Keyword: cfr
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How Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke are destroying the dollar — and perhaps ushering in the amero First under the Bush Administration and even more so under President Obama, the federal government has been seizing power and spending money as it hasn’t done since World War II. But as bold as the Executive Branch has been during this financial crisis, the innovations of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke have been literally unprecedented. Indeed, it is entirely plausible that before Obama leaves office, Americans will be using a new currency. Bush and Obama have engaged in record peacetime deficit spending; so too...
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In recent months, at least three major newspapers have carried columns attempting to push Chief Justice John Roberts into voting to uphold a grossly unconstitutional federal law. But their cheap distortions and Chicken Little yammering will fail. The chief justice will do his job, and the country will be better off for it. On Sept. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court reheard arguments in the landmark campaign finance and free speech case, Citizens United v. FEC. At issue in this case is whether the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) could ban documentaries about candidates when Election Day is approaching. This...
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"But we shouldn’t be so entertained by this spectacle that we lose sight of why, at bottom, it is a disturbing one. It’s not just because, as many commentators have already observed, the president appears to be taking a page out of Nixon’s playbook. Fundamentally, it’s because the administration’s media war against Fox is but a minor display of the tremendous power the government has to stifle speech it views as illegitimate. Much of this power is the result of long-standing “campaign finance” laws. These laws impose all sorts of restrictions on political speech, and it’s no coincidence that the...
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Purported non Muslim Barack Hussein Obama made a presidential appointment of Muslim Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Arif Alikhan for a top job at the federal Department of Homeland Security. In his new job, Arif Alikhan will be Assistant Secretary for the Office of Policy Development at the Department of Homeland Security. Alikhan has been Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles--in charge of public safety for the city. Why Muslim Alikhan at the Department of Homeland Security you might ask? DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said Alikhan’s “broad and impressive array of experience in national security, emergency preparedness, and counterterrorism will make him...
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For years, many of us in the blogosphere have argued that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, better known as McCain-Feingold, violates the fundamental Constitutional exercise of free speech, especially in politics, which the founders expressly intended to protect. The Supreme Court failed in its duty to protect the First Amendment when it had the chance, as did George W. Bush when he signed the legislation into law. Finally, a federal appellate court has recognized the insult to the Constitution that the BCRA represents: A federal appeals court overturned hard-fought campaign finance reform regulations in a ruling on Friday that will...
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WASHINGTON – Independent advocacy groups will be able to spend more money to try to influence federal elections under a decision Friday from a federal appeals court that overturned rules limiting nonprofits' campaign spending. Three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington agreed with Emily's List, a nonprofit that backs women Democratic candidates who support abortion rights, that the regulations limited free speech rights. The Federal Election Commission enacted the rules in 2005, after concerns were raised about the amount of unlimited "soft money" contributions used to fund attacks in the 2004 election. The FEC said nonprofits would...
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The Trial of John Roberts By JEFFREY ROSEN September 12, 2009 FOUR years ago, when John Roberts became chief justice of the United States, he said that he hoped to emulate the modesty and unanimity of his greatest predecessor, John Marshall. But if Chief Justice Roberts presides over a broad, ideologically divided ruling in a campaign finance case the court heard last week, he risks being remembered instead as a conservative Earl Warren. For decades conservatives have attacked Warren, who was chief justice from 1953 to 1969, as the face of liberal judicial activism. They have criticized him for presiding...
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The First Amendment, as rewritten under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, except if it is funded by a corporation, unless it is a media corporation, or if the speech occurs just prior to an election, unless it is in the form of a book, which, even though the law covers books, too, the Federal Election Commission would never apply that law to books because we say so, though we said something entirely different a couple of months ago." In an apoplexy of righteous indignation over...
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Near the start of this year Ron Paul (R-Texas) introduced H.R. 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Financial Services. As of this writing, H.R. 1207 has 282 cosponsors. A Senate equivalent, S.604, the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009, has been introduced by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). It has 23 cosponsors. Both bills have received a tremendous groundswell of grass-roots support. Much of the support is coming from ordinary people who have become aware of the fact that the Federal Reserve has created trillions of dollars literally out of nothing...
