Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Re: Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list'

American traitors like al-Awlaki should be killed asap by any means
necessary

On Oct 11, 4:52 am, excalliber stevens
<excalibur.stevens.bis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list'
> By Mark Hosenball
> WASHINGTON | Wed Oct 5, 2011 7:59pm EDT
> (Reuters) - American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a
> kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government
> officials, which then informs the president of its decisions,
> according to officials.
> There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel,
> which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council,
> several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law
> establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is
> supposed to operate.
> The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant
> preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was
> killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.
> The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to
> target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined
> to discuss anything about the process.
> Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge,
> Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the
> Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only
> American put on a government list targeting people for capture or
> death due to their alleged involvement with militants.
> The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration
> of President Barack Obama's toughness toward militants who threaten
> the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki's killing has
> drawn fierce criticism from both the political left and right.
> In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor
> George W. Bush's expansive use of executive power in his "war on
> terrorism," is being attacked in some quarters for using similar
> tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed
> intelligence assessments.
> Liberals criticized the drone attack on an American citizen as extra-
> judicial murder.
> Conservatives criticized Obama for refusing to release a Justice
> Department legal opinion that reportedly justified killing Awlaki.
> They accuse Obama of hypocrisy, noting his administration insisted on
> publishing Bush-era administration legal memos justifying the use of
> interrogation techniques many equate with torture, but refused to make
> public its rationale for killing a citizen without due process.
> Some details about how the administration went about targeting Awlaki
> emerged on Tuesday when the top Democrat on the House Intelligence
> Committee, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters
> about the killing.
> The process involves "going through the National Security Council,
> then it eventually goes to the president, but the National Security
> Council does the investigation, they have lawyers, they review, they
> look at the situation, you have input from the military, and also, we
> make sure that we follow international law," Ruppersberger said.
> LAWYERS CONSULTED
> Other officials said the role of the president in the process was
> murkier than what Ruppersberger described.
> They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-
> level National Security Council and agency officials. Their
> recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC "principals,"
> meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for
> approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships
> when considering different operational issues, they said.
> The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
> They confirmed that lawyers, including those in the Justice
> Department, were consulted before Awlaki's name was added to the
> target list.
> Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first,
> that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use
> of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of
> September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if
> a country is defending itself.
> Several officials said that when Awlaki became the first American put
> on the target list, Obama was not required personally to approve the
> targeting of a person. But one official said Obama would be notified
> of the principals' decision. If he objected, the decision would be
> nullified, the official said.
> A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials
> principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list
> was to "protect" the president.
> Officials confirmed that a second American, Samir Khan, was killed in
> the drone attack that killed Awlaki. Khan had served as editor of
> Inspire, a glossy English-language magazine used by AQAP as a
> propaganda and recruitment vehicle.
> But rather than being specifically targeted by drone operators, Khan
> was in the wrong place at the wrong time, officials said.
> Ruppersberger appeared to confirm that, saying Khan's death was
> "collateral," meaning he was not an intentional target of the drone
> strike.
> When the name of a foreign, rather than American, militant is added to
> targeting lists, the decision is made within the intelligence
> community and normally does not require approval by high-level NSC
> officials.
> 'FROM INSPIRATIONAL TO OPERATIONAL'
> Officials said Awlaki, whose fierce sermons were widely circulated on
> English-language militant websites, was targeted because Washington
> accumulated information his role in AQAP had gone "from inspirational
> to operational." That meant that instead of just propagandizing in
> favor of al Qaeda objectives, Awlaki allegedly began to participate
> directly in plots against American targets.
> "Let me underscore, Awlaki is no mere messenger but someone integrally
> involved in lethal terrorist activities," Daniel Benjamin, top
> counterterrorism official at the State Department, warned last spring.
> The Obama administration has not made public an accounting of the
> classified evidence that Awlaki was operationally involved in planning
> terrorist attacks.
> But officials acknowledged that some of the intelligence purporting to
> show Awlaki's hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.
> For instance, one plot in which authorities have said Awlaki was
> involved Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to
> blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a
> bomb hidden in his underpants.
> There is no doubt Abdulmutallab was an admirer or follower of Awlaki,
> since he admitted that to U.S. investigators. When he appeared in a
> Detroit courtroom earlier this week for the start of his trial on bomb-
> plot charges, he proclaimed, "Anwar is alive."
> But at the time the White House was considering putting Awlaki on the
> U.S. target list, intelligence connecting Awlaki specifically to
> Abdulmutallab and his alleged bomb plot was partial. Officials said at
> the time the United States had voice intercepts involving a phone
> known to have been used by Awlaki and someone who they believed, but
> were not positive, was Abdulmutallab.
> Awlaki was also implicated in a case in which a British Airways
> employee was imprisoned for plotting to blow up a U.S.-bound plane. E-
> mails retrieved by authorities from the employee's computer showed
> what an investigator described as " operational contact" between
> Britain and Yemen.
> Authorities believe the contacts were mainly between the U.K.-based
> suspect and his brother. But there was a strong suspicion Awlaki was
> at the brother's side when the messages were dispatched. British media
> reported that in one message, the person on the Yemeni end supposedly
> said, "Our highest priority is the US ... With the people you have, is
> it possible to get a package or a person with a package on board a
> flight heading to the US?"
> U.S. officials contrast intelligence suggesting Awlaki's involvement
> in specific plots with the activities of Adam Gadahn, an American
> citizen who became a principal English-language propagandist for the
> core al Qaeda network formerly led by Osama bin Laden.
> While Gadahn appeared in angry videos calling for attacks on the
> United States, officials said he had not been specifically targeted
> for capture or killing by U.S. forces because he was regarded as a
> loudmouth not directly involved in plotting attacks.
>
>  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE7947...
>
> www.realindianews.blogspot.com

