Troops March On White House In Support Of Ron Paul

Ron Paul is the choice of the troops for president in 2012

Steve Watson

Marking President’s day today, February 20th, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of active duty troops and veterans will descend on Washington DC and the White House to show support for Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign.

NDAA Is Now Law, and Libertarians Are Now Anti-Government Extremists!. by Gary D. Barnett

Democracy, which I consider to be the first step or beginning of socialism, thrives on propaganda, and uses this propaganda to indoctrinate the people. Once this indoctrination is complete, totalitarianism is the end result, and then propaganda is replaced by the razor’s edge of the state’s sword. This is our lot today. Propaganda has labeled those of us who desire to protect freedom as dissenters, and as enemies of the State. Given the now "legal" ability of the State to imprison indefinitely or murder any it chooses to, the sword has become the state’s weapon of choice. The circle is nearly complete!
According to a Reuter’s article published recently, the "FBI warns of threat from anti-government extremists." "Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday." The article went on to say that: "These extremists, sometimes known as "sovereign citizens," believe they can live outside any type of government authority.

Coming into her own

Slowly but surely, the president is making her mark on the government

SÃO PAULO

DURING her first year as Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff was careful not to make changes so big that they might be seen as a rebuke to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, her predecessor and patron. She waited to replace the pork-barrel ministers she inherited from him until corruption charges against them became overwhelming, and implemented only limited reforms. Many pundits expected that in 2012 she would take advantage of the quiet period between Christmas and Carnival in February to be more ambitious—only to be disappointed by yet more incrementalism.

A way out of the woods

The euro may survive brinkmanship over Greece, but the road to recovery will be long and hard

LAST year every new jolt in the euro crisis sent financial markets into a spin. This year they have become blasé. They barely even registered the torching of buildings in Athens, nor the last-minute cancellation of a meeting of ministers that was supposed to agree on a new aid package for Greece.
Although a calm is welcome, nonchalance is not justified. A deal probably will be done on Greece, and there are promising signs of reform all over the continent. But, the problems ahead for the euro zone remain huge. The crisis is, in effect, moving from an acute to a chronic phase.

Schumpeter

America is becoming a less attractive place to do business

IS AMERICA fading? It seems an odd thing to say about a country that so dominates the industries of the future. Where else could Facebook have grown from a student prank to a $100 billion company in less than a decade? America has been gripped by worries about decline before, notably in the 1970s, only to roar back. But this time it may be serious.
There is little doubt that other countries are catching up. Between 1999 and 2009 America’s share of world exports fell in almost every industry: by 36 percentage points in aerospace, nine in information technology, eight in communications equipment and three in cars. Some loss of market share is inevitable as China and other economies emerge. But even in absolute terms, there is cause for worry. Private-sector job growth has slowed dramatically, and come to a halt in industries that are exposed to global competition. Median annual income grew by an anaemic 2% between 1990 and 2010.

by Taki

As I watched last week’s Western posturing after the Russo-Chinese veto of the UN Security Council’s resolution against Syria, Captain Renault of Casablanca fame kept coming to mind. Like the good captain, who was shocked to discover gambling was taking place at Rick’s Café (while pocketing his winnings), I was shocked that Uncle Sam’s Secretary of State and her British equivalent were so upset that the big bad Russkis and the tricky Fu Manchus could veto a resolution against the world’s worst man ever, Bashar al-Assad. Following the veto, ominous warnings were issued against the Syrian strongman by the fierce-looking William Hague—a Mister Clean lookalike who is reputed to have worn diapers until he was 16—and echoed by Hillary the Great, the only woman to have ever been cuckolded by Monica Lewinsky.
The reason for my shock was simple. Uncle Sam has been vetoing UN Security Council resolutions against Israel since the latter’s inception.

Jim Rogers: Don't Pay Attention to Governments. by Robert Wenzel

Jim Rogers, who received the Mises Institute's Schlarbaum Prize for the lifetime defense of liberty in 2010, proved today that he deserved the award.

“If you listen to governments, then you are not going to make a lot of money. Governments lie, distort and make mistakes,” he said this morning on CNBC.