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The SCOTUS today appeared poised to strike down at least a portion of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of '02, after a majority of justices fiercely questioned Solicitor Gen. Elena Kagan and an atty for the legislation's sponsors, including Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Russ Feingold (D-WI). The case -- Citizens United v. FEC -- was first heard by the court on 3/24, but, in an unusual move, the court held over the case and ordered a re-hearing before the start of its Oct. term. Citizens United, a nonprofit advocacy org, produced a 90-min. film titled "Hillary: The Movie" meant...
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Imagine power companies spending millions of dollars on ads in the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections accusing congressmen who supported climate change legislation of trying to increase electric rates and urging votes against them, or unions buying airtime to support primary challenges to conservative Democratic senators who opposed the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act. Or even healthcare companies saturating the airwaves with messages urging voters to deny President Obama a second term. All those ads would be illegal under current election law. But the Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that challenges decades of restrictions on...
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments from campaign finance reform advocates and opponents in a case many insiders say will be the most significant decision in more than 35 years. The case the court will hear, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, has the potential to overturn key elements of campaign finance law that prevent corporate spending on elections, a move that would open the door to millions of dollars that could not be spent previously. “This is the biggest case in campaign finance law, really, since Buckley v. Valeo in 1976,” said Rob Kelner, a partner at...
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court appears poised to wipe away limits on campaign spending by corporations and labor unions in time for next year's congressional elections in a case that began as a dispute over a movie about Hillary Rodham Clinton. The justices return to the bench Wednesday — nearly a month early — to consider whether to overrule two earlier decisions that restrict how and when corporations and unions can take part in federal campaigns. Laws that impose similar limits in 24 states also are threatened. The court first heard arguments in March in the case of whether...
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FRED BARBASH: "The continued failure to devise and implement a sound and sustainable immigration policy threatens to weaken America’s economy, to jeopardize its diplomacy, and to imperil its national security," concludes a new Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Independent Task Force co-chaired by former Florida governor Jeb Bush and former White House chief of staff Thomas "Mack" McLarty. "The stakes are too high to fail," says the report. "If the United States continues to mishandle its immigration policy, it will damage one of the vital underpinnings of American prosperity and security, and could condemn the country to a long, slow...
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The super-elite are the world’s international bankers and industrialist who can achieve anything they want simply because they have so much wealth that they can corrupt anything that gets in their way. If government poses a problem, they buy the government off; such is their way in most Third World countries. However, operating in First World countries requires more sophistication and manipulation, for they are set-up as democracies, often with the separation of government powers so that no single branch can control everything; this sort of checks and balances in government requires more finesse to corrupt and manipulate, for there...
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Federal Elections Commission has found that former Gov. Sarah Palin's political action committee gave excessive contributions to two well-known Republicans. The problem is highlighted in a letter sent to SarahPAC treasurer Tim Crawford. Crawford told The Anchorage Daily News that the problem has been fixed. He said SarahPAC has sorted out the $5,000 contributions to Sens. John McCain and Lisa Murkowski, and the campaigns have already refunded $200 each. Crawford blamed the problems on election software used to deal with required disclosures. . . . . . Crawford said SarahPAC has redesignated the $5,000 going...
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London - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of a crucial round of diplomatic talks in Europe Tuesday that progress in the Middle East peace process would 'confound cynics and surprise the world.' Speaking in London after a meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Netanyahu said he had outlined what he called the 'winning formula' for Middle East peace. 'We need a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes Israel,' Netanyahu told reporters after the one-hour meeting. 'Recognition is the pillar of peace.' Brown said the talks had been 'as realistic as ever but more optimistic' than in the...
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The Council on Foreign Relation's article on the Islamic terrorist organization, "Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades" [a U.S. recognized foreign terrorist organization], is not entirely accurate. Under the heading of "What is the Brigade's relationship to the Palestinian Authority Government?", the CFR has this: "Whether Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has a direct relationship with the leadership of Fatah is debated."-CFR Not hardly. In a March 2007 article, Aaron Klein of WND wrote the following: "Many Fatah security members from Force 17 are also openly members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. All Brigades leaders are members of Fatah. " If there was any...
