Geert Wilders Trial to Date

“The latest news from Geert Wilders’ new trial is that Mr. Wilders’ lawyer will offer a new round of objections asking for the case to be dismissed on the merits (or lack of them).

If the case proceeds to trial, then the judges will allow the defense to call at least some of the witnesses who were barred from testifying last fall.

Here’s a report from AP:

Judge: Anti-Islam lawmaker can seek dismissal

AMSTERDAM (AP) — An Amsterdam court said Monday it will reconsider dismissing the hate speech trial of one of the country’s most popular leaders, an anti-immigrant politician who compared Islam to fascism and called for a ban on the Quran.

Preliminary objections to Geert Wilders’ trial were heard by an another panel of judges last year, but that court stepped down when it became embroiled in allegations of potential bias against him.

The Wilders’ defense team had a right to present its preliminary objections again, and if they are granted “then the case is over and out,” Judge Marcel van Oosten said.

Wilders, the powerful head of the Freedom Party, faces charges of “inciting discrimination” for his remarks, which opponents say have led to more anti-Muslim discrimination. Wilders denies wrongdoing, saying he has a right to freedom of speech and that many Dutch voters support him.

Even before the first panel of judges was dismissed, prosecutors had conceded they didn’t think their evidence was strong enough for a conviction.

But if the case is to be heard, then Wilders’ defense lawyer Bram Moszkowicz said at a hearing last week that he wants a complete retrial with new witnesses.

Van Oosten ruled that if the case continues past preliminary objections, then Moszkowicz will be allowed to call some of the witnesses he requested. Those include Islamic scholars to testify about the evidence for Wilders’ claims that it is an inherently violent religion.

However, the judge rejected requests to hear several other witnesses, including Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born Islamic radical who killed filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 over perceived religious insults.

Van Oosten said Bouyeri doesn’t qualify as an expert.

“It’s generally known that among the adherents of Islam, as in other religions, one can find some people who aren’t shy to endorse or apply the use of violence,” the judge said. “That doesn’t need any further evidence.”

Moszkowicz’s key preliminary arguments the first time around were that the case had been motivated by Wilders’ political enemies, and that most of his alleged anti-Muslim remarks are protected speech because they were made as part of public political debate.

Van Oosten ordered a one-hour recess while Moszkowicz and Wilders confer on dates for the preliminary objections to be heard. Wilders said he wasn’t happy to be in court at all, given his public schedule which includes preparation for local elections March 2.

However, “assume that I will be here for every sitting,” he told the judge.

After booking big gains in national elections last year, his Freedom Party is propping up an all-conservative minority Cabinet in exchange for a new round of restrictions on immigration and measures such as a ban on Muslims wearing face-covering clothes in public.”

Comment:  This ‘latest’ news regarding the ongoing  trial of  Geert Wilders for ‘insulting’ Islam was published at Gates of Vienna.   Generally, the European Left is lining up with the Islam fundamentalists and jihadists against  speech from anyone criticizing Islam politics and demands.

Obama Submits His Budget: $3,700,000,000,000 and a tax increase

President Barack Obama will send Congress a $3.7 trillion budget that would reduce deficits by $1.1 trillion over a decade, setting up a battle with Republicans who have already deemed the plan insufficient to reduce federal debt.

The deficit for the current fiscal year is forecast to hit a record $1.6 trillion — 10.9 percent of gross domestic product — up from $1.4 trillion the administration estimated previously, according to documents released this morning by the administration. It would fall to $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2012, the fourth consecutive year of deficits exceeding $1 trillion. By 2015 it would decline to $607 billion, or 3.2 percent of GDP.

“We have a responsible budget that will cut in half the deficit by the end of the president’s first term,” White House budget director Jacob Lew said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program yesterday. “We are going to make tough choices.”

About two-thirds of the deficit reduction comes from spending cuts in areas ranging from heating subsidies for the poor to grants for airports and water-treatment plants. The rest is from revenue increases, including letting taxes rise for married couples with more than $250,000 in annual income, according to the documents.

Republican Resistance

The president’s full spending blueprint is set for release at 10:30 a.m. Washington time and it will hit immediate resistance in Congress. The Republican majority in the House is trying to eliminate more than 100 programs for a savings of $61 billion this year and has vowed to oppose tax increases. Congress still hasn’t enacted Obama’s fiscal 2011 spending plan, submitted last February, and the government is operating under a temporary spending authority that expires March 4.

“It looks to me that it is going to be very small on spending discipline and a lot of new spending — so-called investments,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said on “Fox News Sunday” yesterday. “The country’s biggest challenge, domestically speaking, no doubt about it, is a debt crisis” and the president’s plan “shows that he is abdicating leadership on that point.”

The budget falls short of the deficit reduction that Obama’s fiscal commission proposed in December and would have only a modest impact on the $12 trillion in total deficits the Congressional Budget Office projects the government will run up over the next 10 years. That’s primarily because Obama isn’t proposing changes for Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, the entitlement programs that represent about 40 percent of the budget and are primary drivers of long-term deficits.

Baby Boomers

The administration anticipates the deficit will be $627 billion in 2017, or 3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, and grow in subsequent years reflecting the impact of Baby Boomers qualifying for Social Security and Medicare.

By 2021, the deficit would grow to $774 billion, according to White House estimates. By comparison the fiscal commission called for $4 trillion in cuts in order to squeeze the deficit down to $279 billion in 2020. That included reducing benefits in the entitlement programs.

