Combined?!?

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In 2008, a single county in Florida – Miami-Dade – received more money in Medicare home health care payments than the entire rest of the country combined. This continued throughout the entire year and was finally noticed by our Department of Health and Human Services in December 2009.

Understanding the Muslim Brotherhood

Understanding the Muslim Brotherhood

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A recent case sheds light on the organization, but most Republicans ignore it.

by Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review Online
August 25, 2012

I'm a big fan of the 1 percent. No, not the dastardly 1 percent of Occupy Wall Street myth; I'm partial, instead, to the 1 percent of Congress that takes seriously the threat of Islamic-supremacist influence operations against our government.

The people have 435 representatives serving in the House and another hundred in the Senate. Of these 535, a total of 288 are Republicans — 241 and 47 in the lower and upper chambers, respectively. Of these, only five House conservatives — five — have had the fortitude to raise concerns about the Islamist connections of government officials entrusted with positions enabling them to shape U.S. policy.

Think about that. Republicans purport to be the national-security party. For decades this claim was well founded, starting with Ronald Reagan's clarity in seeing the Soviets as enemies to be defeated, not accommodated. President Reagan's plan for the Cold War was, "We win, they lose," and he pulled it off because he was not under any illusions about who "they" were.

But something happened to the GOP in the Bush years. For all the welcome understanding that Bill Clinton was wrong — that the jihad could not be indicted into submission — the Bush administration never learned a fundamental truth that Reagan knew only too well: You cannot defeat your enemies unless you understand them, and you cannot even begin to understand them if you are too craven to name them.

As they gather in Tampa for their quadrennial showcase, Republicans, but for the 1 percent, remain timorous on the subject of America's enemies. Oh, they'll tell you that we must confront "terrorism" and crack down on the "terrorists." But that's not much different from claiming to be against "burglary" and "burglars." Terrorism is a vicious crime, but it becomes a national-security threat only when it is an instrument of an ideology that aims to destroy our country. What made the terrorist organizations armed and trained by the Soviets in the Sixties and Seventies a threat was theSoviets, not the terrorism.

America's enemies are Islamic supremacists: Muslims adherent to a totalitarian interpretation of Islam who, like Soviet Communists, seek to impose their ideology throughout the world, very much including the United States. Terrorism is an offensive strategy they use, but it is only one arrow in the quiver. Its chief utility, moreover, is not that it will coerce surrender on its own; it is the atmosphere of intimidation it creates. That dramatically increases the effectiveness of the enemy's several other offensive strategies — legal demands for concessions, media campaigns, infiltration of society's major institutions, and influence operations against government.

The most disheartening thing about the modern Republican party's dereliction — about its accommodation and empowerment of our enemies under the delusional guise of "Muslim outreach" — is that it flies in the face of the Bush Justice Department's signal counterterrorism achievement.

That was the 2007–08 Holy Land Foundation case. For once, political correctness and the fear of being smeared as "Islamophobic" were shelved. In the course of convicting several Hamas operatives, prosecutors proved that the Muslim Brotherhood is engaged in a far-flung enterprise aimed, in the Brothers' own words, at "eliminating and destroying" our way of life "from within" by means of "sabotage." The Bush Justice Department not only showed that what the Brotherhood calls its "grand jihad" (or "civilization jihad") is real; Justice shed light on the ideology that fuels this enterprise, and expressly identified many of the global Brotherhood's accomplices.

Alas, this achievement is one today's Republicans prefer to ignore. The party of Ronald Reagan would have worn it like a badge of honor. Today's GOP would rather engage our enemies and call them our friends — not understand them, call them what they are, and defeat them. Today's Beltway Republicans save their wrath for the occasional conservative — the messengers who embarrass them by illustrating how small the big time has made them.

Did you know, for example, that when the Republican establishment had its hissy fit over the inconvenient 1 percent — when John McCain and John Boehner led the shrieking over their five conservative colleagues' purported scaremongering over Islamist influence-peddling — the fact that this influence-peddling effort exists had just been proved in court?

As Patrick Poole, one of few to cover the case, has observed, it is the biggest spy scandal you've never heard about. Right around the time McCain and Boehner were dressing down the 1 percent last month, Ghulam Nabi Fai was finally heading off to prison. He had pled guilty last December to acting as a secret foreign agent against our government.

In sum, Fai was paid millions of dollars over two decades by the Pakistani intelligence service to push its agenda through a D.C.-based front, the Kashmiri American Council. You haven't heard much about it because it is a Muslim Brotherhood operation through and through, one that demonstrates exactly what the 1 percent is warning about.