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Fwd: [I-S] HotAir: White House lawyers who drafted secret Awlaki kill memo were critics of Bush’s war powers



--------->


 

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/10/10/revealed-white-house-lawyers-who-drafted-secret-awlaki-kill-memo-were-critics-of-bushs-war-powers/

White House lawyers who drafted secret Awlaki kill memo were critics of Bush's war powers

Share536

POSTED AT 9:43 PM ON OCTOBER 10, 2011 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
PRINTER-FRIENDLY

Not the first time that the left's anti-war legal heroes have morphed from civil libertarians when Bush was in office to war-power expansionists once they went to work for The One. Remember when Harold Koh convinced Obama that he didn't need to bother with congressional authorization after all if he wanted to wage war in Libya? Good times.

The latest converts to the church of It's Okay When We Do It: OLC lawyers David Barron and Martin Lederman, who, it turns out, co-authored the legal memo last summer arguing that the killing of Awlaki was legal, notwithstanding the fact that he was an American citizen.

The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki's case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of any Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat…

The legal analysis, in essence, concluded that Mr. Awlaki could be legally killed, if it was not feasible to capture him, because intelligence agencies said he was taking part in the war between the United States and Al Qaeda and posed a significant threat to Americans, as well as because Yemeni authorities were unable or unwilling to stop him…

It was principally drafted by David Barron and Martin Lederman, who were both lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel at the time, and was signed by Mr. Barron. The office may have given oral approval for an attack on Mr. Awlaki before completing its detailed memorandum. Several news reports before June 2010 quoted anonymous counterterrorism officials as saying that Mr. Awlaki had been placed on a kill-or-capture list around the time of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. Mr. Awlaki was accused of helping to recruit the attacker for that operation…

The memorandum is said to declare that in the case of a citizen, it is legally required to capture the militant if feasible — raising a question: was capturing Mr. Awlaki in fact feasible?