The spending blueprint does call for postponing for two years scheduled cuts in Medicare payments to doctors, which would be financed with $62 billion in savings elsewhere in the health-care program for the elderly.

Programs Cut

Scores of programs would be slashed under the administration’s budget to make room for increases elsewhere while still staying within Obama’s promise to freeze non-defense discretionary spending for the next five years. About half of all federal departments and agencies would see their budget reduced from levels in 2010, the last time agencies had an enacted budget, according to the administration documents.

The poor would receive less help paying their heating bills, and graduate students would pay more for their student loans. The budget also cuts $1 billion for airport grants and $950 million in water-treatment plans and other infrastructure.

Obama repeated a request to Congress to overhaul the corporate tax code to reduce rates, make it simpler and abolish “special-interest loopholes.” The budget doesn’t offer a specific plan. Lew has said such a package may be negotiated later with Congress, if there’s enough support.

Obama is calling for the elimination of a dozen tax breaks for oil, gas and coal companies to raise $46 billion over 10 years. These funds would be diverted to help pay for putting 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015, doubling the share of electricity from clean energy by 2035 and increasing the efficiency of energy use in buildings by 20 percent.

Infrastructure Spending

The administration wants to spend $53 billion over the next six years on high-speed rail, and proposes spending $15.7 billion to build a nationwide wireless network for emergency workers and to widen access to mobile high-speed Internet. Obama also included his plan for a National Infrastructure Bank, seeding it with $50 billion intended to lure private investment for specific projects.

“The challenge we have is live within our means but also invest in the future,” Lew said on the CNN program.

House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, dismissed Obama’s spending freeze, saying it would come only after Democrats approved sizable spending increases over the past two years. “Locking in that level of spending is way too much,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Signals to Markets

Boehner and Ryan argued that cutting the deficit and spending are more important to economic growth than the increases in education, research and infrastructure spending that Obama wants.

Getting the deficit under control “will help the economy now because that sends the signals to the markets, to the small- businesses men and women of America, that my taxes aren’t going to have to pay for all this borrowing,” Ryan said.

The U.S. GDP rose at a 3.2 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter of 2010, falling short of the 3.5 percent median forecast of 85 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

While the U.S. unemployment rate has remained at least 9 percent for the longest stretch since monthly data was first compiled in 1948, U.S. corporations by the end of last year’s third quarter saw profits rebound to a near record. Nonfinancial companies held $1.9 trillion in cash on their balance sheets, government data show.

To contact the reporters on this story: Roger Runningen in Washington at rrunningen@bloomberg.net; Brian Faler in Washington at bfaler@bloomberg.net;

(article above found at Bloomberg and written by Roger Runningen and Brian Faler)

The Cost of Federal Aid to States Has Soared

Cut Spending

The cost of federal aid has soared, and so has the number of different aid programs.  The number of federal aid programs for the states totaled 1,122 in 2010 — that is up 72 percent from 2000.  The huge federal deficit is one reason to cut state aid, but cutting aid makes sense for many reasons, says Chris Edwards, the director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute.

• Every dollar of federal aid sent to the states is taken from federal taxpayers who live in the 50 states.
• Sending all that money to Washington and back again creates a huge administrative burden in tracking the funding flows and dealing with all the regulations attached to each of 1,122 programs.
• Federal aid reduces state policy innovation because it comes with top-down rules that mandate conformity.
• Aid programs spur overspending by every level of government, since politicians can appease special interests with the spending while imposing part of the funding costs on other levels of government.

Source: Chris Edwards, “Cutting Spending to Revive Federalism,” National Review, February 10, 2011.

For text:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/259414/cutting-spending-revive-federalism-chris-edwards

For study:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb_63.pdf

For more on Federal Spending & Budget Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=25

The above information was made available by the National Center for Policy Analysis

Will a Tommy Robinson Cause America to End POLITICAL CORRECTNESS?

Why did British Prime Minister gather the courage to finally denounce multiculturalism in his recent Munich speech?  

Because of Tommy Robinson!!   

Why hasn’t the American media introduced this British hero to the American people?

Because of the American Leftwing rules of political correctness in which the Left plays the game of Neville Chamberlain called  Let’s Pretend Islamic fascism doesn’t exist.

Click on below and introduce yourselves to Tommy Robinson, the young man who has boiled the cauldron to warm up Prime Minister David Cameron’ courage  to announce the Truth to the World….Islamic fascism has destroyed multiculturalism and is destroying Britain and the West.

Please first read a portion of a “Letter from a concerned Muslim”  from Pajamas Media and here at Prager blog:

The writer, Salim Mansur emphasizes:  “The fault, as Cassius reminds Brutus, is in ourselves, a decaying civilization that will be saved (if it will be) not by the snobs in Washington and New York, London and Paris, Rome and Berlin, but by our version of the unsophisticated children of truckers who are now waking up from the drug-induced stupor of their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. I have hope, the eternal hope of a fearful heart, that the West will survive and yet again gather speed, but how sad are the losses and tears that have piled up — with more to come. They could have been avoided if we, as a people, were not so irresponsible or unfaithful to our history as to place at the head of our societies leaders so unworthy and clueless as the one who so unfittingly occupies the seat of Washington and Lincoln, at the head of this great republic.”         The prophecy is playing out already in the United Kingdom with hero Tommy Robinson.                  

