Financial Cliff Cartoon

Where Is Our Media--Missing in Action

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 was a landmark. For the first time in the history of the republic, a President was elected who had never accomplished anything in his life. His history was remarkable in that he rose to all levels of success without doing anything. 

He ran the Illinois Senate by never having a job or meeting a payroll. He voted "present" on most votes in the Senate in order not to have a track record. Then he ran for the US Senate and was elected again. Within  a short period of time he announced his run for the Presidency having never proposed any meaningful legislation. He was elected based mostly on his skin color and "white guilt."

As President, debt went through the roof, unemployment was maintained at unheard of levels and his greatest accomplishment (ObamaCare) will add trillions of debt, yet he got re-elected.   In all of this bad news, the media never covered this in any detail. In fact they were mostly missing in action. They were more interested in the Kardashians, Jersey Shore, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol and the latest football scandal. Where is the fourth estate?

Without a free and investigating media, freedom is lost as the people cannot get the information to make informed decisions and vote responsibly.  The Obama re-election tells us that we are quickly descending into an abyss that we will not recover.  When the media fails in its vital job, irresponsible leadership will take advantage which is exactly what Obama and his minions have done.   Unless the press decides that it must present  honest, accurate, unbiased reporting in the very near future, the republic is lost.

Will the media awake from its slumber? We doubt it as they have become members of the Obama cheering section.

Conservative Tom

Is America Now Officially A Banana Republic?

November 22, 2012 by Wayne Allyn Root 

Hello, I’m Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty. Barack Obama’s election, the events leading up to it and the way the media have treated Obama certainly seem to indicate that America has officially become a Banana Republic. You know, one of those places where leaders control the media and the election outcomes, too.

For example, take the election results. Not a word in the mainstream media about massive voting irregularities. Not a word mentioned that Mitt Romney won every State requiring voter photo ID, or that Obama won in closely contested States that require no voter ID, like Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado and Pennsylvania. Was there voter fraud? We don’t know. You’d think an investigative reporter somewhere might be interested in this story? Amazingly, the media say nothing.

Or how about the impossible fact that in 59 voting precincts in Philadelphia, Romney got zero votes? Statistically impossible. Yet it happened in 59 precincts in one city and nine precincts in Cleveland. And in urban voting precincts in Florida, Illinois and Colorado (States wide open for fraud), Romney got zero votes. In many other inner-city precincts it was 100-1, 450-1, 315-1. This just isn’t possible. Yet the media say nothing.

Or what about the historic correlation between voter enthusiasm and winning? In 2008, Obama had all the enthusiasm. Not surprisingly, he won. This time around, polls proved that conservatives had a huge edge in enthusiasm and intensity. The tables had reversed. Romney rallies attracted 20,000 and 30,000 enthusiastic fans, while Obama rallies attracted embarrassingly low numbers.

On a personal level, I had reports from hundreds of friends and fans who excitedly reported three- to four-hour lines to vote in suburban conservative and Christian areas across this country. Yet we are told Romney had about 2 million fewer votes than John McCain received in 2008. Impossible. In multiple States there were reports of electronic voting changing Romney votes to Obama votes. Something certainly appears off. Someone should at least be investigating. Yet still the media say nothing.

Polls showed military members supported Romney by landslide numbers. So Democrats actively suppressed military voting, doing everything in their power to make it extremely difficult for soldiers to cast a vote. The media say nothing.

By the way, none of this may have affected the election results. Romney may have had literally no support from blacks, Latinos, women or college students in many areas of the country. Maybe there was no ballot box stuffing in urban precincts. Maybe Obama’s supporters didn’t vote multiple times with no voter ID required. Maybe the military really didn’t care to vote. But shouldn’t the media be mentioning the controversy? Isn’t it their job to investigate and prove it wrong? Yet the media say nothing.

Hurricane Sandy decimates New York and New Jersey. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response is pathetic, embarrassing, close to criminal. No food or water for days. No power for weeks. FEMA did not pre-position the most basic of supplies — like bottled water. They were completely unprepared, incompetent, invisible. This was Obama’s Hurricane Katrina. Yet while Bush was vilified, blamed and called “racist,” the media praised Obama, never blamed him; and 15 percent of voters call his response significant in their decision to vote for him on Election Day.

Then there’s Benghazi, Libya and the U.S. Consulate disaster. President Obama was warned that our Libyan consulate faced an attack on 9/11. He did nothing. The consulate asked for beefed up security. He did nothing. Four brave Americans died — including our ambassador. Obama’s Administration lackeys watched in real time (with drones filming it all from above) from the comfort of the White House Situation Room. They did nothing. SEAL teams begged for permission to rescue our boys. Obama ordered them to stand down. He not only left them behind, he watched them being murdered. Yet the media say nothing. 