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Brad Setser is ditching his Council on Foreign Relations blog for government access. He will now work for Larry Summers at the National Economic Council. Setser is part of the Summers/Roubini clique. Summers appars to have been a silent partner at Roubini's firm, before joinning this administration. Setser writes at his CFR blog that in addition to getting paid by CFR, Nouriel Roubini and RGE, at one point, also paid him to blog. Setser may be being groomed to takeover for Summers, if Summers replaces Ben Bernanke at the Fed.
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Following the 2009 G20 summit, plans were announced for implementing the creation of a new global currency to replace the US dollar’s role as the world reserve currency. Point 19 of the communiqué released by the G20 at the end of the Summit stated, “We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250 billion into the world economy and increase global liquidity.” SDRs, or Special Drawing Rights, are “a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund.” As the Telegraph reported, “the G20 leaders have activated the IMF’s power to create money and begin global...
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Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who drew criticism for not mentioning the word "terror" during her first appearance before Congress in February, used the term or its variants 23 times during a 30-minute speech before the Council of Foreign Relations on Wednesday.
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Rather than holding their ground, the Obama administration has decided to revise the restriction that did not allow lobbyists to meet with government officials to discuss potential uses for the Federal stimulus money they have been allocated. Under the..
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On July 15, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared before the Council on Foreign Relations, the much maligned organization often at the center of many global conspiracy theories. We won’t talk about the merits of the CFR itself, here, but what made me curious is the treatment that MSNBC gave the Clinton speech. It appears that MSNBC edited out Clinton’s opening statement thanking the CFR for having her. When reading what she said at the outset of the speech one might become suspicious that MSNBC was trying to provide cover for the Secretary of State whose comments opened her up...
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On July 15, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared before the Council on Foreign Relations, the much maligned organization often at the center of many global conspiracy theories. We wonÂ’t talk about the merits of the CFR itself, here, but what made me curious is the treatment that MSNBC gave the Clinton speech. It appears that MSNBC edited out ClintonÂ’s opening statement thanking the CFR for having her. When reading what she said at the outset of the speech one might become suspicious that MSNBC was trying to provide cover for the Secretary of State whose comments opened her up...
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MSNBC edits Hillary Clinton speech. Removes one small paragraph. A shocking statement about the enormous influence of Council of Foreign Relations. Here is the paragraph they edited out: “Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told...
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The uber-establishment Council on Foreign Relations said Wednesday it favors granting legal status to many of the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., creating a guest worker program for low-skilled foreign workers to come and work in the U.S and opposes local police getting to conduct immigration raids. The CFR issued an immigration policy report Wednesday that looks to lift caps on foreign university students in the U.S. and allow skilled foreign graduates to get more work visas. The international policy group also wants to create legal paths to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already...
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ROME – World leaders attending the Group of Eight summit opening Wednesday in Italy will each be presented with a gift from the past and one for the future. Handmade books portraying works by Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, as well as gold coins representing an imaginary future world currency will be given to the participants at the opening of the three-day summit...
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A bipartisan task force will recommend today that the United States overhaul its immigration system in response to national security concerns, saying that the country should end strict quotas on work-based immigrant visas to maintain its scientific, technological and military edge. "The continued failure to devise and implement a sound and sustainable immigration policy threatens to weaken America's economy, to jeopardize its diplomacy, and to imperil its national security," concluded an independent Council on Foreign Relations panel, co-chaired by former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R) and former Clinton White House chief of staff Thomas V. "Mack" McLarty III. The report...
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WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ordered new hearings in a case challenging McCain-Feingold, the law that aims to restrict political spending at election time, signaling the possibility it is considering a more sweeping approach to the question. The court had been expected to rule Monday on a narrow question on whether McCain-Feingold applied to electioneering materials delivered through video-on-demand services. The case before the court involves a critical documentary about Hillary Clinton released during the presidential primary. The question before the court was whether it should be considered a campaign ad and regulated as such. Instead, the court asked the...
