Ex-CIA agent: Waterboarding 'saved lives'

Original Post: CNN

December 11, 2007

A former CIA agent who participated in interrogations of terror suspects said Tuesday that the controversial interrogation technique of "waterboarding" has saved lives, but he considers the method torture and now opposes its use.

Former CIA operative John Kiriakou also told CNN's "American Morning" that he disagrees with a decision to destroy videotapes of certain interrogations, namely of al Qaeda's Abu Zubayda. Kiriakou made the remarks as two congressional committees prepared to grill CIA Director Michael Hayden on the destruction of the tapes and on "alternative" means of interrogation.
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Waterboarding begins by placing a suspect on a table with the suspect's feet slightly elevated, said Kiriakou, who was waterboarded several years ago as part of his CIA training. He said he elected not to learn how to perform the technique, which is designed to emulate the sensation of drowning.

Once a suspect is secured on the table, interrogators wrap his or her face in a cellophane-like material, Kiriakou said. Watch journalist undergo, discuss waterboarding"There is a bladder, or a water source, above the head with water pouring down on the mouth, so no water is going into your mouth, but it induces a gag reflex and makes you feel like you're choking," Kiriakou said. Watch the ex-agent describe the procedure

Kiriakou said he lasted only a few seconds during his training because his body felt like it was seizing up almost immediately.

"It's entirely unpleasant," Kiriakou said. "You are so full of tension that you tense up, your muscles tighten up. It's very uncomfortable."

Abu Zubayda lasted a little longer, said Kiriakou, but not much.

The former agent, who said he participated in the Abu Zubayda interrogation but not his waterboarding, said the CIA decided to waterboard the al Qaeda operative only after he was "wholly uncooperative" for weeks and refused to answer questions.

All that changed -- and Zubayda reportedly had a divine revelation -- after 30 to 35 seconds of waterboarding, Kiriakou said he learned from the CIA agents who performed the technique.

The terror suspect, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reportedly gave up information that indirectly led to the the 2003 raid in Pakistan yielding the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Kiriakou said.

The CIA was unaware of Mohammed's stature before the Abu Zubayda interrogation, the former agent said.

Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller wishes the internet had never been invented

There go the Democrats again, the party of science and free speech, decrying both.

Obama pledges US to defend its ally South Korea

My Comments: Huh, another country that just wants nuclear power for clean energy right? I'm shocked, that historically violent countries would act up under the Wonderbringer's watch.

Original Post: Yahoo

By ANNE GEARAN, AP National Security Writer Anne Gearan, Ap National Security Writer – 54 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Tuesday pledged the United States would stand "shoulder to shoulder" with South Korea after what the White House branded a provocative, outrageous attack by North Korea on its neighbor. Its options limited, the U.S. sought a diplomatic rather a military response to one of those most ominous clashes between the Koreas in decades.

"South Korea is our ally. It has been since the Korean war," Obama said in his first comments about the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island early Tuesday. "And we strongly affirm our commitment to defend South Korea as part of that alliance."

Working to head off any escalation, the U.S. did not reposition any of its 29,000 troops in the South or make other military moves after North Korea fired salvos of shells into the island, setting off an artillery duel between the two sides.

The president, speaking to ABC News, would not speculate when asked about military options.

Obama called South Korean President Lee Myung-bak later Tuesday night, saying the U.S. would work with the international community to strongly condemn the attack that killed the two South Koreans and injured many more, the White House said.

The White House said the two presidents agreed to hold combined military exercises and enhanced training in the days ahead to continue the close security cooperation between the two countries.

Obama assured Lee that "the United States stands shoulder to shoulder with our close friend and ally, the Republic of Korea," the White House statement said.

"President Obama said that North Korea must stop its provocative actions, which will only lead to further isolation, and fully abide by the terms of the armistice agreement and its obligations under international law," the statement said.

The U.S. has relatively few options when dealing with the Pyongyang government. Military action is particularly unappealing, since the unpredictable North possesses crude nuclear weapons as well as a huge standing army. North Korea exists largely outside the system of international financial and diplomatic institutions that the U.S. has used as leverage in dealing with other hostile countries, including Iran.

North Korea has also resisted pressure from its major ally, China, which appears to be nervous about the signs of instability in its neighbor.

"We strongly condemn the attack and we are rallying the international community to put pressure on North Korea," Obama said in the ABC interview, specifically citing the need for China's help. Obama said every nation in the region must know "this is a serious and ongoing threat."

An administration official said Tuesday evening that U.S. officials in Washington and in Beijing were appealing strongly to China to condemn the attack by arguing that it was an act that threatened the stability of the entire region, not just the Korean peninsula. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates phoned South Korea's defense minister to express sympathy for the deaths of two of the South's marines in the artillery shelling of a small South Korean island and to express appreciation "for the restraint shown to date" by the South's government, a Pentagon spokesman said.

Obama called North Korea's action "just one more provocative incident" and said he would consult with Lee on an appropriate response.

In his phone call to South Korea's defense minister, Gates said the U.S. viewed recent attacks as a violation of the armistice agreement that ended the Korea War in 1953, and he reiterated the U.S. commitment to South Korea's defense, said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

Obama was awakened at 4 a.m. Tuesday with the news. He went ahead with an Indiana trip focused on the economy before returning to the White House after dark.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. would take a "deliberate approach" in response to what he also called provocative North Korean behavior. At the same time, other administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the emerging strategy, said the White House was determined to end a diplomatic cycle that officials said rewards North Korean brinksmanship.

In the past, the U.S. and other nations have sweetened offers to North Korea as it has developed new missiles and prototype nuclear weapons. North Korea is now demanding new one-on-one talks with the United States, which rejects that model in favor of group diplomacy that includes North Korea's protector, China.

"We're not going to respond willy-nilly," Toner said. "We believe that it's important that we keep a unified and measured approach going forward."

Both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill accused North Korea of starting the skirmish.

The violence comes as the North prepares for a dynastic change in leadership and faces a winter of food and electricity shortages. It is the latest of a series of confrontations that have aggravated tensions on the divided peninsula.

The incident also follows the North's decision last week to give visiting Western scientists a tour of a secret uranium enrichment facility, which may signal an expansion of the North's nuclear weapons program. Six weeks ago, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il anointed his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, as his heir apparent.

The administration official said the U.S. did not interpret North Korea's aggression as a desire to go to war, but as yet another effort to extract concessions from the international community.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said no new equipment or personnel have been relocated to South Korea, while Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz seemed to shrug off the latest incident as something that Seoul can handle on its own.

"The North Koreas have undertaken over time a number of provocations that have manifested themselves in different ways," Schwartz said.

The artillery exchange was only the latest serious incident between the two nations. In March, a South Korean naval ship, the Cheonan, exploded and sank in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors. South Korea accused the North of torpedoing the vessel; the North denied the allegation.

In August, the South Korean military reported that the North had fired 110 artillery rounds into the Yellow Sea near the disputed sea border but said the shells fell harmlessly into North Korean waters.

South Korean officials said Tuesday's clash came after Pyongyang warned the South to halt military drills near the small South Korean island of Yeonpyeong.

When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into the water near the disputed sea border, the North bombarded Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations and a small civilian population.

Recent joint U.S.-Korean naval exercises and strenuous denunciations of the North may only have provoked the regime in Pyongyang. Some experts say the secretive regime may be trying to promote Kim Jong Un as a worthy successor who, like his father, is capable of standing up to the U.S.

