The Huffington Riposte

Offering a conservative counterbalance to the extreme left-coast liberalism of The Huffington Post

Thursday, June 27, 2013

ENGLAND GAVE US OUR LAW AND OUR LANGUAGE, NOW ENGLAND IS ABOUT TO GIVE US SOMETHING ELSE

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Pictures from London
 
Those of you receiving these pictures in the U.S.A. please see the last paragraph.  And please forward them to everyone.
These pictures are of Muslims marching through the STREETS OF LONDON during their recent ‘Religion of Peace Demonstration’.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Why would anyone think that we should be at war with such nice, peaceful Muslims?!
You need to forward this one to everyone! These pictures tell it all!Muslims have stated that England will be the first country they take over!
These are pictures not shown on American TV or in American Newspapers – WHY?!
but were forwarded by a Canadian friend who thought ALL Americans ought to know!
 
Posted by Leo Rugiens at 12:18 PM No comments:
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GOODBY AMERICA, I BARELY KNEW THEE!

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June 27, 2013 4:00 AM
Vetoing Democracy
Justice Roberts’s clumsy opinion threatens the initiative process in 26 states.
By John Fund
John Fund









Chief Justice John Roberts has done it again. His twisted reasoning in last year’s Obamacare ruling wasn’t the only unpleasant surprise he’s sprung on supporters of the rule of law.


His majority 5-to-4 opinion in California’s Proposition 8 case — throwing the issue back to California because plaintiffs lacked standing to argue in his court — is as bizarre as his Obamacare decision. His opinion was joined by an ideological tossed salad of justices that ranged from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Antonin Scalia. But the fact that its list of supporters is unusual doesn’t mean it won’t present real problems for both liberals and conservatives when it comes to democratic freedoms. Has the initiative process in 26 states now been fatally undermined?


Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion held that supporters of Proposition 8, which 52 percent of California voters used in 2008 to define marriage as between only a man and a woman, lacked standing to defend the measure in federal court after state officials refused to defend the law in court. Supporters could fight for Prop 8 in California courts, the court said, because California recognized their standing, but they can’t appeal in federal court because they don’t have standing that meets federal rules. Since a federal district court had previously ruled Proposition 8 unconstitutional, supporters of gay marriage claim the Supreme Court has effectively made gay marriage the law in California.

 
 
Governor Jerry Brown is already ordering clerks to issue marriage licenses to gays in California, a bold step given that it’s unclear the federal district court had the power to extend gay marriage to anyone other than the specific people involved in the suit. But that’s for other courts to sort out in a year or so; for now, Brown is trying to make a show of force that he hopes courts won’t dare challenge.

In California, the initiative process was started in 1911 specifically to pass laws that the governor, other state officials, and the legislature didn’t want to pass. As Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is from California, points out in his dissent to the Roberts opinion: “The initiative system ‘grew out of dissatisfaction with the then governing public officials and a widespread belief that the people had lost control of the political process.’”


Well, that belief will now reassert itself in the wake of Roberts’s opinion.


In the case of Prop 8, Governor Brown, Democratic attorney general Kamala Harris, and the Democratic legislature all refused to defend in court the ban on gay marriage. That’s why the state supreme court unanimously allowed the proponents of Prop 8 to defend it in court, a decision that was ratified by the liberal federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals when the Prop 8 case was heard there on its way to the Supreme Court.


Justice Kennedy said during oral argument in the Prop 8 case last March that not granting standing to the proponents of Prop 8 in federal court would have dangerous implications, what he called “a one-way ratchet.” All state officials have to do is refuse to defend a law passed by the people, watch as those seeking to overturn the law go judge-shopping (Prop 8 opponents found a gay judge in San Francisco who did not disclose his sexual orientation), and then watch the proponents of the initiative lose in federal court because they “lack standing” to represent the law they wrote.


