Barry In Charge: Never Let The Facts Stand In Your Way (the British torture claim)

Why in the world do we claim that Barry is of high intelligence? It's as if we are finding out, day after day, that this man is an affirmative action hire on this new job for him known as, "The Presidency".

Last night he further condemned the Bush administration, which kept the US safe for 7 long years after 911, by claiming that waterboarding is torture, then using the British as cover for directing his treasonous actions of revealing our interrogation secrets to the world.

But there's only one problem: Barry doesn't know history, much less that of his savage Kenyan roots. His grandfather was part of the "kill Whitey" movement in Kenya, then made to pay for it at the British intelligence's directions of his black captors.

First the claim from last night (fast forward to 16:15):



And now the facts:

Barack Obama’s grandfather was imprisoned and brutally tortured by the British during the violent struggle for Kenyan independence, according to the Kenyan family of the US President-elect.

Hussein Onyango Obama, Mr Obama’s paternal grandfather, became involved in the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after the war. He was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a high-security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.

“The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed,” said Sarah Onyango, Hussein Onyango’s third wife, the woman Mr Obama refers to as “Granny Sarah”.

Mrs Onyango, 87, described how “white soldiers” visited the prison every two or three days to carry out “disciplinary action” on the inmates suspected of subversive activities.

“He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down,” she said The alleged torture was said to have left Mr Onyango permanently scarred, and bitterly antiBritish. “That was the time we realised that the British were actually not friends but, instead, enemies,” Mrs Onyango said. “My husband had worked so diligently for them, only to be arrested and detained.”

Mr Obama refers briefly to his grandfather’s imprisonment in his best-selling memoir, Dreams from My Father, but states that his grandfather was “found innocent” and held only for “more than six months”.

Mr Onyango served with the British Army in Burma during the Second World War and, like many army veterans, he returned to Africa hoping to win greater freedoms from colonial rule. Although a member of the Luo tribe from western Kenya, he sympathised with the Kikuyu Central Association, the organisation leading an independence movement that would evolve into the bloody uprising known as the Mau Mau rebellion.

“He did not like the way British soldiers and colonialists were treating Africans, especially members of the Kikuyu Central Association, who at the time were believed to be secretly taking oaths which included promises to kill the white settlers and colonialists,” Mrs Onyango said.

In his book, Mr Obama implies that his grandfather was not directly involved in the anticolonial agitation, but his grandmother said that her husband had supplied information to the insurgents. “His job as cook to a British army officer made him a useful informer for the secret oathing movement which would later form the Mau Mau rebellion,” she said. The Mau Mau used oaths as part of their initiation ceremony.

Mr Onyango was probably tried in a magistrates’ court on charges of political sedition or membership of a banned organisation, but the records do not survive because all such documentation was routinely destroyed in British colonies after six years.

“To arrest a Luo ex-soldier, who must have been a senior figure in the community, is pretty serious. They must have had some damn good evidence,” said Professor David Anderson, director of the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford and an authority on the Mau Mau rebellion.

The British responded to the Mau Mau uprising with draconian violence: at least 12,000 rebels were killed, most of them Kikuyu, but some historians believe that the overall death toll may have been more than 50,000. In total, just 32 European settlers were killed.

According to his widow, Mr Onyango was denounced to the authorities by his white employer, who sacked him on suspicion of consorting with “troublemakers”. He may also have been the victim of a feud with an African neighbour who worked in the district commissioner’s office. Mr Onyango, notoriously outspoken, appears to have accused this official of corruption.

According to Mrs Onyango, her husband was arrested by two soldiers, and taken to Kamiti prison, the national maximum-security prison outside Nairobi.

“This was like a death camp because some detainees died while being tortured,” Mrs Onyango said. “We were not allowed to see him, not even taking him food.” She said her husband was told that he would be killed or maimed if he refused to reveal what he knew of the insurgency, and was beaten repeatedly until he promised “never to rejoin any groupings opposed to the white man’s rule”. Even after he had confessed, and renounced the insurgency, the physical abuse allegedly continued.

Some of Mr Onyango’s fellow inmates were beaten to death with clubs, according to Mrs Onyango. “In fact, my late husband was lucky to have left the prison alive without any serious bodily harm, save for the permanent scars from beatings and torture, which remained on his body till he died.”

Like all family histories, retold many years after the events, some elements of Mrs Onyango’s account are hazy. For example, the white men she described as “soldiers” are far more likely to have been Special Branch officers, who wore a uniform that was indistinguishable from military uniform to most Africans.

Mrs Onyango also described an incident of her husband’s “torture”, which was nothing of the sort. “The white soldiers would spray his body with an itching chemical. This, he said, could make him scratch his body till it bled.” Almost certainly, Mr Onyango was being treated for body lice but apparently he was so used to brutality that he assumed the routine chemical delousing treatment was another form of abuse.

During Mr Obama’s first visit to Kenya in 1988, his grandmother recalled the growing resentment against white colonial rule in Kenya, with rallies and mounting violence that would explode into full-scale rebellion in 1952. “Most of this activity centred on Kikuyuland,” she told him. “But the Luo, too, were oppressed, a main source of forced labour. Men in our area began to join the Kikuyu in demonstrations . . . many men were detained, some never to be seen again.”

The British colonial authorities began a sustained campaign to quell the Mau Mau uprising, establishing numerous detention camps that some historians describe as “Kenya’s Gulag”, where inmates were frequently abused. “There was torture in Kenya during the Mau Mau emergency, institutional and systematic, and also casual and haphazard,” Professor Anderson writes in Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (2005). “Violence . . . was intrinsic to the system, and the use of force to compel obedience was sanctioned at the highest level.”

At the height of the rebellion, an estimated 71,000 Kenyans were held in prison camps. The vast majority were never convicted. Letters smuggled out of the camps complained of systematic brutality by warders and guards. According to the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her exposé of British atrocities during the Mau Mau uprising, there were reports of sexual violence and mutilation using “castration pliers”. “This was an instrument devised to crush the men’s testicles,” she writes in Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (2005). “Other detainees also described castration pliers, along with other methods of beating and mutilating men’s testicles.”

Several hundred letters from camp inmates survive in the Kenyan National Archives, “chronicling camp conditions, forced labour, torture, starvation and murder”, according to Ms Elkins. One white policeman, Duncan McPherson, told Barbara Castle, the former MP, that conditions in some detention camps were “worse, far worse, than anything I experienced in my 4½ years as a prisoner of the Japanese”.