Then he covered it all up. CIA Chief General Petraeus reported to Obama, declaring it a terrorist attack. But that reference to terrorism was removed. Obama, Hillary Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice spent two weeks falsely blaming a YouTube video. Obama referred to the YouTube video four times in a speech at the United Nations two weeks after the attack. This was clearly a cover-up to save Obama’s re-election. This is Watergate with four dead bodies. The media say nothing.

Days before the election, out of nowhere, the Obama Labor Department extrapolated that 873,000 new part-time jobs were created in one month. This “miracle” allowed unemployment to miraculously dip below 8 percent after 43 consecutive months. Perfect timing for a politician trained in Chicago fraud politics. The media say nothing.

But now that the election is over, the Department of Labor reports new jobless claims rose by a staggering 78,000 for just the first week after election, while The Wall Street Journal reports capital spending by America’s corporations has literally collapsed. I guess the perfectly timed one-month recovery is officially over. Any investigative reporter who reported on this fraud would win journalism awards. Yet no one in the media seems to want the job.

The Bureau of Labor & Statistics reports “real unemployment” (called U6) is 14.6 percent. Have you ever heard the media using the 14.6 percent real unemployment number and tying it to Obama? Or did you hear that food stamp growth was faster in Obama’s first term than job growth? During the campaign, the media mysteriously said nothing about those damning statistics.

Obama promised to cut the deficit in half; instead, he doubled it, increased the debt by a mind-numbing $5 trillion and presided over the first credit downgrade in U.S. history. Obama’s 43 consecutive months of unemployment above 8 percent was more than all the months over 8 percent from Presidents Harry Truman to George W. Bush combined. Did you ever hear the media mention that fact? During the campaign, the media said nothing. 

How about Obama’s secret tape about his love for “income redistribution” (the central tenant of socialism)? The media repeatedly pounded Romney’s 47 percent tape into every voter’s subconscious, but mysteriously ignored Obama’s tape for the entire campaign.

During the Presidential debates, Obama lied repeatedly. The biggest whopper was his claim he supported oil drilling. Facts proved drilling permits were down 60 percent under Obama. Two days after the election, Obama issued a plan to close 1.6 million acres of Federal land in the West originally slated for oil shale development. Still the media say nothing.

The media never mention Obama’s schedule. We are in a Great Depression II. Our economy is in the worst crisis since 1929. And Obama’s entire year 2012 was filled with golf, basketball, fundraising, campaign rallies and “morning zoo” media appearances. How is there any time left to deal with the economy? Well, there’s not. Obama’s Jobs Task Force has not found the time to meet in almost a year. The media say nothing.

Nothing to see folks. There is no story. Just move along.

The story I’ve just told you could be expected in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea or Zimbabwe. I would never have guessed in America that the mainstream media would take their marching orders directly from the President.

It sure appears that we are now officially living in a Banana Republic. I’m Wayne Allyn Root forPersonal Liberty. See you right back here next week. Same time, same place. God Bless.

Hamas Does Not Want Peace

In the following post  by Alan Dershowitz, he explains why Hamas has no interest in a cease-fire.  We think that he nails it.

Conservative Musings

Dershowitz: Why a Cease-Fire Will Not Last

Wednesday, 21 Nov 2012 01:08 PM

By Alan Dershowitz

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Alan M. Dershowitz's Perspective: A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas may end the immediate exchange of rockets, but it is not likely to be of long duration. That is because every time Hamas fires rockets into Israel, it creates a win-win-win situation for itself.

The first win is that it terrorizes Israeli civilians, killing some, wounding others and creating panic among millions of Israelis who fear being hit. This show of strength enhances Hamas' standing within much of the Muslim world.

Palestinians inspect damage moments after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Wednesday. (AP Photo)

The second win is that by firing these rockets from densely populated areas in Gaza City, rather than from the many open fields outside of the populated areas in the Gaza Strip, Hamas provokes Israel into targeting the rockets and the terrorists who fire them. As soon as the terrorists fire the rockets, they run to special underground bunkers that are open only to the terrorists, thereby leaving civilians above ground and vulnerable to Israeli rockets.

This is a deliberate tactic employed by Hamas over many years and designed to bring about international condemnation of Israel for inadvertently killing Palestinian civilians. Israel’s only other options would be to allow Hamas rockets to be fired unanswered into Israel, or to conduct a ground war which would result in even greater international condemnation.