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers rarely shine a positive spotlight on lobbyists, much less publicly toast them and rave about their style on Capitol Hill. But they did just that on Tuesday night for consumer advocate Joan Claybrook, who retired earlier this year as the head of the watchdog group Public Citizen. The organization held a dinner event in honor of her 27-year leadership. Claybrook has become known as one of Washington's most relentless consumer-interest lobbyists. Her work has influenced rules on auto safety standards, congressional ethics, campaign finance and more. Among the lawmakers who praised Claybrook's efforts were House Speaker...
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Americans have been hearing for several years about potential war with Iran. For instance, on September 17, 2006, Time magazine reported, “The U.S. would have to consider military action long before Iran had an actual bomb.” On October 10, under the heading “A Chilling Preview of War,” Time warned: “As Iran continues to enrich uranium, the U.S. military has issued a ‘Prepare to Deploy’ order.” In September 2007, US News & World Report stated: “Amid deepening frustration with Iran, calls for shifting Bush administration policy toward military strikes or other stronger actions are intensifying.” And in June 2008, President-to-be Barack...
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Newspapers are fixated upon $160 million in bonuses given to American International Group (AIG) executives. And it’s nice to know where the millions are going (note: the bonuses could have been cancelled had the federal government let the company go bankrupt, as officials should have). But where are the trillions in TARP, TALC and Federal Reserve Bank bailout funds going? The man in charge of administering the bailouts is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who served as a staff member of the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations before being hired in 2003 to head the New York City branch...
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John McCain has made a number of heroic contributions to American politics and life, but this law isn't one of them. How in the world did he ever wind up sponsoring this monstrosity? The only excuse I can come up with is that he got involved with bad company. Namely, the very epitome of liberal -- excuse me, progressive -- excess, Russ Feingold. Sen. Feingold's proposals regularly disappoint, but by now they no longer surprise. Justice Kennedy now has figured it out: The whole statute fails the constitutional test. It is an infringement on free speech -- an injury and...
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A must watch. This has to be the best explanation and elucidation of the powers that make the world tick. This is not a conspiracy. This IS the state of the world...
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A top adviser to President Barack Obama, whose rejection of public funding for his presidential campaign is widely considered to have killed the Watergate-era reform, is accusing Republican rival John McCain of damaging efforts to revive the system. At issue is an interview the Arizona senator gave Friday to The Washington Times, in which he said that the public financing system, intended to reduce the influence of big money in presidential politics, is “dead.” That comment – according to a blog post by Obama’s personal and political attorney Bob Bauer – “was not helpful” to “the cause of public financing...
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Thanks to campaign finance reform, activists can go to jail if their movie makes a politician look bad."I'm a little disoriented here," Justice Antonin Scalia said during last week's oral arguments in a case involving legal restrictions on movies that criticize politicians. "We are dealing with a constitutional provision, are we not, the one that I remember, which says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press?"Scalia's discombobulation was understandable, given that Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart had just claimed the First Amendment does not bar the government from telling interest groups what videos they may post...
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All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.. – Shakespeare, As You Like It Remember all those “conspiracy theorists” who would continually remind (or attempt to remind) America that most of our government is comprised of and powered by the CFR (Council of Foreign Relations)? Remember how people laughed at these harbingers of doom as if they were crazy? Well, crazy no more. Here is a bit from its program, The International Institutions of Global Governance Program: The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has launched a comprehensive five-year program on international institutions and global governance....
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The Republican National Committee will report raising $5.1 million during the month of February when reports are filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission. The number is slightly down from the amount the party raised in January, when the RNC raised $5.77 million from individuals and other political committees, setting aside the $7 million Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) presidential campaigns transferred back to RNC accounts.
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Senator Barack Obama received a $101,332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the A.I.G. are - Senators Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama.
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The highest levels of the Obama administration are infested with members of a shadowy, elitist cabal intent on installing a one-world government that subverts the will of the American people. It sounds crazy, but that’s what a group of very persistent conspiracy theorists insists, and they point to President Obama’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as the latest piece of evidence supporting their claims. It turns out that Sebelius – like top administration economists Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers and Paul Volcker, as well as leading Obama diplomats Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross – is...