Justice Kennedy, in his dissent from the majority, warned that “the Court’s decision also has implications for the 26 other states that have an initiative or popular referendum system, and which, like California, may choose to have initiative proponents stand in for the State when public officials decline to defend an initiative in litigation.” Kevin Drum, a blogger for the liberal Mother Jones magazine, notes that he is in favor of gay marriage, but that the Supreme Court’s “gutting” of the people’s right to defend their own initiatives “has neither the flavor of justice nor of democratic governance.”


Others are already raising the alarm. Bill Jurkovich, a voter in Citrus Heights, Calif., says: “Apparently, we the people do not have the right to create a law that the political elite disagree with. Is it any wonder that people are becoming radicalized, have lost faith with the political process, distrust government, and do not vote?” Indeed, the California supreme court has in the past ruled that “if the very officials the initiative process seeks to circumvent are the only parties who can defend an enacted initiative when it is challenged . . . this de facto veto will erode one of the cornerstones of the State’s governmental structure.”


The California supreme court went on to say: “In light of the frequency with which initiatives’ opponents resort to litigation” — over one-third of the initiatives approved in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington between 1900 and 2008 were challenged in court – “the impact of that veto could be substantial.”


John Eastman, a former dean of Chapman University’s law school, says he believes people of all political persuasions should worry about the “huge hole” Justice Roberts has blown in the initiative process in order to sidestep ruling on the merits of Proposition 8. “Someday, liberals could win an environmental-protection measure in a state and see a conservative governor and attorney general refuse to enforce or defend it,” he told me. “When that time comes, the proponents may seek their day in federal court and find that there’s only darkness because they lack any standing to defend their own law.”


The threat to the initiative process in 26 states is real. Starting with California, voters should quickly explore ways to craft some mechanism that will allow proponents to defend initiatives in court if elected officials refuse to do so. Sounds like a good subject for another initiative — and if such a measure were to pass, elected officials would probably be quite leery of trying to block it.



— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO.

Posted by Leo Rugiens at 5:50 AM No comments:
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Tuesday, June 25, 2013

WHY ARE THE NATIONS LAUGHING AT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

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130624-model-snowden-tease
Edward Snowden speaks during an interview in Hong Kong. (The Guardian via Getty )


JUNE 25, 2013


BARACK OBAMA'S ENDURING INEPTITUDE


BY WES PRUDEN


Barack Obama’s critics are loud enough and persistent enough, but maybe we’ve been baying at the wrong moon.


It’s not the president’s ideology, his arrogance, his attention-deficit disorder, his endless deference to alien religious faith and his contempt for the faith of those close to home (or even his backswing) that’s what’s wrong with the man in charge of the government. It’s the sheer incompetence of the leader and his gang.

This is the gang that can’t shoot straight, eager to stifle or soften the First, Second, Fourth and Fifth Amendments and ever ready to stumble abroad with timidity in the face of governments that mean us ill. In the circumstances, maybe incompetence is not necessarily a bad thing. They could be doing a lot more harm if they actually knew how to do what they’re trying to do. The Obama legion can’t figure out which is the business end of the gun.


The spectacle of a 29-year-old computer geek armed with a laptop and a credit card racing across the hemispheres, eluding the FBI, the CIA, the TSA, the IRS and the rest of the alphabet soup available to the president, taunting the entire U.S. Government to catch him if it can, has much of the rest of the world applauding, cheering and laughing. This is the entertainment nobody has seen since Bonnie and Clyde redefined the job of bank examiner on the front pages of 80 years ago. This is also something new in our history, the world laughing at the ineptitude of the United States. Only Mr. Obama, who set out years ago to cut America down to a size to suit the third world, can be pleased.


Nobody roots for the fuzz, and a petition to the White House to grant a full pardon to Edward Snowden had collected 111,000 signatures by mid-day Monday, seeking “a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret [National Security Administration] surveillance programs,” and calling him “a national hero.”