The third win for Hamas is that every time it fires rockets into Israel and provokes Israel into returning fire, it weakens the Palestinian Authority — its arch enemy in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority has renounced violence, but it has no choice other than to support Hamas’ violence against Israel, which is popular among many Palestinians. The end result is a strengthened Hamas, which is seen as doing something and a weakened Palestinian Authority, which is seen as doing nothing.

The proof that this win-win-win strategy is working for Hamas can be seen on television, in the newspapers, at the United Nations and among the chattering classes. Virtually everyone acknowledges that Israel has the right to defend itself, but that Israeli military actions — particularly if they are tough enough to achieve a modicum of success — do more harm than good to Israel’s standing around the world. That is precisely the reaction that Hamas has been counting on — and with repeated success.

They attack Israel, thus committing the double war crime of using Palestinian civilians as human shields and targeting Israeli civilians. Yet it is Israel that is criticized for engaging in entirely lawful activities, such as conducting a military blockade of Gaza designed to prevent new rockets and rocket material from reaching Hamas terrorists, and targeting Hamas terrorist leaders and Hamas fighters who fire rockets at Israeli civilians.

So long as this dynamic continues, it will be in Hamas’ interest to do precisely what it did in 2008 and again now: start a new battle by firing rockets at Israeli civilians from behind its Palestinian human shields, provoke Israel into responding, and calling on the international community to condemn Israel for killing its babies.

This “dead-baby strategy” has been acknowledged by Hamas leaders, who refer to the victims as “martyrs” and proclaim that Palestinian children and women “have formed human shields . . . in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine.” This strategy always works with an international media that cannot resist showing pictures of the dead babies who are brought to them by Hamas leaders (even when, as in one case, the baby was killed by a misfiring Hamas rocket.)

The real victims of this gruesome strategy are the Palestinian civilians who are cynically used as human shields. Hamas leaders refer to them as martyrs, because they are being used to implement this win-win-win strategy. There is growing evidence that at least some Gaza civilians are fed up with the Hamas strategy. They complain that too few Hamas fighters are being killed and too many Palestinian civilians are dying. They complain that Hamas has deliberately built underground bunkers only to protect its fighters but not its civilians.

Unfortunately, the Gaza Strip is not a democracy. It is tyranny ruled by Hamas killers, who have no hesitation in murdering Palestinians who express disagreement with their strategy. It is unlikely, therefore, that the views of the dissatisfied Palestinians in Gaza will have any impact on the Hamas strategy.

What we can expect, therefore, is a relatively short truce — Hamas calls it a “hudna” — that will last until Hamas decides it is time to invoke its strategy once again. Israel will respond, as it has in the past. In Israel this is called, “mowing the lawn” — cutting down Hamas periodically with no real expectation that the deadly grass will not continue to grow.

The only solution to this recurring problem is for the international community and the media, once and for all, to expose the Hamas strategy, to condemn it, and to deny Hamas the diplomatic and media victory it seeks to achieve by its double war crimes.

For Map of Gaza Strip, Israel, Palestinian Region Click Here. 

Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is a graduate of Brooklyn College and Yale Law School. Read more reports from Alan M. Dershowitz — Click Here Now.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Israel-Gaza-cease-fire-Hamas/2012/11/21/id/465051?s=al&promo_code=10DAF-1#ixzz2D3Q9tcWf

Housewives and Benghazi and the Decline of the US

We just could not pass on the headline of the following post.  Americans, at least some, are so enamored by the "real housewives" series that this is a natural extension.  The really sad thing is that it involves national security (regardless of what the news media tells you) when someone can have secret documents on their home computer.  This is dangerous stuff and it should not be treated like a made for TV drama.

Additionally, it takes our eyes of the real issues of the day. We do not hear much about Benghazi, the lies of Susan Rice or who might be the next CIA chief or Secretary of State.  We are too busy wondering if the story about "under the desk" sex is accurate.

On top of this mess you add the termination of generals about which we wrote yesterday and you have a picture of a country in very quick decline.  The US as we have known it, is about to become extinct. The only thing left is to determine the date and how it all comes crashing down.

We are changing our poll on this blog today, it addresses our "end date" concerns.  Please go there and tell us what you think.

Conservative Tom

The Real Housewives of Benghazi

November 14, 2012 - 12:08 pm - by Michael Walsh

 

Just a week after the re-election of Barack Hussein Obama II as, unaccountably, president of the United States, the full extent of the looming disaster is beginning to dawn on the American people. Forget the looming fiscal cliff, the Senate majority leader’s irresponsible decision to exclude the soon-to-be-bankrupt Social Security system from any budget agreement, the retention of the corrupt Eric Holder as attorney general, or the bruited nominations of the inept Susan Rice as secretary of State, the arrogant John Kerry as secretary of Defense, and the incompetent John Brennan as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Those things, if they come to pass, will cause us plenty of heartburn down the road to Alinskyite serfdom.