"I think it may be all wrapped in this succession planning, in the way the North is looking at it," said Robert RisCassi, a retired Army general who commanded U.S. forces in Korea from 1990-93.

The U.S.-South Korea exercises also angered China. Beijing is regarded as the key to any long-term diplomatic bargain to end North Korea's nuclear program and reduce tensions on the peninsula.

But U.S. officials say the North's motives and internal politics are opaque and sometimes appear inconsistent.

"I don't know the answer to any question about North Korea that begins with the word 'why,'" Gates told reporters Monday.

___

Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Anne Flaherty, Ben Feller, Jim Kuhnhenn, Pauline Jelinek and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

Public School Bans U.S. Flag To Avoid “Racial Tension”

Original Post: Judicial Watch

A public middle school student in central California was forced to take an American flag off his bike because administrators feared Old Glory would ignite “racial tension”among Hispanic students.

The enraging violation of the teenager’s First Amendment right took place this week in Stanislaus County’s Denair Unified School District, where officials say Mexican flags brought in by Hispanic students created racial tension on Cinco de Mayo, the holiday that commemorates Mexico’s victory over France in the Battle of Puebla.

To avoid similar problems, a boy at Denair Middle School was forced to put away an American flag displayed on his bike to support war heroes, including some in his family, on Veterans Day week. The 13-year-old was ordered to remove it after students at his U.S. taxpayer-financed school complained, according to officials quoted in a local news report. All this while an American flag flaps in the wind on campus as is the case at practically all of the nation’s public schools.

Here is the official explanation offered by the district’s superintendant, Edward Parraz: "Our Hispanic, you know, kids will, you know, bring their Mexican flags and they'll display it, and then of course the kids would do the American flag situation, and it does cause kind of a racial tension which we don't really want. We want them to appreciate the cultures."

Who would have ever imagined that the Stars and Stripes would be considered offensive on its own soil and in a government-financed institution, no less? An acclaimed educational center dedicated to studying the First Amendment (Vanderbilt University’s First Amendment Center), points out that a 1969 Supreme Court ruling allows school officials to ban student expression if they can reasonably forecast that the speech or display will cause substantial disruption.

However, addressing this incident, one of its First Amendment scholars asks: “Since when is honoring Veterans Day with the display of the American flag disruptive?” He goes on to suggest that schools facing tensions over cultural differences can teach all students that disruptions over displays such as flags on bikes or backpacks will not be tolerated rather than banning the expression.

It's too much to ask for people to immigrate legally or show voter id but not too much to molest a little girl

The left tells us strang things.

They tell us that voter id is racist. Gosanangelo "..."

Why, then, do Texas Republicans now want to erect a new barrier that almost certainly would disenfranchise thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of voters?

GOP lawmakers, who are in the majority in both houses, are pushing voter identification legislation that would require Texans to show a photo ID in order to vote..." By the way, when I voted last time they didn't even ask my name.

They tell us is too much to ask felons not to vote. Eugine Kane "..."Sure, some will deny it's an attempt to discourage some people from voting.

But when a threatening billboard is put up by an anonymous group in many low-income neighborhoods , it's clear what's happening here..."

They tell us that it's too much to ask people to immigrate here legally. ABC News "ABC News’ Sunlen Miller and Devin Dwyer report: President Obama today joined top Congressional Democrats in urging Congress to pass a small piece of immigration legislation known as the DREAM Act before it adjourns for the year. The measure would give hundreds of thousands of young, undocumented immigrants a conditional path to legal residency..."

But for some reason it's not too much for the left to have TSA molest little girls. If this was anyone else they'd be in jail (and rightly so) for molestation and pedophilia.

Sublime irony: Muslim TSA guard feels Catholic nun’s genitals

Original Post:Barbados Free Press

Muslim TSA security guard searches Catholic nun’s groin for bombs and weapons

As the outcry over virtual strip searches and genital feeling by minimum wage TSA airline security guards grows, this photo from Drudge Report really says it all.

Matt Drudge captioned the photo “The Terrorists have won” and I quite agree with him.

It’s totally out of control. If you had to pick the risk factor in that photo, which person is the most likely to be a threat to commercial air travel?

That’s right, Islamic Supremacists are the risk. How do you tell them apart from normal non-threatening Muslims? I don’t know, but I do know that feeling the genitals of Catholic nuns and New York Jews on their way to Disneyland with the grandchildren is not the answer.

The Muslim terrorists have accomplished what they set out to do.

My family will probably not fly to or through the USA again for some time. If the Brooklyn relatives want to visit us, they are welcome anytime – but Shona and I will not inflict flying upon our family if we can at all help it.

I suspect that we aren’t the only ones who feel that way.

Barbados Tourism industry: prepare to take another hit because this anti-flying feeling is turning into a movement in Europe and the USA.

Religion of peace continues it's "gift giving"

Original Post: Yahoo

Al-Qaeda vows to continue parcel bomb attacks

HONG KONG (AFP) – The Yemen-based branch of Al-Qaeda has vowed further small but frequent attacks against the West such as last month's cargo plane parcel bombs, in a "strategy of a thousand cuts" that will "bleed the enemy to death", a monitoring group said.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said the packages it put aboard freight planes bound for the US in late October were never intended to cause mass casualties, but were aimed at creating maximum economic damage.

The group said the parcels, which were intercepted in Dubai and Britain, were part of "Operation Hemorrhage," a plan that had cost just 4,200 dollars to mount.

It said there was now little focus on large-scale mass-casualty attacks like those on New York and Washington in September 2001.

"To bring down America we do not need to strike big," the network said in an English-language magazine called Inspire, which was monitored Saturday by the US-based Intelcenter.

"In such an environment of security phobia that is sweeping America, it is more feasible to stage smaller attacks that involve less players and less time to launch and thus we may circumvent the security barriers America worked so hard to erect," AQAP said.

"This strategy of attacking the enemy with smaller, but more frequent operations is what some may refer to as the strategy of a thousand cuts. The aim is to bleed the enemy to death."

The two parcels were addressed to synagogues in Chicago and found to contain the hard-to-detect explosive PETN hidden in ink toner cartridges.

A massive global security clampdown on airfreight followed the discovery, with a number of countries banning cargo or flights originating from Yemen, including the United States, Canada and several western European countries.

The AQAP magazine details the "total bill of 4,200" dollars for Operation Hemorrhage, adding that it was three months in the planning and execution.

"On the other hand this... will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures. This is what we call leverage.

"From the start our objective was economic... It was determined that the success of the operation was to be based on two factors: The first is that the packages pass through the latest security equipment.

"The second, the spread of fear that would cause the West to invest billions of dollars in new security procedures.

"We will continue with similar operations and we do not mind at all in this stage if they are intercepted. It is such a good bargain for us to spread fear amongst the enemy and keep him on his toes in exchange of a few months of work and a few thousand bucks."

The magazine says AQAP intends to pass on its know-how to other radical Islamists around the world, to encourage them to mount similar operations.

"We are laying out for our enemies our plan in advance because... our objective is not maximum kill but to cause a hemorrhage in the aviation industry, an industry that is so vital for trade and transportation between the US and Europe."

IntelCenter chief executive Ben Venzke said the level of operational detail AQAP had provided in the magazine marked a departure for Islamists.

"We have never seen a jihadist group in the Al-Qaeda orbit ever release, let alone only a few weeks after, such a detailed accounting of the philosophy, operational details, intent and next steps following a major attack," he said.

"This may represent a new level of interaction by jihadi groups following an operation and is a far cry from the days of shadowy claims and questions as to who was actually responsible.

