The Smoke Break

You want some brie with that whine?

U.N. Fires Another Shot At U.S. Sovereignty: Tax The Internet

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The U.N. continues to grapple with the difficult question of how to subdue and corral the output of that shining beacon of capitalistic opportunity that is the United States.  As with the Global Poverty Act, it is only the most noble of reasons that now send it out sniffing around like a fat rat looking for fallen crumbs in the pantry.  Noble on the surface, that is.

 The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a plan to ask governments to impose a global consumer tax on such things as Internet activity or everyday financial transactions like paying bills online.

Such a scheme could raise “tens of billions of dollars” on behalf of the United Nations’ public health arm from a broad base of consumers, which would then be used to transfer drug-making research, development and manufacturing capabilities, among other things, to the developing world.

The multibillion-dollar “indirect consumer tax” is only one of a “suite of proposals” for financing the rapid transformation of the global medical industry that will go before WHO’s 34-member supervisory Executive Board at its biannual meeting in Geneva.

 WHO’s so-called Expert Working Group has also suggested asking rich countries to set aside fixed portions of their gross domestic product to finance the shift in worldwide research and development, as well as asking cash-rich developing nations like China, India or Venezuela to pony up more of the money.

But the taxation ideas draw the most interest. The expert panel cites a number of possible examples. Among them:

—a 10 per cent tax on the international arms trade, “which might net about $5 billion per annum”;

—a “digital tax or ‘hit’ tax.” The report says the levy “could yield tens of billions of U.S. dollars from a broad base of users“;

—a financial transaction tax. The report approvingly cites a levy in Brazil that charged 0.38 percent on bills paid online and on unspecified “major withdrawals.” The report says the Brazilian tax was raising an estimated $20 billion per year until it was cancelled for unspecified reasons.

The panel concludes that “taxes would provide greater certainty once in place than voluntary contributions,” even as the report urges WHO’s executive board to promote all of the alternatives, and more, to support creation of a “global health research and innovation coordination and funding mechanism” for the planned revolution in medical research, development and distribution.

I read this and my Constitutionally-driven heart skips a beat or two in fear.  Certainly I don’t begrudge giving help to developing nations, no one does.  Allowing an organization as ineffective and corrupt as the U.N. to handle such things is bad enough but when you consider the issue of the inherent subversion of United States sovereignty contained in all of their wealth-transfer proposals, it’s a nightmare. 

A nightmare already testing the waters, whether we realize it or not:

Starting [now], whenever you buy an airline ticket at a travel agency or online, there’ll be a new question to answer before you hand over your credit card:   Would you be willing to donate $2 to help fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa?

It sounds like a small step, and many airline travelers, already irritated by compulsory surcharges for fuel, baggage and wider seats, may simply ignore it.  But behind this call for a voluntary contribution is an unprecedented worldwide effort to make up a shortfall in official government aid to poor countries — a shortfall exacerbated by the world financial crisis. 

The scheme, the idea of a small U.N. agency, is backed by the travel industry and heavyweights of international aid such as the William J. Clinton Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It will be formally announced in New York City on Sept. 23 on the fringes of the U.N. General Assembly, and accompanied by a marketing blitz. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, are expected to participate in the launch, as well as the chief executives of the three companies that have made it technically possible: Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport/Galileo, who run the reservation and ticketing systems for most of the world’s airlines. Barring any last-minute technical or legal hitches, the scheme will roll out in late January in the U.S. and several European countries, including Britain, Germany, Spain and Switzerland.

I will repeat once again that Americans are the most generous people on this Earth.  Our assistance to other countries for any reason, whether humanitarian or military, is generally more in a single instance than that of all other countries combined.  We help because we want to help, not because someone says that we must.  And we are able to do this because we are a free people.  A people who hold fast to the inalienable right to pursue what makes us happy.  And when people are happy, most are only too willing to share.

Someone needs to kick the WHO to the curb.

 

Operation Desperation In Massachusetts

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You know it’s really bad when President Walking Eagle decides that he needs to use our hard-earned tax dollars to fly to Massachusetts to do his favorite thing in the world:  campaign.

Yes, His Transparency is going to take time out of his busy weekend to fly to Boston in an attempt to inspire Democrats there to get out and vote next Tuesday for his latest little lapdogdancer-wannabe, state attorney general Martha Coakley.  The same Martha Coakley who went down to Washington this week to collect campaign contributions from special interest lobbyists, the result of which are little more than a flurry of negative attack ads against state senator Scott Brown that either contain misspellings or are so blatantly offensive they are quickly and stealthily pulled from places like You Tube.

Yessiree.  Partnering up with the Chicago machine is really going to show the good people of Massachusetts that you have taken their views against this administration’s policies to heart, Martha.