The petition, to the White House “We, the People” website, has earned an official White House response, even if all the petitioners can expect is the usual argle-bargle, full of mush and slurry, signifying nothing.

Posted by Leo Rugiens at 5:26 AM No comments:
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Monday, June 24, 2013

DO WE NEED BIG GOVENMENT? NOT IF YOU UNDERSTAND THESE FACTS ABOUT THE U.S.A.

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THE NEW WELFARE MAP
Make sure you read to the bottom...
Quite an eye opener...
b499391.jpg
These 11 States now have More People on Welfare than they do Employed!
Last month, the Senate Budget Committee reports that in fiscal year 2012, between food stamps, housing support, child care, Medicaid and other benefits, the average U.S. Household below the poverty line received $168.00 a day in government support. What's the problem with that much support? Well, the median household income in America is just over $50,000,which averages out to $137.13 a day. To put it another way, being on welfare now pays the equivalent of $30.00 an hour for a 40-hour week, while the average job pays $20.00 an hour.
                Furthermore:
There are actually two messages here.  The first is very
interesting, but the second is absolutely astounding - and explains a lot.
 
           A recent "Investor's Business Daily" article provided very
interesting statistics from a survey by the United Nations International
Health Organization.
 
           Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years
after diagnosis:
 
            U.S.                     65%
 
            England               46%
 
            Canada                42%
 
 
           Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received
treatment within six months:
 
            U.S.                      93%
 
            England               15%
 
            Canada                43%
 
 
           Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it
within six months:
 
            U.S.                      90%
 
            England               15%
 
            Canada                43%
 
 
           Percentage referred to a medical specialist who see one within
one month:
 
            U.S.                      77%
 
            England               40%
 
            Canada                43%
 
 
           Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million
people:
 
            U.S.                      71
 
            England              14
 
            Canada               18
 
 
           Percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are
in "excellent health":
 
            U.S.                     12%
 
            England                2%
 
            Canada                6%
 
 
           And now for the last statistic:
 
 
           National Health Insurance?
 
            U.S.                      NO
 
            England             YES
 
            Canada              YES
 
           Check this last set of statistics!!
 
           The percentage of each past president's cabinet who had worked in the private business sector prior to their appointment to the cabinet.
You know what the private business sector is; a real-life business, not a government job.  Here are the percentages.
         T. Roosevelt.................... 38%
 
           Taft................................ 40%
 
            Wilson ........................... 52%
 
           Harding........................... 49%
 
           Coolidge......................... 48%
 
           Hoover ............................ 42%
 
           F. Roosevelt..................... 50%
 
           Truman........................... 50%
 
           Eisenhower................ .... 57%
 
           Kennedy......................... 30%
 
           Johnson.......................... 47%
 
           Nixon.............................. 53%
 
           Ford................................ 42%
 
           Carter............................. 32%
 
           Reagan............................ 56%
 
           GH Bush.......................... 51%
 
            Clinton .......................... 39%
 
           GW Bush........................ 55%
 
           Obama............................. 8%
 
 
           This helps to explain the incompetence of this administration:
only 8% of them have ever worked in private business!
 
           That's right!  Only eight percent---the least, by far, of the
last 19 presidents!  And these people are trying to tell our big
corporations how to run their business?
 
           How can the president of a major nation and society, the one
with the most successful economic system in world history, stand and talk
about business when he's never worked for one?  Or about jobs when he has
never really had one?  And when it's the same for 92% of his senior staff
and closest advisers?  They've spent most of their time in academia,
government and/or non-profit jobs or as "community organizers." 
They should have been in an employment line.
 
Posted by Leo Rugiens at 5:20 AM No comments:
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Saturday, June 22, 2013

NOT MY WAY, NOT YOUR WAY, NOT EVEN THE FOUNDERS WAY. IT HAS TO BE THE CHICAGO WAY UNTIL 2016.