For now, though, simply consider the state of the U.S. military, whose moral collapse was signaled by the surprise resignation of CIA director David Petraeus last week as details of his affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, slowly became public — a scandal that quickly ensnared Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and another woman, Jill Kelley. By now, you’ve read most of the salacious details of this French bedroom farce, which would be funny if it weren’t so serious — with one door at Centcom after another flying open to reveal lissome bare-limbed married ladies and half-uniformed generals scrambling to get their pants on as the press explodes in orgiastic satisfaction. With its mission accomplished — getting Hussein re-elected and condemning America to four more years of potentially fatal economic disaster, foreign policy malevolence, and domestic fascism in the form of Obamacare, bureaucratic regulation, and executive orders, the media is only too happy to start poking around in the bedrooms of the soon-to-be-formerly famous and powerful.

It’s richly ironic that after celebrating a Democratic Party campaign that was almost entirely based on explicit appeals to female sexuality, including free birth control and the abortion of the inconvenient as a constitutional right, the media now finds itself back in the drag of Tom Wolfe’s Victorian Gentleman, prudishly cluck-clucking over the remarkable fact that when institutional barriers between men and women break down — barriers erected not out of sexist animus or irrational prejudice, but in recognition of the biological reality of boy meets girl — all sorts of things start to happen. Including rampant sexual activity from the top down; as David French observes here:

In the military — as elsewhere — sexual scandal is simply called “drama,” and “drama” (with its related fights, substance abuse, and sometimes even suicide attempts) can dominate military justice in deployed environments. During my deployment, I was with an all-male combat arms unit on a small, isolated base and thus missed most of the controversy that sometimes consumed entire units. But go to Balad — or one of the other larger bases — and it was everywhere. The larger DFACs (dining facilities) were the deployed equivalent of singles bars, and the omnipresent port-o-pot was a favorite location for clandestine couplings.

Whoever decided that “women’s liberation” required the sexual integration of the armed forces did his or her country a signal disservice.

In the Petraeus case, leaving aside for the moment the effects these liaisons dangereuses will have on the four families (or more) involved, let’s look at the fallout: potential major security breaches at the highest levels of the Intelligence Community, the compromising of the Afghanistan war effort — an effort doomed to failure in any case by Obama’s insistence of giving the Taliban a firm exit date — the ending of prominent careers, the mystery of the FBI investigation and what really triggered it, and the laugh-in-your-face attitude of the Obama administration, which has been holding Petraeus’ infidelity over his head since his appointment at CIA and dropped it on him the same week the election was over. And now the president can drop one shoe after another, cleaning house of useful idiots like Petraeus and Hillary Clinton and installing his ideological apparatchiks in high places in the face of toothless opposition from a defeated and dispirited establishment GOP.

The silver lining, of course, is that l’affair Petraeus might lead the MSM to finally notice a scandal that, by rights, could bring down Obama, the same way that Watergate (summer of 1972) eventually ended the presidency of Richard Milhous Nixon in 1974. There are so many outrageous elements to this story — the deliberate abandonment of an American ambassador on a murky mission in a dark and savage land, the order to stand down to the military, the Agency’s callous attitude toward its own people, the loss of top-secret intelligence, and the revelation that the Benghazi “compound” was in fact a very politically inconvenient CIA station and possible prison — that it’s easy to lose track of them all (which is something you can bet the Obamanauts are counting on, in the same way the public was eventually confused and exhausted by all the Clinton scandals).

But then sex reared its seductive head, some members of Congress finally woke up from their long, media-induced slumber and now, with hearings in both houses of Congress looming, we finally might begin to get some answers. If a few marriages and careers are the price we have to pay to see that ambassador Stevens and his murdered colleagues finally get some semblance of justice, so be it.

Israel At The Crossroads?

Will Israel do what they need to do or will they do what they have done in the past?  That is the question and one that the leaders of the country need to address.  In the following post, Daniel Greenfield addresses the Damocles sword facing the only democracy in the Middle East.

Tell us what you think.
Conservative Tom

Op-Ed: WESTERN FRONT: A Moment of Truth in Israel

Daniel Greenfield - Arutz-7,  November 18th, 2012

Seven years ago the Israeli government decided to forcibly evict the 8000 Jewish residents of Gaza and withdraw all bases and forces from the area. The experts, some with the government and some with the media, assured everyone that it would be for the best and that withdrawal would actually improve the security situation in the country.

It was put about that resources and lives were being wasted protecting Israelis living in Gaza, while those Israelis insisted that their presence in Gaza was protecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The experts laughed at them. Now the experts are keeping an ear open for air raid sirens because as it turned out, those farmers and teachers, those men and women growing lettuce in greenhouses and building homes on hilltops, from which rockets are being launched, were the ones protecting Tel Aviv.