That the TOTUS is so willing to ignore the wishes and needs of the majority of Americans by spending their dimes to actively campaign in a state election is equally inspiring.

Flying pig, anyone?

Outright Abortion Funding Surfaces From Reid’s Senate Health Care Bill

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Obama said, “I see the polls. … I catch the occasional blog poster, cable clip that breathlessly declares what something means for a political party, without really talking about what it means for a country.  But I also know what happens once we get this done, once we sign this … bill into law:  The American people will suddenly learn that this bill does things they like and doesn’t do things people have been trying to say it does. The worst fears will prove groundless.”

Groundless?  When nothing managed by this administration has accomplished anything that could be honestly determined as successful, I don’t think it is groundless that as the passage of time rightly allows for better understanding of what Senator Harry Reid hastily scribbled as pork & bribes into his “manager’s amendment” that became the Senate version of health care “reform” we find more and more reason to be very afraid. 

Another report has been released about federal funding for abortion in the Senate bill.  And clever bastards that they are, it was assumed no one would notice or, if they did, they wouldn’t really understand how such a thing would be allowed, smoked over by the ineffective language included to help buy Senator Ben Nelson’s 60th vote.  It is yet more damning evidence that this entire effort cannot be allowed to be birthed behind closed doors nor in such insane haste.

Buried deep in the 383-page Manager’s Amendment was new language making a direct appropriation of funds for Community Health Centers or CHCs (which are also called Federally Qualified Health Centers, or FQHCs), totaling $7 billion ($7,000,000,000) over five years. (See Sec. 10503 on page 2355 of the Senate-passed bill, H.R. 3590.) Because this is a direct appropriation in the health care bill itself, these funds will not flow through the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services. Therefore, these funds would not be covered by the Hyde Amendment, which is a limitation provision that has been attached to the annual HHS appropriations bill in past years.  Nor is there any other language in the Senate-passed bill that would prevent the use of the new funds to pay for abortions performed at Community Health Centers. (Note:  Section 1303 of the bill contains certain language pertaining to abortion, but that language applies only to a proposed program of tax credits and cost sharing for health insurance for low-income individuals; it has no bearing at all on Section 10503, the CHC section.)

Also, there is no restriction in the current laws authorizing CHCs that restricts these centers from performing abortions. [See 42 U.S.C. 254b and Section 330 of the Public Health Services Act.]

CHCs can only use these so-called “Section 330 funds” for purposes within the scope of their grants, but one can assume that grant applications that included (for example) “reproductive
services” would not be deemed objectionable under the Obama Administration, and abortions could be subsumed under various other classifications as well.

This is not a merely hypothetical concern. There is already an organized effort underway by the Reproductive Health Access Project to encourage Community Health Centers to perform abortions, “as an integrated part of primary health care.” For evidence, see “Frequently Asked Questions About Integrating Abortion into Community Health Centers, Potential Obstacles and Possible Solutions” at http://www.reproductiveaccess.org/getting_started/faq.htm

Indeed, the Reproductive Health Access Project and the Abortion Access Project have produced an “administrative billing guide” to help CHCs integrate abortion into their practices within the confines of existing federal and state restrictions.  See “Administrative Billing Guide for Medical Abortion at Facilities that Receive Title X, Section 330, and other Federal Funding,” at http://www.reproductiveaccess.org/med_ab/downloads/Admin_Billing_Guide.pdf.

I wonder if anyone in Nancy’s Nuthouse who supported the Stupak amendment will do the hypocritical Blue Dog roll over and swallow this one whole if those Democrat closed-door reconciliation meetings don’t pull it out?

The Real Importance Of The Massachusetts Special Election

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One of the critical elements in next Tuesdays special senatorial election in Massachusetts is not about a Senate vote for or against government takeover of health care.  As is the case with all elections for national representation, the critical element has only and everything to do with ideology and character.  It is, one could say, a battle between good versus evil; one example of the good being those things in our nation’s laws that presume a person is innocent until proven guilty and shall be judged by a jury of their peers based on the weight of evidence.  Evil comes in the form of a lemming-like, pseudo-moralistic belief not that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, but that equality and therefore justice must, by any means possible, extend to outcomes, not effort.

Such evils have long tainted the American legal system and many are the resulting stories of those unjustly imprisoned for crimes they did not commit simply because of what can only be called moral lynchings; a driving, zealous need to pin the guilt somewhere…anywhere…to nobly insure a victim, even a manufactured victim, receives “equal justice”.  As our ability to use science in crime investigation becomes better and better, though, one sees the tragedies of such misplaced blindness and it is most unfortunate that one who now wishes to serve at a national level is, by all accounts, one of those who works not for good, but is instead party to the moral lynch mob pursuit of justice.