Fai grew up in Kashmir, the disputed territory Islamists have sought to wrest from India, often by terrorism, for over half a century. His story would be typical of Muslim Brotherhood operatives if we actually spoke about Muslim Brotherhood operatives. He became a member of Jama'at-e-Islami, which maintains close relations with the Brotherhood and is, for Pakistanis, what the Brotherhood is for Arabs — the vanguard of global Islamic supremacism.

The force that globalizes this movement is Saudi money and commitment. During one of the many Indian crackdowns on Kashmiri Islamists, Fai did exactly what Muslim Brothers in Egypt frequently did during regime crackdowns: He fled to Saudi Arabia. While studying at one of the kingdom's Wahhabist universities, he made himself useful to a highly influential imam who incited Kashmiri jihadists. Impressed by Fai's devotion to the cause, the Saudi government agreed to pay for his education in the United States.

The Saudis steered Fai to Temple University, where Islamists had a beachhead. Fai studied under a Palestinian sharia specialist, Ismail Raji al-Faruqi, who led the Saudi-funded "Islamization of knowledge" program. Ismail would later join Muslim Brotherhood operatives to found the International Institute of Islamic Thought — a think tank dedicated to the "Islamization of knowledge" project, and one that worked so closely with Sami al-Arian, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad emir, that its leadership was listed among the unindicted co-conspirators cited by the Bush Justice Department at al-Arian's terrorism trial.

At Temple, Fai became the president of the Muslim Students Association — the national organization. Established in the early sixties, the MSA is the original foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood's American infrastructure. It now has hundreds of chapters grooming Islamists across the United States and Canada. Patrick Poole has recounted the numerous MSA leaders who have graduated to violent jihadism. They include — and this is just to name a few of many — Wael Jalaidan, a founder of al-Qaeda; Abdurahman Alamoudi, a leading financier of al-Qaeda who was eventually convicted in a murder plot; and Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda leader who counseled the 9/11 hijackers and, before finally being killed in Yemen last year, was implicated in sundry jihadist plots, including the Fort Hood massacre and the attempt to bomb a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. Like Fai, both Alamoudi and Awlaki were once admired in Washington as model moderates thanks to the magic of "Muslim outreach." (So was al-Arian.)

From the MSA, Fai seamlessly moved on to the "shura council" (i.e., the advisory board) of the Islamic Society of North America. ISNA evolved out of the MSA and the two organizations consider themselves as one. ISNA has become the largest and, perhaps, the most influential Brotherhood affiliate in the United States — see its president, Mohamed Magid, pictured here with State Department official Huma Abedinat the Iftar (end-of-Ramadan) dinner hosted by President Obama just a few weeks ago.

Fai joined ISNA in the late Eighties. That is when the Brotherhood formed Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization whose funding during and after the Intifada was the Brotherhood's top American priority. It was to route money to the jihad against Israel that the Brotherhood established the Holy Land Foundation — the subject of the Bush Justice Department's aforementioned terrorism prosecution. Ostensibly a charity, HLF was housed in the headquarters ISNA shared with another Brotherhood entity, the North American Islamic Trust. NAIT was formed with Saudi funding to buy up real estate throughout the U.S. for the construction of mosques and Islamic community centers — which Brotherhood ideology considers the "axis" of Islamic supremacism in each city and town. In the HLF plot, bank accounts controlled by ISNA and NAIT were used to funnel funds to Palestinian jihadists.

This Saudi and Brotherhood pedigree made Fai an ideal recruit for the Pakistani intelligence service — creators of the Taliban and longtime supporters of al-Qaeda. He was thus tabbed in the late Eighties to begin conducting influence operations against the United States. His front organization, the Kashmiri American Council, was incorporated in 1990 by Fai, along with the wife of Sayyid Syeed, ISNA's longtime secretary-general and currently its director of (what else?) "interfaith outreach." The venture, which opened with an office just a few blocks from the White House, got a boost from a $20,000 start-up loan from NAIT.

In the 20 years that followed, Fai received approximately $4 million in funding from Pakistani intelligence. He used it to buy access — scores of meetings with top federal officials, a ballyhooed annual conference on Capitol Hill, and international credibility as a prominent Muslim who had Washington's ear. The lion's share of his political contributions were targeted at Republicans, particularly Representative Dan Burton, the chief congressional supporter of Fai's Kashmiri American Council, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Fai, however, opportunistically courted members of both parties, and the executive branch as well as Congress. In fact, when President Obama was elected, Pakistani intelligence directed Fai to build relationships in the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Pentagon. Nor did they leave it at government officials; Fai was instructed to court specific members of the media and particular Washington think tanks.

