraq transition — though again, a political accommodation underlay much of that transition, which will not be the case in Afghanistan.

As the drawdown continues, ISAF will have to balance having advisers in the field alongside Afghan units for as long as possible against pulling more back to key strongholds and pulling them out of the country completely. In the former case, the close presence of advisers can improve the effectiveness of Afghan security forces and provide better situational awareness. But it also exposes smaller units to operations more distant from strongholds as the number of outposts and major positions begins to be reduced. And as the process of pulling back accelerates and particularly as allied forces increasingly hunker down on larger and more secure outposts, their already limited situational awareness will decline even further, which opens up its own vulnerabilities.

One of these will be the impact on not just situational awareness on the ground but intelligence collection and particularly exploitable relationships with local political factions. As the withdrawal becomes more and more undeniable and ISAF pulls back from key areas, the human relationships that underlie intelligence sharing will be affected and reduced. This is particularly the case in places where the Taliban are strongest, as villagers there return to a strategy of hedging their bets out of necessity and focus on the more enduring power structure, which in many areas will clearly be the Taliban.

The Taliban

Ultimately, the Taliban’s incentive vis-a-vis the United States and its allies — especially as their exit becomes increasingly undeniable — is to conserve and maximize their strength for a potential fight in the vacuum sure to ensue after the majority of foreign troops have left the country. At the same time, any “revolutionary” movement must be able to consolidate internal control and maintain discipline while continuing to make itself relevant to domestic constituencies. The Taliban also may seek to take advantage of the shifting tactical realities to demonstrate their strength and the extent of their reach across the country, not only by targeting newly independent and newly isolated Afghan units but by attempting to kill or even kidnap now-more isolated foreign troops.

Though this year the Taliban have demonstrated their ability to strike almost anywhere in the country, they so far have failed to demonstrate the ability to penetrate the perimeter of large, secured facilities with a sizable assault force or to bring crew-served weapons to bear in an effective supporting manner. Given the intensity and tempo of special operations forces raids on Taliban leadership and weapons caches, it is unclear whether the Taliban have managed to retain a significant cache of heavier arms and the capability to wield them.

The inherent danger of compromise and penetration of indigenous security forces also continues to loom large. The vulnerabilities of ISAF forces will grow and change while they begin to shift as mission and posture evolve — and those vulnerabilities will be particularly pronounced in places where the posture and presence remains residual and a legacy of a previous strategy instead of more fundamental rebalancing. The shift from a dispersed, counterinsurgency-focused orientation to a more limited and more secure presence will ultimately provide the space to reduce casualties, but it will necessarily entail more limited visibility and influence. And the transition will create space for potentially more significant Taliban successes on the battlefield.


Read more: Obama's Afghanistan Plan and the Realities of Withdrawal | STRATFOR

The 11th Commandment is Alive and Well

article by: Michael Reagan


They stood up there on the stage, shoulder to shoulder, and voiced their opinions freely, often disagreeing with each other over the various details, but they did it like the gentlemen and lady that they are; attacking positions on the issues without attacking each other.

My dad, Ronald Reagan, would have been proud to see them strictly observe his 11th Commandment -- that Republicans shall not ever speak ill of their fellow Republicans.
They did not go after each other but kept their eyes on the target, Barak Obama, the architect of this double-dip recession he has inflicted on the nation. He can try to blame George W. Bush, but this illegitimate baby is his and it's time he admits his fatherhood.
 
Liberals, wake up! Barack Obama is a disaster. He is dragging you and the nation down as he attempts to impose his Euro-Marxist agenda on the United States. Rep. Bachmann was right on when she told him, "You are a one-term president."
 
While Obama campaigns for his job, raising huge sums of cash to fund his re-election campaign, tens of thousands of jobless Americans suffer. I can only pray that the 841,000 Puerto Ricans in Florida that Obama was trying to influence by visiting Puerto Rico are smarter than we were in 2008 and vote Republican in 2012.
 