The story of the Amiraults case is a long one.  But it bears close scrutiny for, as with jetting down to Washington to meet with lobbyists to beg for special interest campaign contributions, using her position and state resources to work on her election campaign, and rushing so fast to put out a negative campaign ad against her opponent that the name of her state is misspelled, it demonstrates the ideology and character of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley.

In a nutshell, the case against the Amiraults was one of child abuse.  Evidence came in the form of children’s testimony to things like seeing a 4-year old being raped with a butcher knife, amazingly with not a drop of blood shed, let alone evidence of injury; the public anal rape of a child tied to a tree in front of the school, and cutting off the leg of a squirrel.  The defendents, two women and one man, were convicted and sent to prison; it was only many years later that any real justice prevailed, but it did not come through the efforts of Martha Coakley.

“…outraged, Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein presided over a widely publicized hearings into the case resulting in findings that all the children’s testimony was tainted. He said that “Every trick in the book had been used to get the children to say what the investigators wanted.” The Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly—which had never in its 27 year history taken an editorial position on a case—published a scathing one directed at the prosecutors “who seemed unwilling to admit they might have sent innocent people to jail for crimes that had never occurred.”

“It was clear, when Martha Coakley took over as the new Middlesex County district attorney in 1999, that public opinion was running sharply against the prosecutors in the case. Violet Amirault was now gone. Ill and penniless after her release, she had been hounded to the end by prosecutors who succeeded in getting the Supreme Judicial Court to void the women’s reversals of conviction. She lay waiting all the last days of her life, suitcase packed, for the expected court order to send her back to prison. Violet would die of cancer before any order came in September 1997.

 

“That left Cheryl alone, facing rearrest. In the face of the increasing furor surrounding the case, Ms. Coakley agreed to revise and revoke her sentence to time served—but certain things had to be clear, she told the press. Cheryl’s case, and that of Gerald, she explained, had nothing to do with one another—a startling proposition given the horrific abuse charges, identical in nature, of which all three of the Amiraults had been convicted.

“No matter: When women were involved in such cases, the district attorney explained, it was usually because of the presence of “a primary male offender.” According to Ms. Coakley’s scenario, it was Gerald who had dragged his mother and sister along. Every statement she made now about Gerald reflected the same view, and the determination that he never go free. No one better exemplified the mindset and will of the prosecutors who originally had brought this case.

“Before agreeing to revise Cheryl’s sentence to time served, Ms. Coakley asked the Amiraults’ attorney, James Sultan, to pledge—in exchange—that he would stop representing Gerald and undertake no further legal action on his behalf. She had evidently concluded that with Sultan gone—Sultan, whose mastery of the case was complete—any further effort by Gerald to win freedom would be doomed. Mr. Sultan, of course, refused.

In 2000, the Massachusetts Governor’s Board of Pardons and Paroles met to consider a commutation of Gerald’s sentence. After nine months of investigation, the board, reputed to be the toughest in the country, voted 5-0, with one abstention, to commute his sentence. Still more newsworthy was an added statement, signed by a majority of the board, which pointed to the lack of evidence against the Amiraults, and the “extraordinary if not bizarre allegations” on which they had been convicted.”

None of this gave Martha Coakley pause.  Indeed, she continued to relentlessly pursue the matter, and eventually convinced the governor to deny Gerald Amirault’s parole in 2002.  He was finally paroled in 2004, but with such tight restrictions employment is pretty much impossible.  But at least he is “free”.

“Questioned about the Amiraults in the course of her current race for the U.S. Senate, she told reporters of her firm belief that the evidence against the Amiraults was “formidable” and that she was entirely convinced “those children were abused at day care center by the three defendants.”

“What does this say about her candidacy? (Ms. Coakley declined to be interviewed.) If the current attorney general of Massachusetts actually believes, as no serious citizen does, the preposterous charges that caused the Amiraults to be thrown into prison—the butcher knife rape with no blood, the public tree-tying episode, the mutilated squirrel and the rest—that is powerful testimony to the mind and capacities of this aspirant to a Senate seat. It is little short of wonderful to hear now of Ms. Coakley’s concern for the rights of terror suspects at Guantanamo—her urgent call for the protection of the right to the presumption of innocence.”

Though I know use of the word “wonderful” is dripping with sarcasm, in plain English, what we hear from Martha Coakley is the same frightening hypocrisy against which we, the people, are actively rallying.  Frankly, this is not a woman of good character; indeed her hands are almost as bloody from this particular witch hunt as were those of the senator she is seeking to replace.  The presence of such bloody hands should serve as fair warning to those who would still believe Coakley is in any way capable of or willing to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Let Them Eat…Pizza?