Mr Onyango was 56 when he was arrested, and he emerged from imprisonment prematurely aged and deeply embittered. In his memoir, Mr Obama described his grandfather’s shocking physical state: “When he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice.” For some time, he was too traumatised to speak about his experiences. Mrs Onyango told her grandson: “From that day on, I saw that he was now an old man.”

Understandably, Mr Onyango held a lifelong grudge against the British for the way he had been treated, yet he was doubtful that the independence movement would succeed. “How can the African defeat the white man,” he told his son, “when he cannot even make his own bicycle?”

Barack Obama Sr, Mr Onyango’s son and the President-elect’s father, seems to have inherited his father’s attitudes towards the colonial power. He was also arrested, for attending a meeting in Nairobi of the Kenya African National Union (Kanu), the organisation spearheading the independence movement. Mrs Onyango told Mr Obama that his father, unlike her husband, had been held only for a short time in the white man’s prison: “Because he was not a leader in Kanu, Barack was released after a few days.”

Mr Onyango was a victim of the fight for Kenyan independence, but his son became a direct beneficiary of that movement. In 1960, Barack Obama Sr travelled on a scholarship to the University of Hawaii, as part of a programme (sponsored by John F. Kennedy) to train young Kenyans to rule their own country.

Mrs Onyango said that the combative spirit shown by her husband during Kenya’s bloody independence struggle has passed down through the generations to the future president. “This family lineage has all along been made up of fighters,” she said. “Senator Barack Obama is fighting using his brain, like his father, while his grandfather fought physically with the white man.”

Bloody birth of a nation

— In 1895, the British Government establishes the East Africa Protectorate and opens up the fertile highlands of Kenya to whites

— Kenya becomes a British colony in 1920. A year later, members of the Kikuyu tribe, angered by exclusion from political representation, form Kenya’s first African political protest movement

— In 1952, the Mau Mau rebellion against colonial rule erupts and for the next seven years Kenya is under a state of emergency

— Uprising is put down by military action and the detention of thousands of Mau Mau suspects in prison camps. Only 32 European civilians are killed in the violence, but more than 50,000 Africans are believed to have died

— Kenya becomes independent on December 12, 1963, with Jomo Kenyatta elected its first President (source)

Barry In Charge: Why A Boy Can't Be Given Leadership ("That wasn't me")

Poor little Barry.

100 days into office, and he still hasn't grown a pair. This petulant child is still running around claiming that anything bad that happens isn't my fault, and everything good that happens is because of me.

But that's not how a man leads. Real leaders take responsibility for what has happened while in congress, while president, and in everyday situations around the house. This man-boy hasn't learned that lesson, and it is painfully obvious to those of us who have already learned that lesson.

Watch here as Barry acts like he wasn't a sitting Senator when President Bush was given a TARP package to pass by congress last fall:



I guess we need to call in Barry's "Truth Squad" to sort it all out: was Barry in congress for two years before becoming president or not?:


Later in the day after this first clip, Barry delivers his own report card after 100 days in office to a Washington press corps. And if you watch here [fast forward to 8:30], you'll see Barry remember that he was indeed part of the senate when there is something good for which to take credit:



It's all pretty sophomoric, isn't it? How did we end up with this child as the leader of the free world?

Well, I'm not the only one who sees it. Millions of Americans are raising their voices through so far peaceful means, and now, finally, we see the press begin to notice, as well:

WASHINGTON – "That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One. It actually was him — and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years — who shaped a budget so out of balance.

And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.

Obama met citizens at an Arnold, Mo., high school Wednesday in advance of his prime-time news conference. Both forums were a platform to review his progress at the 100-day mark and look ahead.

At various times, he brought an air of certainty to ambitions that are far from cast in stone.

His assertion that his proposed budget "will cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term" is an eyeball-roller among many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits and economic calamity that the government is negotiating.

He promised vast savings from increased spending on preventive health care in the face of doubts that such an effort, however laudable it might be for public welfare, can pay for itself, let alone yield huge savings.

A look at some of his claims Wednesday:

OBAMA: "Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit.... That wasn't me. Number two, there is almost uniform consensus among economists that in the middle of the biggest crisis, financial crisis, since the Great Depression, we had to take extraordinary steps. So you've got a lot of Republican economists who agree that we had to do a stimulus package and we had to do something about the banks. Those are one-time charges, and they're big, and they'll make our deficits go up over the next two years." — in Missouri.

THE FACTS:

Congress controls the purse strings, not the president, and it was under Democratic control for Obama's last two years as Illinois senator. Obama supported the emergency bailout package in President George W. Bush's final months — a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.

To be sure, Obama opposed the Iraq war, a drain on federal coffers for six years before he became president. But with one major exception, he voted in support of Iraq war spending.

The economy has worsened under Obama, though from forces surely in play before he became president, and he can credibly claim to have inherited a grim situation.

Still, his response to the crisis goes well beyond "one-time charges."

He's persuaded Congress to expand children's health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more. He's moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion.

___

OBAMA: "I think one basic principle that we know is that the more we do on the (disease) prevention side, the more we can obtain serious savings down the road. ... If we're making those investments, we will save huge amounts of money in the long term." — in Missouri.

THE FACTS: It sounds believable that preventing illness should be cheaper than treating it, and indeed that's the case with steps like preventing smoking and improving diets and exercise. But during the 2008 campaign, when Obama and other presidential candidates were touting a focus on preventive care, the New England Journal of Medicine cautioned that "sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention, however, are overreaching." It said that "although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not."

And a study released in December by the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing preventive care "could improve people's health but would probably generate either modest reductions in the overall costs of health care or increases in such spending within a 10-year budgetary time frame."

___

OBAMA: "You could cut (Social Security) benefits. You could raise the tax on everybody so everybody's payroll tax goes up a little bit. Or you can do what I think is probably the best solution, which is you can raise the cap on the payroll tax." — in Missouri.

THE FACTS: Obama's proposal would reduce the Social Security trust fund's deficit by less than half, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

That means he would still have to cut benefits, raise the payroll tax rate, raise the retirement age or some combination to deal with the program's long-term imbalance.