My father believed in keeping your eye on the big picture, and the candidates truly did that the other evening in New Hampshire. They understood that if we are going to make Michele Bachman's words come true we are going to have to be united after the primaries and support fully our nominee, whoever that might be. That is what my dad would have done.
 
To all of you presidential hopefuls, this Reagan says "bravo" and "good job, well done." Now let's get together and go out and win one for America.
 
The future of this great and blessed nation is at stake. America cannot survive another four years of an Obama administration. At this moment he is fighting another undeclared war in a nation few Americans could even locate on a map, and where no real American interests are at stake. Yet he is risking American lives in bombing raids being carried out without a declaration of war or Congressional approval, and spending billions of our tax dollars in a time of recession to pay for this undeclared war.
 
If we are lucky we'll get though the remaining year and-a-half of the Obama misadministration without going bankrupt. Hopefully Congress, now under GOP control in the House and close to it in the Senate, will rein in this out-of-control administration before it wrecks America.
 
And remember, the Gipper is watching. Let's not disappoint him.

Obama Well Knows What Chaos He Has Unleashed

by: Victor Sharpe

 

Not content with creating havoc in the U.S. economy, setting Americans against each other, and forcing through a health reform act which has nothing to do with health but everything to do with the redistribution of wealth and an immense increase in governmental interference, our president has now opened a Pandora's Box in the Middle East.  It may well usher in a catastrophe not seen since World War 2.

From his notorious Cairo speech to the present, President Obama speaks, and disaster follows.  Some commentators believe that President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are so utterly naïve as to make themselves unable to understand what will happen in Egypt as a result of their undermining of the Mubarak regime.

The question is justifiably asked: Do they truly believe that the next regime that comes to power will have the interests of the U.S. and the West at heart?

My fear is that Obama is not naïve at all, but he instead knows only too well what he is doing, for he is eagerly promoting Islamic power in the world while diminishing the West and Israel, however much innocent blood will flow as a result. 

Inevitably, sooner or later, the Muslim Brotherhood will take power, usher in a barbaric Islamist power in Egypt that will control the Suez Canal, and show no mercy to its own people or its perceived foes.

So now we see what the present incumbent in the White House has wrought, and so can our few remaining allies.  They must now wonder what confidence they can ever have in any future alliance with the United States.

We should be aware of what endemic Islamic violence has wrought in the past.  For example, assassinations of Arab leaders are not an infrequent occurrence.  After the 1948 Arab-Israel War, the King of Jordan, Abdullah, was murdered by followers of the Muslim fanatic, the Mufti of Jerusalem.

The Egyptian prime minister, Nokrashi Pasha, was also struck down.  The forces behind the killings were elements of both Arab socialist movements and the Muslim Brotherhood.  Today, in the streets of Cairo, we have an unholy alliance of the current radical left with the same Muslim Brotherhood.

The Suez Canal is a major lifeline for the economies of Europe and the United States.  It has been the source of political disruption in the past, as it may well be in the near future. And the Muslim Brotherhood may soon control it. As always, the past is our guidepost to the future.

In 1952, Gamal Abdul Nasser seized control of the Egyptian state and forged an alliance with the Soviet Union, which provided enormous arms shipments to Egypt.

Feeling greatly empowered, Nasser broke both the 1949 Armistice Agreement with Israel and international law by blocking the Suez Canal to Israeli ships and other vessels bringing cargoes to and from the Jewish state.  At the same time, Nasser blockaded the narrow Straits of Tiran at the foot of the Sinai peninsula, thus preventing Israeli maritime trade with the Far East and Africa.

Nasser eventually nationalized the Suez Canal on July 27, 1956.  This illegal act threatened the oil supplies to Britain and France from the Middle East.  The economic stranglehold on Israel became intolerable, and Arab terrorism against the Jewish state led to many Israeli civilian deaths.  (Incidentally, Arab terrorism began long before the so-called Israeli "occupation," which Arab and pro-Arab propagandists now use as the excuse for present Arab aggression against Israel.)             