Fai had a partner in the scheme: an American named Zaheer Ahmad, who lived in Pakistan and orchestrated the scheme by which Pakistani funds were transferred to Fai. Ahmad, mysteriously, is no longer among the living. Turns out that in the weeks before the 9/11 attacks, he and a Pakistani nuclear scientist had a meeting with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawhiri about getting mass-destruction weapons for al-Qaeda. That meeting was reported by the Hindustan Times in fall 2011, and two days later Ahmad was found dead in Pakistan — of a cerebral hemorrhage, they say.

It was in 2011 that the FBI concluded it had plenty of evidence to justify arresting Fai. For years he had illegally failed to reveal his status as a Pakistani agent, and he had lied about it in FBI interviews, another felony. But in moving on Fai, the Bureau was stalled by the State Department and the CIA. As Poole suggests, this may be explained by a desire not to exacerbate the growing tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan after American special forces raided bin Laden's Pakistani compound and killed the al-Qaeda leader that spring. That may also explain why Fai got a sweetheart plea deal — requiring only a two-year prison term — despite the fact that the FBI told the court Fai had refused to cooperate regarding "his involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood, and Pakistani terrorist groups."

Here's the most alarming thing — the thing about our enemy being an enemy: Even after Fai pled guilty and was sentenced, the Muslim Brotherhood's American infrastructure continued to support him ardently. As Poole reports, fundraising dinners in his honor were held by ISNA, the Muslim American Society (which is the Brotherhood's quasi-official presence in the United States), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR – which originated out of the Brotherhood's now-defunct Islamic Association for Palestine and serves as an Islamist public-relations and lawfare arm). Mind you, Fai's guilt is not in doubt; he pled guilty and agreed to a 26-page statement of facts detailing his operations against our country. Yet the Brothers stand by their man.

When the five House Republicans rose up to call for scrutiny of enemy efforts to influence our government, they were not speaking hypothetically. The effort is very real. And the enemy is now so brazen, so confident about the inroads it has made, that it publicly closes ranks around its operatives even after their treachery has been laid bare.

Republicans have had ample opportunity to stand with their intrepid 1 percent. Most of them are in hiding, though. The few who've spoken up have, like their Democratic counterparts, calculated that it's more expedient to stand with the Muslim Brotherhood's network than with those trying to expose the Muslim Brotherhood's network.

Twenty-eight years ago this week, the Reagan Republicans gathered in Dallas for their convention, rightly anticipating a landslide electoral victory. They understood the enemy and they had no reluctance about calling it exactly what it was. But that was then.

— Andrew C. McCarthy is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Bad Headlines in Perspective

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Maureen Mearns says this about Bad Headlines:

Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter
This one I caught in the SGV Tribune the other day and called the Editorial Room and asked who wrote this.
It took two or three readings before the editor realized that what he was reading was impossible!!! They put in a correction the next day.

I just couldn't help but sending this along. Too funny.
Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
No kidding, really? Ya think?

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Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
Now that's taking things a bit far!

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Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
What a guy!

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Miners Refuse to Work after Death
No-good-for-nothing' lazy so-and-so's!

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Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
See if that works any better than a fair trial!

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War Dims Hope for Peace
I can see where it might have that effect!

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If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile
Ya think?!

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Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures
Who would have thought!

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Enfield ( London ) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
They may be on to something!

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Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges
You mean there's something stronger than duct tape?

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New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
Weren't they fat enough?!

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Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft
That's what he gets for eating those beans!

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Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
Do they taste like chicken?

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Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
Chainsaw Massacre all over again!

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Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors
Boy, are they tall!

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And the winner is.....
Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Did I read that right?

Whoopsie Dosie

Why Democrat Party want felons to vote

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Socialite Denise Rich dumps U.S. passport

By Lynnley Browning

Mon Jul 9, 2012 9:47am EDT

(Reuters) - Denise Rich, the wealthy socialite and former wife of pardoned billionaire trader Marc Rich, has given up her U.S. citizenship - and, with it, much of her U.S. tax bill.

Rich, 68, a Grammy-nominated songwriter and glossy figure in Democratic and European royalty circles, renounced her American passport in November, according to her lawyer.

Her maiden name, Denise Eisenberg, appeared in the Federal Register on April 30 in a quarterly list of Americans who renounced their U.S. citizenship and permanent residents who handed in their green cards. (link.reuters.com/naq28s)

By dumping her U.S. passport, Rich likely will save tens of millions of dollars or more in U.S. taxes over the long haul, tax lawyers say.

