2011 - Not the Best Year for America

Comment by Dr. Ileana Johnson-Paugh, who grew up under communism in Romania so knows it when she sees it

This year was not a good year for America, for freedom, for democracy, for law and order. We watched the accelerated disintegration and reshaping of every local, state, and federal institution to the detriment of the American people.

We allowed the leftist minority to push their communist agenda to the point of dismantling traditions dear to generations of Americans who have fought hard to establish the most successful society on the planet.

We watched young people debase themselves publicly. Morality reached a new low of depravity on television, in the streets, on YouTube. Every narcissist and self-indulged egoist looked for his/her fifteen minutes of dubious fame. Our children emulated the depraved Hollywood.

We witnessed the useful idiots, filthy Occupiers of Wall Street, so-called defenders of the ninety-nine percenters, destroy and foul our streets, parks, and monuments with the support of some Democrat Congressmen and the White House. Police looked the other way in the face of millions of dollars worth of property destruction during months of squatting on private or public property. Millions in damages were paid by bankrupt cities and states, by citizens who diligently worked, supported their families, and paid taxes. Occupiers closed down ports in California, interfering with international trade, domestic trade, and the flow of goods while Homeland Security did nothing to prevent the closure.

We watched the mainstream media shill for the communist party and communist dictators across the world, while telling American people lies and giving deceptive statistics and falsehoods to support the anti-American agenda of adoring “progressives” in this country.

I never understood why socialists/Marxists called themselves progressive; “regressive” seemed a more appropriate description of their goals. Destroying progress and the capitalist economy is not exactly progressive. Adopting the blue color for socialism-loving Democrats seems like a misnomer since communism by any other name is red, coached in “green” on the outside, fiery red on the inside.

We witnessed the “environmentalist green” proponents weave their “smart-growth” plans to de-develop the United States to the Middle Ages and reduce population growth through crafty health care rationing, outlandish eugenics, and sterilization proposals in order to punish U.S. for the perceived social injustice to third world nations run by tin pot dictators.

We gave developing nations trillions of dollars towards economic development, progress, and to fight poverty, yet we seem to have lost this war since third world nations are just as poor now as they were in the beginning, kept so by the corruption of their leaders and their immediate supervisor, the United Nations.

We saw the end of the expensive war in Iraq that cost us at least $1.5 trillion and thousands of dead and maimed on both sides. After ten years of supposed liberation, nation and democracy building, we are watching the slow takeover of Iraq by Iran, and the certainty of civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Not only were we not reimbursed for the war effort, we did not buy much oil from Iraq; it was sold to China.

A head of state was deposed while another was assassinated without due process; his pleas for mercy and a trial were ignored. The touted Arab Spring turned into an Arab Winter with the Muslim Brotherhood the victors.

A minority of atheists, agnostics, and Islamists objected to our Christian symbols and traditions dear to all of us - mangers, crosses, and the Bible. Forbidding Christmas displays, Merry Christmas, carols, displaying crosses in public places, and displacing Bibles at Walter Reed Hospital gave fodder to our enemies to push on with the “radical transformation” of America.

Disagreeing with the current regime became hate speech and racism. Following in the footsteps of U.K.’s intrusive citizen control by a government that knows best did not seem like a farfetched possibility.

We heard the news media glorify the death of the North Korean tyrant. Reporters and political pundits made the murderer of millions into an eccentric saint. The MSM ignored the true hero and patriot, Vaclav Havel, who helped bring the peaceful end to the communist dictatorship. He freed millions of his own people who suffered 45 years of communist oppression. Vaclav had died within days of the butcher Kim Jong Il. Millions shed heartfelt tears for the passing of Vaclav Havel. North Koreans hired professional mourners. North Koreans sighed perhaps in relief but were too frightened, weak, and hungry to show any emotion.

We watched CNN and Anderson Cooper stir up the youth in Egypt into Twitter frenzy under the false pretense of democracy and freedom from Mubarak. Every free thinker knew that the Muslim Brotherhood extremists were waiting in the wings to take over the country while oil rich nations were providing money and weapons.