In October 1956, war by Britain, France, and Israel against Egypt broke out.  Israeli forces, in what became known as the One Hundred Hours War, defeated the Egyptians in Sinai and Gaza and broke the naval blockade.  Britain and France invaded the Canal Zone to end Nasser's blockade of the Suez Canal.

Under U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Britain and France were eventually forced out of Egypt.  This was, as future events showed, a dreadful blunder on the part of the Eisenhower administration.  It was the beginning of Britain's decline as a world power.  It also led to Nasser remaining in power.

The Egyptian dictator's political and pan-Arab ambitions again climaxed in 1967.  Nasser again blockaded the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping and reinstituted the naval blockade at the mouth of the Tiran Straits.

This in turn led, in 1967, to the hasty withdrawal of the U.N. buffer force that had been in place to prevent further Egyptian aggression against Israel.  U.N. Secretary General U. Thant folded under Arab pressure and arbitrarily withdrew the buffer force.  Egyptian armed forces then entered the Sinai, heading for the Israeli border.

The Arab and Muslim world called then, just as now, for Israel's extermination, and huge mobs in Arab capitals uttered lurid threats for Israel's defeat and the slaughter of her people.  The world prepared for Israel's destruction, but everyone was astonished when in June 1967, Israel -- forced to fight a defensive war of survival -- destroyed the combined Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian armies and air forces within six days.

The Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran were again open for the free passage of Israeli ships.  Nasser fell from power and was replaced by Anwar Sadat.  However, in 1973, the Syrian and Egyptian armies attacked Israel on the holiest day in the Jewish religious calendar, Yom Kippur, which gave its name to the war.

Israel was hard put to survive initially, but she gradually beat back the Arab threat.  Sadat eventually decided that war was not an option for the time being and chose to make peace with Israel.

Israel vacated the entire Sinai desert (95% of the territories Israel conquered) and gave up the oil-producing facilities it had developed at Abu Rodeis -- all in return for a signed peace agreement with Egypt.  Jordan eventually followed Egypt's decision, but both Arab nations maintained a frigid peace with the Jewish state.

Anwar Sadat was subsequently assassinated by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.  His successor was Hosni Mubarak, who, for the last thirty years, has kept control over the seething Egyptian masses and the volatile Arab street.

Now his thirty-year rule has been fatally undermined by U.S. President, Barack Hussein Obama, in a betrayal that is as astonishing as it is deplorable.

It is clear to any child that a new Egyptian regime will, if not immediately, be hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now calling for Egypt to prepare itself again for war with Israel and for the blockading of the Suez Canal to American, Western, and Israeli shipping.  Obama is no fool; he engineered this.

So, thanks to President Obama, we are back to square one with an Islamic Egyptian regime poised to send Egypt's massively armed army back into Sinai and towards the Israeli border with the aim of exterminating the Jewish state.  So much for "land for peace."

But what economic turmoil would a new Egyptian Islamic closure of the Canal mean to the West?

It is estimated that slightly more than two million barrels of crude oil and refined petroleum products flow both north and south through the Suez Canal every day.

In 2009, for example, almost 35,000 ships transited the Suez Canal, and 10 percent were petroleum tankers.  Oil shipments from the Persian Gulf travel through the Canal primarily to European ports, but also to the United States.

Additionally, the Sumed Oil pipeline provides an alternative to the Suez Canal, transporting as much as 3 million barrels of crude oil from Saudi Arabia and several Gulf states.  It amounts to up to seven percent of Europe's oil needs.  Since the violence erupted in Egypt, European oil prices have risen far more than they have in the United States.

If the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in 1928, takes over Egypt, it is more than likely that both the Canal and the pipeline would be shut again, causing oil tankers to travel around the Cape of Good Hope, adding six thousand miles to the journey to Europe alone.  Not what an economically strapped Europe wants.