Rich, who wrote songs recorded by Aretha Franklin, Mary J. Blige and Jessica Simpson, is the latest bold-faced name to join a wave of wealthy people renouncing their American citizenship. Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin gave up his U.S. passport to become a citizen of Singapore, an offshore tax haven, before the company's initial public offering in May.

Nearly 1,800 citizens and permanent residents, a record since data was first compiled in 1998, expatriated last year, according to government figures.

Rich, who was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, has Austrian citizenship through her deceased father, said Michael Heidt, a lawyer in Hollywood, Florida, who represented her in a recent lawsuit.

He said Rich had dumped her U.S. passport "so that she can be closer to her family and to Peter Cervinka, her long-time partner." Rich's two daughters live in London; Cervinka, a wealthy property developer, is an Austrian national. Rich plans to make London her main residence and does not intend to acquire other passports, Heidt said.

MARC RICH's PARDON

Rich's ex-husband, commodities trader Marc Rich, fled the United States in 1983 when indicted on charges of tax evasion, fraud, racketeering and illegal trading of oil with Iran. They divorced in 1996.

Marc Rich received a presidential pardon in 2001 on President Bill Clinton's last day in office. Federal prosecutors and Congress investigated the pardon, and in 2002 a House of Representatives committee concluded Denise Rich had swayed the action through donations to the Clinton library and campaign.

Dubbed "Lady Gatsby" by Yachting magazine, Rich owns multiple properties, including a mansion in Aspen, Colorado. She is a frequent habitue of Cannes, Monte Carlo and St. Tropez with celebrities and singers aboard her 157-foot yacht, Lady Joy.

Rich will escape future U.S. taxes but possibly not all current ones. In 2008, Congress imposed an expatriation tax on persons with a net worth of more than $2 million who dump their U.S. citizenship or permanent residency. Under the law, those people owe an "exit tax" on their worldwide property, computed at a fair market value the day before they leave. But tax lawyers say the tax can be reduced or avoided by structuring asset holdings through foreign annuities.

While Austria, like the United States, generally taxes its citizens on their worldwide income, it has generous tax breaks for citizens who spend half the year abroad.

In January, Rich put her 5th Avenue penthouse in New York on the market for $65 million, according to the listing agent, The Corcoran Group. New York property records show Rich acquired a 100 percent stake in the apartment, described by Corcoran as "the epitome of luxury and grandeur," for $200,000 in 2006. Bonnie Evans, the Corcoran broker for the property, declined to discuss details.

COOK ISLANDS TRUST

The recent lawsuit against Rich was filed on behalf of Lee Goldberg, the former protector of a Cook Islands trust of which Rich is a beneficiary, in February. The case was dismissed in April, court records show.

The Cook Islands, a South Pacific tax haven, offers Swiss-style secrecy for wealthy investors.

The lawsuit accused Rich and Richard Kilstock, a British real estate entrepreneur who is married to Rich's daughter Daniella, of "transferring, moving or secreting trust assets, in violation of the trust's guidelines and without the knowledge or permission of Goldberg."

Rich and Kilstock denied the charges and accused Goldberg of altering trust documents, court filings show.

Both Goldberg and his attorney, Donald Thomas, declined to discuss the case. Rich recently dismissed Goldberg, one of her long-time lawyers, as protector of the trust.

Heidt, who also represents Kilstock in the case, declined to discuss the lawsuit. Kilstock did not return calls requesting comment.

(Editing by Eddie Evans and Mohammad Zargham)

Socialite Denise Rich dumps U.S. passport

Comments (7)

CitizenAbroad wrote:

Austrian vs. US taxation: This story is misleading regarding Austrian vs. US taxation, which seems to suggest that Austria is a tax haven. Austria taxes RESIDENTS of Austria based on worldwide income, irrespective of citizenship. (Residency-based taxation is the method used by all countries in the world, except the US (and Eritrea)). The US and Eritrea tax their CITIZENS based on worldwide income. An Austrian citizen, residing in the UK, would file a tax return in the UK only. A US citizen, residing in the UK, would file two tax returns. One for the UK, as a resident of the UK, and one for the US, as a citizen of the US, although resident in the UK.

The concept behind residency-based taxation is the taxpayer uses the services of the country where he/ she is living. The concept behind citizenship-based taxation is unknown to me. Perhaps a US or Eritrean politician could explain it.

Jul 09, 2012 11:47am EDT  --  Report as abuse

FBAR_Compliant wrote:

You cannot tell the story of people (rich or not) who are either renouncing or relinquishing (there is a difference) their citizenship without a full understanding the unique nature of U.S. Citizenship taxation with all the complexity that surrounds it.