Workers currently pay 6.2 percent and their employers pay an equal rate — for a total of 12.4 percent — on annual wages of up to $106,800, after which no more payroll tax is collected.

Obama wants workers making more than $250,000 to pay payroll tax on their income over that amount. That would still protect workers making under $250,000 from an additional burden. But it would raise much less money than removing the cap completely.

___

OBAMA: "My hope is that working in a bipartisan fashion we are going to be able to get a health care reform bill on my desk before the end of the year that we'll start seeing in the kinds of investments that will make everybody healthier."

THE FACTS: Obama has indeed expressed hope for a health care plan that has support from Democrats and Republicans. But his Democratic allies in Congress have just made that harder. The budget plan written by the Democrats gives them the option of denying Republicans the normal right to block health care with a Senate filibuster. The filibuster tactic requires 60 votes to overcome, making it the GOP's main weapon to ensure a bipartisan outcome. The rules set by the budget mean that majority Democrats could potentially pass health care legislation without any Republican votes, sacrificing bipartisanship to achieve their goals. (source)

Barry In Charge: His Definition of Being A "Unifier" (mocking the Tea Partier's)

There are real people around the world who work to harm America: Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Medvedev/Putin, etc...but do you ever hear Barry speak of them in the same way he does half of his country? Listen to the way he speaks of us Tea Partier's who, in one day, asssembled peacefully to nearly 1 million in size across America to protest runaway spending and the growth of the federal government:



To those of you who have cared enough about your country to actually read the news over the years, I know that I don't need to tell you this...but to the truly ignorant out there who think that Barry is making a good argument in this clip, I offer this bit of education: he's LYING in order to shut out my half of this great country, and usher in SOCIALISM.

We aren't in this situation because of tax cuts for the rich. We are in this situation because the federal government regulated banks to give out BAD LOANS over ten years ago, then grew Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac [both government-owned/run institutions] to enormous sizes in order to purchase all of these toxic loans.

Barry lies in order to foist his socialist "answer" to a problem that he and the rest of his Democrat leftists dreamed up during the Clinton administration. President Bush tried to curtail the growing crisis, but not only is there precious little a president can do in the way of single-handedly correcting this problem, but too many of you idiots who love CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the MSM followed down the path of demonizing Bush even though his management of the economy at least kept us at 3% GDP growth for 8 years, despite a dot.com bust and 9/11 attack on our economy that he inherited.

I know that for many of you, your hate is too blinding to believe my words. So try reading one of your own swishy leftists lay it all out for you here, in the Village Voice.

A Little Levity

Barry In Charge: Either A Liar Or Just Plain Stupid (the AF1 photo op)

The order came from the White House to send out Air Force One with two fighter jet escorts for yet more symbolism in this Obama administration, but as the photo op news went bad, Barry suddenly claims to have known NOTHING about it. With the enormous amount of planning that must go into launching these birds, does anyone doubt how high up the ladder this info originated from?

Indeed, if the little boy in the White House didn't know what his own office of military affairs was doing, then he is one startlingly stupid--and dangerous--commander-in chief.

A furious President Barack Obama ordered an internal review of Monday's low-flying photo op over the Statue of Liberty.

CBS 2 HD has discovered the feds will have plenty to question.

Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and Air Force One to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public.

In a memo obtained by CBS 2 HD the Federal Aviation Administration's James Johnston said the agency was aware of "the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes" in an around New York City. But they demanded total secrecy from the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI and even the mayor's office and threatened federal sanctions if the secret got out.

"To say that it should not be made public knowing that it might scare people it's just confounding," Sen. Charles Schumer said. "It's what gives Washington and government a bad name. It's sheer stupidity."

The flyover -- apparently ordered by the White House Office of Military Affairs so it would have souvenir photos of Air Force One with the Statue of Liberty in the background -- had President Obama seeing red. He ordered a probe and apologized.

"It was a mistake. It will never happen again," President Obama said.

The NYPD was so upset about the demand for secrecy that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly vowed never to follow such a directive again and he accused the feds of inciting fears of a 9/11 replay.

"Did it show any insensitivity to the psychic wounds New York City has after 9/11? Absolutely. No questions about it. It was quite insensitive."

The cost of the frivolous flight was about $60,000 an hour and that was just for Air Force One. That doesn't include the cost of the two F-16s that came along.

The mayoral aide who neglected to tell Mayor Michael Bloomberg about it was reprimanded. (source)

Barry In Charge: The Dangers Of Letting Your Teleprompter Do All Of Your Brilliant Thinking

Porter Goss Writes Open Letter Regarding Our Suicidal Leaders: Pelosi, Barry, And The Gang Of Four

Porter Goss is not just some critic of this new, traitorous administration. Indeed, Goss was director of the CIA from September 2004 to May 2006 and was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 1997 to 2004.

Read his own words here:

Since leaving my post as CIA director almost three years ago, I have remained largely silent on the public stage. I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can't have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets. Americans have to decide now.

A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees charged with overseeing our nation's intelligence services had no higher priority than stopping al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA's "High Value Terrorist Program," including the development of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers.

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:


-- The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.


-- We understood what the CIA was doing.


-- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.


-- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.


-- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed "memorandums for the record" suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately -- to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president's national security adviser -- and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.

Circuses are not new in Washington, and I can see preparations being made for tents from the Capitol straight down Pennsylvania Avenue. The CIA has been pulled into the center ring before. The result this time will be the same: a hollowed-out service of diminished capabilities. After Sept. 11, the general outcry was, "Why don't we have better overseas capabilities?" I fear that in the years to come this refrain will be heard again: once a threat -- or God forbid, another successful attack -- captures our attention and sends the pendulum swinging back. There is only one person who can shut down this dangerous show: President Obama.

Unfortunately, much of the damage to our capabilities has already been done. It is certainly not trust that is fostered when intelligence officers are told one day "I have your back" only to learn a day later that a knife is being held to it. After the events of this week, morale at the CIA has been shaken to its foundation.

We must not forget: Our intelligence allies overseas view our inability to maintain secrecy as a reason to question our worthiness as a partner. These allies have been vital in almost every capture of a terrorist.

The suggestion that we are safer now because information about interrogation techniques is in the public domain conjures up images of unicorns and fairy dust. We have given our enemy invaluable information about the rules by which we operate. The terrorists captured by the CIA perfected the act of beheading innocents using dull knives. Khalid Sheik Mohammed boasted of the tactic of placing explosives high enough in a building to ensure that innocents trapped above would die if they tried to escape through windows. There is simply no comparison between our professionalism and their brutality.