At the same time, the Brotherhood, now governing over 80 million Egyptians and possessing a huge military, would join with a radicalized Yemen in blockading the Bab al Mandeb straits at the foot of the Red Sea.

Add to the noxious mix the Islamic Republic of Iran, and we may well see the closure of the Gulf of Oman, with additional disruptions of oil shipments to the West. The economic reality for America will be catastrophic.

Under Obama's watch, the true democratic revolution against the mullahs in Iran was snuffed out because the American president refused to support the demonstrators in the streets of Tehran.  In contrast, the same Obama ordered Hosni Mubarak to leave office and let the rioters in Cairo have "free" elections.

Following Condoleezza Rice's naïve call for "free" and democratic elections in Gaza, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas) used the democratic process to come to power and immediately trashed all semblance of democracy by instituting oppressive sharia law and raining thousands of missiles upon Israeli towns and villages.

The grotesque policies of Obama have caused Lebanon to fall under Islamic occupation, with the Iranian puppet, Hezb'allah, now controlling the Lebanese government.  Jordan's kinglet, Abdullah, sits on a powder keg whereby his throne is under increasing pressure from violent members of the same Muslim Brotherhood.

So there you have it.  Islam increasingly holds Europe, America, and what is left of the free world in its clutches...and the left cheers it on.

Let me close with the words of  Michael D. Evans, New York Times bestselling author of Jimmy Carter: The Liberal Left and World Chaos:  

It's no coincidence that Al Baradei showed up in Cairo only two days after the uprising began and was immediately named a negotiator by the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, he had been waiting in the wings for quite a while.

He's on the board of an organization headed by George Soros and Zbigniew Brzezinski called International Crisis Group. Brzezinski is the same man who supervised the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979.

Another board member of the ICC is one Javier Solana. Solana is one of the most powerful figures in the European Union. Because of Solana's Marxist sympathies, and his support for the regime of Cuba's Fidel Castro, Solana was on the USA's subversive list.

Former U.S. National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, who once smuggled incriminating documents out of the Clinton White House [editor's note: the documents were smuggled out of the National Archives] by hiding them in his clothing, is another Board Member, as is General Wesley Clark, once fired from his NATO command.

Mohamed El Baradei also sits on the ICC's Board and thus, seeing the hand of George Soros along with the other players who for so long have plotted against the West and Israel, the Islamists are joined together."

Update: Clarice Feldman writes:
 

The ICG site has now updated his membership as a board member.

Mohamed El Baradei

Mr. ElBaradei suspended his membership from the Board of Crisis Group concurrent with his January 2011 return to Egypt.

Director-General Emeritus, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); Nobel Peace Prize (2005)

What, one wonders, will history say of the foreign policies of Barack Hussein Obama?

STICK A FORK IN IT OBAMA – YOU’RE DONE!

article from: Angrywhitedude.com

Dear Leader telling Israel how it must be today with his intentional agenda-filled blather… displaying his true colors for all to see world wide-wide in his Mideast Speech today…you can be sure our enemies within and abroad are Happy Campers…especially Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and all terrorists everywhere.

Rush Limbaugh responds here mincing no words…if you can’t get the video read here for information.

Congressman Allen West speaks out here with disgust as well in response to Obama’s words today in regards to Israel:

“Today’s endorsement by President Barack Obama of the creation of a Hamas-led Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders, signals the most egregious foreign policy decision his administration has made to date, and could be the beginning of the end as we know it for the Jewish state,” said West, R-Fla., one of the leading Tea Party thinkers in the House Republican freshman class,” West said in a prepared statement.

“From the moment the modern day state of Israel declared statehood in 1948, to the end of the 1967 Six Day War, Jews were forbidden access to their holiest site, the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, controlled by Jordan’s Arab army.

“The pre-1967 borders endorsed by President Obama would deny millions of the world’s Jews access to their holiest site and force Israel to return the strategically important Golan Heights to Syria, a known state-sponsor of terrorism,” said West, a career military veteran of the war in Iraq.