The free world is not enslaved yet.  I am pleased to introduce to you readers,  Tommy Robinson:

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-02-06T23%3A07%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=14

Decaying America, if it is to be saved, “will be saved not by the snobs of Washington, but by the children of truckers”…(The Tommy Robinsons of the West)

A Letter from a Fearfully Concerned Muslim

To an American-Jewish friend.

Dear Roger,

Since 9/11 I have been mulling over the words of Georgi Arbatov pinned on the wall above my desk. I don’t believe in conspiracies, and I strive to keep my distance from the sophisticates of the Chomsky school of conspiracy-peddlers. But I do believe in what Barbara Tuchman described so well in The March of Folly. Folly, it seems to me, is the most severe and unforgiving sin of politicians, especially politicians responsible for the security of societies in advanced cultures of relative freedom, such as ours at this time in history. As Martin Walker, then the Moscow correspondent for the Guardian, reported in August 1992, Arbatov said to him: “We are going to do the worst thing we possibly can to America — we are going to take away their enemy.” Arbatov, you might recall, was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, responsible for keeping track of Soviet-American relations.

Arbatov — now looking back nearly twenty years later in deconstructing his words — seemed to possess a piercing understanding, as student of history, of the American scene, and how it could likely unfold over time in the post-Soviet and post-Communist era. His words to Walker were more insightful than any offered by just about all the left-leaning talking heads and commentators, in the U.S., Canada, and Europe put together. Arbatov understood, given his experience sitting in the privileged seat of the party in Moscow during the Brezhnev period, how the existence of Communist Russia checked the forces of the left in the West, keeping them from gaining influence and power. Now, as Arbatov reflected, since the Soviet Union as a military superpower had collapsed and the threat of Soviet Communism was discarded in the so-called dustbin of history, the spoiled children and beneficiaries of the West’s longest and strongest economic expansion and technological achievements, unparalleled in history, would set forth to do what the Soviet Union could not do — to advance the aim of Communism to wreck liberal capitalism from the inside.

Just ponder how a third-rate community organizer — from the most incestuously corrupt political region in the U.S.; with a record of participation in the most vulgar gathering of Jeremiah Wright posing as a reverend, spouting Fanonian rhetoric and bigotry; with mentors such as the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers; channelling the teachings of Saul Alinsky and Rashid Khalidi of the Chomsky school of self-loathing and sophistry — could advance through the ranks of American politics at an astounding speed, with little or no record of experience in government, to become the 44th president. In one of my columns from 2008 for the Sun Media in Canada, I had written in disbelief, as I watched the primaries unfold, of how American voters could be so beguiled by a charlatan of the Harold Hill type from The Music Man and vote for Obama. I was wrong in my overestimation of reason and experience among American voters as a check on the naivete of the university crowd and the duplicity of Lenin’s “useful idiots” in free societies. One of the lessons from 2008, for me, is this: how can I now scold Egyptians for wanting freedom and democracy behind the banners of the Muslim Brotherhood when their experience with electoral politics is negligible, and their history of 7,000 years offer little guidance for what freedom requires — respect for the other and not mistaking freedom for licentiousness?

There is not a very long arc connecting the joyful news of Soviet disintegration with the painfully distressing slide of American politics framed for posterity in the election of Obama. Arbatov did not nor, even if he had indulged in irresponsible speculation, could have predicted such an eventuality in American politics. But he had it right, it seems to me, for what he meant was the presence of the Soviet Union placed upon liberal democracies, led by the U.S., a discipline and a check upon the excesses and follies of democracy. But once this discipline was removed it would lead to a bacchanalia in the West, the near instant raising of the slogan “end of history” even as the dust from the tearing down of the Berlin Wall had not settled, and this lack of discipline combined with the “flower children” of the sixties coming of age and grasping for power, would bring about a situation, Arbatov imagined, that would do more damage than the old men of the Communist plutocracy could ever deliver without committing suicide of their own.
It is on account of the circumstances in which we find ourselves since 9/11 that I fear the West is precariously tilting at the edge of terminal decline. The situation today is dramatically different than the one in 1979. Then, Ronald Reagan, with Thatcher and Pope John Paul II on either side, reversed the slide of American politics and the West — from the debacle of defeat in Vietnam, brought by the fecklessness of the Democrats, to the hostage crisis in Tehran.

The Soviet Union did discipline the West and, ironically, the existing reality of the Soviet Empire gave Reagan the measure needed to re-group and deliver the coup de grace. But after 1992 we have been in the state of enjoying our unrestrained appetite for endless orgy, the zeal that comes to declining bodies from the artificiality of induced eroticism by pills which give to narcissists of the “sixties” generation the pathetic sense of immortality. These are the folks the people have elected to run their lives, protect their cultural legacy, hold back the enemies of freedom, maintain balance of power in strategic and vulnerable regions of the world and, as Burke reminded his own generation, maintain the promise of the present and inheritance of the past as trustees for the unborn generations of the future.

Ten years after 9/11, we, the broad public of liberal democracies, still have not fully grasped the meaning of that horror-filled morning, or understood without any apologetics or polemics the evil nature and ideology of the men who planned and executed the deed. We remain more or less preoccupied with re-litigating the debate over the decision by the Bush administration to take the war declared upon the West into the heartland of the enemy and expunge them; and instead of faulting Bush for not going far enough at home and abroad in defeating the Islamist jihadi assault on the West, for reasons that have everything to do with the nature of our corrupted polity, we have contorted ourselves to find the right mix of appeasement. From the ashes piled high at the end of the Second World War to the re-grouping that was essential to contain the Soviet Union, the passage of time was barely twenty-four months. Ten years after 9/11, the West has as leaders Obama and Cameron, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, and Merkel still clinging to the fantasy that Islamists are merely a Middle Eastern version of Milton and Locke, Tocqueville and Mill, leading the reform of the Islamic civilization that once gave us Alhambra and the Taj Mahal, Omar Khayyam and the tales from the Arabian Nights.