“They are now being asked to relinquish these accomplishments for the greater good,” the government press release said of their houses and farms, of their synagogues and greenhouses. And the greater good was served. The greenhouses were turned into Hamas training camps and the synagogues were burnt to the ground. Rockets fly into the air from the ruins of broken houses.

No longer will your sons have to die in Gaza, the experts said. A month later rockets were falling on Sderot. A year later Gilad Shalit had been kidnapped and Israeli soldiers were back again, dying in a Gaza that was now run by Hamas.

Among the bundle of promises from the Sharon government, was that the Gaza withdrawal was part of an oral agreement with the United States limiting further withdrawals and concessions. That agreement lasted for another few years until Obama took office and no one in his administration could ever remember such an agreement or accept its validity.

“The moment of truth has arrived,” Netanyahu said, on resigning from the Sharon government. “At the moment of truth, a man – especially a leader – must ask himself: 'What are you doing, what do you stand for, what are you fighting for?'”

These moments of truth come fast and furious in Israel, but hardly anyone waits around for an answer. Not even Netanyahu, who knows better.

Hamas' objectives have always been straightforward. Its commanders and suicide bombers, its militia members, bomb experts, smugglers, launchers and embezzlers know what they are fighting for.

“Our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave,” the Hamas charter says. “Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims.” It has the simplicity that you would expect from the Muslim Brotherhood, a fascist organization that drew equal inspiration from the Koran and Nazism.

What however is Israel fighting for? Since Oslo, the slogan of Israeli moderate conservatives has been “Peace with Security” even though it was quite clear that you could pursue peace and have neither peace nor security, or you could pursue security and have peace. Their slogan was muddled and their policies even more so.

Israel may have superior firepower, but like most Western countries, its policymakers are too muddled to be able to apply that firepower in a useful way. The limited scale warfare that has been adopted by America, including drone assassinations and extensive security measures, came out of Israel's futile efforts to find a more humanitarian style of warfare that would limit civilian and military casualties. But all that these measures really did was make life with terror more manageable.

Withdrawals and a variety of defensive measures such as Iron Dome made it seem like Israel could maintain the status quo. Peace with Security meant no peace and no security, but enough of the illusion of both that it would seem as if the slogan had been fulfilled. Suicide bombings dropped and the terrorists were forced to resort to rocket attacks and drive-by shootings with much lower casualty rates. Rates so low that those who didn't live in Sderot or Samaria could ignore them.

Instead of ending the threat, Israeli conservatives had found a way to live with the pain of terrorism while turning their focus to economic reforms. The left, with its emphasis on finding a permanent solution through appeasement and withdrawals, was discredited and collapsed. But the problem had not gone away.

While Israel slept, the makeup of the region changed. Hamas had formerly been strongly backed by Syria and Iran, with some support from more distant Islamist Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Egypt and Jordan were both wary of Hamas because their governments were concerned about being overthrown by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Arab Spring put Islamists into power in Egypt. Suddenly the Muslim Brotherhood was running things on both sides of the Rafah Crossing. Hamas switched its allegiance from the shaky Shiite axis of Iran, Syria and Iraq over to the rising Sunni Islamist axis of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Egypt. The Islamist terrorist group was no longer an isolated arm of Iranian foreign policy, it could count on the backing of Turkey, Qatar and Egypt.

Not long after Qatar's leader paid a visit to Hamas, this latest war began. Like so many conflicts with terrorist groups, it isn't about any specific domestic objective. The objectives are regional and now international. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood regime is looking shaky and the Gaza lifeline has come at a perfect time, allowing Morsi to turn the attention of Egyptians away from the shaky economy and some dubious proposals, including early store closings, over to familiar territory denouncing Israel.

Under Iran or Egypt, Hamas is not fighting for Palestinian nationalism, which was already a fiction manufactured by Soviet propagandists looking up to prop up a Greater Syria, but to support the aims of Iranian and Egyptian domestic policy. And suddenly those aims were uncomfortably close.

Terrorist militias serve an ideology, but function as a business. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Fatah or any other of the many groups blanketing the region, need money and weapons to be viable. They need state sponsors and the states that sponsor them want something in return. Terrorist groups find sponsors the way that Renaissance artists found patrons, they show off their skills and wait for someone to come calling with money and guns. And then they perform for their patrons.