Our enemies do not subscribe to the rules of the Marquis of Queensbury. "Name, rank and serial number" does not apply to non-state actors but is, regrettably, the only question this administration wants us to ask. Instead of taking risks, our intelligence officers will soon resort to wordsmithing cables to headquarters while opportunities to neutralize brutal radicals are lost.

The days of fortress America are gone. We are the world's superpower. We can sit on our hands or we can become engaged to improve global human conditions. The bottom line is that we cannot succeed unless we have good intelligence. Trading security for partisan political popularity will ensure that our secrets are not secret and that our intelligence is destined to fail us. (source)

When Hillary And Barry Pledge To Support Israel And Lebanon...

Where else in this world do a people ’say one thing, then do the exact opposite’? The Arab World. Where we find this two-faced kind of act to be nothing more than lying, thousands of years of cultural practice of this same thing is in fact a point of pride. Case in point.

Couple this gesture of Hill’s with Barry’s boycott of the “racism summit” held just days ago. TCO and Hill are both trying to appear to be firm in their support of Israel and Christian Lebanon, so you know that there is something bad in store for both nations.

These two actors, Hill and Barry, will stand by with their thumbs up their asses while Hezbollah finishes off Lebanon, while Iran destroys Israel, then claim that they are “gravely disappointed” at the actions of these players.

All of the MSM will recite this administration’s “long history” of being firm against Israel and Lebanon’s aggressors as the embers cool.

Sweetness & Light: Exposing The Truth About Henrietta Hughes

I shoved the print-out copies of Henrietta Hughes' property records into the hands of a WINK radio news family member at the Ft Myers Tea Party I attended last week. Now, radio "news" has turned into little more than an oral rebroadcast of what's written in local newspapers these days, but I felt that I should at least try to get the truth out there.


After all, I had gone to the trouble to make my sign and everything:

Out of around 4,000 people there, the site where Barry came down and hugged the neck of Henrietta, only one person approached me to ask what was meant by my sign. Luckily, I came prepared with 3 copies of the fine research that had been conducted by the above-average readers of my favorite blog, Sweetness & Light.

After giving a quick summary of how Henrietta wasn't the poor, pitiful victim she claimed to be, the guy and his wife (both doctors here in Ft Myers), gladly accepted the two pages I had stored in my cargo pockets.

I was simply glad that I had anticipated this conversation, had come prepared to back up my claims with proof, and that I was spreading the word about this small cog in what is turning out to be the biggest Trojan Horse "rescue" in American history.

Don't get me wrong: I know that the economy is in bad shape. After all, I lost my job 6 months ago as a computer tech at a cancer doctor's group here in Ft Myers, when the doctors laid off the entire IT department, calling it a "business decision".

I moved from my duplex in Lehigh Acres back into a 12 x 12 hurricane room in my grandmother's house. And I know that I'm one of the lucky ones. Thank God I don't have kids, like the rest of the IT staff. Three of the guys are still so upset that they are trying to extort more of a severance package from the doctors by threatening to expose HIPA violations on the network. Bad times, indeed.

But at 41 years old, having been raised in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, I've known hard times in my life, and this is right up there near the top. But I've always been something of a miser, and living on next to nothing is not a painful thing for me. I've never owned a house, or land, and when my father died 4 years ago of alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver he left nothing to me and my brother. I still carry on with a student loan to pay off, but no credit card debt. I don't have much, but I don't need much to be happy.

So believe me when I say that I know a thing or two about living within your means. I've run into people who cry "poor me" a few times in my travels, and I'm always sensitive to it, because there are tons of people less fortunate than myself, and it is always something of which I take note, and try to base my own good fortune against.

This is why I smell such a foul odor in this story of Henrietta. From the truly hard-luck stories I've seen in my life, the sincerely down-and-out don't make displays like this:

Well, now the WINK TV News team have done a follow-up on poor Henrietta. Nothing of my Sweetness & Light data made it to this news story, of course. I didn't think it would, but at least I have my little free blog here at Blogger. Before you read the latest about Henrietta, who is living rent-free in a house provided for her by a local Republican politician's wife, I ask you to review her property records first reported at S&L:

The Property Records Of Henrietta Hughes
According to Lee County, Florida property records:

6/18/01 Property (Lot 19, Block 35, Unit 9, Sec. 20, Twnshp 44S, Range 27, Lehigh Acres Subdivision) purchased by Henrietta and Corey Hughes

10/10/03 - $124,400.00 lien release due to payment in full to Henrietta and Corey Hughes.

8/9/06 - Quit claim deed signed by Henrietta Hughes granting full ownership to Corey Hughes.

No transactions since for either Henrietta Hughes or Corey Hughes which means that Corey Hughes still owns the property. Taxes current (paid) on 1/1/09.
There are a number of mortgage lien holder transfers between 2001 and when it was paid off in 2003. This is normal as liens are often sold (think one mortgage holder buying out another). What is interesting is how this lien for $124,400.00 was paid off in less than 28 months.

To access the records:
http://www.leeclerk.org/OR/Search.aspx

Enter last name first, first name last.

Has this property been sold in 2005, a transfer would have been recorded since the county records not only purchases but sales as well. Also, why would someone sell a property they paid at least $124,000.00 for in June, 2001 for $47,000.00 in 2005 when market prices were still high?

The fact is this scam artist did not sell her property that was jointly owned with her son, Corey Lamont, from day one. What she did do was sign a quit claim deed in 2006, giving TOTAL ownership to her son Corey Lamont. I would guess this is because the value of the property would affect SSDI benefits along with Medicare/Medicaid. It would also affect any welfare she might be eligible for under SSDI. My guess is she applied for SSDI and was told that she could only have so much worth. Yet, the 2004 Rochester, NY article states she is already receiving Medicare/Medicaid.