"AQAP is a dedicated, unwavering and sophisticated group. It will continue to strike at the US in creative new ways and it is only a matter of time until one of their attacks results in thousands dead and/or severe economic damage."

Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller wants to kill free speech

Original Post: Huffington Post

Senator Rockefeller Wants FCC To 'End' Fox News, MSNBC

During a committee meeting on Wednesday about television retransmission consent, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) veered away from his prepared remarks to take aim at both Fox News and MSNBC:

More than just retransmission consent ails our television markets. We need new catalysts for quality news and entertainment programming. I hunger for quality news. I'm tired of the right and the left. There's a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC, "Out. Off. End. Goodbye." It'd be a big favor to political discourse, our ability to do our work here in Congress, and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and, more importantly, in their future.

As the New York Times points out, "There is little the Federal Communications Commission can say about Fox News or MSNBC since the channels are on cable, not delivered over the broadcast airwaves."

Rockefeller opened his remarks with a stinging rebuke of the 24-hour news cycle and the blurring of news and entertainment:

When it comes to developing content, our entertainment machine is too often in a race to the bottom. In fact, it is in a race to the bottom. Getting close. Even worse, our news media has all but surrendered to the forces of entertainment. And much of our news media is entertainment as opposed to news. Instead of a watchdog that is a check on the excesses of government and business, we have the endless barking of a 24-hour news cycle. We have journalism that is always ravenous for the next rumor, but insufficiently hungry for the facts that can nourish something called our democracy. As citizens, we are paying one heck of a price in the dumbing down of America. You're probably responsible for that.

Separate but equal swimming for infidels

Original Post: Daily Mail

Public pool bars father and son from its 'Muslim-only' swimming session

By COLIN FERNANDEZ and NICK McDERMOTT

Last updated at 12:33 18 April 2008

A father and his five-year-old son were turned away from their local swimming pool because they were the wrong religion.

David Toube, 39, and his son Harry were told that the Sunday morning session was reserved for Muslim men only.

Hackney Council, which runs the Clissold Leisure Centre in Stoke Newington, north London, claimed staff there had made a mistake.

However, the Muslim-only session was advertised on its website.

Mr Toube, a corporate lawyer, described his experiences on a blog.

"I arrived at the pool to discover that they were holding what staff described to me as "Muslim men only swimming"," he wrote.

"I asked whether my son and I could go as we were both male. I was told that the session was for Muslims only and that we could not be admitted. I asked what would happen if I turned up and insisted I was Muslim.

"The manager suggested that they might ask the Muslims swimming if they minded my son and I swimming with them. If they didn't object, we might be allowed in."

A few days later, Mr Toube, who lives with his wife, 38-year-old barrister Samantha, and their two sons in Stoke Newington, North London, spoke to another leisure centre employee.

"He gave me an identical story. His explanation was that it was a requirement of the Muslim religion that Muslims could not swim with non-Muslims."

The swimming pool at Clissold Leisure Centre where the father and son were barred from

Mr Toube joked: "I asked him whether Clissold Leisure Centre would institute Whites Only swimming for racists. His answer was that they would if there was sufficient demand."

He added: "I spoke to a number of Muslim friends, and none of them had heard of a religious prohibition on swimming with non-Muslims.

"One friend was so disgusted with Hackney for trying to segregate Muslims and non Muslims that he suggested that he take his little daughter swimming with us, just to prove the point."

However, Dr Taj Hargey, chair of the Muslim Education Centre of Oxford, said it was not true that Muslims could not swim with non-Muslims.

"There is no Koranic verse or any statement from the sources of Islam that says different religions should be segregated," he said.

"The only requirement is that when women swim they should be modestly clad."

The Prophet Mohammed is recorded as saying that it is a Muslim's duty to learn to swim as it could save his or her life.

The swimming sessions for male Muslims were advertised as taking place every Sunday from 8am to 9.30am.

Leaflets stipulated: "It is compulsory for the body to be covered between the navel and the knees.

"Anyone not adhering to the dress code or rules within the pool will not be allowed to swim. All brothers welcome.'

A leisure centre spokesman said staff were wrong to refuse entry to Mr Toube.

He added: "The member of staff the user spoke with at the time was mistaken when referring to the session as Muslim-only.

"The men's modesty session is not a private hire and is, therefore, open to the public.

"Staff cannot ask your religion on entrance and you won't be refused entry if you don't appear to be Muslim."

A spokesman for the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: "Segregating services may amount to unlawful discrimination and could create a sense of unfairness, inadvertently increasing community tension."

Obama bashes us for carbon output from his giant armored limo

Obama's 'Beast' of a limo stands out at green NATO summit

Original Post: Yahoo



LISBON (AFP) – The Portuguese hosts of Friday's NATO summit hoped to use the event to promote clean-energy and electric cars, but all eyes were on US President Barack Obama's diesel-guzzling "Beast" instead.

As is usual when he travels, Obama's eight-tonne armoured behemoth of a limousine was flown out to Lisbon before the US leader's arrival, and it ferried him from the airport tarmac to his first meetings of the weekend.

Doubtless he didn't intend the Beast's roar to drown out his hosts' green message, but a US presidential motorcade and its attendant escort of Secret Service SUVs do attract attention, even at the most elite gatherings.

Earlier, Prime Minister Jose Socrates and his fellow Portuguese, the president of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso, had arrived at the summit in quiet, zero-emission electric cars.

"I'd like to underline the priority both our countries assign to renewable energy and electric vehicles," Socrates said, after meeting Obama, amid amused sniping from the Portuguese press at the mixed messages.

Portugal is proud of the lead it has taken in introducing what it says is the world's first national electric vehicle charging network, with 100 power outlets in 25 towns and plans to install 1,300 by next year.

The government was particularly keen for the press covering the summit to underline this, and a news release describing the recharging network was already on each of the tables in the media centre as the global pack arrived.

Within the highly secure summit site, electric buses were put on to ferry journalists between venues.

In theory, at least, Obama was on side with the plan, remarking: "An area where I want to congratulate the prime minister and the Portuguese people is for the extraordinary leadership that you?ve shown in clean energy.

"The prime minister's leadership on electric cars will create new opportunities for American companies here in Portugal ... and this is an example of what Portugal and America can achieve together."

But there was no immediate reaction from the White House to criticism of Obama's rather less green form of transport, and the administration has in the past said that the president's security arrangements are non-negotiable.

Former TSA security director: No one likes Fourth Amendment violations, but we’re going to have to do it

Related Article: Hotair.com

posted at 7:41 pm on November 16, 2010 by Allahpundit
I’ll say this for the guy: He’s not one for sugar-coating. If he has to break a few constitutional eggs to make a security omelette, not only is he going to do it, he’s going to tell you that he’s doing it. Bend over — this Fourth Amendment violation won’t hurt a bit. I wonder what that’ll do to the poll numbers: As of yesterday, fully 81 percent of the public supports the use of full-body scanners at the airport, but as Nate Silver notes, that may be because relatively few people have had to endure them yet. Poll it again in a month, after “don’t touch my junk” fee-vah has had term to percolate culturally, and who knows where it’ll be.