You have to couple this understanding with the inside knowledge of a 3 year IRS jihad in search of revenues ostensibly to cover the continued tax breaks for U.S. homelanders and profligate deficit spending by Congress. Currently they are chasing up revenue from all U.S. persons (more than just citizens) living around the world even when they are not resident in America any longer. Only other country that does anything close to this is Eritrea. They want to tax and penalize them for past FBAR reporting failures, get them to report in the future, even if they have no tax liability, and consequently make life very difficult for them in the countries of their residence.

Never mind that no other civilized country in the world does this. This is the American way. Other countries send their citizens out in the world unencumbered with double taxation and reporting burdens to create markets for their export products. The US tethers,on the other hand, them home with an taxation shackle with severe, complex and expensive tax rules that makes it almost impossible to them to survive, complete or create export jobs for the homeland.

This story was fun one to write, I am sure, even with all the inaccuracies that it contains about Austrian territorial taxation (very normal in the world) and Saverin’s renunciation. BTW, he did not take up Singapore citizenship. He did keep his Brazilian citizenship. You should do some serious inquiries of why he would keep it over the US passport? Could it be that the US be doing something wrong and that Brazil is doing something right?

I understand that story with headline of “Socialite dumping the US passport” is designed to titillate the “drive by” pop culture reader who understands nothing about the complexities of U.S. Citizenship tax law, or the past 3 year offshore IRS jihad. This story adds nothing to the broader understanding of the harmful policies like FBARs and FATCA. If you just said FWhat? I rest my case. You really should start googling around! If you have lived in Timbuktu for the past 30 years and felt the recent pressure of the IRS attempts to haul you into their revenue/penalty net, you get the broader story however!

US citizenship taxation complexities, penalties and continued offshore actions have many unintended consequences and tons of collateral damage. Basically, if you live over seas, and are no longer resident in America, you have some tough choices, Comply, renounce or return home to Kansas! The cost of the US passport has just reached a tipping point, and many are deciding the cost of maintaining it is not worth the benefit anymore.

Those who are taking the renunciation route (a term the US uses for handing in a passport) are doing it for very understandable reasons. It is not just about the taxes, it is about the complexity, the hassle and the Draconian penalties. This is not just the rich leaving, but they are the most sensational and easy to write about. The IRS is required to give you their stats and names on what is called “covered expats” or those having certain characteristics. The most common being that their world wide assets have a value in US dollars more than $2 million. But is my contention that they are just a small part of the story.

There is another class that you don’t know about or would have a harder time counting, and that is the thousands of average dual citizen or accidental Americans who are facing these same serious decisions and electing not to participate in the most complex and onerous penalty taxation regime in the world any longer. Also there are thousands of immigrants who are being seriously harmed, and are just heading back home rather than hand over their family savings to the IRS jihad just because they failed to send in an FBAR that few knew about.

Yes, this story is a headline grabber, but just scratches the surface of a story much bigger than just what is portrayed here.

Jul 09, 2012 5:47pm EDT  --  Report as abuse

arete66 wrote:

The real problem isn’t people like Denise Rich. The real problem is that America has the most lenient transfer pricing rules in the world, allowing companies like Google, Facebook, and so forth to pull a Double-Irish under the auspices that their falsely constructed shell subsidiaries overseas deal with each other as if at arm’s length (riiiight!) when interacting with one another. We lose out on roughly 60 billion dollars in annual revenue by allowing this nonsense. The tax holiday in 2004, in which companies were allowed to bring such moneys back into the U.S. at extremely low tax rates, was promised to create jobs. Instead, corporations mainly reinvested the money in buying back stock and continued to “downsize” and “streamline”. Let Denise renounce her citizenship. But nail companies who do all their business here and hide their money overseas.

Jul 09, 2012 8:01pm EDT  --  Report as abuse

lyne wrote:

Once someone renounces their citizenship, they should be on the no-enter list.

Jul 10, 2012 5:52pm EDT  --  Report as abuse

theagitator wrote:

If our tax laws are too complex it is only because the 1% – ers such as Denise Eisenberg Rich have wanted them that way. Tax attorneys get rich, while hiding their over compensated clients’ money in trusts and offshore accounts. They pay an effective tax rate that is much below what the 99% pays. She needs to be persona non grata in the USA.

Our political leaders (besides getting reelected) have only several priorities….low taxes for the rich, sending our military to fight wars in the Middle East, and waging war on internet freedom and those who have the audacity to copy generally worthless digital material from Hollywood (of which she represents), while doing nothing to protect those average Americans whose jobs and rights have been stolen for the benefit of Wall St..