The fault, as Cassius reminds Brutus, is in ourselves, a decaying civilization that will be saved (if it will be) not by the snobs in Washington and New York, London and Paris, Rome and Berlin, but by our version of the unsophisticated children of truckers who are now waking up from the drug-induced stupor of their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. I have hope, the eternal hope of a fearful heart, that the West will survive and yet again gather speed, but how sad are the losses and tears that have piled up — with more to come. They could have been avoided if we, as a people, were not so irresponsible or unfaithful to our history as to place at the head of our societies leaders so unworthy and clueless as the one who so unfittingly occupies the seat of Washington and Lincoln, at the head of this great republic.

Cordially,

Salim

Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario.  The letter was published at Pajamas Media.

Comment:   Please go to articles written about Tommy Robinson of  Britain’s  English Defence League  to understand better the reason I confess I added his name to the basic Headline.    (or click here for starters)

speech in Luton      http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-02-06T23%3A07%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=14

 media interview     http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b95_1292186443

Why is Suhail Khan a Board Member of the American Conservative Union?

Suhail Khan Exposed… Again

We’ve reported several times in the past on Suhail Khan, the California Muslim who is a Board Member of the American Conservative Union (ACU).

The conservative movement in the United States has been in extreme denial for a number of years about Mr. Khan’s connections with the Muslim Brotherhood and its front groups in the United States. Mr. Khan has been in close association with various members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including those who raised money for Hamas. The convicted Al Qaeda terrorist conspirator Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi was Suhail Khan’s mentor. Mr. Khan’s late father Mahboob hosted Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri at his mosque as part of a fundraising tour of the United States.

Suhail Khan denies the significance of these facts, and insists that there is no problem with any of his associates. The ACU and the Republican Party have been all too eager to accept his denials at face value and allow Mr. Khan to retain his influential position within their ranks.

Mr. Khan even went so far as to deny that the Muslim Brotherhood exists in the United States. Pajamas Media has this report:

Suhail Khan is a member of the American Conservative Union’s board of directors. ACU hosts and operates the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual conference, and during this week’s CPAC conference in Washington, Khan has come under fire for alleged links to the Muslim Brotherhood. During a panel on conservative inclusion at CPAC on Saturday, Khan flatly declared that there is no Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.

See the PJM story for a video of Suhail Khan delivering this whopper.

And now there is a website dedicated to presenting complete information about Suhail Khan. Suhail Khan Exposed has collected all the pertinent material about this pillar of the conservative community. For example:

Suhail Khan has publicly adopted the “we love death more than you love life” formulation which has been employed by jihadists, terrorists and would-be terrorists around the world.

Suhail Khan made the following statement in his speech to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention in 1999:

This is our determination. This is the fierce determination we must resolve to bear in every facet of our lives. This is the mark of the Muslim. The earliest defenders of Islam would defend their more numerous and better equipped oppressors, because the early Muslims loved death, dying for the sake of almighty Allah more than the oppressors of Muslims loved life. This must be the case where we — when we are fighting life’s other battles….

Follow the link to find more videos of Mr. Khan stating that his father founded MSA and ISNA in the U.S.A., and also one that shows him accepting awards from al-Amoudi and Sami Al-Arian, the Florida Muslim who is languishing in prison for giving material support to Hamas.

For an excellent summary of the case against Suhail Khan, watch this speech, which was given by David Horowitz yesterday at CPAC. In it Mr. Horowitz spells out the problem of the Muslim Brotherhood’s penetration of the ACU. He emphasizes an important principle: all those who have ever been associated with the Muslim Brotherhood should publicly repudiate the organization. If they fail to do that, their loyalty to their country remains open to question.

David Horowitz at CPAC:

(The above article was published at Gates of Vienna.)

Women, Romance and “Berkeley Does Gitmo!”

Prelude comment:  Some women become hotly attracted to criminals in prison….even those with life sentences.  Some women will pick up male hitch hikers to be helpful.  Others run the Peace and Justice Commission at Berkeley, California City Council.   Most women prefer reading fiction than non-fiction, some so completely that cannot tell the difference in real life.

Here is an article titled, “Berkeley Does Guantanamo”, by Debra Saunders at the San Francisco Chronicle:

“On Feb. 15, on the recommendation of its Peace & Justice Commission, the Berkeley (Calif.) City Council is set to vote on a resolution to invite “one or two cleared” Guantanamo Bay detainees to resettle in Berkeley.

Peace & Justice Commissioner Rita Maran told me that the idea was to invite to Berkeley “the kind of people you’d like to have living next door to you or dating your cousin.”

While the resolution doesn’t name the one or two detainees, her panel presented material that cites two — Russian-born Ravil Mingazov and Algerian-born Djamel Ameziane — whom it claims have been “cleared.” The resolution also asserts that “cleared” detainees have been determined to “pose no threat to the United States.” Where they got that information, I do not know.

Given that the Director of National Intelligence reported in December that 25 percent of released Gitmo detainees have been confirmed or suspected of engaging in terrorism, the commission’s assertion would not be reassuring, if it were true.

