This and That...

[Warph]

Piers Morgan Expected to Lose 9PM Hour on CNN;
Bill Weir Late of NightLine to Move In?

"Whaaa... what did I do to deserve this.. (sob)"

Via Mediaite:http://www.mediaite.com/tv/piers-morgan-expected-to-lose-9pm-hour-on-cnn-bill-weir-to-move-in/

Earlier this morning, we reported that Nightline anchor Bill Weir was departing ABC News for other pastures.

TVNewser beat us to the punch on the news that his new role is with CNN. But that is only part of the story. A reliable source connected to CNN tells Mediaite that Weir has been promised a show during the 9 p.m. ET hour — an hour that happens to be currently occupied by Piers Morgan.

According to our source, the details and timing have not yet been worked out (and we are told it will likely take "many months") but that Weir is expected to get either half or all of the 9 p.m. slot, meaning Morgan will either move time slots or, at best, reduce to a half hour of airtime per evening. Another CNN source tells us that Weir's show will likely launch in "late night" but our original source insists that if that happens, the goal would be to test it out for an eventual move to the 9 p.m. hour.

Either way, the British host, who's become associated with his anti-gun fights as of late, looks to be losing the full 9 p.m. hour.

Weir was previously the anchor of ABC's newsmagazine show Nightline, and on Friday morning, ABC News chief Ben Sherwood announced that Weir was leaving "for another opportunity in the news business."

Earlier this month, FTVLive reported that CNN was preparing to "dump" Piers Morgan, with Katie Couric allegedly being eyed as a replacement. That rumor plus Morgan's declining ratings further fueled speculation that he could be planning an exit strategy from CNN.

We'll have more here as this story develops.

UPDATE: A spokesperson provides the following comment: "Bill Weir was not brought to CNN to replace Piers Morgan."

[Warph]

Terrific! Ted Cruz Lectures Obuma During White House Meeting

October 11, 2013, 7:07 PM

(You gotta love it.  The one Republican who has the courage to tell it like it is)


Ted Cruz lectured the president on the negative effects of Obamacare today at the White House. Earlier in the day Senator Cruz joked that Obama might abduct him when he attends the White House meeting.


The Politico reported:
Sen. Ted Cruz confronted President Barack Obama over his health care law during a meeting at the White House Friday attended by dozens of GOP senators.

Cruz told Obama that any deal to reopen the government must also provide relief for those negatively affected by Obamacare. In a long gaggle with reporters, Cruz did not use the word "defund" to describe his aspirations for changes to the health care law, but said he wants "substantial" changes.

"I told the president exactly the same thing I have told you here today: That we need to work together and fund the government and at the same time provide substantial relief to the millions of people who are hurting because of Obamacare, who are losing their jobs, being forced into part-time work and losing their health insurance," Cruz said. "If the outcome doesn't impact people who are struggling, who are hurting because of Obamacare, then I don't think it would be a good outcome."
Asked to give a breakdown of the exchange between Cruz and Obama, White House press secretary Jay Carney simply responded: "No."

[Warph]

"Ancient Artifact" That Obuma Gave Iranian President Was A Fake

(Remember the griffin that Obuma gave Iran as a gift of respect, supposedly costing $1 million dollars? ...

http://news.yahoo.com/rouhani-home-us-gift-silver-griffin-reports-175921221.html;_ylt=A2KJ3CUdO0dSLRQAVTTQtDMD

...Well, turns out it's not really worth that much because it's really a fake.  This might have been funny if this had been done as sort of a cagey joke [albeit diplomatically hinky].  Unfortunately, it's just because Obuma and his administration are remarkably ignorant and incompetent)

Via Frontpage:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/ancient-artifact-obama-gave-iran-is-a-fake-from-1999/

(A fake from a fake for a fake)

Obama ran for office promising masterful diplomacy. The reality has been less savvy diplomat and more pathetic loser. Hillary Clinton's Reset Button with Russia was a dumb Bush-bashing gimmick and it was also misspelled.

That set the tone for the long-running comedy of errors in which Obama Inc. blended appeasement with dumb gimmicks and somehow managed to screw them up.

The ancient artifact it shouldn't have given to Iran... proved not to be so ancient after all.

Sometimes an ancient artifact symbolizes more than its admirers necessarily imagine. Take for example the silver griffin that was returned by the United States to Iran as a gesture of respect and—at least according to tea-leaf readers—a sign of an emerging thaw between the two nations.

There's only one problem: It's a fake.

Not only is it a fake, it's a bad fake.

[Warph]

Americans Storm The Barrycades At The Lincoln Memorial

This will send a stir through your heart.

