President Clinton to the Rescue!!!
First of all, I am exceedingly grateful for the release of our two American journalists who have been held by the North Korean authorities. There are two very happy Immigrant-American Families today and that is a joy worth celebrating.
But then there’s the politics:
This visit of a former President is a very dangerous display of legitimacy to the North Korean regime. Remember they are in desperate need of fresh propaganda at a time when they are flexing their nuclear muscles.
The timing couldn’t be worse: A few short months after a round of nuclear weapons tests by the North Koreans, America responds by apologizing (seems to be a trend) and begging for the release of prisoners. When did we become such pansies? When did we as a country decide that we owed anyone an apology for being the most generous and wealth-producing country the world has ever known? Now release those prisoners!!!
But all that is really of little consequence. North Korea has been playing these games for decades. They have their ups and downs, flex their muscles and get some desperately needed economic aid from a former President (remember Carter) who agrees to some shit we will never know about but which our children are on-the-hook for. The economic stimulus will shut them up temporarily while they plan their next big power play.
No, what bothers me the most is the double speak we get from the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs. The efforts to downplay the significance of this event are astounding. Obama can’t afford to be seen as weak on foreign policy therefore he has avoided this issue for months. Biden is now no where to be seen or heard of except for the occasional gaff-truth. But alas, Obama has the political cover to deal with the situation without being personally involved. Mr. President you have received a gift, and it’s not even your Birthday!
Did he approve this trip and the preceding negotiations? I think so, and here is way. Obama can’t have direct talks with N. Korea for foreign policy reasons. Having the Secretary of State’s husband and Ex-President extend-an-olive-branch gives Obama significant political cover. If things get ugly he can always through the Clintons under-the-bus. Something he’s wanted to do since the early days of the campaign.
Ask yourself this, is there anyway that a former President went halfway around the world to meet with the leader of a rogue nation without the knowledge of our security forces? No.
Further, don’t you think the Sitting-President would be made aware of such a trip out of professional courtesy? I’m thinking yes. If not, he should be pissed!!! I would be…
Statue of Liberty Replica Beheaded in New York
Police in New York City are scrambling to locate the producers of a YouTube video that depicts a stolen replica of the Statue of Liberty blindfolded, beheaded and smashed into pieces a display that one terror expert says is intended to “instill fear” in everyday Americans.
The 59-second video shows the 8-foot, 200-pound replica statue, which was stolen from a Brooklyn coffee shop last month, being decapitated and pulverized — accompanied by the words “We don’t want your freedom” and “Death to America.”
The video is sick and disturbing. The people behind it need to be captured and prosecuted. If you have any information please contact the New York Police Department 1-888-NYC-SAFE or The FBI
I have no idea if this was a childish hoax or was the work of radical Muslims – either way it’s disturbing and sick!
HR 1444: New Bill Calls For Congressional Commission on Civic Service
Barack Obama recently signed into law the HR 1388 GIVE Act that would require youth to sign up for a certain amount of community service. This Act becomes much like the AmeriCorps and if we know anything as of late about that organization, we know that it is rife with corruption and government meddling (i.e. Walpin-Gate). AmeriCorps and government funded “volunteer” organizations have always been vulnerable to becoming ideological arms of the parties which give the most or establish them. This is no different than unions receiving kickbacks from Democrats and in turn voting for them. There is a serious problem in our government regarding pay-to-play politics.
The GIVE Act was scary enough because it was reminiscent of what Obama had said on the campaign trail regarding a National Civilian Security force that would eventually be larger than the US military. Many didn’t take Obama seriously at the time, but with the signing of the GIVE Act and the latest bill in the Senate, HR 1444, it keeps looking more and more like he was in fact telling the truth.
Here’s a reminder of what he said:
Here is what a columnist at the Denver Post has to say about HR 1444:
Little did I know he was serious. The first step was the passage of HR 1388, “The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act,” originally titled the GIVE (Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education) Act before the Senate renamed it as a tribute to the “Lion of Liberalism.” It triples AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000. The second step is HR 1444, not yet passed, which would establish a Congressional Commission on Civic Service. The commission would “address and analyze” the effects on the nation and on those who serve “if all individuals in the United States … were required to perform a certain amount of national service” and “whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all young people could be developed.”
Whoa! It’s one thing, out of clear necessity and for purposes of national survival, to have a military draft when our nation is at war (hot or cold). But mandatory community service of up to two years? This is a preposterously intrusive notion and one that is surely unlawful under our Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits “involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime.” What crime have these young people committed?
The “audacity” — to use President Obama’s favorite expression — of such a sweeping mandate is a direct contradiction of our founding principles as reinforced in the Bill of Rights, which emphatically restricts the powers of government over the lives of individuals. The camel’s nose under the tent that has led some people to regard national mandatory community service as respectable public policy is no doubt the imposition of a similar requirement on students as a condition of graduation in our public schools.