Jul 11, 2012 9:47am EDT  --  Report as abuse

jaguar6cy wrote:

Another liberal, democrat, progressive and dear friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Jul 12, 2012 2:18pm EDT  --  Report as abuse

scythe wrote:

@ theagitator – succinct and yes

Amazon UK Joke

Posted on 27 Oct 2012 18:22:35 BDT Veedub says:

There was a Marine deployed into Afghanistan. While he was there he received a letter from his girlfriend. In the letter she explained that she had slept with two guys while he had been gone and she wanted to break up AND she wants pictures of herself back.
So the Marine does what any squared-away Marine would do. He went around to his buddies and collected all the unwanted photos of women he could find. He then mailed about 25 pictures to his girlfriend with the following note:
"I don't remember which one you are, please remove your picture and send the rest back!

Eye Candy

 

Frock-gate!

Chemist = Pharmacist

Posted on 26 Oct 2012 13:49:09 BDT Mrs. P. T. Watters says:

Lady goes to the chemist and asks for cyanide-the chemist says i cannot give you that as it will kill someone and i will get into trouble.

The lady insists she wants some cyanide so the chemist says why do you want the dangerous substance.

She then produces a photo of her husband and the chemists wife in bed together the chemist then says to her why did you not say you had a prescription !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ann Coulter Hits the Mark

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The august New York Times recently explained that illegal immigration has no effect on unemployment because illegal immigrants compete only with "native-born workers without a high school diploma." As noted by Vanderbilt law professor Carol Swain, author of "Debate Immigration," that means black workers. Illegal immigration, she says, harms blacks "the most because they're disproportionately low-skilled." In liberals' view, blacks don't count. They aren't -- in the Times' words -- "the bulk of native workers." According to the Times, Obama's black supporters were dismayed at a White House meeting last year when cards were passed out to campaign donors with talking points about how Obama had helped various groups. There were cards for women, Jews, gays and lesbians. But no talking points for how Obama had helped black Americans. So Joe Biden tells a black audience that Romney wants to "put y'all back in chains," and MSNBC hosts claim opposition to Obama's re-election is based on "racial hatred," and the Democrats believe their work is done.

The Amazon Tax

Living next to a bookstore, she still gets it cheaper from a bookseller 3000 miles away.

Legislation is afoot to make every one of you in the US pay local sales tax (in my case 9.75%) on anything that you buy on the internet from out of state merchants. This is called the Amazon Tax because it is targeting the first and most successful e-commerce site, Amazon. The federal law would require online merchants to collect the tax from the customer and remit it to the state where the customer lives.

Advocates for this outragious Tax Increase argue that state law already provides for "use tax" and imposes it on their residents. Trouble is and has been that the use tax has been unenforceable and of no effect. In other words, nobody bothers with it because the state hasn't tried to collect it before. Well, they will try to collect it now, and everyone needs to oppose this HUGE defacto tax increase.

Why oppose it? Sales Taxes are raised to support local government for the services that are provided to the merchants, businesses, retailers, everyone with a cash register in town. Police protection, fire department services, fire inspection, health department inspection for food and chemical purveyors, investigation and apprehension of shoplifters, paper-hangers, embezzlers, armed robbers, burglars, arsonists, product adulterers, handicap parking offenders, traffic control and street maintenance, plowing, sewers, telephone poles, potable water, tornado sirens, ambulance service, local courthouse, prosecutors, jail, public defenders, dog catchers, parking facilities, bus stops and routes, need I go on? A ton of services from the village, county, or state to help the merchants and their customers.

The out-of-state supplier gets none of those services or benefits. None. The sales tax is not "earned" by the local tax authority and is not deserved.

This is similar to the injustice of the IRS collecting taxes, at the same rate, from all Americans whether or not they live overseas. Why should an American living overseas have to pay federal taxes? No other nation does this. Their citizens living overseas are not benefitting from their Department of Transportation infrastructure, the FAA, the FBI, the Army Corps of Engineers, NOAA, EPA, DOE, DOA, NLRB, FTC, BOM, BIA, DoD, AFL-CIO, FCC, FDA, HHS, etc., etc. The IRS wants to be paid, but no other agency will deliver you anything. Is this just? Is this equitable? Is this fair? Is this even American?

So, look, some of these politicians who have supported this Amazon Tax have signed the Grover Norquest pledge to not raise taxes. They'll argue that this does not raise taxes because the taxes are "already due" under state law.

No. The taxes are not now being paid or collected under state law so it is the most actual, tangible, and impactful tax increase. It takes money out of your pocket that is not being taken today. It creates hundreds of new government employees to administer and enforce. It removes money from the economy that can be spent on goods and services.

It is bad, bad, bad, BAD!