As Thomas Joscelyn, senior fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, observed, “There’s an entire mythology” about detainees being exonerated, when they’ve simply won conditional releases or habeas corpus petitions.

President Obama’s own task force looked into Guantanamo’s 240 detainees in 2009. While it approved some transfers and conditional releases, Joscelyn noted, “They didn’t find any innocent goat herders.”

Here’s another warning sign: resume makeovers. (Remember Osama bin Laden’s “cook”? Ahmed Ghailani was convicted for his role in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa.) The Center for Constitutional Rights lists Ameziane’s interests as “reading mystery novels and French fashion magazines for men.” He’s a chef, the group explains, who worked in Vienna, but was forced to migrate to Montreal and then to — the culinary capital of? — Afghanistan.

Unclassified U.S. documents tie Ameziane to a Tunisian recruiter who bankrolled Ameziane’s trek to an Afghan guesthouse, where the majority of boarders were Taliban fighters. As Joscelyn wrote in the Daily Standard, to “gain admittance to a Taliban guesthouse … recruits need a certified Taliban or al Qaeda member to vouch for their commitment” to jihad.

Has Ameziane been cleared by U.S. authorities? Not that I can find.

Even though the Berkeley commission documents say he was “cleared,” Maran explained, “We were using those two people as examples only.”

The city, she added, would offer to resettle only detainees who were shown to have been cleared.

The commission refers to Russian military vet Mingazov as “a ballet dancer.” Facing anti-Muslim discrimination in the military, it writes, Mingazov traveled to a Muslim country where he could practice his faith. After his detention, the commission asserts, Mingazov “was so afraid to return to Russia that he fabricated stories about himself — that he had attended the al-Farouq training camp and that he had listened to Usama bin Laden” because he wanted to be sent to Gitmo.

Has he been cleared? No.

One federal judge — Henry H. Kennedy of the District Court for the District of Columbia — granted Mingazov’s habeas corpus appeal on the grounds that authorities did not meet “the standard for lawful detention.” This judge bought Mingazov’s claim that he lied about attending al-Qaida training camp and being trained in explosives — and maybe the judge was right. I would have a little more faith in his thinking if the judge had shown more concern that Mingazov spent a night in the Pakistan home of al-Qaida biggie Abu Zubaydah.

A little humility is in order here. Under President George W. Bush, 530 of Gitmo’s 779 detainees were released or transferred. Joscelyn noted, “It’s not like these guys were sent there and somebody locked the door and threw away the key.” Figure that after all these years, the obvious cases already have been handled.

I understand the left’s frustration with President Obama. As a candidate, Obama happily referred to Guantanamo Bay as “a recruiting tool for al-Qaida.” The left ate it up. Fresh in office, he signed an executive order to close Gitmo within a year.

Yet, as president, Obama came to see that it’s a lot easier to talk tough on detainees’ rights when you don’t have to worry about what they might do and whom they might hurt if released. It may have been fun to bash Bush on Gitmo, but now Obama’s in charge — and even a low-level loser can do a lot of damage.

The Berkeley City Council remains in the easy seat where talk is cheap. Or as UC Berkeley law professor and former Bush White House attorney John Yoo noted, “It’s the perfect combination of futility and stupidity. It is futile because what happens to Gitmo detainees is up to the federal government. It is stupid because only Berkeley would want to be a magnet for resettlement of Gitmo detainees.”

Pity the poor Peace & Justice crowd. Gone is the cheap thrill of pretending that all of America’s problems would go away, if only George W. Bush weren’t in the White House. So in a new act of fiction, Bezerkley plays make-believe by pretending that two Gitmo detainees should be dating your cousin.”

George Soros, American Marxist Billionaire …… “Nazi Obsessive”

“George Soros, Nazi Obsessive”  is the headline at Pajamas Media to the following article by Kyle Anne’Shiver:

“George Soros has a Nazi problem. I don’t say that lightly. In fact, I regard those who go around calling people Nazis without substantial verification of such an allegiance to be either without conscience or without strong mental moorings.

So, who was the most prominent individual of the past decade to use the Nazi smear against another public person? That would be George Soros himself.

To refresh the national memory, let’s recall George Soros’ public “Bush is like Hitler” remarks, beginning in 2003. Laura Blumenfeld interviewed George Soros for The Washington Post and summed up Soros’ antipathy for Bush thus:

Soros believes that a “supremacist ideology” guides this White House. He hears echoes in its rhetoric of his childhood in occupied Hungary. “When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ it reminds me of the Germans.” It conjures up memories, he said, of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort Mit (“The enemy is listening”). “My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me,” he said in a soft Hungarian accent.

Soros’ first volley into the Bush-Hitler meme was quickly followed by a MoveOn.org ad campaign against then-President George W. Bush using actual WWII Nazi film footage, interspersed with Bush comparisons. As all aware Americans know by now, George Soros is the money bag that keeps MoveOn in business. The ad that appeared on MoveOn’s site melded an actual recording of Hitler with photos of Bush. “A nation warped by lies. Lies fuel fear. Fear fuels aggression. Invasion. Occupation. What were war crimes in 1945 is foreign policy in 2003,” the ad said. The public outcry was fast and furious, forcing MoveOn to remove the ad from its site and make piteous declarations of ignorance regarding its ever getting there in the first place. But the “Bush is Hitler” meme, begun by Soros’ himself, by then had strong legs throughout the Soros-influenced left wing.