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The out-of-the-closet progressive liberal Democratic party is in well-deserved tatters and struggling to come up with a plan to lull voters into the complacency needed maintain their majority in the 2010 mid-term elections, as well as already planning His Transparency’s reelection bid.  In their stereotypical stealth mode, behind closed doors, the White House is picking favorites in upcoming races across the country.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that:

President Barack Obama’s aides are taking pains to operate out of public view to avoid repeating embarrassing miscues made last year, when efforts to pressure unpopular New York Gov. David Paterson into retirement hit front pages and proved unsuccessful.

Embarrassing, indeed.  But to the Democrats, it’s just another speedbump.   

The exit of Michigan Lt. Gov. John Cherry from that state’s gubernatorial contest came as party insiders grew increasingly concerned that Mr. Cherry faced an uphill struggle to win, putting a chill on potential donors, according to Democratic officials.

When Mr. Cherry dropped out, citing fund-raising problems, White House officials began discussions with a potential replacement, Denise Ilitch, whose family owns the Detroit Red Wings hockey team, Detroit Tigers baseball team and Little Caesars Pizza chain.

Ms. Ilitch is an elected member of the state Board of Regents. Strategists believe her personal wealth and image as a businesswoman and political outsider could give Democrats a boost in an economically ailing state where the party’s top official, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, is unpopular.

Now there’s a picture for you.  A wealthy capitalist Democrat handing out $5 hot & ready Little Caesar’s pizzas to the great unwashed masses of Michigan’s unemployed Kool-Aid drinkers to buy their votes.

But, like those 10% unemployed across the country, it ain’t working.  Despite the Demons howling in Massachusetts (“Martha Coakley is running to fill the rest of Ted Kennedy’s term, and her opponent is a far-right tea-bagger Republican,” Chuck Schumer wrote in a fundraising email) it’s just been reported by the Boston Globe that Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown has a 4 point lead in the polls.  Though that’s within the poll’s margin of error, other details show just how fall the self-perceived mighty have fallen:

Brown’s popularity is solid. He enjoys a 57 percent favorability rating compared to just 19 percent unfavorable. Coakley’s favorability is 49 percent; her unfavorability, 41 percent.

From the poll itself:

In the race for U.S. Senate, who will you vote for?

Scott Brown: 50%

Martha Coakley: 46%

Joseph L. Kennedy: 3%

Undecided: 1%

In your opinion, who won the debates?

Scott Brown: 41%

Martha Coakley: 25%

Joseph L. Kennedy: 2%

Undecided: 31%

As a U.S. Senator, do you think Martha Coakley will be an independent voice or tow the Democratic Party line?

Independent voice: 24%

Tow the party line: 64%

Undecided: 11%

Do you support the proposed national near universal healthcare law?

Yes: 36%

No: 51%

Undecided: 13%

Can the federal government afford the proposed national healthcare law?

Yes: 32%

No: 61%

Undecided: 7%

And despite those words of the White House laying low with which we started this piece, like all those other words that have come out of the White House to date, there’s a strong push among some Democrats to get His Transparency to visit Massachusetts this weekend on behalf of Martha Coakley so he sent an “impassioned video plea” for Attorney General Martha Coakley to thousands of Bay State voters today.  But Scott Brown’s called it right:

“He should stay away and let Martha and I discuss the issues one on one,” Brown said. “The machine is coming out of the woodwork to get her elected. They’re bringing in outsiders, and we don’t need them.”

Free-Market Capitalist Satisfaction

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There was something very satisfying about today’s news that Ford’s Fusion Hybrid midsize sedan has taken the 2010 North American Car of the Year award and that its Transit Connect compact van was voted 2010 North American Truck of the Year at this year’s 2010 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

It isn’t common for a single automaker to win both awards at the same time, and that Ford has taken both top honors while staying out of the clutches of the federal government is, well, one real swell argument for free-market capitalism.

Kudos, Ford.  Based on recent sales figures, it’s been obvious that Americans have been thinking of Ford first; it’s nice that those in the industry do, too.

The Enemy Within: Islamic Jihadists Controlling U.S. Anti-Terrorism

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PJTV’s Bill Whittle has posted a very disturbing look at how U.S. counter-terrorism efforts are being controlled by the Islamic jihadists.  Sources within the intelligence community have stepped forward to present some of the details about the liberal progressive politically-correct mindset that is driving an operational model that directly endangers America.

You can watch the interview here (you may have to register first) but I find the information contained in it so unsettling and important that I took the time to transcribe the interview.  Key points have been highlighted.