Adults, elderly, young people, children–Americans–remove the Barrycades and charge up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

"Remove the trash in Washington," one shouts as goes up.  He clearly wasn't referring to any garbage left by the people.  Wave upon wave, ascend up the stairs.

This, please, and more of it, until we all make DC listen.

[Warph]

Girl Rising -- Walking to School

One reason we made Girl Rising is because of the 66 million girls around the world who can only dream of getting an education. But, as we traveled the globe making the film, we were struck by the powerful energy of the girls who are in school -- their enthusiasm, their spirit, their sheer joy. The pride they take - in their uniforms, in their schools, in their studies -- is infectious, and you won't be able to resist the rhythm of their feet as they walk to school and march into a better future.


It's time to join the march - sign up to host an International Day of the Girl event! October 11th. www.girlrising.com/idg

[Warph]

Obama purging military of officers who refuse to fire on U.S. citizens?

by Christopher Cook | February 6 2013 http://www.westernfreepress.com/2013/02/06/obama-purging-military-of-officers-who-refuse-to-fire-on-u-s-citizens/

I knew Obama was going to be a bad president before he was elected the first time. If you had asked me at the time, I would have told you that I would rather have had Bill Clinton for three terms (were such a thing possible) than Obama for one. But even I, with whatever prescience I can claim, never imagined that I was going t0 write a headline like that . . . even with a question mark at the end of it. But here we are.

The headline is inspired by the video below. I have no proof of the claims being made therein. I do not have any inkling who this high-ranking military source may be. I am not making any claims myself. I am simply relaying the video for you to watch and judge. I do think the host and guest do their discussion a disservice by throwing in a lot of buzzwords ("socialist," etc.) that drive away all but strong conservatives and anti-statists. On the other hand, WHDN and Nobel Prize nominee Jim Garrow presumably have reputations to protect. It would not serve them to make things up out of whole cloth, or so one would think.

I will simply, for now, say this: If there is even a shred of truth to this, we have a serious problem.

Published on Jan 23, 2013

http://nextnewsnetwork.com | The Obama administration is openly escalating its campaign against private gun ownership, and shaking up the top ranks of the military command structure -- but is it also preparing to make war on the American population? According to a person identified as a former senior military official, the answer to that shocking question is yes.

World-renowned educator and human rights activist Jim Garrow says that the source, man regarded as "one of America's foremost military heroes," told him that President Obama is using a new litmus test for "determining who will stay and who must go" among top-ranked military leaders. That test is whether they will fire on US citizens or not. Garrow says that his source made the disclosure in order to "sound the alarm" over the administration's plans.

While Garrow will not yet reveal the identity of the source, it's important to note that Garrow himself is a man of considerable accomplishment. He is the founder of the Bethune Institute, which has established hundreds of schools throughout China. Three years ago, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work though a group called Pink Pagoda, which combat "gendercide" in China -- that is, the practice of rescuing baby girls who had been abandoned or targeted for infanticide because of the government's one-child policy. He was personally involved in helping to save the lives of more than 50,000 Chinese girls. He joins Gary Franchi on WHDT World News to discuss this new "Litmus Test."

*No party or entity depicted in this broadcast advocates insurrection against the government of the United States of America.

[Warph]

"The most expensive thing in the world is something that's free.  And if you sit down at the poker table and you don't know after a half hour which person is going to be taken to the cleaners, it's going to be you."

Obumacare's winners and losers in Bay Area, Californication

By Tracy Seipel

Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.

"Welcome to the club," said Robert Laszewksi, a prominent health care consultant and president of

Health Policy and Strategy Associates in Virginia.

For years, the nation has been embroiled in the political rhetoric of "Obamacare," but this past week the reality of the new law sank in as millions of Americans had their first good look at how the 3 1/2-year-old legislation will affect their pocketbooks.

This much quickly became clear:
As state- and federal-run health insurance exchanges debuted across the country offering a range of prices for different tiers of insurance coverage, the new online marketplaces -- which represent the centerpiece of Obamacare -- could greatly benefit more than 40 million Americans who now lack coverage. But an additional 16 million -- who buy individual health insurance policies on the open market -- are finding out that their plans may not comply with the new law, which requires 10 essential benefits such as maternity care, mental health care and prescription drug coverage.

In California, 1.9 million people buy plans on the open market, according to officials with Covered California, the state's new health insurance exchange. And many of them are steaming mad.

"There's going to be a number of people surprised" by their bills, said Jonathan Wu, a co-founder of ValuePenguin, a consumer finance website. "The upper-middle class are the people who are essentially being asked to foot the bill, and that's true across the country."

Covered California spokesman Dana Howard maintained that in public presentations the exchange has always made clear that there will be winners and losers under Obamacare.