Israel's terrorist problem is unsolvable through any form of peace negotiations because there will always be sponsors. A terrorist group may sign a peace agreement, but then it quickly gets on the phone to its sponsors to assure them that it will go on committing acts of terror. Its militias are spun off into “separatist” or “splinter” groups that go on doing what they did before. And the group then asks its new friend American and Israeli friends for guns and money to fight these extremists. That way the terrorist groups get twice the money for terrorism and a farce of counter-terrorism.

Even if a terrorist leader is sincere, his movement is nothing but an umbrella group for terrorist militias. If the umbrella group stops funneling money from state sponsors to local militias, the militias go into business for themselves. And there is such a demand by sponsors for more and more “extreme” militias, that even the existing terrorist groups find themselves having to compete with newer and more violently Islamist militias.

Peace is useless and hopeless under these conditions. Fatah claimed that it could not control Hamas. Hamas claims it cannot control the men shooting rockets out of Gaza. The people shooting rockets out of Gaza will claim that they cannot control their fingers on the trigger. It's plausible deniability all the way down when it's convenient, but the real control is in the hands of regional regimes who feed coins into the slot and get out terrorism.

So what then is Israel fighting for? Peace with security. Which means slapping down Hamas hard enough that it will have to wait another 3-4 years before trying the same thing again, this time with bigger and better rockets. That was the policy six years ago and it's the policy today.

Israel will bomb Hamas targets, kill some of its senior leaders and destroy some of its weapons stockpiles. Its soldiers will enter Gaza, arrest some more senior leaders, walk into traps that will kill some of its best and brightest, and then withdraw again while Hamas celebrates its victory in the Battle of XX or YY where five or six Israeli soldiers were killed, along with ten or fifteen Hamas terrorists. And then the Battle of XX will become the Massacre of XX and lead to a documentary that will be doing an extended tour of American and Canadian campuses during the next Israeli Apartheid Week.

This is the status quo and it cannot be maintained indefinitely. The air raid sirens going off in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem warn that the war is heading into unsustainable territory. As Iran goes nuclear, Hizbullah is trying to become another Iran and Hamas is trying to become another Hizbullah. It is not a nuisance that can be ignored. Israel has no answer to the growing threat except to try and contain it through the same old methods that have now put Jerusalem and Tel Aviv into the line of fire.

Since 1992, Israel has been retreating and those retreats have replaced secure borders with borders of terror. Rather than reversing those withdrawals, the right has been satisfied with trying to stabilize them. But that has only created safe spaces for terror while setting the stage for the next round of retreats by the left which will create even broader territories of terror. These territories are staging areas for the next invasion, which will come not from Hamas, but a Muslim Brotherhood Egypt and an Islamist Turkey, once Israel has been sufficiently softened up.

The only way to end the threat of Hamas in Gaza is by retaking Gaza, but no such policy is on the table. Like America, Israel responds to terrorism not with the aim of achieving decisive victories, but with a policy of intimidating the terrorists into scaling down their attacks. This is a political policy of political generals and leads to terror becoming a permanent institution.

Israel has tried negotiating its way out of the terrorist trap. It has not tried fighting its way out. Israel has tried to escape the occupation, but in a region where you are either the occupier or the occupied, it may have no choice.

Any moment of truth must begin and end with a realistic assessment of the realities that you face. Israel faces a proxy war by its neighbors and like most proxy wars, it is the opening round to a true war ending in true occupation and genocide.

Its neighbors know what they are fighting for. They are fighting Israel for the same reason that Shiites fight Sunnis and that Sunnis persecute Christians. They are fighting Israel because “by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population” it is different and must be crushed for the national and religious aims of any proper Islamist country.

But what is Israel fighting for? Like so many modern countries it is fighting so as not to fight. It is fighting for peace. It is fighting to escape from fighting. And so like many modern countries it cannot bring itself to fight hard enough to break the cycle. Instead it fights just hard enough to defer the fight by another few years and the cycle continues.

Israel can retake Gaza once. Or it can retake Gaza every few years. It can have soldiers patrol Gaza or it can have rockets falling on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The options are as unfortunate as they are clear. The only hope for peace lies in driving out the terrorist militias who have turned Gaza and the West Bank into their own Somalia and Afghanistan and reclaiming the territory. Because after this fight is through, the next generation of rockets will go on being built and smuggled. And they will not fall in empty fields.

There can be farms and greenhouses on the hilltops of Gaza. Or there can be rockets.

Great Advice For Teenagers

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=295828847184561&set=a.208991355868311.32725.206703882763725&type=1&ref=nf

Benghazi's Missing Story

Those of us who follow the Obama Benghazi (less and less each day) are amazed at the totally missing details of the sacking of the upper escheolons of the military. Most of us know about General Petraeus and his sex-capade. However, the real missing story is the Generals who have been removed or demoted over the Benghazi affair.