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History repeated - Chicago owns the USA? 
  
 chicagotribune.com

 
John                                          Kass
John Kass Bio
John Kass has covered a variety of topics since arriving at the Chicago Tribune in 1983.
The son of a Greek immigrant grocer,
Kass was born June 23, 1956, on Chicago's South Side and grew up there and in Oak Lawn. He held a number of jobs—merchant marine sailor, ditch digger, waiter—before becoming a film student at Columbia College in Chicago. There, he worked at the student newspaper and caught the attention of Daryle Feldmeir, chairman of the journalism department and former editor of the Chicago Daily News.

Feldmeir and journalism professor Les Brownlee helped him obtain an internship at the Daily Calumet in 1980, where Kass worked as a reporter until he left for the Tribune.

In 2004, Kass was awarded the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi national award for general column writing, the Scripps Howard Foundation's National Journalism Award for commentary, the Press Club of Atlantic City's National Headliner Award for local interest column writing on a variety of subjects, and the Chicago Headline Club's Lisagor Award for best daily newspaper columnist.

In 1992, Kass won the Chicago Tribune's Beck Award for writing.
 Kass lives in the western suburbs with his wife and twin sons.  His column appears on Page A2 of the Chicago Tribune every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday.

The Chicago Tribune

 
John Kass

 
IRS scandal a reminder of how I learned about
'The Chicago Way'

 
           
 
John Kass

 
May 19, 2013
As the IRS scandal attests, President Barack Obama brought
The Chicago Way to Washington.
(Andrew Harrer, Bloomberg / May 19, 2013)

The Internal Revenue Service scandal now devouring the Obama administration — the outrageous use of the federal taxing authority to target Tea Party and other conservatives — certainly makes for meaty partisan politics.

But this scandal is about more than partisanship. It's bigger than whether the Republicans win or the Democrats lose.

It's even bigger than President Barack Obama. Yes, bigger than Obama.

It is opening American eyes to the fundamental relationship between free people and those who govern them. This one is about the Republic and whether we can keep it.


And it started me thinking of years ago, of my father and my uncle in Chicago and how government muscle really works.

Because if you want to understand The Chicago Way of things in Washington these days, with the guys from Chicago in charge of the White House and the federal leviathan, there's one place you start:

You start in Chicago.

My father and uncle ran a small business, a supermarket on the South Side.. Uncle George worked in the front, my father in the butcher shop in the back. My uncle had been a teacher. My father had plowed his fields with a mule.

They were immigrants who came here from Greece with nothing in their pockets but a determination to work, and the belief that here, in America, no other power could roll in with tanks and put their boots on the necks of their children.

My father and uncle, like the rest of the family, valued education and books and free political debate. And so at large extended family Sundays, we'd all sit around the dinner table, many uncles and aunts and cousins, young and old.

There were conservatives and socialists, Roosevelt Democrats and Reagan Republicans and a few bewildered, equivocal moderates in between, everyone squabbling, laughing, telling stories.

No matter whose house we were visiting, the TV was never turned on after dinner. Instead, we'd have coffee and fruit and dessert and argument. We had different views, we loved each other, and even strangers who showed up were expected to join in, to debate education, the presidency, social issues, the war, drugs, blue jeans, long hair, baseball, everything.

Uncle Alex was the uncle who told us young people how best to make our points. He ran a snack shop in the Bridgeport neighborhood — the legendary home of Chicago mayors and Democratic machine bosses.

"Don't wait for a ticket," he'd say, and puff on his cigar, always in a white shirt and tie, on those family Sundays. So we'd just jump in when we could, like the rest.

One Sunday, I must have been 12 or 13, I decided to ask what I thought was an intelligent question that was something like this:

We talk politics every Sunday, we fight about this and that, so why aren't you politically active outside?

Why don't you get involved in politics?


There was an immediate silence. The older cousins looked away. The aunts and uncles stared at me in horror, as if I'd just announced I was selling heroin after school.