"Some people will see an increase who are already on the individual market purchasing insurance," he said, "but most people will not."

Covered California officials note that at least 570,000 of the 1.9 million people who buy their own insurance should be eligible for subsidies that will reduce their premiums.

Even those who don't qualify for the tax subsidies could see their rates drop because Obamacare doesn't allow insurers to charge people more if they have pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and cancer, he said.

People like Marilynn Gray-Raine:

The 64-year-old Danville artist, who survived breast cancer, has purchased health insurance for herself for decades. She watched her Anthem Blue Cross monthly premiums rise from $317 in 2005 to $1,298 in 2013. But she found out last week from the Covered California site that her payments will drop to about $795 a month.

But people with no pre-existing conditions like Vinson, a 60-year-old retired teacher, and Waschura, a 52-year-old self-employed engineer, are making up the difference.

"I was laughing at Boehner -- until the mail came today,"

Brochures and handouts on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are shown at the education outreach booth sponsor by Daughters of Charity O'Connor Hospital at Santa Clara County Library Alum Rock branch in San Jose on Oct. 1, 2013. (Josie Lepe/Staff)Waschura said, referring to House Speaker John Boehner, who is leading the Republican charge to defund Obamacare.

"I really don't like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family's pocket each year, that's otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy."

Both Vinson and Waschura have adjusted gross incomes greater than four times the federal poverty level -- the cutoff for a tax credit. And while both said they anticipated their rates would go up, they didn't realize they would rise so much.

"Of course, I want people to have health care," Vinson said. "I just didn't realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally."

A frustrated Vinson went on the Covered California site to see what she would pay for the same policy if she lived in Los Angeles or Sacramento. She discovered she would save at least $100 monthly.

According to data compiled by ValuePenguin, Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, San Francisco as well as Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties have some of the highest health insurance rates in the state. Covered California officials say that in addition to the higher cost of living here, more hospitals in the Bay Area are owned by hospital groups that can demand higher rates because of the lack of competition.

Not all of the sticker shock can be blamed on Obamacare.

Health care inflation costs routinely increase at least 4 percent annually, said Ken Wood, a senior adviser for Covered California. Those increases, he noted, are due to an aging population and the rising costs of new medical technology and drugs, among other factors.

But Wood, Wu and others also said premiums will rise as a result of people getting better insurance under the new law, which requires most Americans, with few exceptions, to buy health insurance no later than March 31, or pay a minimum $95 annual penalty.

The law's intent is to cover people who are now uninsured by making insurance accessible to everybody. But that means rates will rise for many because sick and healthy people will now be charged the same premium.

Adding a required list of 10 essential benefits to all plans is also significant. A study published last year in the journal Health Affairs said more than half of Americans who had individual insurance in 2010 were enrolled in plans that would not qualify because they didn't meet all the new requirements.

Wood likened these mandates to the higher cost of buying cars today that must have safety features like air bags and anti-lock brakes.

The law also will often make some policies more expensive because it limits out-of-pocket expenses to $6,350 annually for an individual and $12,700 for a family. In addition, the law restricts the minimum and maximum premiums that people can be charged based on their age.

Now, a 64-year-old can be charged almost five times more than a 21-year-old. Beginning Jan. 1, it will be a 3-1 ratio.

Those explanations, however, don't completely satisfy Waschura and Vinson.

"I'm not against Obamacare," Waschura said. "It's just the initial shock. I'm holding out hope that there will be a correction over a handful of years."

But to Gray-Raine, the breast cancer survivor from the East Bay, that correction has already come.

"Obamacare is a huge step in the right direction for those of us without employer coverage," she said, adding that she hopes everyone will "join in and make this new legislation a success for all."

[Warph]

(Remember, as you listen to these two videos, keep in mind that this is
about Obuma one week BEFORE he won his first term in 2008)

The Men behind Barack Obama - Part #1

The Men behind Barack Obama - Part #2

Uploaded on Oct 29, 2008

Especially in politics it is of the utmost importance to try to look behind the facade: who makes up the team of the presidential candidate? The future president of the United States of America is for a large part dependent on and being fed by his team of advisors and future cabinet members. Webster Tarpley wrote a book on the men and women behind presidential hopeful Barack Obama. He argues that there is more to Obama than his charismatic appearance and that some of his advisors pose a danger to the US and the world in case Obama might be elected to become the next US president. Whether Tarpleys view is correct for now is a matter of opinion and remains to be seen, but for the public debate it is relevant to take note of his facts and arguments. Therefor DeepJournal interviewed Webster Tarpley on the topic of his recently published book 'Obama, The Postmodern Coup, The Making of a Manchurian Candidate.'

