From The Hill:

A series of emails written in October 2010 between Jason Weinstein, the deputy assistant attorney general of DOJ’s criminal division, and James Trusty, the acting chief of the DOJ’s organized crime and gang section, reveals a fluid knowledge of the operation.

“It’s not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of US guns are being used in MX [Mexico], so I’m not sure how much grief we get for ‘guns walking,’ ” wrote Trusty to Weinstein. “It may be more like, ‘Finally, they’re going after people who sent guns down there … ‘ ”

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From the Associated Press:

Protests against Wall Street entered their 18th day Tuesday as demonstrators across the country show their anger over the wobbly economy and what they see as corporate greed by marching on Federal Reserve banks and camping out in parks from Los Angeles to Portland, Maine.

Demonstrations are expected to continue throughout the week as more groups hold organizational meetings and air their concerns on websites and through streaming video.

In Manhattan on Monday, hundreds of protesters dressed as corporate zombies in white face paint lurched past the New York Stock Exchange clutching fistfuls of fake money. In Chicago, demonstrators pounded drums in the city’s financial district. Others pitched tents or waved protest signs at passing cars in Boston, St. Louis, Kansas City, Mo., and Los Angeles.

(more…)

To quote someone we all know and love, let me be perfectly clear:  The mainstream media is the bought and paid for lapdog of the liberal Democrat elite.  It will not only never give conservatives a fair hearing but will actively distort, lie and slander in an effort to destroy any conservative it sees as a threat to its masters.  So why the hell do conservatives treat its members with anything other than contempt and allow it to set the agenda and exploit fault lines in the movement?

Easy – conservatives tend to be polite, reasonable people with a genuine interest in honest debate and a quaint belief in the efficacy of things like “facts” and “evidence” as a way to demonstrate the truth.  No wonder they get rolled.  The other side believes in none of those things – its only belief is that leftism must prevail and any other value is disposable if it turns into a liability.  The answer is conservative judo – understanding how the Left works and using its own weight and momentum against it.  We need to start being less like butt-kissing conservanerd David Brooks and more like butt-kicking conservastud Chuck Norris.

Conservative judo means going on the offense and keeping on the offense.  It’s not about reasoning with unreasonable people; it’s about using their own strengths against them to defeat them.  It has application to the GOP candidates for sure, but it also applies to those of us in the real world facing liberals every day.

The bizarre Rick Perry rock pseudo-scandal is a wonderful teachable moment for conservatives, mostly because the GOP candidates’ reactions allowed this contemptible lie to gain steam.  The Washington Post ran a story that some idiot wrote a racial slur on a rock at some ranch where Rick Perry hunted.  Now, one might observe that the facts and evidence show that about 30 years ago the Perry family got a hunting lease and promptly painted over the word.  One might also note that Perry was a Democrat at the time.  Moreover, the sources who disagree can’t agree on a different timeline and won’t give their names – inconsistent, anonymous hearsay is apparently acceptable when it comes to conservatives.

But none of this matters.  It’s not about “facts” or “evidence” or even “truth.”  It’s a calculated smear designed by a liberal rag to slander a leading GOP candidate.  Moreover, it is another example of a partisan political publication hiding behind the lie that it is an objective news source.  It is not.  The Washington Post, like the New York Times and the vast majority of mainstream media outlets, is an active collaborator with the liberal elite.  If it weren’t, Andrew Breitbart would not be the one breaking the story of Barak Obama’s game of patty cake with the expressly black supremacist New Black Panthers.

The question is, then, why the other GOP candidates tolerated this attack instead of coming to his defense – after all, this was an attack not just on Rick Perry but upon every conservative.  This was pure innuendo designed not just to trash one candidate but to feed a narrative that all conservatives are just one sheet away from an old fashioned cross burning of the kind dead Democratic icon Robert Byrd would have enjoyed in his pre-Senate capacity as a KKK Kleagle.