You could hear them breathing. No one spoke. I could feel myself blushing.

Someone quickly changed the subject to some safe old story. It could have been the one about how our grandfather named the family mule — a white, big-headed animal — after President Truman. My sin seemed forgotten.

But I couldn't forget it. I couldn't understand how we could argue about politics over baklava and watermelon and coffee, but not put it into practice.

We could support a political candidacy, we could donate or work for one or another politician that we agreed with.

This is America, I said.

"Are you in your good senses?" said my father. "We have lives here. We have businesses. If we get involved in politics, they will ruin us."

And no one, not the Roosevelt Democrats or the Reagan Republicans, disagreed. The socialists, the communists, the royalists, everyone nodded their heads.


This was Chicago. And for a business owner to get involved meant one thing: It would cost you money and somebody from government could destroy you.

The health inspectors would come, and the revenue department, the building inspectors, the fire inspectors, on and on. The city code books aren't thick because politicians like to write new laws and regulations. The codes are thick because when government swings them at a citizen, they hurt.

And who swings the codes and regulations at those who'd open their mouths? A government worker. That government worker owes his or her job to the political boss. And that boss has a boss.

The worker doesn't have to be told. The worker wants a promotion. If an irritant rises, it is erased. The hack gets a promotion. This is government.

So everybody kept their mouths shut, and Chicago was hailed by national political reporters as the city that works.

I didn't understand it all back then, but I understand it now. Once there were old bosses. Now there are new bosses. And shopkeepers still keep their mouths shut. Tavern owners still keep their mouths shut.

Even billionaires keep their mouths shut.

One hard-working billionaire whose children own the Chicago Cubs dared to open his mouth. Joe Ricketts considered funding a political group critical of Obama before last year's campaign. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former chief of staff, made it clear that if the Cubs wanted City Hall's approval to refurbish decrepit Wrigley Field, Ricketts better back off.

It happened. He backed off. It was sickening. But it was and is Chicago.

And now — with the IRS used as political muscle and the Obama administration keeping that secret until after the president was elected — America understands it too.


Posted by Leo Rugiens at 6:04 PM No comments:
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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

TOMORROW, JUNE 19TH, WE CELEBRATE EMANCIPATION DAY FOR BLACK TEXANS

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Senator Slams Democrats & Welfare As He Dramatically Switches Parties

Read more: http://conservativevideos.com/2013/06/senator-slams-democrats-welfare-as-he-dramatically-switches-parties/#ixzz2WbrFf6L1


Posted by Leo Rugiens at 3:29 PM No comments:
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Friday, June 14, 2013

EDWARD SNOWDEN IS NO HERO, HE IS A TRAITOR

!!!!


Chinese police lead a condemned man into a special execution van to be put to death. (AFP/Getty Images)


Snowden and China

 

HUGO RESTALL

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
14 June 13
The decision of Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old contractor who exposed details of top-secret U.S. spy programs, to hole up in Hong Kong is one of more bizarre aspects to this story. He told the South China Morning Post this week that he chose Hong Kong to better broadcast his revelations, not to flee U.S. justice. But Mr. Snowden seems determined to use that stage to inflict maximum damage on the U.S. government and its reputation abroad.
In the same interview with the Post, Mr. Snowden accused the National Security Agency of spying on the Internet backbone in Hong Kong since 2009 as well as hundreds of targets in China, and provided documents to back up his claims. He may have inflicted serious damage to the U.S. national interest by exposing a successful espionage operation. It's hard to see how this squares with his insistence that he is a "whistle-blower" motivated by patriotism.
Mr. Snowden has also damaged the cause of civil liberties he claims to defend. Beijing has long tried to deflect Western criticisms of its human rights record by criticizing shortcomings in the U.S. and Europe. This attempt at moral equivalence has always fallen flat. Reporters Without Borders calls China "the world's biggest prison for journalists, bloggers and cyber-dissidents." But now the Communist Party has a new advocate who some in the U.S. are hailing as a hero.
Even in Hong Kong, Mr. Snowden fails to understand where the battle lines are drawn. He is correct that the territory has a tradition of protecting free speech with the rule of law. But the real threat to its freedoms comes from self-censorship because local tycoons have business interests on the mainland. It's notable that he gave his interview to the South China Morning Post, which has softened its China coverage in recent years.
Mr. Snowden tags U.S. "hypocrisy" for targeting China's civilian infrastructure while condemning Beijing for doing the same thing. The state-run media on the mainland has been quick to trumpet this accusation as well as exaggerated characterizations of NSA domestic snooping. However, he offers no evidence that the NSA steals commercial secrets the way China does.
Perhaps Mr. Snowden believes that he can make himself useful enough to Beijing that it will block his extradition from Hong Kong to the U.S. That would give him more of the notoriety he seems to crave. But it would also debunk the notion he is a crusader for freedom.