Congress, the Fed, and the White House spent trillions of dollars on schemes, bailouts, and stimuli that benefited foreign governments, domestic and foreign banks, AIG, Goldman Sachs, and created no jobs in America. On the contrary, the jobs czar shipped the GE imaging department overseas. Jobs were created in countries like Brazil, Mexico, and Norway with taxpayer money.

The debt-ceiling crisis pointed out the failure of this administration to lead the nation and its success in plunging our economy into insurmountable national debt, a massive threat to our national security.

Corruption had become so rampant, Americans wondered if the famous checks and balances that prevented any one entity from acquiring unbridled power and control over our nation still exist.

Congressional representatives on both sides of the isle legislated against the wishes of the American people, passing law after law in the dead of night, chipping away at our freedoms. Legislators were bribed in order to garner necessary votes.

The Democrat-controlled Senate had not passed a budget in almost three years, funding government in piecemeal increments with much fanfare and political posturing on the part of the Obama White House and the Democrats. Republicans caved every time, in spite of the fact that voters had given them mandate in the November elections for lesser government and less spending. As Mark Steyn said, the recent two-month payroll tax cut was the biggest cave since Tora Bora.

Elections were defrauded by ACORN and voter intimidation remains unpunished to this day. The Justice Department sued state after state that tried to pass laws to protect its borders and financial integrity from illegal immigrants’ free buffet of rights, demanded through organized street protests by La Raza and its many affiliates. Trampling and burning our flag, booing our national anthem, and waving foreign flags at national events and football games became accepted and mundane.

Dropping anchor babies, accepting social welfare, and demanding equal rights with Americans, illegal aliens brought an array of bankruptcies, hospital closings, school closings, unchecked diseases, increased gang violence, gang membership, and drug cartel murders at the border with Mexico. ACLU filed lawsuits against defenseless American citizens whose rights and safety were violated.

The leftist “social justice” movement and the “green” movement pushed by United Nations’ Agenda 21 and EPA brought us closer and closer to a Marxist dictatorship by a few oligarchs who pull the strings of our politicians. Lavish union donations kept the campaign coffers of the Democrat party well stocked.

Education became more and more politicized by the left, indoctrinating students into the “global citizen” and the “evil capitalists who are destroying the planet” mentality. Busy and ignorant parents looked the other way, implicitly accepting this indoctrination. Vigilant parents home-schooled their children. Textbooks rewrote history and morality to suit the leftist agenda.

We experienced more and more censorship on line, in life, in academia, and in print. We became more of a police state, under surveillance for our views, our patriotism, and our military service. TSA received increased powers and authority to strip-search us of our dignity and molest us in the name of public safety.

More and more non-elected bureaucrats gained fiat power over our freedom, our energy, our industry, our speech, assembly, our health care, choice of schools, banking, finance, land use, water use, and home ownership.

What will 2012 bring? We have high hopes and expectations. Next year will be the defining moment of our nation – whether we continue to exist as free men and women or we cease to exist as a constitutional republic and become another tin pot banana republic dictatorship ruled by a handful of oligarchs.

SOURCE

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Obama signs compromise defence bill

In its final form the bill does seem to leave open the possibility of challenging military detentions of U.S. citizens in American courts but Obama's signing statement would appear to strengthen that

US President Barack Obama signed a huge defence Bill today, despite having "serious reservations'' that it seeks to force his hand on Guantanamo Bay and military trials for terror suspects.

Mr Obama, who is holidaying in Hawaii, added a signing statement to the $662 billion law, laying out objections to its clauses on detaining and prosecuting suspects, and directing government agencies on how to interpret them.

"I have signed this Bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists,'' Mr Obama said.

The measure, which passed by wide majorities in Congress, says the US military has the power to detain terror suspects without trial for as long as the US global anti-terror campaign is waged.

Mr Obama was particularly troubled by a section of the Bill which appears to leave open the option that a US citizen who is considered a terror suspect could be detained indefinitely in military custody. "I want to clarify that my administration will not authorise the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens,'' Mr Obama said. "Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.''

However, the President said he believed the Bill did grant him sufficient latitude to interpret its provisions in compliance with the US Constitution and the laws of war.

The White House had initially threatened to veto the Bill because of the detainee measures, but backed off when a compromise version was agreed with lawmakers.

A signing statement lays out what the president's understanding is of a measure he is signing into law and tells government officials and agencies exactly how the new legislation should be implemented.