The Rise, Fall, and Renaissance of Classical Liberalism

Click here

In the 17th century, England, too, was threatened by royal absolutism, in the form of the House of Stuart. The response was revolution, civil war, the beheading of one king and the booting out of another. In the course of this tumultuous century, the first movements and thinkers appeared who can be unequivocally identified as liberal.

With the king gone, a group of middle-class radicals emerged called the Levellers. They protested that not even Parliament had any authority to usurp the natural, God-given rights of the people. Religion, they declared, was a matter of individual conscience: it should have no connection with the state. State-granted monopolies were likewise an infringement of natural liberty. A generation later, John Locke, drawing on the tradition of natural law that had been kept alive and elaborated by the Scholastic theologians, set forth a powerful liberal model of man, society, and state. Every man, he held, is innately endowed with certain natural rights. These consist in his fundamental right to what is his property — that is, his life, liberty, and "estates" (or material goods). Government is formed simply the better to preserve the right to property. When, instead of protecting the natural rights of the people, a government makes war upon them, the people may alter or abolish it. The Lockean philosophy continued to exert influence in England for generations to come. In time, its greatest impact would be in the English-speaking colonies in North America.

The society that emerged in England after the victory over absolutism began to score astonishing successes in economic and cultural life. Thinkers from the continent, especially in France, grew interested. Some, like Voltaire and Montesquieu, came to see for themselves. Just as Holland had acted as a model before, now the example of England began to influence foreign philosophers and statesmen. The decentralization that has always marked Europe allowed the English "experiment" to take place and its success to act as a spur to other nations.

In the 18th century, thinkers were discovering a momentous fact about social life: given a situation where men enjoyed their natural rights, society more or less runs itself. In Scotland, a succession of brilliant writers that included David Hume and Adam Smith outlined the theory of the spontaneous evolution of social institutions. They demonstrated how immensely complex and vitally useful institutions — language. morality, the common law, above all, the market — originate and develop not as the product of the designing minds of social engineers, but as the result of the interactions of all the members of society pursuing their individual goals.

In France, economists were coming to similar conclusions. The greatest of them, Turgot, set forth the rationale for the free market:

"The policy to pursue, therefore, is to follow the course of nature, without pretending to direct it For, in order to direct trade and commerce it would be necessary to be able to have knowledge of all of the variations of needs, interests, and human industry in such detail as is physically impossible to obtain even by the most able, active, and circumstantial government. And even if a government did possess such a multitude of detailed knowledge, the result would be to let things go precisely as they do of themselves, by the sole action of the interests of men prompted by free competition."

The French economists coined a term for the policy of freedom in economic life: they called it laissez-faire. Meanwhile, starting in the early 17th century, colonists coming mainly from England had established a new society on the eastern shores of North America. Under the influence of the ideas the colonists brought with them and the institutions they developed, a unique way of life came into being. There was no aristocracy and very little government of any kind. Instead of aspiring to political power, the colonists worked to carve out a decent existence for themselves and their families.

Fiercely independent, they were equally committed to the peaceful — and profitable — exchange of goods. A complex network of trade sprang up, and by the mid-18th century, the colonists were already more affluent than any other commoners in the world. Self-help was the guiding star in the realm of spiritual values as well. Churches, colleges, lending-libraries, newspapers, lecture-institutes, and cultural societies flourished through the voluntary cooperation of the citizens.

When events led to a war for independence, the prevailing view of society was that it basically ran itself. As Tom Paine declared:

"Formal government makes but a small part of civilized life. It is to the great and fundamental principles of society and civilization — to the unceasing circulation of interest, which passing through its million channels, invigorates the whole mass of civilized man — it is to these, infinitely more than to anything which even the best instituted government can perform that the safety and prosperity of the individual and the whole depend. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government. Government is no further necessary than to supply the few cases to which society and civilization are not conveniently competent."

So, one may notice that the Culture Wars are being fought over changing the meaning of words. Not natural evolutionary change, but deliberate and cynically deceptive intentional change. Liberal no longer means what Thomas Paine meant. Now it is for those who advocate government solutions for personal problems. Gay now has only one meaning in current usage. The euphemism has now become the official nomenclature for an entire class of people and has lost it's usefulness for describing any other kind of party, cocktail lounge, cruise ship, resort, attitude, or tea dance. Marriage next will cease to be a synonym for matrimony, and sex will become synonymous with orgasm rather than signifying sexual reproduction. Sex will no longer theoretically require a zygote and have reference to purely biological intercourse.

Thank you, President Clinton, for distinquishing between sexual relations and fellatio and teaching our youth that lies and deception are just fine.