BILL WHITTLE:  Hi, I’m Bill Whittle from PJTV and I’m standing in front of what is very likely the most photographed structure on the face of the earth.  Inside the White House sits the President of the United States of America; the most powerful man in the world.  The President bears enormous responsibilities, and primary among them is to defend the citizens of the United States of America.  We’re here in Washington today to speak to a Department of Defense analyst and counter-terrorism official who, requesting anonymity, has made some very remarkable charges.  Charges that both the political and the military structure of the highest levels of our government are infiltrated by the very agents of the enemy against which we find ourselves fighting today.

BILL WHITTLE:   Well, you were given an assignment from the Joint Chiefs, essentially from the upper levels of the Pentagon, to understand what the Islamic jihadi enemy’s ideology and operational methods might be.  Is that a fair statement?

DoD Analyst:  Yes.

BILL WHITTLE:   Ok.  What did you discover?

DOD ANALYST:  Well, I was expecting to find that, well, there was some basis to the jihadi arguments that their jihadist warfare, that there were competing arguments and that we could leverage these competing arguments but because they were claiming Islamic laws as basis for their actions we had to start there.  And over a long period of time I ended up collecting a large body of Islamic law, an enormous amount of it available in English, and realized that if Islamic law is the criteria by which you measure legitimacy or illegitimacy you can’t show that the moderates have a doctrinal basis for the position they hold, and you can’t show that on the statement of the law the radicals are wrong. 

I was expecting to find competing views that had some merit. I was expecting to find that the moderate view would be the dominant view, and we’d have to figure out how to make these arguments so that people in the Middle East would know what it was, and could not find it.

Now, I could find that you’re not allowed to fight a jihad you can’t win, and that’s a limiting factor, but when you get to actually what published Islamic law says, it supports the radicals and what they say.  And you come to find, after you kind of get a sense for the language of jihad, and the language of how Islamic law works, that it’s pervasive, even in the U.S. Muslim community.

BILL WHITTLE:   So you got out, you do this research that you were tasked to do by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Department of Defense; you come back and you say to them, “It’s the radicals that appear to have the doctrinal basis, not the moderates.”

DOD ANALYST:  That’s correct.

BILL WHITTLE:   Ok.  Well, presumably, this would be an interesting piece of information for our Defense department to have.  What were the consequences of you coming back with this information?

DOD ANALYST:  Shock. Because what my experience brought me to was the complete unresponsiveness to facts that as a practical matter they experience every day.  I think that gives way, on a different level, to one that basically has had me believing or holding that if you have no profession…if you have no factual basis to hold a position, you have no professional basis to support it.  If you’re professionals, then you have a duty to be competent; that includes the duty to know.  And if you are national security analysts who are professionals, you’re in violation of your oath to be competent, you’re in violation of your oath to protect and defend.  It just seems they picked up our whole national security apparatus and moved it from a factual legal basis to one that supports the narratives.  But it just struck me that when you hit a certain level, and I don’t want to sound too cynical, but at the same time it seemed where the point at which your future promotion was dependent upon toeing a party line as…let me rephrase that; toeing a narrative as opposed to orienting on facts, or I witnessed a complete shutdown.  A friend of mine used to call my brief, “the redco brief” or the “guilty knowledge brief”, meaning you see this brief that clearly lays out facts that must be accounted for, and at a certain point they just stopped coming.

BILL WHITTLE:   So when officials started telling you, “Hey, we’re not interested in this; we just really don’t care to hear this,” I mean, how pervasive was this attitude?  Was it large numbers of people or one or two key individuals?  I mean, just exactly what are we looking at?

DOD ANALYST:  I can’t give you names and numbers; I have to say, in fairness, there are scores of senior people who got it and were supportive, but it seems that the organizational emphasis, the institutional emphasis, was in the other direction.  And so you would get it in terms of people who would come up and tell you, “We really support you but we can only go so far.”  You know, I supported some missions where the people who I supported made it very clear to me that using the information I used really brought success in a stunning way.  And for a while there I thought that just the sheer force of those successful things would cause some people to do a double look.  It didn’t happen.

BILL WHITTLE:   Well, immediately after we concluded that interview here in the Mayflower Hotel, a second whistleblower came forward.  We received a phone call from another gentleman who’s also extremely concerned about the infiltration of radical Islam into law enforcement and defense.  Let’s go upstairs now and listen to parts of our interview with a former special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

BILL WHITTLE:   Ok, can you start by giving me a quick thumbnail of your professional experience?

FORMER FBI AGENT: I spent nearly 15 years working in the government with a primary expertise on the Islamic movement in the United States, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islamic doctrine.

BILL WHITTLE:   And which department did you work for?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  The FBI.