It is also interesting that in 2004, Corey Lamont Hughes sought, and received, free medical treatment in Rochester, NY while he and his mother were still owners of property in Florida…

Retire05 also added this:

Here is the history (remember to keep the lot numbers separate as that is important):

6/18/01 - Henrietta and Corey Hughes purchases Lot 18 and 19, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres

8/17/01 - Henrietta and Corey Hughes purchases Lot 22, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres

10/29/01 - Henrietta and Corey Hughes receives building permit for Lot 19, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres. The builder is Holiday Builders of Cape Coral, Florida

10/29/01 - (same day) Henrietta and Corey Hughes secures mortgage financing from Riverside Bank of The Gulf Coast, Cape Coral, Florida (this would be for the building of the structure constructed by Holiday Builders) in the amount of $124,400.00

7/15/03 - Forclosure filed by Riverside Bank of the Gulf Coast on Lot 19, Block 35 Lehigh Acres in an amount of slightly over $123,600.00 (meaning she paid about $800 of the mortgage in 21 months)

10/16/2003 - Mortgage satisfaction filed by Riverside Bank granting ownership to Henrietta and Corey Hughes for Lot 19, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres for $124,400.00
6/30/05 - Lot 22, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres sold to Homeland, LLC.
8/9/06 - Quit claim deed signed by Henrietta Hughes to Corey Hughes for Lot 18, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres.

She originally owned 3 lots, #18, #19 and #22. Number #22 was sold in 2005 (when she claims she lost her home) to Homeland, LLC in June, 2005 and #18 was transferred to her son, Corey Lamont, on 8/9/06 (signing a quit claim deed gave him total ownership of #18 which they had bought jointly).

I can find no record of any subsequent sales of the home build on Lot 19.(source)

Pretty wild, huh? She has had more property in her life than most people I've ever known. Yet the world and Barry trip over themselves to showcase and help her. In fact, here's the sympathetic story that just ran from WINK TV News.

Oh well. There are as many cheats and scams as there are welfare dollars extracted from our paychecks every payday. I can't get too exercised about it. I've got my eye on bigger things:

Nancy Pelosi: A Study In Dementia

Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002
In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say

By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 9, 2007; A01



In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.

"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "

Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 -- by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding -- did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey's confirmation hearings for attorney general.

GOP lawmakers and Bush administration officials have previously said members of Congress were well informed and were supportive of the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques. But the details of who in Congress knew what, and when, about waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning that is the most extreme and widely condemned interrogation technique -- have not previously been disclosed.

U.S. law requires the CIA to inform Congress of covert activities and allows the briefings to be limited in certain highly sensitive cases to a "Gang of Eight," including the four top congressional leaders of both parties as well as the four senior intelligence committee members. In this case, most briefings about detainee programs were limited to the "Gang of Four," the top Republican and Democrat on the two committees. A few staff members were permitted to attend some of the briefings.

That decision reflected the White House's decision that the "enhanced interrogation" program would be treated as one of the nation's top secrets for fear of warning al-Qaeda members about what they might expect, said U.S. officials familiar with the decision. Critics have since said the administration's motivation was at least partly to hide from view an embarrassing practice that the CIA considered vital but outsiders would almost certainly condemn as abhorrent.

Information about the use of waterboarding nonetheless began to seep out after a furious internal debate among military lawyers and policymakers over its legality and morality. Once it became public, other members of Congress -- beyond the four that interacted regularly with the CIA on its most sensitive activities -- insisted on being briefed on it, and the circle of those in the know widened.

In September 2006, the CIA for the first time briefed all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, producing some heated exchanges with CIA officials, including Director Michael V. Hayden. The CIA director said during a television interview two months ago that he had informed congressional overseers of "all aspects of the detention and interrogation program." He said the "rich dialogue" with Congress led him to propose a new interrogation program that President Bush formally announced over the summer

"I can't describe that program to you," Hayden said. "But I would suggest to you that it would be wrong to assume that the program of the past is necessarily the program moving forward into the future."

Waterboarding Used on at Least 3

Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of history's worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition to North Korea and Iraq. In the United States, the technique was first used five decades ago as a training tool to give U.S. troops a realistic sense of what they could expect if captured by the Soviet Union or the armies of Southeast Asia. The U.S. military has officially regarded the tactic as torture since the Spanish-American War.

In general, the technique involves strapping a prisoner to a board or other flat surface, and then raising his feet above the level of his head. A cloth is then placed over the subject's mouth and nose, and water is poured over his face to make the prisoner believe he is drowning.

U.S. officials knowledgeable about the CIA's use of the technique say it was used on three individuals -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaida, a senior al-Qaeda member and Osama bin Laden associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002; and a third detainee who has not been publicly identified.

Abu Zubaida, the first of the "high-value" detainees in CIA custody, was subjected to harsh interrogation methods beginning in spring 2002 after he refused to cooperate with questioners, the officials said. CIA briefers gave the four intelligence committee members limited information about Abu Zubaida's detention in spring 2002, but offered a more detailed account of its interrogation practices in September of that year, said officials with direct knowledge of the briefings.

The CIA provided another briefing the following month, and then about 28 additional briefings over five years, said three U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge of the meetings. During these sessions, the agency provided information about the techniques it was using as well as the information it collected.

Lawmakers have varied recollections about the topics covered in the briefings.

Graham said he has no memory of ever being told about waterboarding or other harsh tactics. Graham left the Senate intelligence committee in January 2003, and was replaced by Rockefeller. "Personally, I was unaware of it, so I couldn't object," Graham said in an interview. He said he now believes the techniques constituted torture and were illegal.

Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.

Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.

"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."

Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings. Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but the West Virginia Democrat's public statements show him leading the push in 2005 for expanded congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA interrogation practices. "I proposed without success, both in committee and on the Senate floor, that the committee undertake an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation activities," Rockefeller said in a statement Friday.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Vietnam War prisoner who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, took an early interest in the program even though he was not a member of the intelligence committee, and spoke out against waterboarding in private conversations with White House officials in late 2005 before denouncing it publicly.

In May 2007, four months after Democrats regained control of Congress and well after the CIA had forsworn further waterboarding, four senators submitted written objections to the CIA's use of that tactic and other, still unspecified "enhanced" techniques in two classified letters to Hayden last spring, shortly after receiving a classified hearing on the topic. One letter was sent on May 1 by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). A similar letter was sent May 10 by a bipartisan group of three senators: Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

In a rare public statement last month that broached the subject of his classified objections, Feingold complained about administration claims of congressional support, saying that it was "not the case" that lawmakers briefed on the CIA's program "have approved it or consented to it." (source)

Grassley Gets His Wish: Executive Commits Suicide

Not a AIG CEO, but instead a CFO of the more guilty Freddie Mac:

Death By 1,000 Cuts: White Firefighters Denied Promotion

Joseph B. Muhammad, president of a black firefighters’ group, spoke in New Haven last month against the white firefighters’ suit.