This wasn't the first piece of scholarship Barron and Lederman wrote together. Turns out they also co-authored a pair of articles in the Harvard Law Review three years ago arguing that constitutional war powers had tipped too much towards the executive and away from Congress over the years. That's not the same issue as was raised in the Awlaki case, but insofar as those articles were part of the left's broader argument for limiting the president's ability to wage war wherever and however he likes, the Awlaki memo is obviously a terrible betrayal. No wonder Glenn Greenwald is heartbroken. Apparently, so scrupulous was the by-the-book Obama OLC about targeting Americans that they gave the okay to hit Awlaki before they'd even done the research into whether it was legal.

If you missed Al Qaeda's statement today wondering where, oh where, America's vaunted due process was when it came to killing Anwar al-Awlaki, follow the link here. They too would have gotten a different reaction if Bush had greenlit the drone strike instead of Obama. Imagine how many times we'd have seen this bit of propaganda parroted by the we're-no-better-than-they-are anti-war illuminati:

"The Americans killed the scholar Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaqi and Samir Khan, but they did not prove any crime they committed and they never presented any proof against them from their laws of unjust freedom. So, where is the freedom, justice, human rights and respect of freedoms they boast of? Did America become so suffocated that it contradicted—and everyday it contradicts—these principles it claims it established its country on?"

"America has failed as it has not stuck to its principles, and the Shaykh—who lived his doctrine and died for its cause—won. And like that, everyday America kills humans unjustly and aggressively. Its history is black and long and has no limit, and it lies openly that it protects human rights, justice and freedom."

As it is, with O in charge, that logic has gone right down the media toilet. See, guys? Thereis one advantage to having him as president.

In lieu of an exit question, go read Tom Joscelyn's reminder of what a stickler Awlaki himself was for freedom, justice, and human rights.

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[New post] Nobel Prize for Economics Awarded to Two Anti-Keynesian Americans



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Doctor Bulldog & Ronin
Date: Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Subject: [New post] Nobel Prize for Economics Awarded to Two Anti-Keynesian Americans
To: majors.bruce@gmail.com


New post on Doctor Bulldog & Ronin

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Nobel Prize for Economics Awarded to Two Anti-Keynesian Americans

by doctorbulldog

What?  You mean Obama didn't win for his work on the Stinkulus Package???

<http://doctorbulldog.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/christopher-sims-and-thom-007.jpg?w=450&h=270>

 

A Pair Of (Nobel) Aces

IBD

Failed Policy: The Nobel Prize for Economics goes to two Americans who have separately exposed the flaws in government stimulus spending. For a Keynesian president, it's the Anti-Peace Prize.

When President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize during his first year in office, detractors said it was for doing nothing.

That can't be said for Thomas Sargent of New York University and Princeton's Christopher Sims, whose macroeconomics work has been of invaluable help to central bankers and other economic policymakers, and for which they now share this year's economics Nobel.

Sargent's discoveries in particular echo the rationale Republican leaders in Congress have presented in opposing the massive Democratic stimulus spending during the first two years of the Obama administration — that such spending seeks to give the economy nothing more than what House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan over the weekend aptly called a "sugar high."

As the New York Sun pointed out Monday, Sargent has also criticized Obama's stimulus policies specifically. It pointed to an interview a year ago in which he called the calculations of the Obama Council of Economic Advisers "surprisingly naive for 2009."

According to Sargent, "They were not informed by what we learned after 1945" regarding fiscal policy. He suspected the council "was asked to do something quickly, and they did what they thought was 'good enough for government work,' as some of us said during my days at the Pentagon."

On high unemployment and a possible double dip, Sargent told Business Week that Washington risks breaking its benefits contracts. He said "it's not clear which of the incredible promises are going to be broken first."

While Sims might not be quite as outspoken a critic of Obamanomics as Sargent, at a 2004 Federal Reserve Bank of Boston conference, he selectively criticized Alan Blinder, economic adviser to Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry. On using stimulus spending to counteract economic downturns Sims said Blinder overlooks the debt-driven "inter-generationally unfair crowding out" that a massive stimulus can cause.