Speaking of which, Gizmodo’s touting the fact that it’s obtained 100 images from a full-body scanner used at a courthouse in Florida showing photos of people side-by-side with their (fuzzy) X-rayed selves. Which isn’t supposed to happen, of course, per the endless assurances from the feds that the machines don’t save images they record. Two things, though. One: We already knew about this incident. That doesn’t diminish the privacy breach, but strictly from the standpoint of public awareness, everyone should already know that these things are indeed capable of exporting images. (Which makes sense: They’d want that as evidence afterwards if a suspect is apprehended.) As for the side-by-side real-life/X-ray comparisons, if you believe Napolitano — a very big if, I know — that wouldn’t happen at the airport. She’s sworn up and down that images from the full-body scanner are viewed at a remote location in the airport so that the screener observing them doesn’t see the actual passenger. In theory, at least in airports, side-by-side comparisons that identify people shouldn’t be possible. But then, in theory, the machines aren’t saving images either. Go figure.

Update: Elsewhere, Greenroomer Howard Portnoy explores the claims about dangerous radiation. Are these things really firing off damaging rays? Well … maybe, yeah.

Compassionate Liberal shoots up TV after seeing Bristol Palin on it

Enraged by Bristol Palin on 'Dancing,' man shoots TV, prompts standoff

Original Post: JS Online

By Sharif Durhams and Ryan Haggerty of the Journal Sentinel


Steven N. Cowan
Associated Press
In this publicity image released by ABC, Bristol Palin performs during the celebrity dance competition series, "Dancing with the Stars," on Monday.

A rural Dane County town supervisor believes Bristol Palin should not be on "Dancing With The Stars."

He demanded his wife get his pistols to emphasize his point.

The result: A 15-hour standoff Monday and Tuesday involving hostage negotiators, a dog team and other law enforcement authorities on one side and the Town of Vermont man on the other.

The only casualty: The man's television.

Dane County prosecutors have charged Steven N. Cowan with second-degree reckless endangerment in the incident that made his wife worry he would shoot her, according to a criminal complaint.

Cowan, 67, and his wife were in their living room Monday night, watching the dance competition program that features the daughter of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as a competitor this season.

As Bristol Palin danced on the screen, Cowan raged.

"The (expletive) politics," he yelled, according to the complaint. Cowan, a Town of Vermont supervisor, was upset that a political figure's daughter was on the show when he didn't consider her a good dancer, his wife told authorities.

Cowan went to his bedroom and came back about 20 minutes later, demanding that his wife find his pistols. Cowan's daughter had taken two handguns for safety reasons, according to the complaint.

Cowan tracked down a single-shot shotgun in the house, he "slapped" shells down onto a TV tray, loaded a round and took out the TV, the complaint says.

Cowan's face was bright red. He loaded the gun again. His wife put a blanket over her head, thinking that if her husband decided to shoot at her, she didn't want to see it, the complaint says.

Cowan again demanded his pistols. His wife grabbed her purse and went to the police department, and the standoff ensued, the complaint says.

Cowan's wife told authorities he has been taking medication for bipolar disorder and that the family's finances have caused stress. He had been drinking at a bar before he came home, according to the complaint.

Cowan appeared at a hearing Wednesday where his bail was set at $1,500 and a status hearing was scheduled for Dec. 6. Meanwhile, Palin advanced to the finals of "Dancing With The Stars," which will air next week.

Larry Ziemer, a fellow town supervisor, said he has known Cowan for about 20 years.

"I have nothing but good things to say about Steve," Ziemer said. "It was totally out of character for this to occur. He just does an excellent job on the town board and in his private working life."

Ziemer said Cowan is a talented carpenter and is well-respected in the area. Ziemer said he had never heard Cowan speak ill of Sarah Palin or her family before.

“He and I agree pretty much on politics,” Ziemer said. “We would probably lean both to the liberal side.”

FDA banns alcoholic energy drinks

Original Post: Yahoo

Amanda Chan, MyHealthNewsDaily Staff Writer

LiveScience.com amanda Chan, Myhealthnewsdaily Staff Writer

livescience.com – Thu Nov 18, 12:14 pm ET

While many health professionals and lawmakers are cheering the Food and Drug Administration's decision yesterday to declare caffeine an illegal and unsafe additive to manufactured alcoholic beverages, critics say the move is an infringement of consumer rights by the government.

The FDA issued warnings yesterday (Nov. 17) to four companies, including Four Loko maker Phusion Projects, after conducting a year-long review that found no scientific support for the claim that the addition of caffeine to these alcoholic beverages is generally recognized as safe. The companies have 15 days to create a plan to remove the caffeine from their products, or remove them from store shelves.

But the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit group that supports limited government, said the FDA had gone too far.

"It's just one more example of the FDA reaching into a practice that people can, and often do, do safely and trying to eliminate it," said Gregory Conko, a senior fellow at the institute.

Conko acknowledged that drinking caffeine with alcoholic beverages has the ability to dangerously mask the effects of intoxication. But people can responsibly drinking caffeine and alcohol together, in the form of rum-and-cola and other mixed drinks, and there shouldn't be a difference in legality of those drinks and drinks that are manufactured, he said. [Related: Brewing Controversy: Experts Say Four Loko Worse Than Mixed Drinks]

But because the manufactured drinks are sold in colorful, super-size containers, younger consumers - even underage kids - find them attractive, David Vladeck, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, said at a news conference.

"These products are cheap and cost less than $3 a can," Vladeck said. Making matters worse, the caffeine "can mask the consumer's sense of intoxication, so young, inexperienced drinkers may not understand how drunk they are," he said.

Caffeinated alcoholic beverages have grown in popularity since they came onto the scene about eight years ago. Two leading manufacturers saw their sales increase by 67 times between 2002 to 2008, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Numerous hospitalizations from alcohol poisoning, auto accidents and sexual assaults have been attributed to consumption of Four Loko, FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg said at the news conference.

Looking at the evidence

In deciding whether to prohibit caffeine from being added to manufactured alcoholic drinks, the FDA reviewed scientific literature to see the effects of the two substances together. Conko said the studies government officials used to make their decision are based on mixed drinks, not manufactured drinks, so their research is based on a slightly different product.

One study, published in April in the journal Addictive Behaviors, found that people who drank alcohol mixed with energy drinks were three times more likely to leave a bar highly intoxicated, and four times more likely to try to drive, than bar patrons who had drinks with no caffeine.

Another study published this month in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research found that high consumption of energy drinks was associated with alcohol dependence and heavy drinking.

People who drink alcohol mixed with energy drinks are three times more likely to binge drink than those who don't mix the two substances together, according to the CDC.

It's hard to know for sure whether the drinks cause people to engage in risky behavior, or if risk-takers tend to gravitate toward the drinks, said Aaron White, a health scientist administrator at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

"For one reason or another, we see a different pattern of behavior and consequences in people who consume energy drinks with alcohol than people who drink alcohol alone," White told MyHealthNewsDaily. "I think the move [by the FDA] was made in order to protect the public from what could be a real recipe for disaster."

Sarah Palin was right about Death Panels I'm shocked

Gee, it's almost like she read the bill and looked at similar systems around the word and was able to pierce the arcane writings that lay within. She's like the Oracle at Delphi.

Multiculturalism fails in Germany

Original Post: Newsweek

When Chancellor Angela Merkel said multiculturalism in Germany has “utterly failed,” the commentariat revolt was swift, and way off the mark. Merkel was accused of pandering to her right-wing constituency and lurching right in the face of rising anti-Muslim sentiment. Unjustly accused, she has delivered a refreshing, no-nonsense message that Germany, and other Western nations, should take to heart.

As Merkel pointed out, Germans have a long history of willfully deceiving themselves about the people they often call their “foreigners.” The “guest workers” they began recruiting from Southern Europe and Turkey in the 1960s—in the case of the Italians, as early as 1955—were officially treated as temporary residents, even when they settled in and produced children and grandchildren on German soil. Helmut Kohl, the last Christian Democratic chancellor before Merkel, kept repeating right up until he lost office in 1998: “We are not a country of immigration.” He kept saying that even though the number of “foreigners” had already swollen to nearly 9 percent of the population.