When your house is burning to the ground, are you going to feel any better that the lieutenant in charge is black if he can't read obvious signs, like: Propane, Oxygen, or Allergy? How about if he leaves your spouse or child in the unburned part of the house and stands outside as the rest of it overtakes your loved ones?

The knowledge these brave men learn through their testing to advance is what easily could mean the difference between life and death.

This latest story on a firefighters' racial discrimination suit in New Haven is yet another reason why America is doomed to not only mediocrity, but Balkanization as well:

NEW HAVEN — Frank Ricci has been a firefighter here for 11 years, and he would do just about anything to advance to lieutenant.

The last time the city offered a promotional exam, he said in a sworn statement, he gave up a second job and studied up to 13 hours a day. Mr. Ricci, who is dyslexic, paid an acquaintance more than $1,000 to read textbooks onto audiotapes. He made flashcards, took practice tests, worked with a study group and participated in mock interviews.

Mr. Ricci did well, he said, coming in sixth among the 77 candidates who took the exam. But the city threw out the test, because none of the 19 African-American firefighters who took it qualified for promotion. That decision prompted Mr. Ricci and 17 other white firefighters, including one Hispanic, to sue the city, alleging racial discrimination.

Their case, which will be argued before the Supreme Court on April 22, is the Roberts court’s first major confrontation with claims of racial discrimination in employment and will require the justices to choose between conflicting conceptions of the government’s role in ensuring fair treatment regardless of race.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has repeatedly noted his hostility to what he has called the “sordid business” of “divvying us up by race.” In 2007, diverging from an important Rehnquist court decision that allowed public universities to consider race in admissions decisions, the Roberts court forbade public school systems to take race explicitly into account to achieve or maintain integration.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

But those cases involved education, and it has been decades since the court last took an intensive look at the use of race in public hiring or promotion. Among the questions swirling around Mr. Ricci’s case are whether the law should treat diversity in the work force differently from diversity in the classroom and how it should handle hiring and promotion tests that have a severely disparate impact on candidates of one race.

The city says it was merely trying to comply with a federal law that views job requirements like promotional tests with great suspicion when they disproportionately disfavor minority applicants.

“The fact of the matter is it’s a flawed test,” said Victor A. Bolden, the city’s acting corporation counsel.

Mr. Bolden added that he had sympathy for Mr. Ricci. “There’s no question that there are people who are disappointed,” he said. “But disappointment doesn’t lead to a discrimination claim.”

The promotion exam was offered in the fall of 2003, and no one has been promoted since, Mr. Bolden said.

The suit brought by Mr. Ricci and his colleagues says that the city’s rationale for throwing out the test is illegitimate and that they were denied a chance for promotion on account of the color of their skin. Karen Lee Torre, a lawyer for the firefighters, declined to be interviewed and said she had instructed her clients not to speak to reporters.

John Payton, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., which filed a brief supporting the city, said the case, Ricci v. DeStefano, No. 07-1428, must be understood against the backdrop of what he described as pervasive racial discrimination in firefighting and the pitfalls of thinking that a test can capture the qualities needed for leadership in life-or-death situations.

“Firefighting is a skilled job where all of the skills are learned on the job,” Mr. Payton said. “It’s a really good job, and it’s been racially exclusive in most of our major cities.”

In a brief supporting the white firefighters, the National Association of Police Organizations saw the injection of racial politics into public safety. Promotion decisions should be based on merit, the group said. Race-neutral decisions foster camaraderie and a sense of fairness, it added, saying that people who work in public safety “are, in the main, effectively colorblind.”

But Donald Day, a representative of the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters, questioned the value of the New Haven test, which included written and oral components. “An individual’s ability to answer a multiple-choice exam,” Mr. Day told the city’s Civil Service Board, “does nothing but measure their ability to read and retain.”

There are more important values, he added. “Young black and Latino kids have every right,” he said, “to see black and Latino officers on those fire trucks that are riding through their community. They have every right to look for a role model.”

According to the 2000 census, New Haven is 43 percent white and 37 percent black. African-Americans held 32 percent of the entry-level positions in the Fire Department in 2007, according to data compiled by the city, but only 15 percent of the supervisory positions.

In 2006, Judge Janet Bond Arterton of the Federal District Court here ruled that the city had not discriminated against the white firefighters. Since no one was promoted, Judge Arterton said, no one was harmed.

True, she wrote, “a jury could infer that the defendants were motivated by a concern that too many whites and not enough minorities would be promoted.”

But the city’s motives were lawful, Judge Arterton said. They included fear of public criticism, the possibility of “lawsuits from minority applicants that, for political reasons, the city did not want to defend” and a desire to promote “diversity in the Fire Department” and “managerial role models for aspiring firefighters.”

Judge Arterton ruled that city officials were not required to abide by the test results even though “they cannot pinpoint its deficiency explaining its disparate impact.” It is enough, she said, that the test results ran afoul of federal guidelines that presume discrimination where the lowest-scoring group is promoted at a rate of less than 80 percent of the highest-scoring group.

A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in New York affirmed Judge Arterton’s ruling in an unusually terse decision. By a vote of 7 to 6, the full appeals court declined to rehear the case and issued a set of heated opinions in the process. The six dissenting judges urged the Supreme Court to step in.

The test itself is not publicly available, but the court record offers glimpses of it. One question, for instance, referred to “uptown” and “downtown,” terms that do not make sense in New Haven.

But it is not clear what would have generated racial disparities in the results, and the six dissenting appeals court judges said the test had been “carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality.”

Blacks passed at roughly half the rate of whites and ended up low on the ranked list of possible promotion candidates.. Under the city charter’s “rule of three,” as positions became available they had to be offered to one of the top three candidates then on the list.

In practice, this meant that no black firefighters would have been eligible for the available promotions to lieutenant. After a series of contentious hearings, the city’s Civil Service Board deadlocked by a 2-to-2 vote on whether to certify the lieutenant’s test and a similar one for captain. The tie had the effect of rejecting the tests.

With no one promoted since, “we’re sort of frozen in time,” said Mr. Bolden, the city lawyer. (source)

Barry In Charge: Prosecuting Bush And Cheney For War Crimes

This little boy is playing with fire.