Herman Cain fell right into the trap.  A good man, it seems he did so here not in a short-sighted attempt to capitalize on the blow to Rick Perry but because he was genuinely disgusted with the idea that some nitwit would paint that sort of thing on a rock.  When asked about it (at the 3:42 mark) by Chris Wallace of Fox News, he responded that it was “insensitive.”  Well, “insensitive” is one word for it – Cain was being kind.  My saltier characterization would have included an adjective beginning with an “F.”  Cain later clarified that he was referring to the person who wrote it, and that he did not believe the Rock of Outrages represented Perry’s belief.  Too late.  The damage was done.

(more…)

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity has released another “Economics 101″ video, and this one has a very powerful message about the federal government’s so-called War on Poverty.

As explained by Hadley Heath of the Independent Women’s Forum, the various income redistribution schemes being imposed by Washington are bad for taxpayers – and bad for poor people.

The video has a plethora of useful information, but the data on the poverty rate is particularly compelling. Prior to the War on Poverty, the United States was getting more prosperous with each passing year and there were dramatic reductions in the level of destitution.

But once the federal government got involved in the mid-1960s, the good news evaporated. Indeed, the poverty rate has basically stagnated for the past 40-plus years, usually hovering around 13 percent depending on economic conditions.

Another remarkable finding in the video is that poor people in America rarely suffer from material deprivation. Indeed, they have wide access to consumer goods that used to be considered luxuries – and they also have more housing space than the average European (and with Europe falling apart, the comparisons presumably will become even more noteworthy).

The most important message of the video, however, is that small government and economic freedom are the best answers for poverty.

(more…)

In 1999, I was lecturing at the Smithsonian Institution (The Smithsonian Associates), on The History of Revolutions. At the end of the series, a question was put to me, namely: which country was poised for revolution? My answer was “this one”.

Why? came the inevitably anxious reply.

Again my answer was not comforting. ‘Here in the most economically significant and militarily powerful nation in history has blossomed, an endemic entitlement attitude which has fomented a dysfunctional culture. This culture encompasses not merely welfare mavens or dead-beats, so to say. But also corporations and politicians; the latter whom in a zero-sum, future-be-damned spirit, have fed and fostered this culture for their own perceived advantages’.

Such was my view then as now. The ‘fallout’ from such mendacity often results in social upheaval. However, Americans tend to watch public apoplexy in other countries with a gyroscopic fascination, expressed in the mirthful assumption that “such things cannot happen here”.

Yet, they can, have and are; perhaps now, increasingly.

(more…)

The National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, is rolling out its new $350,000 television ad campaign to generate support for President Obama’s American Jobs Act. Thirty billion of Obama’s $450 billion jobs bill has been designated to supposedly save 285,000 teaching jobs.

According to our estimates, the bill would generate $35.4 million in dues revenue for the NEA. In other words, the teachers union is spending $350,000 in hopes of getting over $35 million in “saved” dues payments – a return 100 times greater than the initial investment. These union geniuses belong on Wall Street.

Our estimates also show that the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, would see $13 million in “saved” dues payments.

(more…)

As the mainstream media continue to obsess about a painted rock in Texas, the Solyndra story continues to grow.

“A number of us are concerned that the president is visiting Solyndra…  Many of us believe the company’s cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term. . . . I just want to help protect the president from anything that could result in negative or unfair press.”

Those words appeared in an email from Solyndra investor and Obama fundraiser Steve Westly to Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in May 2010.  The correspondence is yet another indication that the White House had immediate warning signs that the $535 million loan guarantee of stimulus money pushed through by the Obama Department of Energy (DOE) was at great risk.

President Obama visited Solyndra despite the warnings, and the resulting video footage of the photo-op has become the perfect b-roll to accompany stories describing the failed “green jobs” initiative that the president held up as a shining example of how his administration was “Winning the Future.”

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Today, Andrew Breitbart published some photographs of an event in March 2007 where Senator and candidate Barack Obama shared a stage with Malik Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party.

It was not, as the mainstream media wants to believe, a mere coincidence. Certainly not to Malik Shabazz himself.

It may be difficult to appreciate now, but at the time of that event, Senator Obama was still considered a long shot for the White House. Hillary Clinton was still ahead in the polls, and had already secured endorsements from civil rights icons like Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).