The most absent story is the one of General Ham, who was removed from his command when he refused to "stand down" by the Pentagon after he had prepared a force to go in and rescue the Ambassador and his associates. For more on the story read American Thinker:
article.http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/10/has_general_ham_been_fired.html  

 or Washington Times:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/robbins-report/2012/oct/28/general-losing-his-job-over-benghazi/

The real irony is that there has been a news blackout on General Ham since the beginning of the month. He has been totally quiet and all the news is coming from the Administration.  It is so quiet that we believe that there is a purge of any officer who will argue with the Dictator. 

The number and position of those military leaders who have been removed is unheard of.  What does it mean, only the Obama Administration knows for sure.

Conservative Tom

What’s Behind Obama’s Military Purge?

November 16, 2012 by Bob Livingston 

PHOTOS.COM

Is something deep and dark afoot in the upper regions of military command?

Since the Sept. 11 Benghazi, Libya, massacre, President Barack Obama has sacked his CIA director and two of his top military commanders, demoted one and found another caught up in the scandal involving the CIA director. This many top commanders being relieved at one time is unprecedented in U.S. history.

So, are sexual misconduct and corruption that rife in the military command? Or is Obama making a point about staying on script in the Benghazi incident? Or is the President purging a group of rogue commanders who were planning a coup?

The recent casualties of the high command are CIA Director (formerly top Afghanistan commander) David Petraeus, General Carter F. Ham (AfriCOM) and Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette (Carrier Task Force Stennis), who were sacked; General William “Kip” Ward (former AfriCOM), who was stripped of a star; and Afghanistan commander Marine General John R. Allen, who has been tied to the Petraeus “sex scandal” in a guilt-by-association sort of way.

This is reminiscent of Joseph Stalin’s and Adolf Hitler’s purges and executions of top military commanders who did not toe the line — without the bullets.

Petraeus was either sacked or chose to resign, perhaps because he was galled by being forced to claim something he knew to be not true: that the attack was the result of an amateurish video denigrating Mohammed as the pedophile and murder he was. So a sex scandal story was fabricated — or used after being held in abeyance — to try to shut him up or embarrass him. Now, he says he’ll testify before Congress. He should watch his back in the coming days.

The dismissal of Ham is interesting because there are reports that he had assets in place set to rescue Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his team but was ordered to stand down. According to Tigerdroppings.com, Ham was receiving the same emails the White House was receiving requesting support as the attack was under way. Ham got a rapid response unit ready and communicated that with the Pentagon. When he was told to stand down, Ham responded he was not going to obey the order. Less than a minute later, his second in command told Ham that he had been relieved of his command.

In a highly unusual move, Gaouette was relieved while deployed “pending the outcome of an internal investigation into undisclosed allegations of inappropriate judgment,” according to a report by The Stars and Stripes (since scrubbed from its website). But the Russian intelligence agency GRU reports that Gaouette’s firing was due to his disobeying orders when he ordered his forces to “assist and provide intelligence for” American military forces ordered into action by Ham.”

The whole Benghazi cover-up story took an even stranger turn with revelations that the man who succeeded Petraeus in Afghanistan had sent hundreds of emails to Jill Kelley, the woman who supposedly caused the FBI to open its investigation into Petraeus. The emails were then reported to be of the “phone sex” variety.

And finally there’s Ward, who had been under investigation for a year and a half over charges he had spent $82,000 on lavish travel and other unauthorized expenses.

Being among the top brass is an increasingly dangerous business.

Obama--Friend of Israel?

We believe that Obama is no friend of Israel. Although he says nice things, the reality is that his words are not backed by action. He says he supports Israel but does not have his UN Ambassador press it in the UN. He says that the country has the right to "defend itself," yet denies Israeli actions to use military force.  

We have said this before and want to repeat it again, one day, Israel will have to fight by itself against overwhelming odds. It will win, but the cost will be tremendous. We would hope that at that time, whomever is Prime Minister will not listen to the UN, the US, or the international community and finish the job instead of  being stopped in mid battle as they were in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973.

Conservative Tom

Politics: Obama to Israel: Stand down and stay on defense

Published by: Robert Laurie on Sunday November 18th, 2012

By ROBERT LAURIE – Obama warns Israel not to deal with Hamas.

Imagine you’re in a darkened alley, when a thug appears with a knife.  He lunges forward, trying to stab you, but you manage to deflect the attack.  Then, you stand back calmly, so the assault comes once more. Again, you manage to intercept the blade and avoid injury. So, your attacker thrusts, over, and over, and over again.  Each time you manage to dodge your assailant, but you never neutralize him.

How long do you think you can keep that up before he manages to land the killing blow? 