Obuma's Private Army

[Warph]

Below is a speech given by David Horowitz at the Kohler conference of the Bradley Foundation. It has been revised and edited for publication as an article.

(First... let me say that Yes, it was brilliant but I see that Mr. Horowitz could not bring himself to mention that the clown bunkered down in the "sleeper cell" at 1600 Penn Ave is a Fraud.  He failed to mention that this 'Fraud in Chief' has been under a two year criminal investigation looking into his fraudulent and E-Verified flagged SS# (042-68-4425), his fraudulent registration with the Selective Service in 2008 and his computer generated 9 layered April 27th, 2011 forged birth certificate.  Wouldn't you say that the root of our "threat" is the fact that this man is a FRAUD who sits next to the Nuclear Football for crying out loud.  That should have been part of Mr. Horowitz's opening remarks.  This Fraud and his criminal activity is our biggest national security challenge... and that is getting rid of this psycho in the WH)

The Threat We Face

I was born at the beginning of the Second World War into a family of high school teachers who were members of the Communist Party, and therefore were actually part of a vast conspiracy dedicated to the destruction of this country, although they would never have looked at it that way, and so-called liberals would be the first to deny it.

In those days, the schools were old fashioned enough that my parents did not use their classrooms to indoctrinate students as tens of thousands of university professors and even more K-12 teachers regularly do today. It is also an unhappy but hugely important fact that the conspiracy to which my parents belonged has steadily migrated into the heart of the Democratic Party until it now occupies the Oval Office in the person of our president, Barack Obama, and his closest advisors.

The president, his chief operative Valerie Jarrett and his chief political strategist David Axelrod all came out of the same Communist left and the same radical new left as I did, and all have remained heart and soul a part of it. As someone who turned his back on that destructive movement, I can say with confidence that they have not. If a person belongs to an organization or is the supporter of an idea that they come to see as destructive or evil, the first thing they will want to do when they leave is to warn others against it, to warn them of the dangers it represents. If a person does not do this – that tells me that he or she hasn't left the destructive movement or abandoned the pernicious idea but has just put another face on them. Instead of calling themselves communists or socialists they call themselves liberals and progressives. This camouflage is very old. I never once heard my parents and their party friends refer to themselves as Communists. They were progressives – and registered Democrats.

This is why – to take one disturbing example, I know that Hillary Clinton's right hand, Huma Abedin, the former deputy secretary of state, and chief foreign policy adviser on Muslim Affairs is a Muslim Brotherhood operative. Huma Abedin's late father was a Muslim Brotherhood leader, and her mother and brother still are. For 12 years until the moment she was hired by Hillary, Huma Abedin worked for Abdullah Omar Naseef, one of the top three funders of Osama Bin Laden who is still wanted by our government for his role in the 9/11 attacks.

Huma Abedin has never to my knowledge uttered a word of disapproval about the Muslim Brotherhood's desire to rid the world of Christians and Jews or to bring all infidels under the heel of totalitarian Islamic law. Her spiritual adviser Yusef al-Qaradawi is the spiritual leader of the Brotherhood. Qaradawi has publicly said that the Holocaust of the Jews was God's punishment for their corruption, and that it would come again, and when it did, "Allah willing it will be at the hands of the believers." Huma Abedin has not broken her relations with this evil man or dissociated herself from his genocidal remarks. Nor has she opposed the policies enacted by Obama and Hillary, which have supported the Muslim Brotherhood at home and in the Middle East.

On the contrary. when the Obama administration supported the Brotherhood's rise to power in Egypt, Huma Abedin was our government's key adviser on Muslim affairs. She was at Hillary's side when security was not provided to our diplomatic complex in Benghazi and when al-Qaeda fanatics murdered our Ambassador. The murder of Ambassador Stevens led to the most shameful presidential act in our history when the President turned his back on the cries for help of three American heroes who served him and who were in a desperate fight for their lives. It is a time honored American code never to abandon our warriors on the field of battle. But America's commander-in-chief turned his back on these brave fighting men and left them to die; and then lied to the American people to cover up his crime.

Ever since Barack Obama was elected and began his radical course, American conservatives have been in a state of shock, as though they couldn't quite believe what was happening. Until then there had been a general collusion in the practiced deceptions of the left as commentators on all sides would refer to unrepentant radicals, and dedicated socialists as "liberals," and turn half blind eyes to their anti-American agendas. What is "liberal" about the mean-spirited intolerant people of the left, except their attitude to hard drugs, sex, and criminal behavior? Oh yes, and spending other people's money?

Today the Obama juggernaut is systematically bankrupting our country, and undoing our constitutional arrangements. Its contempt for consultative and representative government is relentlessly on display. This week Senate Majority leader Harry Reid defended his refusal to negotiate with Republicans over Obamacare and the debt in these words: "We are here to support the federal government. That's our job." End quote. Forget about representing the people whom our Founders made sovereign. Forget what America is about.