Meanwhile, Obama’s support among black Americans was weak. Just a few weeks before the event with the Panthers, Steve Kroft of CBS’s 60 Minutes had noted that some black voters were openly questioning Obama’s racial authenticity saying, “There are African-Americans who don’t think that you’re black enough, who don’t think that you have had the required experience.” Obama smiled at such dismissals, but it was clear he had work to do.

Obama’s trip to Selma was obviously intended as a solution to the problem. There, he was able to stake a claim to the mantle of the civil rights movement by participating in the annual remembrance of the famous ‘65 march with Rep. Lewis.

“Don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama,” Obama told the audience inside the Brown Chapel A.M.E. church.”

He also said: “I must send greetings from Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. but I got a letter giving me encouragement and saying how proud he was that I had announced and encouraging me to stay true to my ideals and my values and not to be fearful.”

And as the pictures Big Government published this morning show, Obama also shared a podium outside with Shabazz and others.

I did find a radio interview Shabazz gave in May 2008 in which he reflects on his interaction with Obama in Selma. Some of the things he says about Obama are pretty interesting:

Aside from the confirmation that Shabazz did meet Obama in Selma, I’ll just highlight this bit of the conversation: (more…)

From ABCNews:

A majority of Americans expect Barack Obama to be a one-term president, an assessment on which, in past elections, the public more often has been right than wrong.

Just 37 percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll say they expect Obama to win re-election in November 2012; 55 percent instead expect the eventual Republican nominee to win. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is asking the president about that result in an interview today.

It’s a challenging finding for the president because expectations can fuel voter enthusiasm – precisely the ingredient that led the GOP to its broad success in the 2010 midterms, when charged-up conservatives turned out while dispirited Democrats stayed home.

(more…)

Another blockbuster scoop here on Big Government today. While much of the blogosphere’s background coverage on this story will probably be focused on more recent controversies surrounding the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), such as the voter intimidation case in Philadelphia and the “kill some crackers” video from fellow NBPP leader King Samir Shabazz, I think the activity the NBPP was engaged in during the years immediately prior to 2007 is even more damning with regards to this revelation. For reasons that will soon be clear, Barack Obama, in fact any politician, would have to have been completely out of their mind to appear anywhere near Malik Shabazz or anyone else from the NBPP in 2007.

As I first reported on Verum Serum last year, in 2004-2005 Malik Shabazz and the New Black Panther Party were purveyors of some of the most vile, subversive, racist “music” you will ever hear anywhere. Including this atrocity from the leader himself, the man President Obama inexplicably shared a stage and marched with in Selma, Malik “Zulu” Shabazz:

Amerikkka’s Most Hated

Sample lyrics:

Black Power crackers
Black Power niggers
Negroes, political prostitutes, bitches and hoes

What kind of teaching I’m following?
The kind of teaching that got my picture in the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance
_
You pigs beat a nigger down in Inglewood
But we fucked up your Pentagon filled with crackers and peckerwoods
_
The Al Qaeda comparative true to life now
Cracker, I’m a terrorist
Bin Laden might look alike
I ain’t losing no sleep at night
_
In Cincinnati, we got to burn that shit
And snatch crackers out of cars
Too many young black brothers locked behind bars
For killing one of us
So why not bust on the true terrorists
The American cracker devil police officer

At what point does offensive speech move beyond First Amendment protection into illegal incitement?

(more…)

From the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama said Monday that Americans aren’t better off than they were four years ago as the struggling economy and high unemployment have taken a toll.

Looking ahead to next year’s election, the incumbent called himself the underdog in the 2012 presidential campaign though he said he doesn’t mind the label. The Democrat said it’s a role that he is used to.

In an interview with ABC News, Obama was asked how he planned to convince people they’re better off now than they were four years ago—the formulation Ronald Reagan famously used to defeat President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

(more…)

From the Associated Press:

American Amanda Knox was acquitted of murder and sexual assault by an Italian appeal court on Monday after four years in custody over the killing of her British housemate Meredith Kercher.