The rest of West’s words can be read here.

West speaking about Israel in Dec. at Fort Lauderdale.

Netanyahu is flying to Washington today and addressing Congress…anyone wonder what he’s going to say, he has to be seething, I’ve read where members of the Knesset have already referred to Obama as the new Arafat.

Rage is going on with many in this country today with this speech from Obama, I’m one of them…add your thoughts and opinions as well, this isn’t going to end up pretty for Obama, hopefully Israel will do what it has to do to defend itself as it is now surrounded by all that want it’s demise, they sure can’t depend on this administration, they’ve helped ensure that Israel is now surrounded by all enemies far and wide.

Barack Obama Is Wrong: 18 Facts Which Prove That Illegal Immigration Is An Absolute Nightmare For The U.S. Economy

Barack Obama has declared that "immigration reform is an economic imperative", and is promising to do his best to get an immigration bill pushed through Congress this year.  But will "legalizing" all of the illegal immigration that has taken place over the last several decades improve the struggling U.S. economy or will it actually make our economic problems worse?  One of the favorite tricks of top politicians is to promise that the economy is going to improve if we just support what it is that they are currently pushing.  Hopefully the Americans people will not buy the nonsense that Obama is spewing. 


The truth is that Barack Obama is wrong about the economic impact of illegal immigration.  Illegal immigrants don't do jobs that Americans "don't want" to do.  A million Americans recently showed up to apply for a job at McDonald's.  That is how desperate Americans are for work these days.  Please don't try to tell me that there aren't millions of Americans out there that would not pick fruit for minimum wage.  The millions upon millions of illegal immigrants in this country are stealing jobs, they are depressing wages in a whole host of industries and they are a huge factor in the erosion of the middle class.  Millions of middle class American families can't afford to provide for their families anymore and are losing their homes, drowning in debt or going bankrupt.  Rather than what Barack Obama is proposing (which is to essentially "legalize" illegal immigration), we need an immigration policy that makes sense and that protects American jobs.

Before we go any further, it is important for me to make a few points.  It is not a bad thing that people want to come to this nation from another country.  A lot of people that want to come to the United States are really hard working and have really solid character.  This nation has a long tradition of immigrants arriving to build a better life here. At different times this country will need different levels of immigration, but we will always need new immigrants.  People on one side of a border are not more "valuable" than people on another side of a border.  There is a reason why our founding fathers believed that "all men are created equal".  In every nation on earth there are really wonderful people.  We should love all men, women and children no matter where they were born and no matter what they look like.  God created us all and He loves us all dearly.

The reason I went into all that is because of the way politics is played in America in 2011.  The moment that anyone suggests that there might be a problem with illegal immigration they are immediately branded with all kinds of horrible labels.  To put a horrible label on someone that is completely and totally untrue just to score political points is absolutely despicable.

The funny thing is that some of the organizations that denounce others the loudest should actually be examining themselves.  For example, one of the largest pro-illegal immigration organizations is called "La Raza", which literally means "The Race" (as if we all couldn't figure it out).  Perhaps it is time for them to come up with a new name.

Look, we all have to start learning to love each other.  If not, our society is going to continue to break down.

A majority of the American people (yes, that is what the polls show) are not against illegal immigration because they "hate" another group of people.  Rather, they just want all immigrants to go through the "front door" and they want the government to be sensitive to changing economic conditions.

The sad truth is that the U.S. government has absolutely refused to secure the U.S. border with Mexico for decades, and this has allowed millions upon millions of criminals, drug dealers and gang members to cross freely into the United States.  In addition, by refusing to secure the border we have allowed new diseases to spread unchecked into this country.

Meanwhile, the law abiding people that would like to get into this country legally are put through absolute hell.  I used to practice law and I have filled out immigration forms.  The process is a complete and total nightmare.

So we have been making it really easy for law breakers to sneak in the back door of our country and we have been making it really hard for law abiding people to get in the front door.