All in all, the judges honored economists who've shown what the public knows well: Obamanomics is a failure.

doctorbulldog | 11 October, 2011 at 9:44 am | Categories: Economics, Economy, Money, Nobel Prize, Obama Sucks, politics | URL: http://wp.me/p1NPg-7nN

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The Transformation of the American Party System


"The Transformation of 1896 and the death of the third party system meant the end of America's great laissez-faire, hard-money libertarian party. The Democratic Party was no longer the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland. With no further political embodiment for laissez-faire in existence, and with both parties offering "an echo not a choice," public interest in politics steadily declined. A power vacuum was left in American politics for the new corporate statist ideology of progressivism, which swept both parties (and created a short-lived Progressive Party) in America after 1900.
"The Progressive Era of 1900–1918 fastened a welfare-warfare state on America that has set the mold for the rest of the 20th century. Statism arrived after 1900 not because of inflation or deflation, but because a unique set of conditions had destroyed the Democrats as a laissez-faire party and left a power vacuum for the triumph of the new ideology of compulsory cartelization through a partnership of big government, business, unions, technocrats, and intellectuals."

The Transformation of the American Party System
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
by Murray N. Rothbard

[ A History of Monkey and Banking in the United States (2002)]

Orthodox economic historians attribute the triumph of William Jennings Bryan in the Democratic convention of 1896, and his later renominations for president, to a righteous rising up of the "people" demanding inflation over the "interests" holding out for gold. Friedman and Schwartz attribute the rise of Bryanism to the price contraction of the last three decades of the 19th century, and the triumph of gold and disappearance of the "money" issue to the price rise after 1896.

This conventional analysis overlooks several problems. First, if Bryan represented the "people" versus the "interests," why did Bryan lose and lose soundly, not once but three times? Why did gold triumph long before any price inflation became obvious, in fact at the depths of price contraction in 1896?

But the main neglect of the conventional analysis is the disregard of the highly illuminating insights provided in the past 15 years by the "new political history" of 19th-century American politics and its political culture. The new political history began by going beyond national political issues (largely economic) and investigating state and local political contests. It also dug into the actual voting records of individual parishes, wards, and counties, and discovered how people voted and why they voted the way they did. The work of the new political history is truly interdisciplinary, for its methods range from sophisticated techniques for voting analysis to illuminating insights into American ethnic religious history.

In the following pages, we shall present a summary of the findings of the new political history on the American party structure of the late 19th century and after, and on the transformation of 1896 in particular.

First, the history of American political parties is one of successive "party systems." Each party system lasts several decades, with each particular party having a certain central character; in many cases, the name of the party can remain the same but its essential character can drastically change -- in the so-called "critical elections." In the 19th century the nation's second party system (Whigs v. Democrats), lasting from about 1832 to 1854, was succeeded by the third system (Republicans v. Democrats), lasting from 1854 to 1896.

Characteristic of both party systems was that each party was committed to a distinctive ideology clashing with the other, and these conflicting worldviews made for fierce and close contests. Elections were particularly hard fought. Interest was high since the parties offered a "choice, not an echo," and so the turnout rate was remarkably high, often reaching 80 to 90 percent of eligible voters. More remarkably, candidates did not, as we are used to in the 20th century, fuzz their ideology during campaigns in order to appeal to a floating, ideologically indifferent, "independent voter."

There were very few independent voters. The way to win elections, therefore, was to bring out your vote, and the way to do that was to intensify and strengthen your ideology during campaigns. Any fuzzing over would lead the Republican or Democratic constituents to stay home in disgust, and the election would be lost. Very rarely would there be a crossover to the other, hated party.