And, he clearly recognizes the near-global money printing now being conducted by central banks.

“My way of playing this is to own real assets like commodities,” he said “You now have the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve printing money. The way to protect yourself at a time like this is to own assets.”

A Greenbacker Invents a Nut-Case History of Libertarianism

Gary North

I have been asked by several of my subscribers to respond to this article: Proof Libertarianism is an Illuminati Ploy. It appears here: http://www.henrymakow.com/libertarianism_as_an_illuminat.html
Let me say, before I begin, that the author of this article is the only person I have come across who could profitably study with Ellen Brown.
There is a subhead: William S. Volker (1859-1947) was a wealthy German-Jewish businessman.
There is a biography of William Volker, Mr. Anonymous (1951). On Page 16, we read:

After supper they gathered around Dorothea to pray and to listen to her read passages from the Bible. The Scriptures finished, she laid the Bible aside and explained the practical application of each admonition. Dorothea also passed along to her children the plain homilies she had learned from her parents. She spoke with serious purposefulness; her steady voice revealed her deep conviction. William joined his mother's circle of instruction before he could comprehend all her teachings. And each Sunday the whole family attended the Lutheran Church services in Esperke where the family prayers were supplemented with more formal worship.

Down With the Presidency. by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It's not an inspiration; it's a threat.

Obama’s Phony Theology Offers Phony Financing on Everything. John Ransom

Rick Santorum struck the right note with conservatives when he attacked Obama on his phony liberal theology. This is the red meat that conservatives have been waiting for. They want someone who will take the fight to the enemy, exposing the false religiosity of the liberal left.
“I just said that when you have a world view that elevates the Earth above man and says that, we can't take those [energy] resources because we're going to harm the Earth by things that frankly are just not scientifically proven- for example, that politicization of the whole global warming debate,” Santorum told liberal Grand Inquisitor Bob Scheiffer on CBS News’ Face the Music. “I mean, this is just all an attempt to centralize power and to give more power to the government.”

The Left Fuels Santorum Surge. Star Parker

A succession of high profile left wing decisions and initiatives of recent weeks drive home the extent to which the left is changing the face of America.
Notable among these are the decision of a federal appeals court in California to uphold a prior court decision finding California’s Proposition 8, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, unconstitutional; the reversal of a decision, due to a tsunami of left wing pressure, of the Susan G. Komen Foundation to withdraw its funding to Planned Parenthood; and the Obama administration rulemaking refusing to grant a religious exemption from the new health care law employer mandate requiring provision of free contraception and sterilization services as part of health coverage.
These developments are, I think, helping to buoy the newly surging candidacy of former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.
Why?

Illustration by Ted McGrath

By Michael Lewis

About Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is the author of the best-sellers The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine; The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game; Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game; and Liars Poker among other works.
More about Michael Lewis

To: The Upper Ones From: Strategy Committee Re: The Counterrevolution
As usual, we have much to celebrate.
The rabble has been driven from the public parks. Our adversaries, now defined by the freaks and criminals among them, have demonstrated only that they have no idea what they are doing. They have failed to identify a single achievable goal.

Santorum Is Romney's Toughest Challenge Yet

Illustration by Ryan Rhodes

By Ramesh Ponnuru

The latest not-Romney is the strongest one yet. Mitt Romney has beaten back challenges from Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich in succession.

Santorum’s Surge Raises Cheers From Camp Obama: Albert R. Hunt

“The one who can beat Obama: Rick Santorum,” the television commercial proclaims. That boast brings cheers from two quarters: the faithful followers of the conservative Republican presidential candidate, and the Democratic president’s political strategists.
The former Pennsylvania senator is on fire in the Republican contest, threatening the front-runner, Mitt Romney, in the critical Michigan primary next week and nationally.

If U.S. Troops Pull Out, Economic Growth May Slow: Amity Shlaes

Out. Everywhere. Yesterday. Those three words sum up the mood here at home when it comes to American military presence outside U.S. borders.
President Barack Obama is signaling he wants to get out of Afghanistan so badly that he’s even taking a few political gambles to accelerate a pullout. There’s also a more general sense that putting soldiers in other countries has proved a bad investment for everyone involved, rendering those nations sadder, rougher and poorer.