The fact that I had a radical past allowed me to see much of this coming. But even I never thought we would be looking so soon at the prospect of a one-party state. Those words may sound hyperbolic, but take a moment to think about it. If you have transformed the taxing agency of the state into a political weapon – and Obama has; if you are setting up a massive government program to gather the financial and health information of every citizen, and control their access to care; and if you have a spy agency that can read the mail and listen to the communications of every individual in the country, you don't really need a secret police to destroy your political opponents. Once you have silenced them, you can proceed with your plans to remake the world in your image.

The good news is that the bad five years we have just been through have aroused a sleeping giant among Americans who didn't see it coming and couldn't imagine that it would. For the first time since the Cold War, people with a public voice are calling socialists by their right name; conservatives are finally organizing at the grassroots to defend their freedom; and at last we have leaders who are willing to stand up to the thuggery of the left and who have the spine not to back down.

As a sometime Jonah freed from the whale let me offer some intelligence about the political forces arrayed against us. Do not make the mistake of thinking that progressives and conservatives are people who merely differ about practical agendas. There are four defining features of the left, which distinguish it as a movement of individuals who approach politics quite differently from pragmatically-minded conservatives.

The first of these features is their alienation from country: If you ask progressives about their patriotic feeling, they will tell you that they don't think of themselves first as Americans but as "citizens of the world." That even has a Harvard imprimatur. They are, in fact, so profoundly alienated from their country as to be in some sense foreigners to it. They are hostile to its history and to its core values, which they see as reflections of a society that has been guilty of racism and oppression on an epic scale. And they are fundamentally opposed to its constitutional arrangements which the framers specifically designed to thwart what they deemed "wicked projects" to redistribute income and share individual wealth.

This is perhaps the hardest feature of their progressive adversaries for conservatives to comprehend. It is difficult to imagine that people as privileged by America's generosity as Barack Obama and his entourage of despoilers should be so alienated from their country as to feel themselves in it but not of it. And there is no more shocking example of this than Benghazi. No matter what your politics, or what solutions you propose to the problems that confront this nation, ask yourself this: Could you have done what Barack Obama did that night? Could you as commander-in-chief abandon three Americans fighting for their lives under your command? These men had served their country for more than a decade. For seven hours they cried out for help from their government, but you refused to give it.

How, as a fellow American, could Obama have just left these men to die? No one with an ounce of patriotic feeling could. But he did. Even Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet premier of a Communist dictatorship, maintained contact with his astronaut as he burned up in space. But not our president. When the attack on our embassy in Benghazi began, he hung up the phone and went to bed, and then on to a fundraiser with Beyonce and Jay-Z in Las Vegas in the morning. This, with four Americans including our ambassador dead.

As a nation we are now confronted by mortal enemies in Iran and Syria, in Hizbollah and Hamas – enemies who have openly declared that we are the devil's party and should be erased from the face of the earth. How could an American president deliberately set out to appease such enemies? How in the face of such threats could he reduce our country to an international laughing stock, no longer respected by our friends, no longer feared by our foes? How could he be so cavalier about having failed so miserably to have defended his country's security and uphold its honor? How could an American commander-in-chief then put himself in a position to be snubbed by the Iranian Hitlerites, which is what they are, and which is what Obama did? How could he snub our Israeli allies and at the same time grovel before our Islamic enemies? But he did. How could he create a vacuum in the Middle East allowing Russia to become the new regional power? How could he make himself an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, which slaughters Christians, and promises the extermination of the Jews and spawns terrorist armies like al-Qaeda and Hamas?

The answer to all these questions is that Obama doesn't identify with our country. He sees himself as a "citizen of the world," and a redresser of grievances for the suffering he imagines America has inflicted on our adversaries, including Hitlerite Iran.

The second feature of the progressive left that is key to understanding it is its instinctive, practiced, and indispensable dishonesty. As I previously noted, the Communists in the circles I frequented in my youth never identified themselves as Communists but always as "progressives" and "Jeffersonian democrats" (which is the last thing they were). When I was a young man and Stalin was alive, the goal of the Communist Party U.S.A. was a "dictatorship of the proletariat," and a "Soviet America." But under Stalin's inspiration the official slogan of the Communist Party was "Peace, Jobs, and Democracy."

The lesson? People on the left may be delusional but they are not stupid. They know what they can say and get away with, and what they can't. Barack Obama is a born and bred member of the left and not coincidentally is the most brazen and compulsive liar ever to occupy the American White House. What other politician could have successfully explained away the fact that two of his closest political confidantes over a twenty-year period were an anti-American racist, Jeremiah Wright and an anti-American terrorist William Ayers?