BILL WHITTLE:   So you were a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  Yes.

BILL WHITTLE:   Ok.  You assert that we’re getting many of our cues on how to react to this terrorist threat from the Muslim Brotherhood, that essentially we’re letting our enemy tell us how to fight them.  Now, I think this is a critical point that we really need to make clear:  is this speculation on your part?  Or is this credible, factual information that you’ve been able to obtain as a former special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation? 

FORMER FBI AGENT:  It’s all factual information and it’s open to the public to digest if they so desire.  These documents from the Holy Land Foundation trial are available online.  All you need to do is Google “Holy Land Foundation”.  The documents also show that every major Muslim organization in the United States is a Muslim Brotherhood front, specifically the most prominent organizations.  The two most prominent organizations in the United States, or three most prominent, are the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America).  CAIR is a Hamas entity; it is Hamas; and ISA is a huge financial entity for Hamas in the United States.  And CAIR and ISNA are the two groups that the U.S. government, including the FBI, DoD, state department, DHS, look to and utilize to do their outreach with the Muslim community in America.

BILL WHITTLE:   Can you tell us how these radical Islamic organizations interface directly with the federal government, in terms of the Defense Department, in terms of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, local law enforcement?  How exactly do these radical Muslim groups use their connections to suppress the defenses of the United States against these type of activities?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  That’s a great question.  At the national level, or the FBI and DHS, they actually are invited in by general council’s office of the FBI and DHS to sit in on brainstorming about investigative techniques that FBI agents are using in the field….

BILL WHITTLE:   I have to stop you because, frankly, that sounds so absurd that I have to really make sure I’m understanding you correctly.  Are you saying that the radicalized Muslim groups are invited in to learn our investigative techniques?  That they are invited in to get their feedback on how we’re going to fight against them?  Is that…is that what I understood you to say?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  Yes.  So for instance, in the FBI, the general council of the FBI, Valerie Caproni, invited these Muslim organizations, as well as the ACLU and other groups, in to make sure the investigative techniques and the attorney general guidelines and the way the FBI was going to implement the attorney general guidelines was ok and not offensive to these organizations.  As an investigator, and certainly speaking for many others that I know, that is…ummm…that’s nothing short of outrageous.  If you can imagine any group, whether it’s the Costa Nostra or the mafia or any kind of organized crime syndicate, certainly the Muslim Brotherhood could loosely fall under that category, certainly it’s much, much more significant than the mafia was, but to invite them in to make sure that our investigative techniques aren’t offensive to John Gotti; I mean, it’s absurd on the face of it but that’s exactly what we’re doing.

BILL WHITTLE:   Sure. Because you’re revealing in great detail exactly what your investigative and interrogation techniques are, right?  I mean, in a meeting like that you’re giving away the farm, essentially, in terms of how you’re going to be operating in order to make sure that their feelings don’t get hurt.  And then you’re essentially giving the enemy all of the details about how you plan to operate against them, right?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  Certainly a significant strategic look a how we’re doing things,yes; as well as some specific techniques.

BILL WHITTLE:   Well, you’d mentioned earlier that there’s no training; that people ranging from upper-level administrators in the FBI down to some local sheriff’s deputy in some county out in the middle of Arizona, some place local, local law enforcement; you mentioned that there’s no training for these people whatsoever in terms of the real nature of the threat.  Why is that?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  Well, again, I think there are a lot of pieces to that but number one is when the people advising the assistant directors, the special agents in charge in the FBI, the assistant secretaries, and the Department of Homeland Security, etc., when those are Muslim Brothers you’re not going to get training that discusses Islamic doctrine and who the Muslim Brotherhood is, their history and their influence, and their penetration operations here in the United States.  And, to boot, the people who ARE training the FBI are groups like CAIR, which is a Hamas entity and an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing throughout the history of the United States.

BILL WHITTLE:   Now I have to stop you again because this is virtually impossible for me to process.  You’re saying that the training that our counter-terrorism forces get is determined by radical Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood?

FORMER FBI AGENT:  No, I’m not saying it’s determined.  It’s given by them.  They have been in our FBI field offices, they’ve been in our FBI headquarters teaching and training our agents and our employees.

BILL WHITTLE:   Is this not too dissimilar to saying that the people who were determining the landing zones for  the D-Day invasion of Germany were Nazi S.S. officials giving out information on gunner placements, and where the best places to come ashore are; is it too far-fetched to say that? 

FORMER FBI AGENT:  It’s not about analogy.

BILL WHITTLE:   And then when the plans are finalized and all of the operational details are locked and sealed up in a little envelope, and then it’s handed over to the Gestapo and hopefully they won’t do anything mean with the information.