One problem that strikes anyone interested in 19th-century political history is, How come the average person exhibited such great and intense interest in such arcane economic topics as banking, gold and silver, and tariffs? Thousands of half-literate people wrote embattled tracts on these topics, and voters were intensely interested. Attributing the answer to inflation or depression -- to seemingly economic interests, as do Marxists and other economic determinists -- simply won't do. The far-greater depressions and inflations of the 20th century have not educed nearly as much mass interest in economics as did the milder economic crises of the past century.

Only the findings of the new political historians have cleared up this puzzle. It turns out that the mass of the public was not necessarily interested in what the elites, or national politicians, were talking about. The most intense and direct interest of the voters was applied to local and state issues, and on these local levels the two parties waged an intense and furious political struggle that lasted from the 1830s to the 1890s.

The beginning of the century-long struggle began with the profound transformation of American Protestantism in the 1830s. This transformation swept like wildfire across the Northern states, particularly Yankee territory, during the 1830s, leaving the South virtually untouched. The transformation found particular root among Yankee culture, with its aggressive and domineering spirit.

This new Protestantism -- called "pietism" -- was born in the fires of Charles Finney and the great revival movement of the 1830s. Its credo was roughly as follows: Each individual is responsible for his own salvation, and it must come in an emotional moment of being "born again." Each person can achieve salvation; each person must do his best to save everyone else. This compulsion to save others was more than simple missionary work; it meant that one would go to hell unless he did his best to save others. But since each person is alone and facing the temptation to sin, this role can only be done by the use of the State. The role of the State was to stamp out sin and create a new Jerusalem on Earth.

The pietists defined sin very broadly. In particular, the most important politically was "demon rum," which clouded men's minds and therefore robbed them of their theological free will. In the 1830s, the evangelical pietists launched a determined and indefatigable prohibitionist crusade on the state and local level that lasted a century. Second was any activity on Sunday except going to church, which led to a drive for sabbatarian blue laws. Drinking on Sunday was of course a double sin, and hence was particularly heinous.

Another vital thrust of the new Yankee pietism was to try to extirpate Roman Catholicism, which robs communicants of their theological free will by subjecting them to the dictates of priests who are agents of the Vatican. If Roman Catholics could not be prohibited per se, their immigration could be slowed down or stopped. And since their adults were irrevocably steeped in sin, it became vital for crusading pietists to try to establish public schools as compulsory forces for Protestantizing society or, as the pietists liked to put it, to "Christianize the Catholics." If the adults are hopeless, the children must be saved by the public school and compulsory-attendance laws.

Such was the political program of Yankee pietism. Not all immigrants were scorned. British, Norwegian, or other immigrants who belonged to pietist churches (whether nominally Calvinist or Lutheran or not) were welcomed as "true Americans." The Northern pietists found their home, almost to a man, first in the Whig Party, and then in the Republican Party. And they did so, too, among the Greenback and Populist parties, as we shall see further below.

There came to this country during the century an increasing number of Catholic and Lutheran immigrants, especially from Ireland and Germany. The Catholics and High Lutherans, who have been called "ritualists" or "liturgicals," had a very different kind of religious culture. Each person is not responsible for his own salvation directly; if he is to be saved, he joins the church and obeys its liturgy and sacraments. In a profound sense, then, the church is responsible for one's salvation, and there was no need for the State to stamp out temptation. These churches, then, especially the Lutheran, had a laissez-faire attitude toward the State and morality. Furthermore, their definitions of "sin" were not nearly as broad as the pietists'. Liquor is fine in moderation; and drinking beer with the family in beer parlors on Sunday after church was a cherished German (Catholic and Lutheran) tradition; and parochial schools were vital in transmitting religious values to their children in a country where they were in a minority.

Virtually to a man, Catholics and High Lutherans found their home during the 19th century in the Democratic Party. It is no wonder that the Republicans gloried in calling themselves throughout this period "the party of great moral ideas," while the Democrats declared themselves to be "the party of personal liberty." For nearly a century, the bemused liturgical Democrats fought a defensive struggle against people whom they considered "pietist-fanatics" constantly swooping down trying to outlaw their liquor, their Sunday beer parlors, and their parochial schools.