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"One of the most far-reaching consequences of the General Education Board's political philosophy was achieved with a mere six million dollar grant to Columbia University in 1917, to set up the "progressive" Lincoln School . >From this school descended the national network of progressive educators and social scientists, whose pernicious influence closely paralleled the goals of the Communist Party, another favorite recipient of the Rockefeller millions . From its outset, the Lincoln School was described frankly as a revolutionary school for the primary and secondary schools of the entire United States . It immediately discarded all theories of education which...
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Eat your heart out Jack Abramoff. President Obama looks forward to a guaranteed supply of Democrat campaign money which will make the imprisoned Republican fundraiser look like the small time operator he was. And better yet, Obama's multi-billion dollar nationwide scheme to circumvent campaign spending laws comes neatly disguised as a Hawaii-only deal for "reconciliation" and "justice". "Campaign finance" isn't even in the bill's description. It is called the Akaka Bill. Reintroduced February 4 for the 2009 Congressional session as S381 and HR862, the Akaka Bill creates a process to establish a Native Hawaiian Tribal Government. If it reaches his...
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Reporting from Washington -- Rep. Grace F. Napolitano (D-Norwalk) has collected tens of thousands of dollars in personal income by charging double-digit interest on money she lent her campaign 11 years ago and soliciting donations from Washington lobbyists at "debt retirement" fundraisers.
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VIDEO A little over a week after the November 4th elections, the Republican National Committee filed federal lawsuits to repeal McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance regulations. A day before the RNC elected it's new chairman, Michael Steele, the Democratic National Committee attempted to block the RNC's lawsuits to repeal McCain-Feingold. A recent press release from the DNC said the following: WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today the Democratic National Committee announced that it filed a motion to intervene in the case of the Republican National Committee v. FEC, in which the RNC is seeking to dismantle the soft money provisions of...
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Democratic National Committee files motion to intervene in RNC v. FEC WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today the Democratic National Committee announced that it filed a motion to intervene in the case of the Republican National Committee v. FEC, in which the RNC is seeking to dismantle the soft money provisions of the bi-partisan McCain Feingold campaign reform act (BCRA) of 2002. After a bruising defeat in November 2008, the RNC filed suit in the District of Columbia, challenging the constitutionality of the central tenet of BCRA - the ban on national party soft money. In its suit, the RNC...
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“World, hold on. Instead of messing with our future, open up inside.” --Bob Sinclair Thomas Jefferson once said “when you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.” As the global financial system pushes on a string, investors are desperately trying to hold tight. The New World Order is upon us, full of hope, promise and a fair amount of fear. In our recent discussion regarding the direction of our country, we noted the risks of catering to conventional wisdom and the implications for the U.S. dollar. The Minyanville mantra is to provide financial...
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Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama's chief of staff, has declared that "you don't ever want a crisis to go to waste." As reported here yesterday, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has been busy lately promoting the idea that Obama should move quickly once in the White House to turn various economic and political crises into opportunities to create a "new world order." (The words are Kissinger's.) Kissinger, never one to let a crisis got to waste, has been busy on an important new-world-order project in Russia with Vladimir Putin. Although it has gone virtually unreported in the U.S. media,...
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Both Iran and its Hamas proxy in Gaza have been busy this Christmas week showing Christendom just what they think of it. But no one seems to have noticed. On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari'a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion. Hamas's endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad. Here, too, Hamas wanted to make sure that Christians didn't feel neglected as its fighters launched missiles at Jewish day care centers and schools. So on Wednesday, Hamas lobbed...
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When European powers ask the United States to "join forces" with them, their intent is for America to act in a supportive role, not one in which it takes the lead. To believe otherwise is to suggest that Europe places America's interests above its own. And though they may suggest such commitment from us, they are not so reckless as to entertain pursuing a similar course themselves. Yet the fact that Obama was being asked, in essence, to do little more than to heed the EU's beckoning was lost in the nuance of Reuters' reporting. To the average reader, the...
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