Soros put more than $25 million of his own money into defeating George W. Bush in 2004, calling that mission the “central focus of his life.” Coming away with nothing but an “I supported the other guy” t-shirt, Soros went all in with Barack Obama. Not content, however, merely to back an alternate party candidate, Soros reiterated his “Bush is like the Nazi leader” mantra at Davos in 2007:

“America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany,” he said. “We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.”

So, again I say that George Soros has a Nazi problem.

At the moment, however, Soros is battling his Nazi problem from a wholly different angle.

You see, while George W. Bush had not even yet been born in 1945, when real Nazis were perpetrating the real Holocaust, George Soros, as a teenager, was actually helping real Nazis confiscate the real property of real, about-to-be-“exterminated” Jews in his native Budapest, Hungary.

And no, this actual Nazi collaboration by a young George Soros was not an obscure tidbit dug up by opposition researchers. George Soros freely admitted his actions in the now-infamous Steve Kroft interview of 1998. Soros was shocked that the interview was so upsetting to so many and endeavored greatly to put the controversy to rest by giving more details and explanations to his biographer, Michael Kaufman.

When Soros spoke with Steve Kroft in 1998, the huge question was whether Soros had felt any guilt over his acquiescence to the Nazis. It was Soros’ denial of any survivor’s guilt and his nonchalant “If I hadn’t been there doing it, then someone else would have” excuse that caught the discerning public eye at the time. And details added in his biographer’s ear did nothing whatsoever to diminish Soros’ inhumane diffidence regarding the sufferings of his fellow Jews during the Holocaust.

In fact, in the biography — aptly titled Soros, the Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire — are scads of details that make Soros much more culpable than the Kroft interview. At age 72 — with 58 years for reflection — George Soros described his year of living under Nazi rule as “the most exciting time of my life.” That was the same year Soros’ own uncle, along with his wife and children, were “deported” to Auschwitz. But as Soros glibly recounted, his family had long ago abandoned Judaism — for a “cosmopolitan” pseudo-religion, for Esperanto, and for watching their fellow Jews, including family members, get carted off by the Nazis. It caused George no real grief. “We were somehow above them,” he told his biographer, his family having abandoned their “tribal” loyalties long ago.

No, neither the young George Soros nor his family were unaware of what was happening to their fellow Jews. Though the full extent of the Holocaust would not be known until war’s end, Soros confided to his biographer that “word of mass shootings, slave labor, and the Jewish rebellion in the Warsaw Ghetto became more and more frequent.” So when Nazi tanks rolled into Budapest in the spring of 1944, George and his family were not caught unaware.

When George’s family had traveled on holiday to Hitler-controlled Bavaria in 1939, they saw the “No Jews allowed” signs in restaurants and hotels for the first time. But George’s father answered his mother’s fears and protests with the nonchalant, “You’re a foreigner. It’s not for you.” Even so, George recalled, his mother was not reassured and continued to become more and more wary of the Nazis.

As well she should have been. Putting the plight of Hungary’s Jews in proper perspective requires a look at the numbers. Even though the war was all but lost in 1944, Hitler sent Adolf Eichmann himself to deal with Hungary’s “Jewish problem.” Eichmann arrived in Budapest a mere four days after the German tanks.  In the span of only two months, German efficiency coupled with Hungarian collaboration managed to “deport” 437,402 Jews, and all but 15,000 went to Auschwitz. A full ¾ of all Hungarian Jews perished in the Holocaust; one in every three killed at Auschwitz was a Hungarian Jew.

Yet, even knowing all these gruesome details after the war, George Soros still described that year of the Hungarian Holocaust, during which his own hands had delivered “deportation” notices and confiscated Jewish properties, as “the most exciting time of my life.” Soros also told his biographer that for his family, the worst suffering had been their inability to obtain their preferred Titleist tennis balls. Concealing his Jewishness from the Nazis with forged identity papers? Why, that was “exciting,” a year of facing “danger, yet “getting the better of it,” of “being in command of the situation,” “maneuvering successfully” and feeling “inviolate.” As George added, “what more could you ask for” at age fourteen?

Fourteen. Yes, it’s a young age. And George’s age at the time has been his best excuse for what most people would regard as a callous and inhumane lack of guilt over his own Nazi collaboration.

However, modern people ought not judge Soros’ 1944 actions by the level of maturity exhibited by American 14-year-olds today.

The truth is that George Soros was 14 years old in 1944, not 2004. And at the same time that George Soros was having the “most exciting time” taking care of nothing more substantial than his own survival at any cost, other 11, 12, 13 and 14 year olds were actually fighting as soldiers in the war.

Not only were child soldiers being used in actual combat, but the valiant uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto — the one George’s family had heard about in 1943 — saw a great many children fight heroically against the Nazis. Resistance fighters throughout the Nazi-occupied territories welcomed child warriors and many played vital parts. Hitler was employing his own youth squads in tank battalions, drafting children as young as twelve. These German child soldiers were matched and often bettered in real battle by Jews and gentiles of the same ages. So for George Soros to use his youth as some sort of blanket apologetic for what many regard as unapologetic collaboration with evil is quite beyond the pale.

Soros has often spoken of his father’s rejection of Judaism as the thing that framed his own conscience development, but even that is a half-truth at best. Young George Soros was both mature enough and independent enough at age 12 to seek his own answers regarding the faith of his grandfathers. George undertook Yeshiva schooling on his own, against the admonitions of his father, learning about his Jewish history and the tenets of Judaism, even having his own bar mitzvah at age 13.