There is a marked difference between the radicals of the Sixties and the radical movement Obama is part of. In the Sixties, as radicals we said what we thought and blurted out what we wanted. We wanted a revolution, and we wanted it now. It was actually very decent of us to warn others as to what we intended. But because we blurted out our goal, we didn't get very far. Americans were onto us. Those who remained on the left when the Sixties were over, learned from their experience. They learned to lie. The strategy of the lie is progressives' new gospel. It is what the progressive bible — Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals — is all about. Alinsky is the acknowledged political mentor to Obama and Hillary, to the service and teacher unions, and to the progressive rank and file. Alinsky understood the mistake Sixties' radicals had made. His message to this generation is easily summed up: Don't telegraph your goals; infiltrate their institutions and subvert them; moral principles are disposable fictions; the end justifies the means; and never forget that your political goal is always power.

An SDS radical wrote in the Sixties: "The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution." The Alinsky version is this: The issue is never the issue; the issue is always power: How to wring power out of the democratic process, how turn the process into an instrument of progressive control. How to use it to fundamentally transform the United States of America — which is exactly what Barack Obama warned he would do on the eve of his election.

The chosen legislative instrument to begin this transformation was Obamacare. It was presented as an act of charity, a plan to cover the uninsured. That was the "issue" as they presented it. But the actual goal of Obamacare's socialist sponsors was a "single payer system" – government healthcare — which would put the state in control of the lives of every American, man, woman and child. That is the reason that none of the promises made about Obamacare was true, beginning with his campaign lie that Obamacare government health care was not a program he would support. Obamacare will not cover 30 million uninsured Americans, as Obama and the Democrats said it would; Obamacare will not lower costs, as they promised it would; Obamacare will deprive many Americans of their doctors and healthcare plans, as they assured everyone it would not; Obamacare is a new tax, as they swore it wouldn't be. All these promises Obama and the Democrats made were false because they were only a camouflage for their real goal actual goal, which was universal control.

A third feature of progressives that defines their politics is that they regard the past, which is real, with contempt, and are focused exclusively on a future, which is imaginary.

To understand why this is important, think of progressives as a species of religious fundamentalists planning a redemption. Like fundamentalists they look at the world as fallen – a place corrupted by racism, sexism and class division. But the truly religious understand that we are the source of corruption and that redemption is only possible through the work of a Divinity. In contrast, progressives see themselves as the redeemers, which is why they are so dangerous. Because they regard those who oppose them as the eternally damned. Progressives are on a mission to create the kingdom of heaven on earth by redistributing income and using the state to enforce politically correct attitudes and practices in everyone's life. They want to control what you do, and who you are, and even what you eat. For your own good, of course.

The fact that they see themselves as saving the world – or "saving the planet" as they would prefer — results in a fourth key characteristic of their politics, which is that they regard politics as a religious war. This explains why they are so rude and nasty when you disagree with them or resist their panaceas (and of course if they had the power, the punishments would be more severe); that is why the politics of personal destruction is their favorite variety, why they are verbal assassins and go directly for the jugular, and why they think nothing of destroying the reputations of their opponents and burying them permanently. And that is why they can perform their character assassinations without regrets – or did I miss Obama's  apology to Romney for accusing him of killing a woman with cancer during the campaign? Why apologize when you did it for the good of a world transforming cause?

To sum this up: Progressives see themselves as an army of the saints, and their opponents as the party of Satan; and that will justify almost anything you can get away with.

An appalling episode of their Machiavellian politics has shaped the international conflict in which we find ourselves currently impotent in the Middle East. The root of that impotence lies in the way Democrats turned the issue of the Iraq war against the Republican president George Bush. The Democrats' case against Bush was that he acted unilaterally, deceptively and in haste.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The policy to remove Iraq's government by force was put in place by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, when he signed the Iraqi Liberation Act and fired 450 cruise missiles into that sovereign country. He did it, by the way, not only unilaterally but without consulting anyone.

That was in 1998, which is five years before Bush sent American troops into Iraq. Ten months before Bush did that he warned Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, to obey the Gulf War truce he had signed in 1991 and then repeatedly violated over the next ten years. Seven months before sending our troops into Iraq Bush went personally to the UN and got a unanimous Security Council ultimatum to Saddam. UN Resolution 1447 said: Obey the terms of the Gulf War truce by December 7, 2002 – or else.

Two months before that deadline Bush went to Congress and requested an authorization to use force in the event that Saddam did not voluntarily observe the terms of the UN Resolution, and the Gulf War truce he had signed and then violated.  Both houses of Congress including a majority of the Democrats in the Senate voted to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq. He also got an authorization from NATO and he also formed a coalition of 40 nations, including America's oldest allies, the Brits, to enforce the UN Security Council ultimatum.