What in the world could be wrong about wanting to fix that?

Once many illegal immigrants arrive in the United States they either try to make a living legally (by directly competing with blue collar American workers  for jobs and driving their wages down) or illegally by selling drugs or being involved in other kinds of criminal activity.

Apparently Barack Obama believes that this kind of behavior should be rewarded with a "path to citizenship".

The vast majority of illegal immigrants pay absolutely no federal or state income taxes and they never intend to.  At the same time, they seem more than happy to take advantage of the free social services and benefits offered to them.  In fact, stories of how "good" life in America is just encourages more and more immigrants to come to the United States illegally.

We need an immigration policy that insists that everyone come in through the front door.

Is there anyone out there that cannot agree with that?

We also need to set immigration levels that our economy can handle.

Right now our economy is struggling.  Millions upon millions of Americans are out of work.  44 million Americans are on food stamps.  47 million Americans are living in poverty.  We just can't take in a whole lot of extra workers right now.

You would think that would just be common sense.

But instead, Barack Obama wants to grant amnesty to all of the illegal immigrants that are already here and put them on a path to citizenship.

Wow - do you think that might embolden millions more illegal immigrants to come flooding in?

Barack Obama is against a border fence.  He says we don't need it.

Meanwhile, thousands more illegal immigrants pour into this country every single day.

Barack Obama supports all of the "sanctuary cities" that have openly declared that they are not going to enforce our immigration laws.

So where do you think illegal immigrants are going to flock to?  The truth is that word about these "sanctuary cities" gets around really fast.  If you live in one of these cities, then you probably know all about it.

If Barack Obama gets his way, nobody will be breaking our immigration laws because essentially there will not be any more immigration laws.

Not that George W. Bush was any better.  He was an absolute disaster on immigration as well.

The truth is that our immigration policy has been slowly eroding the U.S. middle class for many decades.

But according to Barack Obama, we desperately need to implement his "immigration reform" plan for the good of the middle class....

"One way to strengthen the middle class in America is to reform the immigration system, so that there is no longer a massive underground economy that exploits a cheap source of labor while depressing wages for everybody else."

What a joke.  The reality is that illegal immigration hurts that U.S. middle class and it is severely damaging to the U.S. economy.  Because of illegal immigration, every single day wages are lost, taxes don't get collected, hospitals provide "free health care" for which they are never paid, huge criminal gangs of foreigners are roaming our streets and the cost of providing social services to illegal aliens is slowly bankrupting state and local governments.

The following are 18 facts which prove that illegal immigration is an absolute nightmare for the U.S. economy....

#1 Illegal immigrants take jobs away from American citizens. According to a review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data, legal and illegal immigrants gained over a million additional jobs between 2008 and 2010 even as millions of American citizens were losing their jobs during that same time period.

#2 The majority of our immigrants now sneak in through the "back door" that the federal government purposely leaves open.  Thanks to the negligence of the federal government, far more people move into the United States illegally than come in through the legal immigration process.  This has got to change.

#3 Illegal immigrants generally don't pay taxes.  The vast majority of illegal aliens would never even dream of paying income taxes, but Mexicans living in America send billions upon billions of dollars out of the United States and back to Mexico every single year.

#4 Although illegal aliens pay next to nothing in taxes, they have no problem receiving tens of billions of dollars worth of free education benefits, free health care benefits, free housing assistance and free food stamp benefits.  Many communities in the United States now openly advertise that they will help illegal aliens with these things.

#5 The cost of educating the children of illegal immigrants is staggering. It is estimated that U.S. taxpayers spend $12,000,000,000 a year on primary and secondary school education for the children of illegal immigrants.