Well, if Barack Obama is to be believed, the answer is either “forever,” or “until he gets tired of attacking and gives up.”  At least, that’s his attitude toward Israel.

As rockets rain down on America’s only real Middle-Eastern ally, Obama has said that the nation has “every right to defend itself.”  As long as Israel can intercept the incoming missiles, our President is perfectly happy to let them.  Just so long as they don’t get any ideas about actually dealing with Hamas, the root cause of their troubles.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that the time had come to “ramp up” their strategy, press into Gaza, and handle their attackers once and for all, Obama quickly warned against it.

According to the AP, this morning in Thailand Obama took the opportunity to urge Israel to rethink its plan to attack those who would see their nation wiped off the map.

He again claimed that Israel had the right to “defend itself” against inbound rockets, but also said that she should not engage in any sort of ground fight in Gaza.  Such an undertaking, he said, would put Israeli soldiers at risk and cause Palestinian civilian casualties.

There was no mention of the military or civilian death toll caused by the rockets which have managed to penetrate Israel’s “iron dome” defense system.  Apparently, they’re not as important, since they have less impact on the President’s desire to continue the search for a two-state solution.  

"If we see a further escalation of the situation in Gaza,” The President said, “the likelihood of us getting back on any kind of peace track that leads to a two-state solution is going to be pushed off way into the future."

So a strong offense will harm the talks, but sitting back and watching the missiles explode in Jerusalem is A-OK. 

Obama obviously thinks that Israel should allow her enemies to continue the murder of her citizens, because we wouldn’t want the Palestinians to get upset and stop their insincere negotiations. If that’s his definition of a “peace process” we’re all in very serious trouble.

It seems that the President would prefer that Israel handle its defense the way he handled Benghazi.  Appease a gang of terrorists, ignore their threats until it’s too late, “stand down” when the real fighting starts, cover the whole thing up in the aftermath, and sweep the ugliness under the rug so we can all just forget about it.

What’s really interesting is that the President doesn’t normally apply any of these principles to his own global military endeavors.  Obama has no problem killing America’s enemies via ground attack, he positively revels in erasing names from his “kill list” via Drone strike, and he was eager to enter into an unconstitutional mini-war with Libya.

However, for some reason, the President wants Israel on a perpetual and ultimately unsustainable defense.

Until the U.S. has a change of leadership, the Israeli people should operate under the assumption that our government – though not necessarily our people – no longer have their backs. Sadly, they’re in a position where they need to ignore the American President, as it’s become clear that he does not hold their best interests at heart

The Solution to Middle East Hostilities

The title of the following post says it all when it comes to the Middle East. If the Arabs, Hamas, Hezbollah and their accomplices will do as Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren says, peace will come to the region. We doubt that it will ever happen!

Conservative Tom

Israel envoy: If Hamas stands down, we will stand down

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Laura Rozen

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Israel’s envoy to the United States said Friday that Israel is not looking to escalate the conflict with Hamas, but that if Hamas continues to launch rocket fire at  Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, it would consider that an escalation and respond in kind.

“If they stand down, we will stand down,” Israeli ambassador Michael Oren told journalists on a call arranged by The Israel Project Friday “We are not looking to escalate.”

“The rocket fire on Tel Aviv, … and Jerusalem is an escalation,” Oren said, referring to Hamas rocket fire that landed in both cities today without causing casualties or much damage, aside from psychologically, he said. Further rocket attacks on major Israeli population centers “would be an escalation and we would respond accordingly.”

Oren declined to say if Israel would launch a ground invasion if further such rocket attacks on major Israeli cities continue. “I am just going to say that we will take all and every means to defend our citizens.”

Oren said Israel had been largely successful in targeting Hamas’ long range rocket supply, although some remain, in the three-day old Gaza operation, Pillar of Defense. The major concern now remains Hamas’ stockpile of short and medium range rockets, with a range from 7 to 50km, he estimated. A Syrian-provided 50km range rocket is one that  Oren cited as responsible for the killing of three Israeli civilians in Kiryat Malachi on Thursday.

Oren also said the Israel is encountering an increased flow of arms into Gaza  from Libya, as well as from Sudan via the lawless Egyptian Sinai.

Oren said the US-funded Iron Dome ballistic missile defense system has been very successful in limiting the damage of Hamas rocket attacks. Hamas has launched some 400 rockets in recent days, he said.

“Iron Dome continues to be an amazing success story, with an 90% interception rate,” Oren said. “It’s the first anti-ballistic missile system to prove effective in history. …In terms of defending the south, it is really a remarkable story.”

Read more: http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2012/11/3230/israel-envoy-if-hamas-stands-down-we-will-stand-down/#ixzz2Ci4rogTd