Posted by Leo Rugiens at 12:56 PM 1 comment:
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Wednesday, June 12, 2013

EDWARD SNOWDEN IS NOW SUPPLYING RED CHINA WITH INFORMATION ABOUT THE USA / WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF A "TRAITOR"?

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MANDATORY CREDIT: GUARDIAN/GLENN GREENWALD/LAURA POITRAS    EDITORIAL USE ONLY/NO SALES  EDITORIAL USE ONLY/NO SALES

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/edward-snowden-defends-hiatus-hong-kong-article-1.1370345#ixzz2W3Dib7He


COMMENTARY MAGAZINE


Contentions

Snowden’s Quest Isn’t About Civil Liberties

Max Boot | @MaxBoot 06.12.2013 - 4:40 PM

Renegade NSA techie Edward Snowden apparently seems to be extending his campaign to do as much damage as possible to America’s national security. It’s not bad enough that he blew two highly classified programs designed, with considerable safeguards to protect civil liberties, to monitor telephone calls and Internet traffic. Now in an interview with the South China Morning Post, a newspaper in Chinese-controlled Hong Kong which is owned by the pro-Beijing billionaire Robert Kuok, he has disclosed what he describes as U.S. government efforts to penetrate computer networks in China and Hong Kong.



After an extensive interview with him, the Post reported:


Snowden said that according to unverified documents seen by the Post, the NSA had been hacking computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland since 2009.
One of the targets in the SAR, according to Snowden, was Chinese University and public officials, businesses and students in the city. The documents also point to hacking activity by the NSA against mainland targets.
Snowden believed there had been more than 61,000 NSA hacking operations globally, with hundreds of targets in Hong Kong and on the mainland.
“We hack network backbones – like huge internet routers, basically – that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” he said.



This is very useful information–for Chinese authorities. What wider purpose it could possibly serve in Snowden’s self-styled war for American liberties is hard to say. None of this hacking was directed against American citizens, after all; it was directed, assuming his account is accurate, against a rival state that itself engages in extensive hacking of American computer networks. Constitutional protections certainly don’t apply to citizens of foreign states.



One wonders what further information is contained in the “unverified documents” he handed to the Post; whatever it is, it’s a safe bet that it is harmful to America’s security and that it is now in the hands of Chinese intelligence.



Whatever other information Snowden possesses (and he claims to have taken many more Top Secret documents with him than have so far been published) will undoubtedly wind up in Chinese hands too. That’s inevitable given that Snowden has chosen to hide out on Chinese territory; Hong Kong’s supposedly separate political system, which is in fact increasingly compromised by Beijing’s heavy-handed authoritarianism, will not for a minute stop Chinese intelligence agents from seeking to learn what he knows. His computer and cell phone undoubtedly have been downloaded by Chinese authorities already, with or without his permission. It would not be surprising if intelligence operatives seek to interrogate him as well–and if he refuses to talk he could face the threat of extradition and the likelihood of a long prison term in the United States.