#6 Thanks to illegal immigration, California's overstretched health care system is on the verge of collapse.  Dozens of California hospitals and emergency rooms have shut down over the last decade because they could not afford to stay open after being endlessly swamped by illegal immigrants who were simply not able to pay for the services that they were receiving.  As a result, the remainder of the health care system in the state of California is now beyond overloaded.  This had led to brutally long waits, diverted ambulances and even unnecessary patient deaths.  Sadly, the state of California now ranks dead last out of all 50 states in the number of emergency rooms per million people.

#7 It was estimated that there were approximately 7.7 million illegal aliens employed by U.S. employers during 2008.  How much better would our economy look if all of those jobs were being filled by American workers?

#8 The region along the U.S./Mexico border is now an open war zone. Just across the U.S. border, the city of Juarez, Mexico is considered to be one of the most dangerous cities on the entire planet because of the brutal drug war being waged there. In fact, Juarez has now become the murder capital of the western hemisphere.  Much of that violence has begun to spill over into areas of the southwestern United States.

For example, a while back NPR described one incident in the Juarez Valley that involved American citizens....

A couple of weeks ago, gunmen in the Juarez Valley killed the Mexican relative of a Fort Hancock high school student. When the student's family in Fort Hancock heard about it, they crossed the border at 10 a.m. to see the body, and took the student with them.

"By 10:30, they had stabbed the relatives that went with him, which included his grandparents, with an ice pick," says school superintendent Jose Franco. "My understanding is that the gentleman is like 90 years old, and they poked his eyes out with an ice pick. I believe those people are still in intensive care here in a hospital in the U.S."

#9 A substantial percentage of young illegal immigrants end up in gangs.  U.S. authorities say that there are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs operating inside the United States. According to federal statistics, these 1 million gang members are responsible for up to 80% of the violent crimes committed in the U.S. each year.  Latino gangs made up primarily of illegal aliens are responsible for much of this violence.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, some of the most notorious gangs in the country are made up almost entirely of illegal immigrants....

"Gang investigators in Virginia estimate that 90% of the members of MS-13, the most notorious immigrant gang, are illegal immigrants."

#10 The "18th Street Gang" is certainly giving MS-13 a run for their money.  It is believed that the 18th Street Gang has thousands of members in the city of Los Angeles alone. In fact, the gang has become so notorious that there are even rumors that some police officers in Los Angeles simply will not venture into the areas most heavily controlled by the 18th Street gang.


The following is what Wikipedia says about the 18th Street Gang....

A US Justice Department report from 2009 estimates that the 18th Street gang has a membership of some 30,000 to 50,000 with 80% of them being illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America and is active in 44 cities in 20 states. Its main source of income is street-level distribution of cocaine and marijuana and, to a lesser extent, heroin and methamphetamine. Gang members also commit assault, auto theft, carjacking, drive-by shootings, extortion, homicide, identification fraud, and robbery.

#11 The "drug war" in northern Mexico is one gigantic bloodbath. The Mexican government says that as many as 28,000 people have been slaughtered by the drug cartels since 2007.  A very significant percentage of those deaths have happened in areas right along the U.S. border, and yet our federal government still sees no reason to get serious about border security.

#12 It is an open secret that Mexican drug cartels are openly conducting military operations inside the United States.  The handful of border patrol agents that we have guarding the border are massively outgunned and outmanned.


One agent who patrols the border and who asked to remain anonymous told Fox News the following....

"To say that this area is out of control is an understatement."

A different federal agent put it this way in an email to Fox News....

"Every night we’re getting beaten like a pinata at a birthday party by drug, alien smugglers."

#13 Federal border officials say that Mexican drug cartels have not only set up shop on U.S. soil, but they are actually maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona.  If you go to Arizona today, there are actually signs that have been put up by the federal government warning American citizens not to venture into certain wilderness routes that are used by Mexican drug cartels to bring in drugs.

#14 The drug war being waged on both sides of the border is so violent that it is almost unimaginable.  For example, one very prominent Mexican assassin known as "the soupmaker" has confessed that he made approximately 300 bodies disappear by dissolving them in acid baths.  But right now there is essentially nothing that is preventing the next "soupmaker" from crossing the U.S. border and moving into your neighborhood.