Germany was a country of immigration in severe denial. And that denial meant official policy discouraged guest workers and others from integrating into society; citizenship requirements were designed to keep them on the outside, while “bloodline” Germans—Russians with 18th-century German ancestors, for example—were easily accepted.

Gradually, citizenship requirements were liberalized, particularly under Kohl’s successor, Gerhard Schröder. But the problem is far from solved. While some German Turks, the country’s largest ethnic minority, have prospered in politics, the arts, and business, others have remained isolated in mono-cultural communities. Many German Turks have shown little interest in filing for citizenship or in integrating into a society that they believe is still prejudiced against them. This breeds resentment on both sides—and, in some cases, radicalism. In that sense, the vision of multiculturalism, allowing separate communities to live happily side by side, has failed indeed.

Merkel’s conclusions deserve serious attention. By saying “we lied to ourselves” about the role of immigration in German society, she was clearing the way for an honest discussion about what needs to be done now. Merkel’s message is that Germany needs to do a better job of offering opportunities to immigrants to integrate into society and gain real acceptance. She pointed out that any abrupt moves to reject anyone who doesn’t speak good German will backfire. With an aging population, Germany needs a stronger workforce. But with much of Merkel’s constituency, that kind of realism doesn’t go over well. Last week Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière rejected appeals to ease current laws and allow in more skilled workers.

For immigrants, Merkel’s message is that they should take advantage of new opportunities. In other words, they need to integrate, learning German as a first step to breaking out of their cultural isolation. That doesn’t mean rejecting their own roots, but it does mean thinking of themselves as full-fledged members of German society. If the door is opened wider, they need to walk through it.

That’s the deal the United States offered generations of immigrants, including my parents. They never forgot their Polish roots, and they insisted that my sisters and I speak Polish at home. But they fully expected and wanted us to become Americans, which we did. We saw no contradiction in any of this. Merkel’s message that there needs to be a similar two-way understanding for all modern—and, yes, multicultural—societies to thrive is right on target. The German chancellor wasn’t pandering; she was just offering a common-sense recipe for integration. It’s one that the United States, the original land of opportunity, would also do well not to forget, at a time of new heated debates about its own immigration policies.

Obama care unless you beg us not to have it forced on you

Original Post: Michelle Malkin

et us briefly review the rapidly growing rolls of companies, unions, and states bursting out of the Obamacare escape hatch.

In early September, I noted the push by Obamacare promoter and Democrat Rep. Ron Wyden for a special state waiver from the very federal mandate he advocated for everyone else.

A few weeks later, McDonald’s finagled its own Obamacare waiver after warning federal regulators that it could be forced to drop its affordable health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 restaurant workers unless it got a pass.

In early October, the Obama administration announced it had granted waivers not only to McDonald’s, but also to several other firms and labor unions.

Now comes word that Torquemada HHS Secretay Kathleen Sebelius has approved a whopping 111 waivers for businesses of all sizes, along with more unions and other providers of health insurance. The escapees include employers of many low-wage and part-time workers whose health insurance plans would otherwise be dropped, including Darden Restaurants — the parent company of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster and other chains, which employ some 34,000 people.

Among the waivers recently granted were for employers like Darden Restaurants, which operates the Red Lobster and Olive Garden restaurants, for 34,000 of its workers. Federal officials have granted 111 waivers to employers, insurers and union plans, who are responsible for covering about 1.2 million people.

Darden said the waiver would allow it to offer employees access to affordable coverage as the health care law is started.

Also on the list: Carlson Restaurants, which owns T.G.I. Friday’s, and hair salon chain Regis Corp:

Without waivers, companies would have to provide a minimum of $750,000 in coverage next year, increasing to $1.25 million in 2012, $2 million in 2013 and unlimited in 2014.

According to HHS, waivers depend on “a series of factors including whether or not a premium increase is large or if a significant number of enrollees would lose access to their current plan because the coverage would not be offered in the absence of a waiver.”

Carlson Restaurants and Regis declined interview requests but e-mailed statements.

“Providing competitive health benefits to our team and their family members is a very important priority for us,” said Anne Varano, senior vice president for human resources and communication at Minnetonka-based Carlson. “The [Health and Human Services] waiver allowed us to continue providing health benefits to our team members at an affordable cost while giving us additional time to develop longer-term approaches. ”

Said a spokesperson at Minneapolis-based Regis Corp.: “Until [health care] reform is further solidified, it is premature to comment.”

Also on the list: Dish Networks and more. At this point, the better question is: Who won’t be on the list after the Obamacare central planners fully acknowledge the destructive consequences of their schemes?

Aetna, based in Hartford, Connecticut, was part of a first round of waivers in September for 209,423 beneficiaries in plans that don’t comply with the new requirement. Oak Brook, Illinois- based McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest restaurant chain, Jack in the Box Inc., based in San Diego, and the United Federation of Teachers also were among the waiver recipients.

About 200,000 people were included in the new round of exemptions, bringing the total to almost 1.2 million people, HHS said on its website. Also on the list for exemptions are Manor Care Inc., a nursing-home company owned by Washington-based private equity firm Carlyle Group, and Universal Forest Products Inc., a lumber company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Spokesmen for Manor and Universal Forest didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

…Dish Network, the Englewood, Colorado-based No. 2 U.S. satellite-television provider, will be given a waiver for 3,597 employees, and Orlando, Florida-based Darden Restaurants, owner of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster chains, will get a waiver for 34,000 workers, according to the HHS list. Darden spokesman Rich Jeffers didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Dish Network spokesman Marc Lumpkin declined to comment.

The waivers, which last for a year and can then be renewed, let workers keep coverage until new options are available in four years under the law, said Jessica Santillo, a spokeswoman for the agency.

The list of most recently approved refugees is here. Make no mistake: Team Obama isn’t granting the waivers out of bleeding-heart compassion for the affected workers, but out of a panicked urgency to avoid a public relations disaster.

As I’ve boiled it down before:

Old Democrat promise: Everyone gets to keep their health insurance.

New Democrat promise: You can keep your health insurance…if you BEG hard enough for an Obamacare waiver.

Yep: The only way for hundreds of thousands of workers to keep their health insurance is to exempt them from the government-imposed “fix.”

The Soros monkeys are attacking conservative Obamacare critics as “Republican repeal mongers” — even as the Obama administration concedes failure and continues to approve temporary repeals of the federal mandates to company after company after union after union.

Waiver-mania also comes on the heels of Democrats’ own push to repeal the onerous 1099 provisions:

A leading Senate Democrat vowed Friday to introduce legislation killing a part of the new healthcare reform law that imposes new tax-filing requirements on small businesses.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Finance Committee and a leading architect of the reform law, said a provision requiring businesses to report more purchases to the IRS will impose undue paperwork burdens on companies amid an economic downturn when they can least afford it.

Baucus, who had pushed legislation scaling back the requirement earlier in the year, now wants it repealed in full.

“I have heard small businesses loud and clear and I am responding to their concerns,” Baucus said in a statement. “Small businesses are the backbone of our economy in my home state of Montana and across the country, and they need to focus their efforts on creating good-paying jobs — not filing paperwork.”

Guess we are all “repeal mongers” now, eh?