Not only was the decision not made in haste, and not made without consultation, as the Democrats claimed. The truth was just the opposite. The process of making the decision to go to war took 10 months and every significant authority was consulted. But once U.S. troops entered Iraq on March 19, 2003, it took only three months for the Democrats to betray them and their president, to turn their backs on the war they had authorized and supported, and claim it was – to use the words of former Vice President Al Gore, "unnecessary, immoral and illegal." Or in the words of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time."

Why did the Democrats betray the war they had supported? It was not because of any fact on the ground in Iraq, or any principles Bush had allegedly violated. They betrayed our troops and turned on their commander-in-chief for one reason and one reason alone: to gain political power at home.

At the very moment of their treachery a Democratic primary was in progress. An anti-war Democrat – a Sixties leftist named Howard Dean — was on the verge of winning their presidential nomination, burying other candidates like John Kerry and John Edwards in the polls. Until then, Kerry and Edwards were full-throated supporters of the war. Kerry made a speech on the floor of the Senate in support of the bill authorizing the use of force. He explained why the forcible removal of Saddam was necessary to defend the country and secure the peace.

But that was before the anti-war candidate Howard Dean had surged ahead in the polls. When that happened, and Kerry saw that he was going to lose the party nomination, he decided to switch sides. He turned his back on everything he had said in defense of the war, and the necessity of using force, and he turned his back on our troops in the field, and attacked their commander-in-chief. He did it for one reason, and one reason only. He did it because he saw it as the only way to win the Democratic nomination and have a chance of winning the presidency in 2004.

Kerry and the Democrats betrayed the war they had authorized; they betrayed the young Americans they sent into harms way; they betrayed the country they had sworn to serve. They did it to win the political power they were going to use to change the world. No conservative in his right mind would behave like this. No conservative would regard a political administration in Washington as a stepping stone on the way to a brave new world, and therefore something to justify opposing a war they had authorized and supported.

What were the issues the Democrats used to make their case against the president and the war in Iraq? It didn't really matter, because the issues were never the issue. The Democrats opposed Bush and the war because both stood in the way of their quest for power.

The Democrats attacked Bush for acting in haste and acting unilaterally. Both charges were false. Worse, the Democrats claimed that the war was about weapons of mass destruction, ignoring the fact that Saddam had violated the Gulf War truce and had failed to comply with sixteen Security Council resolutions attempting to bring him into line, including the ultimatum of December 7. To make their case they claimed that Bush falsified the intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction and lied in order to fool them into supporting the war. This was the biggest lie of the entire war. CIA chief George Tenet was a Clinton appointee. John Kerry sat on the intelligence committees with other Democrats like Feinstein and Rockefeller. The Democrats had access to all the intelligence information that Bush did. Bush could not have persuaded them to support the war by lying about the data, even if he had wanted to.

Why did they accuse him of lying? Because they could not admit the actual reason they had betrayed the war and the young men and women they sent to battle. They did it for partisan political gain. Unfortunately neither the White House nor any Republican had the political courage to hold them to account, and we are all paying the price for that.

For five years the Democrats conducted a scorched earth campaign against their country and its commander in the midst of a war. The harm they did is irreparable. Their sabotage of the war crippled our efforts to prosecute it – for example to follow Saddam's weapons and generals into Syria, where they had fled; to take the war to Iran which supplied the IEDs which killed most of our troops; to close the border with Syria across which jihadists entered Iraq to fight our troops. The Democrats' sabotage of the war created the power vacuum in the Middle East, which the terrorists and the Russians have now filled. And it most certainly inflicted casualties on our troops, though no one has had the political courage to say so.

The Democrats sabotaged the war in Iraq for the worst of reasons. They claimed it was for principle, but it was really – and only — to save their political skins.

Once the Democrats recaptured the presidency, it took no time at all for events to expose this destructive farce. Unlike the majority of his Democratic colleagues, Senator Barack Obama had always opposed the war in Iraq. He was against American interventions in sovereign countries, and he was against presidents who acted unilaterally, and in haste. Or so he said.

But when Obama became president and had the power to do so, he invaded Libya: unilaterally, and without authorization, and with no national security interest at stake. And he lied about the cause. There was no prospect of massacres as he claimed, and it was not a human rights intervention. If it were, Libya would not now be in chaos with al-Qaeda resurgent, and in a worse state than before.