Penn Gillette -- sharp patriot

Kylie Minogue has hardly slept in her Los Angeles home

link

Saturday, October 20, 2012 (Los Angeles)

Kylie Minogue once bought a house in Los Angeles, but only ever slept in it twice. 

The singer worried her career was over in 1999 so decided to move to California. However, it didn't last long as she was approached by British record label Parlophone to release 'Spinning Around' - which became her first UK top ten hit in six years. 

She said: "It was so quiet for me that I though, 'Maybe that's it?' So I bought a house in Los Angeles, because it was this weird middle ground - it wasn't Australia, It wasn't England, and it was fun, like a grown up's playground. 

"So I bought this house and I must have stayed there twice and then I signed with Parlophone. Then, well ... Boom Parlophone and 'Spinning Around', let's just say I sold the house!" 

The 2000 single may have given Kylie's career a huge boost, but it was her next track, 'Can't Get You Out of My Head' in 2001 which put her back on the top of the pop world.
She added in an interview with UK station BBC Radio 2: "'Spinning Around' was a golden moment. It was the Millennium, it was back in the most shiny, exuberant way. Then with Can't Get You Out of My Head on the next album, the sound, the video, this time it wasn't golden, it was ice cool, sharp and futuristic, and it took it to a new place, and with the reach of that song to another level."

Jayson Elliot

This is kinda how I see Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.

http://gothamist.com/2012/10/18/video_man_screaming_racial_slurs_on.php

Video: Man Screaming Racial Slurs On Subway Gets Punched Out Cold

gothamist.com

There's not much to say about this video, except that there's something gratifying about its climax, in which an unhinged man ranting about Obama, Guantanamo, and

Like ·  ·  · Share · 4 hours ago near New York, NY

• Seen by 28
• 

  Dan Hagevik a homeless ranting EDP getting assaulted is no laughing matter. Hope that guy that punched him gets arrested. Funny thing I see a bunch of black Israelites doing basically the same thing every day around NYC for 30 years and no one says anything.

  4 hours ago · Unlike · 1
• 

  Jayson Elliot Hard to laugh at a homeless man getting knocked out, I agree. It's a shame Reagan didn't leave the support structure in place that would have helped him.

  4 hours ago · Like · 1
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  Old Fox "Reagan?"
  
  "Geraldo Rivera... in 1972, ... garnered national attention and won a Peabody Award for his report on the neglect and abuse of mentally retarded patients at Staten Island's Willowbrook State School.... After John Lennon watched Rivera's report on the patients at Willowbrook, he and Rivera formed a benefit concert called "One to One" (released in 1986 as Live in New York City.)"
  
  That's what caused deinstitutionalization, switched the cost from state hospitals to the federal government, and pushed these unfortunate, dysfunctional souls under your bridges, where they don't have to follow your control-freak rules, take your mind-bending medication, wash their hair or wash anything, can spend all day at the nice, air-conditioned public library (as long as you leave the children alone now). Real "safety net" for these folks.
  
  The only kindness they get nowadays is the miniature bottles of liquor and automobile rides that they get from the Democrat Party when election day comes around. Personal opinion: I think everyone was a lot better off when the state hospitals thrived full of dipsomaniacs and nymphomaniacs. But that's just me.

  2 minutes ago · Edited · Like

Okay, you're the doctor, doctor.

The Fourth Estate

Don Hewitt openly bragged about how he coached and cooked '60 Minutes' to "save" Clinton's campaign, and Roone Arledge determined that advertising revenue was worth more than political education and dropped the majority of all convention coverage (but he continued to indulge David Brinkley with the rollcall of the states).

I wonder who on the left came up with the Blue State--Red State idea that goes entirely against intuition and reality.   In England the left party color is red.  The right party color is blue.  They wear big ribbons and bows on their breasts.

Red is the color of Stop!, bull-headed passion, blood and violence, fire engines, the Red Army, dis-ease and alarm, Red Guards, Red Brigade, Red Skull, Red China, red tape, deficit and losses, wounds, inflammation, lesions, pox, seeing red, red ants, failing marks.

 While blue represents law & order, blue bloods, aristocracy, winning horses, number one livestock, and top-rated pies, police cars, sensible blue plate specials, clear skys, life-giving water, the thin blue line of protection from evil, the best baking flour, sensitivity, sadness, calm, peacefulness, soothing, security and safety, etc.

This convention is obviously the creation of a Madison Avenue color consultant that wants to influence your thinking and your emotions to his point of view.  Look at the colors that NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN use to dress their sets and backgrounds for the "news."   They ain't usin' red, pilgrim.

I can't understand how Roger Ailes at Fox could accept it. These are not neutral colors. Who did this?