Obama sued for authorizing an assassination on an American citizen

My Comments: I believe Awalki should be put to death, but you can't have the President authorizing assassinations on American citizens. That's blatantly un-American. We have rights, we have due process. Obama himself made a big stink about giving civilian trials, and Miranda rights, to capture Al-Qaeda operatives, but he won't extend those protections to American citizens. I'll stop my point before I get into trouble....

Obama sued over Awlaki slaying order

Original Post: Newstalk 1130

The ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights are suing the government over an executive order to kill Anwar al-Awlaki.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Lawyers for the father of radical al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki called on Washington to outline its legal justification for targeting the cleric for death.

U.S. President Barack Obama in early 2010 sparked controversy when he targeted U.S.-born Awlaki for death. Awlaki was in contact with the alleged triggerman in the November 2009 shooting rampage in Fort Hood, Texas, and the suspected would-be suicide bomber on a U.S. passenger plane Christmas Day and recently said the killing of Americans is permissible for Muslims even without a religious edict.

Nasser al-Awlaki retained the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights to challenge the Obama administration's authority in the order.

The Obama administration argues that the executive branch has the unilateral authority to determine threats, noting targeted killings are a "political question" outside of the reach of the judicial branch.

The Awlaki lawsuit calls on the courts to rule that targeted killings are permissibly only in extreme cases and asks Washington to lay out its legal justification for putting U.S. citizens on government kill lists.

Jameel Jaffer, a deputy legal direct at the ACLU, said it's the government's responsibility to protect its citizens, though the courts have a key role to play in counter-terrorism policies.

"If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state," he said in a statement.

For some reason Venezuala is allowed to nationalize American companies

Original Post: Reuters

By Deisy Buitrago

CARACAS | Thu Mar 5, 2009 6:04pm EST

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela on Thursday said it has no plans to take over any additional holdings of U.S. food giant Cargill after leftist President Hugo Chavez ordered the seizure of the rice plant, renewing his nationalization drive.

Chavez's clash with the food companies, demanding they produce cheaper rice, came less than three weeks after he won a referendum on allowing him to run for reelection and marked his first nationalization in seven months.

The move shows he is likely to continue his combative style as the OPEC nation, faced with tumbling oil revenues that form the backbone of its economy, slowly begins to feel the effects of the global economic crisis.

"The measure only includes the rice plant," said Agriculture Minister Elias Jaua, adding the government has taken control of the mill and would seek an amicable agreement in its nationalization.

But he admonished Cargill, which has 2,000 employees and 13 manufacturing plants around the country, for failing to comply with government regulations that foreign investors have often found onerous.

"The state will not accept a violation of the law, it will now accept disobedience," he told reporters. "We did what the law requires us to do."

The government this week temporarily occupied rice mills owned by Venezuela's top food company Empresas Polar, which on Thursday called for dialogue and increased cooperation after Chavez said he could nationalize the entire company.

"We have maintained that the best way to increase Venezuela's food (production) is through dialogue and close collaboration between the government, agricultural producers ... and consumers," Polar said on Thursday in response to Chavez's threat.

Chavez has often followed through on his nationalization threats, taking over oil, electricity, steel, cement and telecommunications companies. Sometimes, however, threatened companies have averted seizures by bowing to Chavez's demands.

The anti-U.S. president is popular among the poor for pressuring companies to produce cheap goods and for government programs that provide subsidized food in city slums.

But Polar, the producer of Venezuela's top beer brand and key staple products such as corn flour, is also highly regarded among the OPEC nation's poor.

Chavez, an ally of Communist Cuba, said the seizure of rice mills belonging to Polar this week was temporary but warned he could take over the whole company permanently if it kept defying him.

He accuses the food industry of skirting price controls and failing to produce enough cheap rice.

The recent moves to tighten the government's grip over food supplies are criticized by the private sector and many economists who say it could contribute to food shortages.

One of the United States' largest privately-owned companies, Cargill employs 2,000 people at a dozen plants in Venezuela. It was not clear if Chavez intends to expropriate Cargill's local operations or just its one rice plant.

Cargill said on Wednesday night it was "respectful" of Venezuela's decision but seeks talks to resolve the situation.

(Writing by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Kieran Murray)

WHERE ARE THE JOBS? THE PARALLELS BETWEEN TODAY AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION

Original Post:Reason TV

Little-known fact: Obama's failed stimulus program cost more than the Iraq war

Original Post: Washington Examiner

By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
08/23/10 11:32 AM EDT

Expect to hear a lot about how much the Iraq war cost in the days ahead from Democrats worried about voter wrath against their unprecedented spending excesses.

The meme is simple: The economy is in a shambles because of Bush's economic policies and his war in Iraq. As American Thinker's Randall Hoven points out, that's the message being peddled by lefties as diverse as former Clinton political strategist James Carville, economist Joseph Stiglitz, and The Nation's Washington editor, Christopher Hayes.

The key point in the mantra is an alleged $3 trillion cost for the war. Well, it was expensive to be sure, in both blood and treasure, but, as Hoven notes, the CBO puts the total cost at $709 billion. To put that figure in the proper context of overall spending since the war began in 2003, Hoven provides this handy CBO chart showing the portion of the annual deficit attributable to the conflict:


















But there is much more to be said of this data and Hoven does an admirable job of summarizing the highlights of such an analysis:

* Obama's stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War -- more than $100 billion (15%) more.

* Just the first two years of Obama's stimulus cost more than the entire cost of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.

* Iraq War spending accounted for just 3.2% of all federal spending while it lasted.

* Iraq War spending was not even one quarter of what we spent on Medicare in the same time frame.

* Iraq War spending was not even 15% of the total deficit spending in that time frame. The cumulative deficit, 2003-2010, would have been four-point-something trillion dollars with or without the Iraq War.

* The Iraq War accounts for less than 8% of the federal debt held by the public at the end of 2010 ($9.031 trillion).

* During Bush's Iraq years, 2003-2008, the federal government spent more on education that it did on the Iraq War. (State and local governments spent about ten times more.)

Just some handy facts to recall during coming weeks as Obama and his congressional Democratic buddies get more desperate to put the blame for their spending policies on Bush and the war in Iraq.

Some Liberals can learn. An open letter to Rush.

Original Post: Hillbuzz

Dear Rush,

It’s my great hope that some of your listeners find a way to get this letter to you, or that it makes it to “Snerdley” and finds its way into your hands. I don’t think even you understand just how much damage Obama has done to the Democrat Party — to the point where formerly lifelong Democrats like myself, and everyone here at HillBuzz.org, are actively working to expose the party and literally burn it to the ground for the good of the country.

None of this is being reported in the media, but a Civil War in the Democrat ranks has been raging since May 31st, 2008…a date every Hillary Clinton supporter knows well, because that was the date of the Democrat Rules & Bylaws Committee Meeting where Howard Dean (then-DNC Chair), Donna Brazile, and scores of other Kool-Aid slurping Obama flunkies took off their masks and revealed the full extent of the Leftist coup that had taken over the party. This was the day when the DNC took delegates Hillary Clinton won in Michigan away from her and handed them to Obama (despite the fact he wasn’t even on the primary ballot in that state, because he removed his name when his campaign realized he’d come in third in that race).

May 31st, 2008 was a day when Hillary “babes” (as you call us sometimes) like us flew to Washington in large numbers to stand outside the Marriott near the National Zoo, where this Rules & Bylaws Committee Meeting was held, to shout for the DNC to count all the votes and operate the nominating process fairly — but they refused. The anger over that day has never abated. In fact, it’s grown considerably since then.