The dramatic ruling overturns a 26-year sentence handed down to Knox in the original trial in which she had been found guilty of murdering Kercher together with her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and local drifter Rudy Guede.

(more…)

“EU Carbon Trading Rocked By Mass Killings”, “Armed Troops Burn Down Homes, Kill Children To Evict Ugandans In Name Of Global Warming”

These two headlines from today’s Global Warming Policy Foundation update ought to finally shake some sense into any of the many US companies pushing for our involvement in the Kyoto debacle. That’s a demand invented by Enron (greenies, I was in the room, don’t bother), and I particularly recall DuPont’s rep whining like a child to the US representative about their being denied the right to cash in, at a State Department briefing at one global confab I attended in 2002.

This is particularly true on the heels of the experience of Coca Cola and Unocal with the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act, under which they were sued to pay for the actions of a government in whose country they operated.

Specifically, news reports indicate that:

“Armed troops acting on behalf of a British carbon trading company backed by the World Bank burned houses to the ground and killed children to evict Ugandans from their homes in the name of seizing land to protect against ‘global warming,’ a shocking illustration of how the climate change con is a barbarian form of neo-colonialism.

The evictions were ordered by New Forests Company, an outfit that seizes land in Africa to grow trees then sells the ‘carbon credits’ on to transnational corporations. The company is backed by the World Bank and HSBC. Its Board of Directors includes HSBC Managing Director Sajjad Sabur, as well as other former Goldman Sachs investment bankers…

Villagers told of how armed ‘security forces’ stormed their village and torched houses, burning an eight-year-child to death as they threatened to murder anyone who resisted while beating others.

‘We were in church,’ recalled Jean-Marie Tushabe, 26, a father of two. ‘I heard bullets being shot into the air.’

‘Cars were coming with police,’ Mr. Tushabe said, sitting among the ruins of his old home. ‘They headed straight to the houses. They took our plates, cups, mattresses, bed, pillows. Then we saw them getting a matchbox out of their pockets.’

‘But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming,’ reports the New York Times.”

To beat some too-typical greens to their punch, no, this is not what happens when one introduces “market mechanisms” into environmental schemes.

(more…)

As Congress was in the middle of the debt ceiling debate this summer, deciding which bloated federal programs to cut, Michelle Obama decided to take a nice taxpayer-funded “working” vacation to South Africa and Botswana with her children.  Judicial Watch began asking some very simple questions:   What was the purpose of the trip and how much did it cost?  We’re just now starting to get some answers.

Last week we obtained mission expense records and passenger manifests from the United States Air Force related to the June 21-27, 2011, trip.  Judicial Watch obtained the documents pursuant to an August 19, 2011, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.  It is amazing how transparent the Obama administration becomes once you sue them in a federal court!

On June 28, 2011, we filed a FOIA request seeking the mission taskings, transportation records, and passenger manifests for Michelle Obama’s Africa trip.  Our FOIA lawsuit extracted some interesting information:

• According to U.S. Department of Defense’s published hourly rates for the C-32A aircraft used for the trip, we calculated the total cost to American taxpayers was $424,142 for the flight and crew.  (The C-32 is a specially configured military version of the Boeing 757.)  Other expenses ─ meals (off the plane), transportation, security, various services, etc. ─ have yet to be reported.

• The expense records also indicate $928.44 were spent for “bulk food” purchases on flight.  Overall, during the trip, 192 meals were served for the 21 passengers on board.

• The passenger manifests confirm the presence of Obama’s daughter’s, Malia and Sasha on the trip.  The two girls are listed as “Senior Staff.”   The manifests also list Mrs. Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, and niece and nephew, Leslie and Avery Robinson, as well Mrs. Obama’s makeup and hairstylist (Carl Ray and Johnny Wright).

The professed purpose of Michelle Obama’s trip to South Africa and Botswana was to encourage young people living in the two growing democracies to become involved in national affairs; and during her scheduled stops in Pretoria and Cape Town, South Africa, and in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, the First Lady used the opportunity to speak on education, health, and wellness issues.