Just what we need, more politicians using the constitution as toilet paper and youth having the government run their lives.
Look at it this way – blue will be the new “brown” 
“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Abraham Lincoln, Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838)
The DoD Thinks Protesters Are Terrorists
It reminds me of the old junkie commercials from the 90’s… “Nobody said ‘I want to be a terrorist when I grow up.’”
I certainly never thought myself a terrorist or involved in terrorist activities, but that’s not what the DoD manual says.
On the last 2 pages of the DoD manual, (PDF here) obtained by the ACLU, they state that protests are considered low-level terrorism. That means that Tea Party protesters, abortion protesters, and even David Letterman protesters are considered terrorists.
The DoD refresher course/manual begins:
“Anti-terrorism (AT) and Force Protection (FP) are two facets of the Department of Defense (DoD) Mission Assurance Program. It is DoD policy, as found in DoDI 2000.16, that the DoD Components and the DoD elements and personnel shall be protected from terrorist acts through a high priority, comprehensive, AT program. The DoD’s AT program shall be all encompassing using an integrated systems approach.”
The first question of the Terrorism Threat Factors, “Knowledge Check 1″ section reads as follows:
Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorism activity?
Select the correct answer and then click Check Your Answer.
O Attacking the Pentagon
O IEDs
O Hate crimes against racial groups
O Protests
***
The “correct” answer is Protests.
Of course the left-wing blogs like Salon associate this with “fascists” on the right. However, fascism is left-wing and totalitarian. Fascism can go left or right. It’s incredibly disingenuous to blame a group based upon the actions of lone “crazies” like Tiller’s killer. I could say the very same thing for the Arkansas murder of the Army recruiter for the left, or what we learned about the Holocaust Museum shooting (although the below shows a lack of research or knowledge of the shooter’s political leanings, blaming it on the right).
…thus giving the government under the rubric of fighting domestic terrorism unrestrained and unsupervisable power to suppress legitimate political activities, the unleashing and justifications for Christian fascists to murder those they do not like (such as the assassination of Dr. George Tiller and the killing at the Holocaust Museum a few days ago) – this news adds further fuel to the fire.
The far left fails to realize the gravity of this for all of America, not just some political ideology. We all protest and we all stand up and fight for what we believe in. To be considered terrorists for our voice is something we should all be concerned about.
Flip-Flopper In Chief Now Agrees to Reading Detainees in Afghanistan Miranda Rights
I personally want to stop writing and crawl back into the hole I found myself in over a year ago before becoming politically involved. This just keeps getting worse by the minute. Everyday there is something new occurring and some story being reported that seems worse than the last…
The Obama administration is granting Miranda rights to detainees in Afghanistan. This is simply ludicrous! Obama wants to allow FOREIGN terrorists US constitutional rights!? These same terrorists who want to destroy our military, the West and Israel!? My brain is hemorrhaging trying to comprehend this idiocy.
When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.
Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal — read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.
If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today — foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them and they’re reading them their rights — Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.
Rogers, a former FBI specialagent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”
Global justice? Global justice? The law of the land, the constitution, is no longer valid for liberals. The document that has given us the greatest country on Earth is apparently obsolete. Quite frankly, if liberals and anyone else for that matter, do not like America, then by all means, please move elsewhere and quit whining! I’ve lived abroad, and if anything, it makes one appreciate America even more…
This is a clear message to the troops – don’t defend America and if you do happen to defend Her, don’t take any prisoners just kill them all on the spot do what the islamo-fascists do and video tape a beheading. (I’m sure that will really improve our image abroad and help the problem in the Middle East). The liberals with the body count signs in their front yards from Iraq and Afghanistan will have to update regularly, since these actions are bound to cost more lives.
Does this also mean that any Gitmo detainees who are tried in court and were not read Miranda rights (which none of them were) would be released into the US immediately? Would there be a statute of limitations that would stipulate no detainees arrested prior to this new policy will qualify? If the former occurs then the body counting liberals should also create a sign for unarmed, innocent, American citizens who were killed by Obama’s naivete.
What is even more interesting is the fact that Obama completely flip flopped on this issue, when back in 2003 he opposed giving Miranda rights to foreign terrorists. It’s interesting to see those who can sell out their principles for political expedience. It’s the real ideologues who don’t have an issue with checking their values at the door if it will win them votes.
Juxtapose that with Governor Palin’s remarks at the RNC convention last year (as C4P has reported, it was another “I told ya so moment”)… I’m so glad we dodged the bullet on Palin last election/sarc!
Thank God for JaNo’s Overseas Contingency Operation… LOL!