The Six Mistakes of Germany’s Finance Minister: Charles Wyplosz

One can accuse Germany’s finance minister of many things, but not of hiding his views. By saying that a Greek default is possible because the rest of the euro area can now bear it, Wolfgang Schaeuble has simply admitted that the strategy adopted since late 2009 has been designed to protect Germany, not to help Greece. By further suggesting that elections be delayed in Greece and that technocrats replace the remaining politicians holding ministerial jobs, Herr Schaeuble has shown how little he cares about elementary democratic principles.

How the U.S.-Iran Standoff Looks from Israel

Tehran is located 970 miles (1561 km) from Jerusalem. In 2010, Israel had a defense budget of $13 billion and 176,500 active armed forces personnel; Iran's defense budget was $7 billion with 523,000 active armed forces personnel. Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal is estimated to include 75-200 warheads; the capacity of Iran's nuclear program is uncertain. Charts by Everything Type Company

By Efraim Inbar

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Sources: International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics, 2011; International Institute for Strategic Studies Military Balance, 2010; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook, 2011; World Bank; Arms Control Association; U.S. Energy Information Administration.

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New Economy Transformation: Obama Budget Won't Help

By Miriam Pemberton,

Two military policeman go through training at Fort Bragg, NC. Photo by Spc. Garett Hernandez

The last decade’s surge in military spending has pushed military contracting deeper into the foundations of our economy. Reversing this process, and transferring the savings to support the green economy, are necessary components of the project to build the new economic foundation we need. Here is a quick take on how little the President’s budget request, released this week, is going to help.
First a few bright spots. This budget is a milestone of sorts. For the first time, it offers less money to the military next year than we are spending this year. This is not the way the term “spending cut” tends to be defined in Washington-speak. Mostly “cuts” are made to last year’s expansive projections of the future. As in: the doubling of my salary that I projected last year didn’t happen, therefore I took a salary cut. All those military spending cuts referred to in previous years have been that kind.

Iranians Deserve Our Solidarity

Carlos Alberto Montaner

Madrid, Spain

Carlos Alberto Montaner is a Cuban-born writer, journalist, and former professor. He is one of the most influential and widely-read columnists in the Spanish-language media, syndicated in dozens of publications in Latin America, Spain and the United States. more »

The Current Discussion: Are we witnessing a pro-regime coup in Iran? What should the world do in response? How will the election aftermath affect Iran's projection of power into the Middle East?

Of course Democrats worldwide must support those in Iran who are trying to expand their freedoms. There are three very important reasons to give them that support:

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Leaders Plan Islamic Legislation; Blame “Friends Of Israel” For Criticism

Egyptian media is reporting that in a Friday symposium, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders said that the Brotherhood “aims to apply Islamic legislation” and blames “friends of Israel” for conducting “smear campaigns” against the organization. According to a report in Al-Masry Al-Youm:
The Muslim Brotherhood aims to apply Islamic legislation and we don’t seek an alternative. If Copts knew their rights in Islam, they would seek the application of Islamic law,’ said Sobhi Saleh, a leading Muslim Brotherhood (MB) member in a symposium called ‘Egypt Post Revolution.’ The event was held Friday in the city of Qafr al-Dawar in Beheira Governorate. ‘Any citizen has the right to run for any position, and voters have the right to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

Tackling the great decline debate.

BY DANIEL W. DREZNER, GIDEON RACHMAN, ROBERT KAGAN |

Dan Drezner:
Dear Bob and Gideon,
It's an honor to be moderating this discussion between the two of you. You have both managed to author interesting and cogently argued books that are nevertheless at odds with each other on the future of world order. Gideon, you are of the belief that the Age of Anxiety is upon us, due in no small part to the waning of American power and the Western model of political economy more generally. Bob, you rebut arguments about American decline by pointing out the ways in which current commentators have wildly exaggerated American power in the past and the ways in which current U.S. power resources are still quite robust...