(more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

A “Take Back the American Dream” three-day conference in Washington begins on Monday that features Van Jones, the disgraced former Obama Administration “Green Jobs Czar,” a Russian TV star, and a veteran of the Venceremos Brigades to Cuba who works for the AFL-CIO. Such is the nature of the modern progressive movement.

“I think everybody should hold onto your seats,” said Jones on Thursday’s MSNBC program “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell.”

“October is going to be the turning point when it comes to the progressive fight back,” he went on. “We are a part of something called the American Dream Movement. We`re having a huge summit on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Come—you can go to rebuildthedream.com and find out more about it. We are going to build a progressive counterbalance to the Tea Party.”

Once a top figure in a Marxist group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), Jones predicts “an American fall, an American autumn, just like we saw the Arab spring. You can see it right now with these young people on Wall Street. Hold onto your hats. We`re going to have an October offensive to take back the American Dream and to rescue America`s middle class.”

The Campaign for America’s Future, sponsor of the conference, depicts the conservative Tea Party as a puppet of corporate interests and protests Wall Street but remains silent about the millions of dollars that Van Jones and other progressive activists have received from hedge fund operator George Soros. Number seven on the Forbes list of the richest people in America, with $22 billion, Soros runs an “alternative investment vehicle” available only to the super-rich which is based off-shore and taps into mysterious sources of cash beyond the supervision of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Indeed, a sister organization of the Campaign for America’s Future, the Institute for America’s Future, has itself received $1.3 million from Soros’s Open Society Institute over the last several years.

(more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the opening of the fourth quarter, the movement of free-trade agreements in Congress and how a change of leadership could influence our relationship with China.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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SEE NO EVIL

I was in Washington on election day helping to manage the information traffic coming into the Voting Section while nearly every other lawyer and section employee was scattered across the nation doing election coverage.…

I received an early report about the Panther incident in Philadelphia. Voting Section chief Chris Coates had kept me at the Washington desk for just this sort of eventuality. Normally another lawyer would manage all the traffic on election day, but Coates didn’t trust him because there were already signs within the DOJ that some attorneys had used their position and power to aid the Obama campaign. Not only were key DOJ election officials large donors to Obama, but a wave of questionable inquiries and requests had come in over the previous few months from people such as Obama campaign lawyer Robert Bauer. Other Voting Section lawyers had spouses or friends deeply involved in the Obama campaign who referred matters to their DOJ contact, who then initiated a line of inquiry.…

When the initial information reached the Voting Section about the Panther incident in Philadelphia, I related the report to Coates. He in turn contacted Deputy Chief Robert Popper, who was already managing election coverage in Philadelphia, and Popper quickly sent DOJ staff to investigate. In the meantime, in Washington we immediately encountered the first sign of resistance within the DOJ to pursuing the case. (more…)

While perhaps too soon to say the sky is falling, in a very real sense, Greece seems to be. However you slice it, this is simply not good news.

(Reuters) – Greece will miss a deficit target set just months ago in a massive bailout package, according to government draft budget figures released on Sunday, showing that drastic steps taken to avert bankruptcy may not be enough.

World markets are not taking the news well. The large global sell-off is also putting downward pressure on Wall Street.

BigPeace’s Worldview, October 3rd: Will Greece still get its next bailout payment?

DOOM: You upset me, baby!

Even the “Oracle of Omaha” Warren Buffett couldn’t help sell-out an Obama fundraiser in New York City. This caught our eye:

Jim Chanos, the billionaire hedge fund manager and short seller, was among the best known attendees, and bank executives were noticeably absent from the fundraiser.

Of course, short sellers make money when stocks go down, so we’re guessing Obama has very high approval ratings among this group of voters.

Rumors are swirling that Chris Christie will announce this week whether or not he’s running for President. An anonymous source claims that major donors have been told to be ready to be in Trenton this Thursday. Sources have told us that Christie staff have been calling operatives to gauge their interest in working on his campaign.

Solyndra II? A Nevada geothermal energy company, a recipient of tens of millions in federal loans and grants, is struggling, according to the New York Times. Of course, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a strong advocate for the company.

(more…)