#15 Arizona police are being openly warned by the Mexican drug cartels that if they try to interfere with the drug traffic in their area that they will be "taken out" by drug cartel snipers.


#16 While the U.S. military endlessly hunts for "members of al-Qaeda" in the caves of Afghanistan and on the streets of Iraqi cities, a very real threat has been building just south of the border.  Over the past 15 to 20 years, Hezbollah has set up operations all over Mexico, Central America and South America.  Hezbollah is reportedly making a lot of money in the drug trade and in trafficking illegal aliens.  Sadly, our government is largely ignoring this.


#17 Each year, it costs the states billions of dollars to incarcerate illegal immigrant criminals that should have never been allowed into the country in the first place. It is estimated that illegal aliens make up approximately 30 percent of the population in federal, state and local prisons and that the total cost of incarcerating them is more than $1.6 billion annually.


#18 The drug cartels and the gangs always seem to be a couple steps ahead of our agents along the border. Approximately 75 tunnels along the U.S. border with Mexico have been discovered by law enforcement authorities in the last four years alone.

How much do you think all of this crime, gang violence and drug cartel activity is costing our economy?

Why won't the federal government do what the Constitution requires and secure the border?

Oh, but Barack Obama says that he has a plan.

He says that he is going to save the day.

The following is how Barack Obama describes his plan...

"We are not going to ship back 12 million people, we're not going to do it as a practical matter. We would have to take all our law enforcement that we have available and we would have to use it and put people on buses, and rip families apart, and that's not who we are, that's not what America is about. So what I've proposed... is you say we're going to bring these folks out of the shadows. We're going to make them pay a fine, they are going to have to learn English, they are going to have to go to the back of the line...but they will have a pathway to citizenship over the course of 10 years."

So how many illegal immigrants do you think are going to step forward to pay a fine?


One percent?

How many of them do you think are going to show up for English classes?

Who is going to make them do it?

Obama?

Are we going to have law enforcement officials running around trying to collect fines from illegal immigrants and trying to get them to attend their English lessons?

According to Obama, the millions upon millions of illegal immigrants that are in this country are going to be glad to willingly do the following....

1) Admit they broke the law

2) Pay back taxes and a fine

3) Learn English

4) Be willing to undergo background checks before starting the legalization process

Those four points are taken directly from Obama's plan.

So what are illegal immigrants going to do when this plan is passed?

99 percent of them are going to laugh and they are just going to keep on doing what they have been doing.


Large numbers of illegal immigrants are already enjoying the "high life" in the dozens of "sanctuary cities" across the United States.

The following is how the Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC defines sanctuary cities....

Generally, sanctuary policies instruct city employees not to notify the federal government of the presence of illegal aliens living in their communities. The policies also end the distinction between legal resident aliens and illegal aliens--so illegal aliens often benefit from taxpayer funded government services and programs too.

Sounds like a good deal to me.

Can I sign up for that plan?

After all, who wouldn't want to earn all income tax-free and yet enjoy unlimited government services?

Today we are being told that we need to make life as comfortable as possible for the waves of illegal immigrants that are coming in.  In fact, Barack Obama says that all of us need to make sure that our kids are learning how to speak Spanish....

"I don't understand when people are going around worrying about, we need to have English only. They want to pass a law, we just, we want English only...Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English, I agree with this. But understand this, instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English, they'll learn English, you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish."

All of this is utter insanity.

The cold, hard reality of the matter is that we have tightly secured the border between South Korea and North Korea for over 50 years and we could secure our own borders if we really wanted to.

But instead, we continue to leave our border with Mexico completely wide open. Thousands of criminals, gang members and drug pushers continue to come in completely unchecked every single day.

Meanwhile, the rest of us have to subject ourselves to some of the most humiliating "security measures" imaginable before we are even allowed to get on to an airplane.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it?


Read this and more at: The Economic Collapse Blog