This was the determining factor in millions of us leaving the Democrat Party for good. This was the day when the P.U.M.A. movement began — in response to Donna Brazile’s calls for “party unity” following the Rules & Bylaws Committee Meeting, we “Hillary babes” said “Party Unity My A$$” (or People United Means Action, depending on how you want to phrase it). Exit polls showed 8 million PUMA voted Republican for the first time in our lives in the fall of 2008…casting ballots for McCain/Palin (and in truth, mainly for Palin, whom we support, and not to a small degree because she receives many of the same attacks lobbed at Hillary Clinton all these years).

You seem to know most of all this, so I’ll end the history lesson by noting the people alienated by the Democrat Party during the primaries in 2008 — where it was clear the party and the media colluded at great lengths to push Obama while hammering Hillary Clinton into the ground — never came back to the Democrat Party.

This is also when most of us stopped using the term “Democratic Party”, since there’s nothing “democratic” about these people. They are the “Democrat Party”, and even that is hard to acknowledge because they really and truly have proved themselves to be enemies of real democracy.

I’m still registered as a Democrat here in Chicago (because the Cocktail Party GOP establishment so disgusts me I can’t will myself to party-ID Republican, and there’s no Independent option here in Illinois) but I can’t imagine ever voting for another Democrat again, as long as I live. To Hell with Democrats. This was solidified for me on Christmas Eve of last year, when Democrats rushed Obamacare through the Senate in the dead of night, through various secret channels, and every single Democrat voted for its passage (even supposed moderates like Evan Bayh in Indiana, who quickly realized his vote would cost him re-election…so the coward retired rather then face angry voters over what he did). I just don’t believe Democrats should be given elected office by voters because they cannot be trusted to even read bills before they vote on them, not even when said bills seek to permanently alter the entire American economy. This is reckless and reprehensible to the point of treason.

I was a Democrat for 32 years before the heavy-handed push for Obama alienated me from the party…and I borrow what Hillary Clinton said about Republicans once, back when she was a Goldwater Girl, and will paraphrase by saying that I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left me.

After it beat me to a pulp, called me a racist, berated and insulted me, and used Alinsky Rules to hit me with everything it had. Not just me, but all Hillary supporters.

This is the part I don’t think you understand because I don’t know if you and your listeners paid much attention to what the Obama campaign and DNC did to malign and assault Hillary Clinton’s supporters during the 2008 campaign. None of this has been forgotten by any of us.

If you have not seen it already, Rush, you need to watch Gigi Gaston’s documentary “We Will Not Be Silenced 2008″. I’m featured in a segment on the voter fraud that was committed in the Iowa Caucus back in January of 2008. While I was always aware Democrats use unions and other means to cheat in elections, I never knew the Democrat Party was capable of the large-scale, aggressive, unapologetic fraud it committed on Obama’s behalf all through 2008. In Iowa, I watched Obama’s ACORN and SEIU goons push and shove old people, bully them, and intimidate them when they wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton. I saw scores of Illinois license plates fill the parking lots outside caucus locations, with Chicagoland Obama supporters illegally entering the Caucus sites to vote for Obama and game Iowa for him. Having planned ahead, Obama supporters actually RAN those caucus sites, and held the doors open for all these fraudulent voters to walk right in, without being asked for IDs, where they then took control of the caucuses and bullied the Iowa residents into supporting Obama — lest they be called RAAACISTS! out in the open in front of their friends and neighbors in those open-air caucuses.

The media has never talked about this. I don’t remember ever hearing you talk about it. But one of the biggest reasons the Democrats are in the trouble they’re in right now is because of how frequently the Left and the media (one and the same, really) called anyone who opposed Obama a RAAACIST. If you supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries instead of Obama, you were called a RAAACIST. If you were someone like me who fundraised for Hillary, who hosted events for her, who put yourself out there and wrote columns advocating her or did media spots talking up her candidacy, you were aggressively targeted by the Obama campaign and his supporters…relentlessly attacked as a RAAACIST! and assaulted with the Alinksy Rules for Radicals in hopes of breaking your spirit, terrorizing you, and making you abandon Clinton for fear of having these people destroy your life, ruin your business, and make you an absolute pariah in your community.

This is what the Obama campaign, the media, and the DNC did to DEMOCRATS.

For almost a year, the Obama zealots and the Left waged all-out-war not just on Hillary Clinton, but on lifelong, loyal, dyed-in-the-wool Democrat voters like me. This came straight from the top, from Obama himself. Both he and his wife Michelle called the Clintons racists. Obama’s surrogates like James Clyburne, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, and others called Geraldine Ferraro, Madeline Albright, and others racists. The Obamas toxified the South Carolina primary, in particular, with foul race-baiting and turned North Carolina and Indiana into racial powder kegs by ramping up accusations that anyone not supporting Obama was a vile racist that needed to be pounded into the ground.

Stephanie Tubbs Jones, my former Congresswoman back home in Cleveland, was a black Hillary Clinton supporter to the very end — and she was called a “race-traitor”, an “Aunt Jane”, and all manner of worse names as she was bullied, berated, and verbally assaulted by the Obama team…because she was black and dared to stand with her friend Hillary Clinton, the person Tubbs Jones knew would make a better president than “The One”. To her dying day in August of 2008, Tubbs Jones was threatened by the Obama campaign and told she’d be primaried in 2010 and kicked to the curb for being a “race-traitor”. She died of a brain aneurysm while driving her car, and Obama supporters filled Daily Kos, DemocratUnderground, and other George Soros-supported sites with lies about her drunk driving, doing drugs, and other slurs because even after she died these people wouldn’t stop hating her for daring to be an outspoken black woman who would never abandon Hillary for Obama.

This is similar to the grief that I’ve received here in Chicago for being a gay Hillary former Democrat in Boystown who never drank any Kool-Aid, never stopped speaking out against Obama, and who recently fully came out as a conservative — in the face of the same kind of Alinsky-grade, identity-based, “traitor” hectoring that Tubbs Jones got for being a black woman who didn’t kneel before the Obama altar.

Well, Rush, let me just tell you, from personal experience, that the tens of millions of people relentlessly abused and hounded by Obama supporters (remember that back in 2008 he urged his followers to “get in their faces” and “confront their neighbors” if they weren’t drinking his unicorn-pumped sparkly Kool-Aid ) will NEVER EVER FORGET what the Obama campaign directed at them, in terms of all this Alinsky bullying.

To quote Jeremiah Wright, the man Obama spent twenty years eagerly listening to at Trinity United Church of Christ: somebody’s chickens have now come back to roost.

During the campaign, Donna Brazile famously said that the Democrat Party no longer needed the people Obama once described as “bitter, religion-and-guns-clinging, Midwesterners”. Brazile took this further and said, outright, that the Democrat party did not need blue-collar white voters, the Jacksonian voters, the Hillary voters, because the party was “Obamafied” and would win elections for generations with the Obama coalition of blacks, Leftist elites, Hispanics, low information gay voters, and self-hating Jews.

This is all the Democrats have left, Rush.

Speaking from personal experience, as someone who has worked in fundraising for over 10 years and who has been a part of every presidential campaign since 1992, the Democrats have permanently alienated tens of millions of people who normally turned out reliably every year not just to vote Democrat, but also to write checks and otherwise participate in campaigns.

No more. Never again.

Here in Chicago, just about everyone who was part of Team Hillary efforts with me on the ground has completely divorced themselves from the Democrat Party. Being called a racist repeatedly and hearing from Donna Brazile that we are not needed will do that to a person.