He breezes into office without one callous on his soft hands. His character hasn't been formed from years of having to go to work everyday at a job you hate, for people who don't make a big fuss over you at all. Never has he had to "look on the bright side" of things, just to get by and keep the bills paid.

No, this little boy is used to getting everything he wants. Soon will come a day of reckoning for us, as a nation, that we ever elected this dark, hating, child into our fold.

We were whipped into a frenzy by the MSM, who not only picked Barry as a candidate, but led every newscast, interview, and headline as if you're a racist if you don't vote for this man.

And it has all caught up with us.

This is what we deserve for ever allowing the Left to guide our highest choices as a country.

We are witnessing the groundwork of persecuting President Bush and Vice President Cheney being laid right now. Barry thinks he's being judicious and thoughtful by saying that CIA operatives will be off the table for prosecution, but today he is adding that as we go up the deadly ladder to those closest to Mssrs Bush and Cheney, Barry is open to allowing the Justice Department to "make those decisions".

Of course he is. True to a life absent of any hard decisions, he is shielding himself from the fallout of having our best wartime president and administration put before a Nuerenberg-like trial system.

He is hiding behind the Justice dept, just like the little coward boy he is, to do his bidding while appearing "neutral", just as the draft-dodger Bill Clinton did during Waco. This is what any maniacal tyrant in a democracy must do. Perform a total takeover of society while appearing that you're simply letting "the process take its course."

Only a boy who has grown up with self-hate [thanks to a couple of savage fathers and mother who spawned without love] would fill his head with notions from the Left of deconstructing our American Way and grow up to do the things this man-child is now threatening to do.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama left the door open Tuesday to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations, saying the United States lost "our moral
bearings" with use of the tactics.

The question of whether to bring charges against those who devised justification for the methods "is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said. The president discussed the continuing issue of terrorism-era interrogation tactics with reporters as he finished an Oval Office meeting with visiting King Abdullah II of Jordan.

Obama also said he could support a congressional investigation into the Bush-era terrorist detainee program, but only under certain conditions, such as if it were done on a bipartisan basis. He said he worries about the impact that high-intensity, politicized hearings in Congress could have on the government's efforts to cope with terrorism.

The president had said earlier that he didn't want to see prosecutions of the CIA agents and interrogators who took part in waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, so long as they acted within parameters spelled out by government superiors who held that such practices were legal at the time.

But the administration's stance on Bush administration lawyers who actually wrote the memos approving these tactics has been less clear and Obama declined to make it so. "There are a host of very complicated issues involved," Obama said.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said in a television interview over the weekend that theadministration does not support prosecutions for "those who devised policy." Later, White House aides said that he was referring to CIA superiors who ordered the interrogations, not the Justice Department officials who wrote the legal
memos allowing them.

The president took a question on the volatile subject for the first time since he ordered the Justice Department to release top-secret Bush-era memos that gave the government's first full accounting ofthe CIA's use of waterboarding — a form of simulated drowning — and other harsh methods criticized as torture. The previously classified memos were released Thursday, over the objections of many in the intelligence community. CIA Director Leon Panetta had pressed for heavier censorship when they were released, but the memos were put out with only light redactions.

Far from putting the matter in the past, the move has resulted in Obama being buffeted by increased pressure from both sides.

Republican lawmakers and former CIA chiefs have criticized Obama's decision, contending that revealing the limits of interrogation techniques will hamper the effectiveness of interrogators and critical U.S. relationships with foreign intelligence services.

The release also has appeared to intensify calls for further investigations of the Bush-era terrorist treatment program and for prosecutions of those responsible for any techniques that crossed the line into torture.

Obama banned all such techniques days after taking office. But members of Congress have continued to seek the release of information about the early stages of the U.S. response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror under former President George W. Bush. Lawsuits have been brought, seeking the same information.

Obama said an investigation might be acceptable "outside of the typical hearing process" and with the participation of "independent participants who are above reproach." This, he said, could help ensure that any investigation would be a tool to learn, not to provide partisan advantage to one side or another.

"That would probably be a more sensible approach to take," Obama said. "I'm not saying that it should be done, I'm saying that if you've got a choice."

The president made clear that his preference would be not to revisit the era extensively.

"As a general view, I do think we should be looking forward, not back," Obama said. "I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively and it hampers our ability to carry out critical national security operations." (source)

The Left: A Dionysian Comparison

On my favorite blog, Sweetness & Light, an astute contributor started a thread which I thought worthy of reproducing here. The readers of Ann Coulter's blog (administered by Steve Gilbert) are a cut above ther rest:

proreason
April
16, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Has anybody noticed that every single thing said by these left wing hacks is a lie or one sort or another.
At least there is one area where The Moron is demonstrating his leadership.

englishqueen01
April
16, 2009 at 9:45 pm
It’s not lies, proreason.
It’s PROJECTION. As in, everything liberals say about us is absolutely 100% true…about them, their beliefs, their policies, and actions.

jrmcdonald
April
18, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Your both right. Ayn Rand said that people do not believe in the irrational, but they do believe in the unjust. The lefts core beliefs in the unjust are:1. Punishing the producer while rewarding the parasite.2. Mocking the moral while celebrating the deviate.3. Killing the innocent while protecting the homicidal.4. Removing the sacred while expanding the bureaucrat.

proreason
April
18, 2009 at 8:17 pm
jr: “The lefts’ core beliefs in the unjust ”
It’s a rather profound thought.

But is eq correct in saying the belief in the unjust is a projection (a generous assessment, imho), or am I correct in saying that it is a simple case of defending one’s own deviant behaviour patterns (which I summarized by just calling them liars….in fact, it goes way beyond lying to all sorts of immoral behaviours, including the one jr points out, but well beyond them as well)?

It may be a fine point, but I personally feel the left compounds their immoral and anti-social behaviours by defending them, much like children twist themselves in knots when caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

And I also believe that the core liberal beliefs arise out of their immorality. For example, the reason they defend abortion with such gusto is that they know it is murder. Another example, the reason they defend taxes in the face of the obvious failure of almost all government programs is that, like Biden, they are selfish and will give nothing to charity themselves without being forced.

Howard Roark
April
20, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I like all of the responses to PR’s original question, here. I think they all are true: projection, Rand’s thought on the unjust, immorality.