Obama's invasion of Libya was not merely unilateral. It was egomaniacal. Obama consulted no one outside his White House inner circle, not his own party, not the Congress, not the United Nations. Unlike Bush, he acted without constitutional authority and he acted alone. Yet there was not one Democratic leader who stood up for the principles they had all invoked to cripple America's war against the jihadists in Iraq. Not one Democratic leader opposed the Democratic president, or criticized his aggression. They abandoned the principles of multilaterialism, consultation with Congress, and support from the U.N. because it would have been bad for their leader if they didn't; it would have jeopardized their power.

The political consequences of the differences between conservatives and progressives is not only not small, it affects the way both sides conduct their political battles. Progressives focus on an impossible future, a utopia of promises, and this justifies for them their unscrupulous means. Issues for them are merely instruments for accumulating political power.  Conservatives look to the past as a guide to what is possible and humanly practical, and what is not. Issues for them are problems that need to be fixed, and they take seriously the policies they devise to address them. This puts conservatives at a huge political disadvantage. It causes them to argue policy as though they were debating a party with whom they shared goals and only differed on the means to get there. But that is far from the case.

Take the present debate about a government shutdown. A statement from Boehner's office explains, "The entire government is shut down right now because Washington Democrats refuse to even talk about fairness for all Americans under ObamaCare." This is a proposal for compromise and is designed to portray Republicans as reasonable. We're all part of the same social contract, and we need to give on both sides to resolve the impasse. We're all interested in fairness, when all is said and done. If individuals were to be given a year's extension under Obamacare, as corporations already have been, that would be fair. But since when is Obamacare about fairness? That's a Democratic façade and talking point, courtesy of the Republican Speaker. By way of contrast, this is how the Democrats make their argument: "Republicans are trying to shut down the government so they can prevent us from providing all Americans with affordable healthcare." In other words, Democrats are standing up for fairness and ordinary Americans, against the selfish Republicans who want deny them affordable care and shut down their government. This is three lies in one sentence. But who do you think wins that vote?

If you want to fight the left you have to fight fire with fire. That means first and foremost you have to hold them to account for hurting the people they are pretending to help. Whose opportunities are going to be wrecked by Obamacare? Health care taxes will go up for those who pay taxes – the middle class — while their incomes will go down. Already Obamacare is cutting the workweek to 30 hours. Whose pocket books do you think that is hitting?

They claim conservatives are conducting a war against minorities; we need to throw the truth back in their faces. We need to tell the people that progressives are the principal oppressors and exploiters of minorities and the poor in this country. Progressives control the inner cities, which are teeming with the nation's minorities and poor; and they run the broken public school systems that have become dumping grounds for those who cannot afford a private education.

The city of Milwaukee has been run by liberals and progressives without interruption for more than 100 years. What is the consequence of this progressive rule? Milwaukee's median household income is forty percent below the rest of the country. The black unemployment rate is 27%, three times the national average for everyone. Milwaukee's population is majority black and Hispanic, and 30% of it lives below the poverty line. A third of Milwaukee's public school children drop out before they graduate; those who do are barely literate. That's what progressive policies achieve. Don't let them forget it.

Conservatives need to put the human disasters of progressive policies in front of people every chance they get. We need to confront progressives with the misery they have created in America's bankrupt cities, Detroit and Chicago, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, St. Louis, and the nation's capital, and every city they have controlled for 25, 50 and 100 years, without interruption.

Conservatives need to talk less to the voters' heads and more to their hearts. Government debt is not just an accountant's nightmare. Debt is a form of economic slavery. If you add up all the taxes Americans pay — federal, state, local, income, sales — Americans already work half the year for government rather than for themselves. Like Obamacare and the political use of the I.R.S., debt is a threat to individual freedom.

Freedom is what our cause is about not just fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility has no emotional appeal except to people who already understand what it means. Fiscal responsibility is a means to an end. The end is freedom, and that is what inspires commitment and sacrifice and the passion necessary to win. Because it speaks to the heart.

Conservatives need to speak up as champions of the little guys, the underdogs, whose lives are being steadily constricted – made less free — by the ongoing destruction of a system that once afforded more opportunity for more people than any other in the history of the world. Conservatives need to speak up for the young whose future horizons are being rapidly diminished as the trillion dollar Obama deficits pile higher and higher. Conservatives need to speak for all Americans whose security under Obama has been degraded to the most dangerous levels since the end of the Cold War.

This is the threat we face, and the sooner we grapple with it the greater our chances to survive it. The most important battle in the world today is not being waged in the Middle East but here at home in the United States. If we lose this battle, everything is lost. But if we will take the measure of the enemies of freedom and prepare ourselves to fight them, we have a better than even chance to win.

[Warph]

A Final Salute From The #1MVetMarch

Video: "Return To Sender" -
Watch As Hundreds Return "Barrycades"
To The White House - #1MVetMarch