FORMER FBI AGENT:  Right.

BILL WHITTLE:   I think that as an average American citizen listening to this information, my first response would be, “How on God’s green earth did this happen?  How did this get this far?”

FORMER FBI AGENT:  This has happened because the Muslim Brotherhood has a long-term strategy; they are well-organized with hundreds of front groups that support their public relations, their research arms, they’ve insinuated themselves into our largest universities, they have Muslim student’s associations, which is the first Muslim Brotherhood group that formed in the United States in 1963.  MSA is on every major college campus in the United States, recruiting people to the Brotherhood in our own campuses.

BILL WHITTLE:   So even something as innocuous as a Muslim student association at any American university campus, you can categorically connect those campus groups to the most virulent, radical, anti-American organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood? 

FORMER FBI AGENT:  I can say that that’s 100% legally and factually true. The evidence entered into the Holy Land Foundation trial demonstrated the Muslim Students Association was the first Muslim Brotherhood entity in the United States formed in 1963 for the sole purpose of being and establishing the Muslim Brotherhood here, and it continues today to be a Muslim Brotherhood entity that has expanded and recruits students on campuses in the United States.

I did a Google search and the NEA Foundation site has a good compilation of court documents, etc.  for the Holy Land Foundation trials. 

I will let Clare Lopez, Vice President of the Intelligence Summit and a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies have the final word:

To be sure, enemy influence within the Intelligence Community didn’t begin in 2009. In fact, the blueprint for the Muslim Brotherhood information warfare operation against the West goes back to a 1981 MB document called “The Project” that was discovered in a raid in Switzerland. More recently, the FBI discovered the MB’s 1991 U.S. Manifesto in a 2004 raid, a manifesto that not only confirmed the existence of the Brotherhood in the U.S., but outlined its organizational structure and agenda in this country.

The dozens of groups listed as associates in that document include a number who’ve succeeded in forging close relationships inside the structures of U.S. national security. One of them is the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA, another unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial). The FBI itself has maintained a longstanding liaison relationship with ISNA officials and placed ads in its monthly publication seeking Muslim applicants to become agents. A top FBI lawyer named Valerie Caproni joined senior ISNA official Louay Safi on a 2008 panel discussion at Yale University for a discussion entitled “Behind the Blindfold of Justice: Security, Individual Rights, & Minority Communities After 9/11.” Worse yet, in the wake of the horrific November 2009 military jihad assault at Ft. Hood that took fourteen lives and left dozens injured, it was revealed that Louay Safi was at Ft. Hood providing seminar presentations about Islam to U.S. troops about to deploy to Afghanistan. That’s an amazing record of successful penetration. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg.     

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Until and unless the United States proves capable of appointing and electing officials to the top ranks of our national security leadership who both understand and reject the influence of Islamic jihad groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, our country will be incapable of effective defense against either kinetic or stealth jihad attack. We can do better than this…..much better.

Dems Planning Next Hidden Tax Increase

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We all know that our federal witholding has been increased this year, thanks to Obama’s “no new taxes” promises.  But now Congress is looking to raid your pocketbook even more, again without having to actually pass legislation to do so.

Today’s Wall Street Journal talks about this latest Democratic fundraiser.

We’re guessing that when Americans think of outlaw industries, tax preparers aren’t the first rogues that come to mind. But lo, the nation’s green eyeshades are now destined to come under the regulatory rule of the Internal Revenue Service as part of the Obama Administration’s latest revenue grab.

Under the plan, which would begin with the 2011 tax season, anyone who takes money to help people with their taxes will have to register with the IRS, and eventually pass competency tests and sign up for continuing education. So having made tax filing so complicated that most Americans need help with their forms, Washington now wants to raise the price of such counsel by regulating advisers in a way that may reduce their supply.

While the progressive liberals favorite slur is to claim profitable private enterprise are evil “corporate oligarchies”, they are only too glad to hop into bed with them when it suits their purposes of ursurping the Rights of American citizens.  The excuse being bantied about this time is that undocumented IRS claim of $290 billion/year in alleged “unreported income”.

Cheering the new regulations are big tax preparers like H&R Block, who are only too happy to see the feds swoop in to put their mom-and-pop seasonal competitors out of business. Kathryn Fulton, senior vice president for government relations, told the Washington Post the company was glad to support rules that meant H&R Block “won’t be competing against people who aren’t regulated and don’t have the same standards as we do.” With fewer tax preparers in the market, H&R Block will find it easier to raise prices.