Snowden looks less and less like an overzealous civil libertarian and more and more like someone driven by the same kind of anti-American animus which inspires Julian Assange, the accused rapist and WikiLeaks founder. Snowden is now objectively serving the interests of the People’s Republic of China–not the people of the United States.




Topics: Edward Snowden, NSA
Posted by Leo Rugiens at 5:20 PM 1 comment:
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WHO CARES ABOUT MINORITY RIGHTS?

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Posted by Leo Rugiens at 10:56 AM No comments:
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Monday, June 10, 2013

LEAKER EDWARD SNOWDEN FLEES THE USA FOR THE FREEDOM OF RED CHINA, WHICH PROVES THAT HE WAS INDEED A HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT

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Nsa Leaker Edward Snowden Maryland

COMMENTARY MAGAZINE

Contentions

NSA Leaker Is No Hero

Max Boot | @MaxBoot 06.09.2013 - 3:35 PM

That didn’t take long. The official who leaked top-secret information about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs to fight terrorism has now come forward in the pages of the Guardian to revel in his role “as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning.”



Edward Snowden is described as a 29-year-old high school dropout who worked (ironically) on computer security for the CIA before becoming a highly paid contractor at Booz Allen, making a reported $200,000 a year working for the National Security Agency in Hawaii. The Guardian story presents him as a martyr for some kind of libertarian world view: “In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: ‘I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions’ but ‘I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.’ ”



He claims he is willing to sacrifice a comfortable lifestyle in Hawaii “because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.” In reality, of course, the United States is the greatest champion of liberty the world has ever seen–this is, after all, the nation that defeated Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and has championed democracy from Libya to the Philippines, freeing untold millions from oppression.



But that’s not the only delusional aspect of Snowden’s justifications. It turns out he is not so willing to accept the consequences of his actions. On May 20, having downloaded all the Top Secret documents he intended to leak, he took a flight to Hong Kong, where he has been ensconced in a hotel room ever since. Why Hong Kong? According to the Guardian, “he chose the city because ‘they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent,’ and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.”



In point of fact the latter justification is considerably more compelling than the former. One wonders if even someone as ignorant and delusional as Snowden could possibly imagine that Hong Kong–ruled by a Communist dictatorship in Beijing–is more of a haven of “free speech and political” dissent than is the United States, which happens to be one of the freest countries in the world. Freedom House rates Hong Kong as only “partly free,” and getting less so all the time, as Beijing consolidates its control over what was once a genuinely free British colony.



It is a cardinal irony that Snowden, a self-styled martyr to Internet freedom, has taken refuge in a country (China) that does more to restrict the Internet than any other major country and has far more intrusive electronic surveillance than anything the NSA could possibly dream up. If he thinks he can elude Chinese intelligence by typing in passwords with a bag over his head, he is deeply ignorant of how sophisticated the Chinese government is in tapping into cell phones and computers. They don’t even need physical access to download everything he has in his hard drive.



That the Guardian is glorifying this misguided and malevolent individual does him no favors: He needs to see a psychiatrist or a minister rather than to be granted access to the front pages of the world to blow some of the U.S. government’s most important intelligence-gathering activities.



The fact that the CIA and NSA employed him for years—and then allowed him to leave the country with Top Secret documents–suggests that major modifications are needed in their security procedures. The intelligence community has been mostly focused on checking out employees with overseas family or friends on the assumption that they are most likely to be compromised by foreign intelligence services. But Snowden, like Bradley Manning (and, for that matter, like Robert Hannsen, Aldrich Ames, the Walker family and other high-level spies), is a homegrown traitor who managed to escape the tightest security. It is time to readjust the assumptions on which U.S. counter-intelligence operates–and time, too, to make the most strenuous efforts to move Snowden out of China and bring him to justice for the serious crimes he has committed.