SOURCE

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Why the Left Is Losing the Argument over the Financial Crisis

Fair-minded people are persuaded by facts, not invective

To the extent that we have had any success in challenging the conventional narrative about the causes of the crisis, it is because fair-minded people are persuaded by facts, not invective. Our argument is and has been that the financial crisis would not have occurred but for government housing policy implemented principally through Fannie and Freddie and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Although there were a number of such policies, the most important were the affordable housing requirements first imposed on Fannie and Freddie in 1992 and expanded and tightened by HUD through 2007.

Summarized below are the original numbers we relied on, taken from Fannie and Freddie’s own data and from the views of bank regulators—and now supplemented with additional data from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent complaints against certain officers of Fannie and Freddie. Of particular interest are Fannie and Freddie’s non-prosecution agreements with the SEC, in which they agree with facts that confirm—and in many cases go beyond—our original research concerning the scope of the GSEs’ subprime and Alt-A exposure. These are facts, and Nocera and others who might wish it otherwise should become familiar with them.

For example, in its non-prosecution agreement Freddie agreed that as of June 30, 2008, it had $244 billion in subprime loans, comprising 14 percent of its credit guaranty portfolio, rather than the $6 billion it had previously disclosed. Freddie also agreed that it had $541 billion in reduced documentation loans alone, vastly more than the $190 billion in previously disclosed Alt-A loans which Freddie had said included loans with reduced documentation.

While the SEC documents about $1.03 trillion in previously undisclosed subprime and Alt-A loans in Fannie and Freddie’s credit guaranty portfolios, an estimated $812.8 billion, or about 80 percent, were already accounted for in the totals of Fannie and Freddie subprime and Alt-A exposures included in Pinto’s Forensic Study and Wallison’s Dissent from the majority report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

The SEC findings add $219 billion and 1.43 million loans to our original Fannie and Freddie subprime and Alt-A totals, bringing the combined subprime and Alt-A total to $2.041 trillion and 13.37 million loans.

All told, after adding the SEC’s new data to our original estimates, there were approximately 28 million subprime and Alt-A loans outstanding on June 30, 2008, before the financial crisis, with a value of approximately $4.8 trillion. This was half of all mortgages in the United States. Of these loans, over 74 percent were on the books of U.S. government agencies and firms subject to government housing finance policies. This shows where the demand for these low quality loans came from. Fannie and Freddie were themselves exposed to more than 13 million subprime or Alt-A loans, or 65 percent of the government total.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

There is an article here that gives substance to the old accusation that Wall St runs America -- and Obama and the Democrats are up to their necks in it. Because it is an old accusation, the article is very long. It has to give chapter and verse about the people involved. So I will not attempt to excerpt or summarize but rather say something I seldom say: Read the whole thing.

In defense of bourgeois civilization: "The real danger of the Dawson piece is its erudition in big things and its deep disengagement with the small things that make life good, like clean clothes, medical care, running water, job opportunities, access to food to feed the children, and the like. He cares nothing for these things. He is content to simply praise the past for its Michelangos and Berninis and condemn the present for its Lady Gagas and Justin Beibers. It’s really a cheap trick and an obvious one: pick the best of the past and the worst of the present and you can paint a picture of relentless decline."

Public property killed Christmas: "When schools and institutions are government run they are captive to whoever runs government. When Christians ran things Christianity was everywhere. Now that secularists run the show its secularism that dominates. Had America gone libertarian from its founding all schools and institutions would be private along with virtually all other property in the country."

NYT selloff: "The New York Times Co. said Tuesday that it will sell its group of 16 small, regional newspapers to Halifax Media Holdings LLC for $143 million. The newspapers being sold include The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif.; the News Chief in Winter Haven, Fla.; and The Tuscaloosa News in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Halifax Media is based in Daytona Beach, Fla., and owns the Daytona Beach News-Journal. “The sale of our Regional Media Group will enable The New York Times Company to continue our transformation to a digitally focused, multiplatform media company,” said New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger. Last year, the group accounted for 11 percent of The Times Co.’s $2.4 billion in annual revenue, according to the company’s annual report. The Times Co., like many newspaper publishers, has struggled in recent years"

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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