But in a bigger sense, Democrats, by being so shameless and aggressive with the voter fraud in 2008 have opened too many eyes for us to ever go back to pretending that fraud and corrupt practices aren’t the hallmark of the Democrat Party.

There was a show on ABC a few years ago called Alias starring Jennifer Garner in which she played a woman working for a company called Credit Dauphine…which she was told was a front for a CIA organization called SD6. Garner’s character, Sidney Bristow, carried out her missions for SD6, overlooking different things the organization did that she might not have liked, because she thought she was doing what was best for the country. And then, one day, Sidney learned SD6 was actually an enemy of America…that it’s real mission was to destroy the country…that everything Sidney was told about SD6 was a lie. The mask came off SD6, and Sidney Bristow realized she had to work aggressively to take the whole enterprise down.

Rush (and his listeners), please hear me on this because you will not read this in the media — but just about every one of us from the Hillary 2008 campaign is a Sidney Bristow today.

Those of us who worked Democrat campaigns in the past put up with union associations and the other unsavory aspects of being a Democrat because we were told this was the only way Democrats could win…with union muscle. But, in 2008 the Democrats revealed themselves to be an SD6 conglomeration of every force in this country that wants to bring America down, tank our economy, usurp our Constitution, and lay waste to the American way of life.

Democrats took off the mask. The DNC reveled in being fully Leftist-controlled. Crazy people unapologetic in their Communist admiration took over positions of great influence not just in the DNC, but in our state and federal governments as well.

I’m horrified by that.

Hillary supporters are horrified by that.

And we have not sat back quietly to allow this to happen without a fight.

I know for a fact that people I worked with on the Hillary 2008 campaign have been actively working against every single Democrat who supported Obama’s nomination. Everyone who backstabbed Hillary Clinton is being undermined and sabotaged by people who might still be registered as Democrats but have no more loyalty to the party. Sometimes, conservative sites try to make this into a “sour grapes” sort of “Hillary’s revenge” meme — and there might be a taste of this in what’s going on — but the real driving force is that we former Democrats saw just how insane these people really are and we are now doing everything we can, behind the scenes, to use everything we know about the Democrat Party to collapse it from within.

If you think about it logically, there is not enough energy to sustain a years-long drive to remove Obama supporters from office just because people are still upset Hillary Clinton was not the 2008 nominee and is not president today. Sometimes, I think even you believe this is what this is all about. Your “Reverse Operation Chaos” initiative seems predicated on this, but that belief is apocryphal in that it misses a few big marks.

This is and it isn’t about Hillary.

What it’s really about is what the Democrat Party did to Hillary that alienated tens of millions of Jacksonian/Clintonian/middleclass Americans from the party permanently — and this includes what the party and Obama campaign did to Hillary’s supporters themselves (ie, calling them racists, telling them they weren’t wanted, calling them bitter clingers, etc.).

For the first time in our lives, so many of us former Democrats were given an Alinsky taste of what the Democrat Party really stand for…what it really believes…and how it really feels about America, our Constitution, our economy, and our way of life.

Howard Dean, Donna Brazile, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Obama took the mask off the Democrat Party…and the Leftist gorgon that lurked beneath is something America-loving, middleclass, Jacksonian/Clintonian Democrats want nothing to do with.

As part of your “Reverse Operation Chaos”, you really need to emphasize something the media just won’t talk about — and that’s the simple fact that even if you called yourself a Democrat for 32 years, the way I did, because everyone you grew up with and everyone in your family was a Democrat, that in 2010 it’s time to ask yourselves what that really means.

Do you want to be in a party that calls people racists for stepping out of line and voicing opposition to the socialist lurch of the current administration?

Do you condone voter fraud and the shameless, undemocratic tactics employed by Democrats?

Do you wish to associate with the likes of ACORN, the SEIU, the Black Panthers, and all the other thugs, goons, and degenerates the Obama campaign and White House employ as the DNC’s muscle on the ground?

It is crystal clear that being a patriotic American who loves this country is intellectually incompatible with being a Democrat. If you love America and want it to prosper, the Democrat Party is at absolute odds with everything we need for a thriving, successful economy.

Hillary supporters realize this.

We received a heaping helping of Alinsky assaults to wake us up to this reality.

The reason so many of us support Governor Palin is not just because we see the same Alinksy assaults being waged upon her…but the woman is pitch-perfect in outlining exactly why Obama and the Left are wrong, and why Democrats under Obama are dangerous to have in elected office.

I know you talk about a “Hillary 2012″ but Rush, as much as I love Hillary Clinton, and as much as I worked my heart out for her in 2008, there’s no way that even she can repair the damage Obama has done to the party. Certainly not by 2012. MAYBE the Clintons and their supporters can purge the Obama lunatics from the party by 2016…but I doubt even that will happen. Just like with the Leftists Carter infected the Democrat Party with, Obama legacy hires will be in the DNC for a generation to come…and it might not be until the 2030s before the Democrats can remove the taint Obama and his Leftist agenda have put on the party.

Democrats have made themselves synonymous with anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-democracy. Obama and his acolytes decidedly upped the ante when it came to their aggressive push towards socialism…and this Center-Right nation is resisting it in what I am certain will be an epic refudiation (to borrow the Governor’s term) next week.

On November 3rd, no one I know will be resting on any laurels. November 3rd starts the 2012 campaign…and not just the presidential race (where we’ll back Governor Palin) but the drive to knock people like Claire McCaskill out of office, continuing our work to take down every last one of the Obama supporters who backstabbed Hillary Clinton and helped install this socialist into the White House back in 2008. When you hear talk of a Hillary “enemies’ list”, or just “The List” as we call it in HRC supporter circles, this is very much real…and we are truly committed to making sure the Claire McCaskills out there get everything that is coming to them for all their service to Obama and his agenda.

Hear that, Ben Nelson…voters will be coming for you.

You and everyone like you.

Every last one of you.

If you voted for Obamacare, you are politically dead but may not know it…and it is your own fault. Being intensely stupid is no defense. If you were a YES vote on anything related to Obamacare you are going to be defeated…if not in 2010, then in the primaries in 2012. If you survive those, you will be taken down in the 2012 general election. Your political career is over…dummy.

Hope your time on the Obama Kool-Aid bandwagon was worth ruining your life over.

We will not forget those Obamacare votes. We will not forgive being called a racist because we don’t support this terrible man and his awful agenda. We will not be silenced.

We will not give up.

It’s going to be years, if ever, before the lamestream media ever catches up to any of this, and realizes that a large swath of people who used to be Democrat loyalists are now doing everything they can to destroy the party. Some of them are out and open, like me and my friends here at HillBuzz, but many are doing their part quietly. They just stop writing checks. Or maybe now they write checks to Democrat opponents. They might continue to attend events and fundraisers, but now they call up Republican sites and give them all the dirt on what they heard in those meetings. The Democrat Party alienated so many people who are now working to bring it down that I could go on for pages and pages more on this topic.

It’s very Sidney Bristow, Rush. And if you watched that show Alias, you’d know she not only won in the end, but looked damn good kicking ass while doing it.

THAT, El Rushbo, is what your “Hillary babes” are up to.

Here in Boystown, and in every town, because the Civil War Howard Dean, Donna Brazile, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Obama started on May 31st, 2008 is raging without end until the Democrat Party is no more.

Tell your listeners to count on that.

Kevin DuJan

Editor-in-Chief, HillBuzz.org

Hillary “Babe” in Buzzquarters, Boystown

Restore Sanity Rally