It might also live to regret that. The new IRS blueprint is already in play in California, whose rules for regulating tax preparers seem to have inspired Commissioner Shulman, including his new education and registration requirements. To get taxpayers away from preparers and off-the-shelf software, the state is pushing programs like CalFile, which allows voters to file returns through a state run electronic program. Under the ReadyReturn program, the state will even scour your W-2 for the year and send you a return for your signature already filled out. The eventual goal seems to be to have the government do everybody’s state tax return, like the French do.

The feds are now getting in on this act, with Montana Democrat Max Baucus and Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley supporting a free e-file portal at the IRS Web site that would compete directly with private tax preparation software. In March, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a Ways and Means Committee hearing that he’d also like the IRS to begin sending taxpayers pre-completed returns.

We can certainly understand why Mr. Geithner wants government to do his returns, but please spare the rest of us. By insourcing tax preparation to the government, the IRS would shift the burden of objecting to any error onto the taxpayer instead of the IRS. That would change the dynamics of U.S. tax compliance, trending away from a voluntary system in which taxpayers are expected to be honest about declaring income and deductions—subject to audit. Instead, the feds would apply their standards, and a taxpayer would have to appeal for an exception to the same efficient folks at the IRS you can’t get on the phone at tax time.

This is yet another reason to tell the progressive liberals to K.I.S.S. it and flush Washington’s “baffle ’em with bullshit”.   It’s long past the time for at least a modicum of common sense.   Like simply streamlining the tax code.

This Administration Means Business!

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Yessiree, Bob.  You’d better not go messing around with these guys.  The LA Times notes today that:

“…the State Department has announced it is revoking the U.S. visa for suspected Nigerian underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.”

Yes, you read that correctly.  Twelve whole days after trying unsuccessfully to blow his nuts off and take down a Christmas Day U.S. flight before Numbnuts Abdulmutallab no longer has a U.S. visa.  Instead, he’s got a room to himself, 3 squares a day, and visits from his rich daddy while we’re paying for a shady lawyer to defend him against charges of:

  1. Attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction
  2. Attempted murder within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States
  3. Willful attempt to destroy and wreck an aircraft within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States
  4. Willfully placing a destructive device in, upon and in proximity to an aircraft within the special airdraft jurisdiction of the United States, which was likely to endanger the safety of such aircraft
  5. Possession of a firearm/destructive in furtherance of a crime of violence
  6. Possession of a firearm/destructive in furtherance of a crime of violence

(Yes, I know that #5 and #6 read exactly same.  The details of them do, too.  No idea why except thst maybe the administration wants to make it really, really clear they’re really, really serious about the first four counts that are the details contained in #5 and #6.)

I’m sure that this has all sent shivers of fear up and down the spines of Islamic jihadists everywhere.

About That Massachusetts Senate Race

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It’s no secret that here at the Smoke Break, politicians must do a great deal to earn our trust.  And that because it has become a given that the definition of sleazebag has a picture of a Democrat next to it, they have an even deeper hole from which they must dig themselves.  A story posted in today’s Boston Globe is a perfect example.

In October 2005, a Somerville police officer living in Melrose raped his 23-month-old niece with a hot object, most likely a curling iron.

Keith Winfield, then 31, told police he was alone with the toddler that day and made additional statements that would ultimately be used to convict him.

But in the aftermath of the crime, a Middlesex County grand jury overseen by Martha Coakley, then the district attorney, investigated without taking action.

It was only after the toddler’s mother filed applications for criminal complaints that Coakley won grand jury indictments charging rape and assault and battery.

Even then, nearly 10 months after the crime, Coakley’s office recommended that Winfield be released on personal recognizance, with no cash bail. He remained free until December 2007, when Coakley’s successor as district attorney won a conviction and two life terms.

The story goes on to say that:

Coakley’s prosecutors made the recommendation that Winfield be released with no cash bail, even though an investigator with the Department of Children and Families, working in the weeks immediately following the rape, found that Winfield had been suspended from his job with the Somerville police for disciplinary reasons and had lied about it.

In addition, the investigator found that Winfield had concealed the fact that he had been evaluated at Melrose-Wakefield Hospital for stress less than two weeks before the rape.

Indeed, before Winfield’s trial, prosecutors sought to admit evidence that Winfield, in the days leading up to the rape, was treated for a substance abuse problem and had threatened to kill himself by holding a gun to his head, “evincing great emotional stress and the strong possibility that [he] would harm himself or others.’’

 And that baby? 

The toddler ultimately spent a month at Shriners Hospital for Children in Boston recovering from burns.

Now Martha Coakley wants to be a United States Senator representing the state of Massachusetts.  With this kind of horrific irresponsibility in her track record, it’s clear she has long surpassed her level of incompetance.  If the people of Massachusetts have a lick of sense, they will give her the boot.