He promptly abandoned Judaism, however, concluding that man “had created God in his own image.” Fine. That was his personal choice. But he cannot now claim that during the war, he knew not what he was doing. He knew very well; he had learned from the rabbis of Budapest — the same rabbis who were put to death by Eichmann with a lot of help from Hungarian Jews, like George Soros.

It ought not go without mention, too, that as soon as Soviet forces “liberated” Budapest, George and his father immediately set about capitalizing on their fellow Hungarians’ desperate straits. George’s “sense of exhilaration” accelerated in 1945. The year was for George “as exciting and interesting — in many ways even more interesting and adventurous — than the German occupation.” That was the year George Soros first began his financial ventures and currency trading in the flourishing black market.

George’s father would send him to a crowded café, the center of Budapest’s black market, to “change money and trade jewelry” — because a 15 year old “was less likely to arouse suspicion than an older man.” And this currency trading, for which Soros has now become quite infamous and which has made him quite rich, was conducted with the same insouciance with which Soros treats his own former Nazi collaboration.

Whenever one thinks of George Soros, one ought never forget that his own conscience is made from a wholly indifferent cloth. As Soros wrote himself in 1995, in his book, Soros on Soros, “I do not accept the rules imposed by others.” No, Soros plays by his own rules. And as he shamelessly recounts his cunning survival during WWII and his money-changing exploits at war’s end, the only lesson he took from it all was that what counts in life is one’s own survival and “trying to come out on top no matter what happens around you.”

When Jews are being “deported” to death camps, Soros says, I am “above them.” What’s that to him? If “I was not doing it, then someone else would be doing it.” When life savings of hard-working people depend upon the value of their currency, Soros trades with the same nonchalance. His only goal is to save himself, promote himself, and enrich himself.

Oh, and lest we forget, Soros’ main life objective, as he told his biographer, is to “become the conscience of the world.” If Soros’ own conscience is the guide, who would wish to live in that world?”

Comment:  Please do your country a favor……become learned about George Soros.   Recognize  his amoral approach to his Marxist reality.   His democratic opponents both Democrats and Republicans are steeped in a certain belief that truth telling is vital to the uplifting of mankind.   The Truth shall make you Free, I believe the adage goes.  

Mr. Soros is a living example of deceit whenever he speaks.  Even habitual liars are allowed a platform in a free society…..alas.   Soros projects purpose upon his enemies that which governs his own duplicitous  being.  Click below to view his attack on Fox News:

http://www.businessinsider.com/george-soros-oreilly-beck-fox-news-video-2011-2

Kyle-Anne Shiver is an independent journalist and a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at www.kyleanneshiver.com.

Poll Shows Obama and Republicans are Miles Apart on Key Issues

“Poll Shows Big Partisan Divides on Obama’s Handling of Key Issues”, by Bruce Drake at Politics Daily:

“A Gallup study released last week reported that President Obama was a far more polarizing force during his second year in office compared to any chief executive at that point in their terms since 1953 (the poll measured the gap between the approval ratings he got from Democrats and Republicans). Now, a new Gallup poll puts some flesh on the bones of that overall finding by showing the partisan gaps that exist on Obama’s handling of specific issues. Health care was the most polarizing issue, with a 61-point gap between Democrats who approved of Obama’s performance and Republicans who didn’t, according to the poll conducted Feb. 2-5. But the economy and foreign affairs were close behind in terms of the approval gap between Democrats and Republicans (59 percent and 56 percent, respectively).

The least polarizing areas were Obama’s handling of the situation in Egypt (a 32-point gap between Democrats and Republicans) and the situation in Afghanistan, (a 26-point gap).

Gallup noted that independents, a pivotal group, were “closer to Republicans than to Democrats on the two most polarizing issues — health care and the economy. Independents come even closer to GOP views with respect to the federal budget and taxes, making these potential problem issues for Obama when it comes to garnering independents’ support in the next election.”

The Gallup survey tested Obama’s approval/disapproval rating on eight issues.

Obama did not hit the 50 percent approval mark on any of them, although when it came to handling the situation in Egypt, 47 percent approved compared to 32 percent who did not, with 21 percent having no opinion.

Three other issues on which he did best were handling of foreign affairs (48 percent approval compared to 45 percent disapproval, with 7 percent offering no opinion), the situation in Afghanistan, (47 percent approval compared to 46 percent disapproval, with 7 percent having no opinion) and energy policy, (43 percent approval compared to 42 percent disapproval, with 14 percent having no opinion). However, it should be noted that the poll’s margin of error was 4 points.

One area in which Obama consistently gets high negatives from the public is his handling of the federal deficit. The poll found that the percentage of Americans who disapprove of Obama on that score has hit a new high of 68 percent.

A majority of the public has disapproved of Obama on the deficit issue since July 2009. Throughout 2010, that number stood at 64 percent.

This is an issue that has always been a big negative for Obama compared to other issues, including economic ones, where he mostly held his own — including on questions about whether Americans trusted him or congressional Republicans more on a range of matters. However, on the economy, 60 percent in the new Gallup survey disapproved of Obama’s performance while 37 percent approved, with 3 percent having no opinion.

Most Americans rank their concerns about the deficit as less of a priority than they do for jobs and the economy in general, but that concern has been inching upward.