My only addition to this is my belief that we see a present-day version of what the Greeks knew of as Dionysian principles in the modern liberal Democrats.

We Conservatives are the Stoics.

25 years ago, you couldn’t have convinced me of the value of Stoicism. I called myself a Dionysian. In fact, I remember doing a class report in the third year of my Latin studies during my senior year in the public high school I attended. I passed around plastic cups of Kroger-brand fake wine to everyone, and launched into what the differences were between Stoicism & Dionysianism, and why I, (a 17 year-old immature kid) was indeed a Dionysian. After all, who could be an adolescent and turn your back on wine, intoxication, and ecstasy?

It took me nearly twenty years to understand the other component of living a Dionysian lifestyle, though: chaos. Add to that: irrational thought, insincerity, and faithlessness. I now merely shake my head at my foolish youth.

Democrats/liberals are stuck in their adolescent youth, living a life of satisfying their every impulse, especially the base ones. They aren’t full of “principles” as we know them.

Their only “principles”, I have found, are based on doing the exact opposite of what they think a Republican or Conservative would do. And they are happy with that shallow definition of their core belief system. They are chaos, plain and simple.

Some of us Christians would call them “lost”.

As much as J. Gerofalo would love to medicalize the “condition” of being a Conservative (her laughable display on K. Olbermann’s show recently saw her attempt at diagnosing all “Teabaggers” as having a limbic brain disorder of overgrowth, resulting in misfirings of the synapses in our frontal lobes, ‘natch.

Isn’t it ironic that a good liberal like her would rest the diagnosis of “intelligence” on brain size/growth? The last time cranial studies were done to “prove” intelligence,
African Americans didn’t fare too well, so we demonized those scientists, of course. But I guess you’d have to be one of those “readers” to know that. Perhaps Gerofalo didn’t get that Twitter blast.), I, like EQ above, believe that they project the neurological/brain condition on us, yet it is they who suffer from a condition of underdeveloped sectors of the brain. As the Colonel might say, “can’t prove it, just know it.”

Their brain suffers from a suite of maladies, I believe: unresolved phobias, coping problems, attention span deficiencies, irrational thought, etc. I am not trained as a medical scientist, but I see these patterns in the arch liberals I’ve encountered in my life.

Barry In Charge: The "Blame America Tour '09" Continues

The intellectual Chavez thinks he's illuminating Barry by handing him a book on how America is an imperialist nation. Apparently, Hugo doesn't read that much, himself. If he did, he'd know that our new president has spent a lifetime learning how to blame America first.

I guess the chubby Chavez was too busy wrecking Venezuela's economy to have learned to read, though.

Have you heard the latest from the "oppressed" Latin American nations? They're complaining that their exports are down, and while we're all clinging to what dollars we have left, they are screaming "down with capitalism".

Brilliant, huh?

But what do you expect from a people who were too busy sacrificing and eating humans when those mean old Europeans arrived and tried to persuade them that evolving past such savagery was a good thing?

"The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" is the name of Hugo's prideful book that he handed to Barry today.

Open veins? How about opening your minds? When you're mired in class envy and thuggery you kind of overlook the more important problems in your society, like child slavery, guerrilla militias, and voodoo, just to name a few.

How about this, Hugo and Barry: we'll stop mentioning things like America's 200 years of keeping your South America safe via the Monroe Doctrine, if you you stop bringing up that our fruit companies came down and asked you all to work for a living like we do, ok?

You can read about Barry's pals Daniel Ortega, Hugo, and Raul here.

Cloward-Piven Strategy: The Lie He Tells To Take Away Our Guns (90% of Mexican guns came from the US)

Cloward-Piven Strategy

The lie he tells:




The truth:

EXCLUSIVE: You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.

-- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.

-- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States."

-- William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."

There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:

It's just not true.

In fact, it's not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.

What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

Video:Click here to watch more.

A Look at the Numbers

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:

-- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.

-- Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.

- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.

-- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.

-- The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

-- Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.

'These Don't Come From El Paso'

Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.

"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."

Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."

Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.

The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years -- but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.

"Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California," according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

Boatloads of Weapons

So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown "straw" buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?

Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean, Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.

The exaggeration of United States "responsibility" for the lawlessness in Mexico extends even beyond the "90-percent" falsehood -- and some Second Amendment activists believe it's designed to promote more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S.

In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States -- 730,000 a year. That's a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general's office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.

Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican weapons come from.

"Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this," Cox said. "The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment."

"The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It's estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?"

But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the "90 percent" issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.

"Let's do what we can with what we know," he said. "We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open." (source)

Napolitano Apologizes: Leftist Style

Typical of the Left, their courage lasts only as long as the Patchouli hasn't worn off.

After being forced to hold her nose and meet with the American Legion, DHS (Dept Homeland Security) Secy Janet Napolitano is backed into a corner, and then fakes sincerity with a mealy-mouthed "apology" that fools no one.

To the extent veterans read it as an accusation, an apology is owed. (source)

Given the withering light of day, and having to finally show bravery in a life that apparently isn't used to such things, this Leftist crybaby did what all too many of these bedwetters do: conjur up something that they had nothing close to actual experience in, but claim that said incident drove them to their phobic reaction (such as associating all veterans with Timothy McVeigh).

Hear this limosine liberal explain her rationale:

“I have to tell you, I was the United States Attorney for Arizona in the 90’s when Tim McVeigh bombed the Murrow building in Oklahoma City and unfortunately he was a vet — that’s where he got his training,” she said. “And so when I was told about the report, it rang true with me. This has happened in the past.” (source)

*sigh*

Why can't any liberal ever say what they mean, and mean what they say? It reveals their character when they repeatedly hide behind things that are obvious smokescreens. If Napolitano is SO stupid that she thinks the US Army teaches us infantry soldiers (which Timothy was, and so was I), to mix nitrogen fertilizer and gasoline in exact measurements in the back of a truck for remote detonation, she shouldn't be given the job, trust, or government clearance she has.

My guess is that of course she knows we're not trained for that kind of warfare, but that it sounds plausible for making the atrocious claim she did in her alarmist report only days earlier about "right-wing extremism". She is merely doing her administration's bidding of arousing civil unrest against what Barry considers to be his "enemies": Conservatives, veterans, and the GOP.

America needs to be afraid. Be very, very, afraid.