By Clyde Prestowitz

In their Oval Office meeting earlier this week, President Obama predictably warned China's visiting president-in-waiting Xi Jinping that China must play by the rules in international trade. It sounded right and fair and slightly tough as it was carefully crafted to do by top White House political advisers, and the president may even believe it. But he shouldn't have said it.
Put aside for the moment the indelicacy of implicitly calling the soon to be president of the a country that is the world's second most powerful and that highly values "face" (pride,dignity) a cheater. I mean, can you imagine the reaction here if Xi had lectured Obama on playing by the rules? But I digress.

How to tackle -- and not tackle -- the most delicate assignment in journalism.

BY RON KAMPEAS

Even before she gets to Israel, Jodi Rudoren, the new New York Times bureau chief, is already explaining why she'd prefer not having "Zionist" attached to her name.
And to a Jewish reporter at a pro-Israel website, no less.
Rudoren, whom I've never met, should know this: It could be worse.
Instead of telling Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon why she's not a Zionist, she could be explaining why she'd prefer not having "Jewish" attached to her name.
It's happened.

'Sweet Spot' for War Right Before Election

by Jason Ditz

While insisting that they “want to see sanctions work,” Obama Administration officials are convinced that the sanctions won’t lead Iran to abandon its civilian nuclear program and that either the US or Israel will attack Iran as a result.

The new reports come just one day after Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta conceded that Iran isn’t actually developing a nuclear weapon, and DIA chief Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess said that Iran was unlikely to start any war on their own.
Officials say Obama has been telling Israel he wants to “give sufficient time” to the current round of sanctions before starting the war, though they say that in the end the result will start be a war because Iran is “behaving like sanctions don’t matter.”
It does seem to have pushed back the start of the war a bit, however, as Panetta had previously predicted Israel would launch an attack between April and June, but Obama advisors are now calling September or October the “sweet spot.”

Provocations Against Iran Follow a Rich Tradition

by Ivan Eland

The apparent Israeli-U.S. covert operations to inhibit Iran’s missile and alleged nuclear weapons programs — using assassinations, computer worms, faulty parts, exploding factories, etc. — very likely has a secondary objective as well. When Iran haplessly and publicly vows revenge and retaliates — as it seemingly has with ham-handed attempts to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in the United States and car bombings of Israeli embassy personnel in the countries of India and Georgia — it allows Israel and the United States to further hype the limited Iranian threat to either country. By inflating the threat, both countries can better justify any future military strike on Iran.

Voting Out the War Party?

The Limits of Electoral Politics

by Justin Raimondo

The brazen theft of the Maine Republican caucus by Mitt Romney and the Republican establishment should be a lesson to us in the antiwar movement – and, indeed, one that needs to be learned by all Americans hoping and working for real political change.

First, a word about the evidence left at the crime scene: this is a case of vanishing voters, caucus participants whose ballots simply disappeared. In the town of Belfast, the seat of Maine’s coastside Waldo county, the caucus resulted in a Ron Paul victory, but when the caucus chairman called the state party to report the results, he was told they already had the vote totals – which showed Romney had won. The caucus chair was puzzled, since he was the designated reporter, and no one else. He was told "Oh, I’ll be sure those numbers are changed." The numbers, however, have not changed. Indeed, all but one of the precincts in Waldo county have the same official tally: zero. According to the participants, Paul swept those precincts: the party establishment’s solution to this "problem" was to simply disappear those voters.

Jeff Bell, an 'early supply-sider,' on the roots of American social conservatism—and why the movement is crucial to building a Republican majority.

By JAMES TARANTO

If you're a Republican in New York or another big city, you may be anxious or even terrified at the prospect that Rick Santorum, the supposedly unelectable social conservative, may win the GOP presidential nomination. Jeffrey Bell would like to set your mind at ease.
Social conservatism, Mr. Bell argues in his forthcoming book, "The Case for Polarized Politics," has a winning track record for the GOP. "Social issues were nonexistent in the period 1932 to 1964," he observes. "The Republican Party won two presidential elections out of nine, and they had the Congress for all of four years in that entire period. . . . When social issues came into the mix—I would date it from the 1968 election . . . the Republican Party won seven out of 11 presidential elections."

Monday, February 20, 2012