The public disapproved of his handling of taxes by 54 percent to 42 percent, with 4 percent undecided, and his handling of health care policy by 56 percent to 40 percent, with 3 percent undecided.”

A New York Times article about Clarence Thomas…(My Favorite Supreme Court Justice)

…..but not a favorite among the Liberal establishment of the New York Times.   The title of the article below, by Adam Liftak, is “No Argument:  Thomas Keeps 5-year Silence:”

“A week from Tuesday, when the Supreme Court returns from its midwinter break and hears arguments in two criminal cases, it will have been five years since Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken during a court argument.

If he is true to form, Justice Thomas will spend the arguments as he always does: leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, rubbing his eyes, whispering to Justice Stephen G. Breyer, consulting papers and looking a little irritated and a little bored. He will ask no questions.

In the past 40 years, no other justice has gone an entire term, much less five, without speaking at least once during arguments, according to Timothy R. Johnson, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. Justice Thomas’s epic silence on the bench is just one part of his enigmatic and contradictory persona. He is guarded in public but gregarious in private. He avoids elite universities but speaks frequently to students at regional and religious schools. In those settings, he rarely dwells on legal topics but is happy to discuss a favorite movie, like “Saving Private Ryan.”

He talks freely about the burdens of the job.

“I tend to be morose sometimes,” he told the winners of a high school essay contest in 2009. “There are some cases that will drive you to your knees.”

Justice Thomas has given various and shifting reasons for declining to participate in oral arguments, the court’s most public ceremony.

He has said, for instance, that he is self-conscious about the way he speaks. In his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” he wrote that he had been teased about the dialect he grew up speaking in rural Georgia. He never asked questions in college or law school, he wrote, and he was intimidated by some fellow students.

Elsewhere, he has said that he is silent out of simple courtesy.

“If I invite you to argue your case, I should at least listen to you,” he told a bar association in Richmond, Va., in 2000.

Justice Thomas has also complained about the difficulty of getting a word in edgewise. The current court is a sort of verbal firing squad, with the justices peppering lawyers with questions almost as soon as they begin their presentations.

In the 20 years that ended in 2008, the justices asked an average of 133 questions per hourlong argument, up from about 100 in the 15 years before that.

“The post-Scalia court, from 1986 onward, has become a much more talkative bench,” Professor Johnson said. Justice Antonin Scalia alone accounted for almost a fifth of the questions in the last 20 years.

Justice Thomas has said he finds the atmosphere in the courtroom distressing. “We look like ‘Family Feud,’ ” he told the bar group.

Justice Thomas does occasionally speak from the bench, when it is his turn to announce a majority opinion. He reads from a prepared text, and his voice is a gruff rumble.

He does not take pains, as some of his colleagues do, to explain the case in conversational terms to the civilians in the courtroom. He relies instead on legal Latin and citations to subparts of statutes and regulations.

His attitude toward oral arguments contrasts sharply with that of his colleagues, who seem to find questioning the lawyers who appear before them a valuable way to sharpen the issues in the case, probe weaknesses, consider consequences, correct misunderstandings and start a conversation among the justices that will continue in their private conferences.

By the time the justices hear arguments, they have read briefs from the parties and their supporters, and most justices say it would be a waste of time to have advocates merely repeat what they have already said in writing.

“If oral argument provides nothing more than the summary of the brief in monologue, it is of very little value to the court,” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote in 1987.

Lawyers who appear before the court and scholars who study it are of mixed minds about Justice Thomas’s current silence. His views can be idiosyncratic, and some say lawyers deserve a chance to engage him before being surprised by an opinion setting out a novel and sweeping legal theory.

Others say they are just as happy not to waste valuable argument time on distinctive positions unlikely to command a majority in major cases.

Justice Thomas routinely issues sweeping concurrences and dissents addressing topics that had not come up at argument.

He asked no questions, for instance, in a 2007 case about high school students’ First Amendment rights. In a concurrence, he said he would have overturned the key precedent to rule that “the Constitution does not afford students a right to free speech in public schools.”

Neither side had advanced that position. The basis for and implications of his concurrence were not explored at the arguments, because, by asking no questions, Justice Thomas did not tip his hand.

No other justice joined Justice Thomas’s opinion. “If Justice Thomas holds a strong view of the law in a case, he should offer it,” David A. Karp, a veteran journalist and third-year law student, wrote in the Florida Law Review in 2009. “Litigants could then counter it, or try to do so. It is not enough that Justice Thomas merely attend oral argument if he does not participate in argument meaningfully.”

Justice Thomas’s last question from the bench, on Feb. 22, 2006, came in a death penalty case. He was not particularly loquacious before then, but he did speak a total of 11 times earlier in that term and the previous one.

His few questions were typically pithy and pointed. He pressed a defense lawyer, for instance, in a 2005 argument about possible race discrimination in jury selection.

“Is there anything in the record to alert us to the race of the prosecutor?” he asked. “Would it make any difference? There seemed to be some suggestion that there are stereotypes at play.”

Justice Thomas’s most famous comments also came in a case involving race.

In a 2002 argument over a Virginia law banning cross burning, his impassioned reflections changed the tone of the discussion and may well have altered the outcome of the case. He recalled “almost 100 years of lynching” in the South by the Ku Klux Klan and other groups.

“This was a reign of terror, and the cross was a symbol of that reign of terror,” he said. “It was intended to cause fear and to terrorize a population.”

The court ruled that states may make it a crime to burn a cross if the purpose is intimidation.”