Far from striking a blow for political liberty and freedom of expression, he is unwittingly helping the most illiberal individuals in the world–jihadist terrorists–to more effectively attack us.
Topics: Edward Snowden, NSA, terrorism
Posted by Leo Rugiens at 3:22 PM 1 comment:
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Friday, June 7, 2013

THE WATCHWORD OF THIS ADMINISTRATION IS NOT "GOVERN" IT IS "GROVEL"

!!!!

Samantha Power

June 7, 2013 SHARE

When a bow is not deep enough

By Wes Pruden


A deep bow to our “friends” in the Middle East no longer satisfies Barack Obama’s White House. His new ambassador-to-be to the United Nations has a better idea. Samantha Power thinks the president should take a deferential knee. (It worked for Al Jolson, paying tribute to Mammy.)






Mzz Power is nothing if not flexible, and admires “flexibility” in presidents paying court to the nation’s adversaries and enemies. This president just hasn’t bowed deeply enough to suit her.



A decade ago, when Mzz Power was a learned perfessor at Harvard, she set out a few guidelines for how an American president could earn the respect of the squalid and the corrupt, envious as they are of American pelf and power.



She held up the example of German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who in 1970, eager to expiate the sins of the Nazis, went to one knee on a street in the old Warsaw ghetto, scene of one of the great atrocities of World War II, to apologize for the unspeakable and the unforgivable.



“A country has to look back before it can move forward,” she wrote of the gesture in New Republic magazine. “Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When [Willy] Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany. Would such an approach be futile for the United States?”




Al Jolson
















“Futile” is not the word for such a gesture. “Sick” is the word. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman, who led the coalition of the civilized in World War II, were neither Nazis nor evil-doers, nor were the 291,000 Americans who shed their blood to liberate Europe and the Pacific from the embrace of Nazis and their journeymen in evil.
Mzz Power’s infamous essay – for which she has apologized, though for getting caught at saying it, not for thinking it – was titled, “Why do they hate us?” In it, she concedes that George W. Bush was right about “some” America-bashers when he rightly and accurately said “they hate our freedoms – our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” But Mzz Power thinks her adopted land deserves the abuse of the bashers and malicious malcontents. “U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought,” she wrote. “It needs not tweaking but overhauling. We need: a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored or permitted by the United States.”


Wes Pruden is the Editor Emeritus of The Washington Post

.................................................................................................................

grov·el

intransitive verb \ˈgrä-vəl, ˈgrə-\
grov·eled or grov·elledgrov·el·ing or grov·el·ling

Definition of GROVEL

1
: to creep with the face to the ground : crawl
2
a : to lie or creep with the body prostrate in token of subservience or abasement
b : to abase oneself
3
: to give oneself over to what is base or unworthy : wallow <groveling in self-pity>
— grov·el·er noun
— grov·el·ing·ly adverb

Examples of GROVEL

  1. The peasants groveled before the king.
  2. He had to grovel to get her to accept his apology.
  3. He made a groveling apology to his girlfriend.

Origin of GROVEL

back-formation from groveling prone, from groveling, adverb, from Middle English, from gruf, adverb, on the face (from Old Norse ā grūfu) + -ling
First Known Use: 1552

Related to GROVEL

Synonyms
cringe, cower, quail
Related Words
flinch, recoil, shrink, squinch; blanch, blench, whiten; fawn, kowtow, toady
Posted by Leo Rugiens at 9:05 AM No comments:
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Leo Rugiens
Texas, United States
A Texan who loves the truth and hates the lying, cheating, and deliberate prevarication that characterizes so much of our civic discourse these days. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ RIPOSTE, n. 1. Fencing: a quick thrust after parrying a lunge 2. a quick sharp return in speech or action; counterstroke. - The Random House Dictionary of the English Language........... You can contact me by sending an email to me at: leorugiens23@gmail.com
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