How did all this relate to the economic issues of the day? Simply that the leaders of each party went to their voting constituents and "raised their consciousness" to get them vitally interested in national economic questions. Thus, the Republican leaders would go to their rank and file and say, "Just as we need Big Paternalistic Government on the local and state level to stamp out sin and compel morality, so we need Big Government on the national level to increase everyone's purchasing power through inflation, keeping out cheap foreign goods (tariffs), or keeping out cheap foreign labor (immigration restrictions)."

And for their part, the Democratic leaders would go to their constituents and say, "Just as the Republican fanatics are trying to take away your liquor, your beer parlors, and your parochial schools, so the same people are trying to keep out cheap foreign goods (tariffs), and trying to destroy the value of your savings through inflation. Paternalistic government on the federal level is just as evil as it is at home."

So statism and libertarianism were expanded to other issues and other levels. Each side infused its economic issues with a moral fervor and passion stemming from deeply held religious values. The mystery of the passionate interest of Americans in economic issues in the epoch is solved.

Both in the second and third party systems, however, the Whigs and then the Republicans had a grave problem. Partly because of demographics -- greater immigration and higher birth rates -- the Democratic-liturgicals were slowly but surely becoming the majority party in the country. The Democrats were split asunder by the slavery question in the 1840s and '50s. But now, by 1890, the Republicans saw the handwriting on the wall. The Democratic victory in the congressional races in 1890, followed by the unprecedented landslide victory of Grover Cleveland carrying both houses of Congress in 1892, indicated to the Republicans that they were becoming doomed to be a permanent minority.

To remedy the problem, the Republicans, in the early 1890s, led by Ohio Republicans William McKinley and Mark Hanna, launched a shrewd campaign of reconstruction. In particular, in state after state, they ditched the prohibitionists, who were becoming an embarrassment and losing the Republicans large numbers of German Lutheran votes. Also, they modified their hostility to immigration. By the mid-1890s, the Republicans had moved rapidly toward the center, toward fuzzing over their political pietism.

In the meanwhile, an upheaval was beginning to occur in the Democratic Party. The South, by now a one-party Democratic region, was having its own pietism transformed by the 1890s. Quiet pietists were now becoming evangelical, and Southern Protestant organizations began to call for prohibition. Then the new, sparsely settled Mountain States, many of them with silver mines, were also largely pietist. Moreover, a power vacuum, which would ordinarily have been temporary, had been created in the national Democratic Party. Poor Grover Cleveland -- a hard-money, laissez-faire Democrat -- was blamed for the panic of 1893, and many leading Cleveland Democrats lost their gubernatorial and senatorial posts in the 1894 elections. The Cleveland Democrats were temporarily weak, and the Southern-Mountain coalition was ready to hand. Seeing this opportunity, William Jennings Bryan and his pietist coalition seized control of the Democratic Party at the momentous convention of 1896. The Democratic Party was never to be the same again.

The Catholics, Lutherans, and laissez-faire Cleveland Democrats were in mortal shock. The "party of our fathers" was lost. The Republicans, who had been moderating their stance anyway, saw the opportunity of a lifetime. At the Republican convention, Representative Henry Cabot Lodge, representing the Morgans and the pro-gold-standard Boston financial interests, told McKinley and Hanna, Pledge yourself to the gold standard -- the basic Cleveland economic issue -- and drop your silverite and greenback tendencies, and we will all back you. Refuse, and we will support Bryan or a third party. McKinley struck the deal, and from then on, the Republicans, in 19th-century terms, were a centrist party. Their principles were now high tariffs and the gold standard, and prohibition was quietly forgotten.

What would the poor liturgicals do? Many of them stayed home in droves, and indeed the election of 1896 marks the beginning of the great slide downward in voter turnout rates that continues to the present day. Some of them, in anguish at the pietist, inflationist, and prohibitionist Bryanites, actually conquered their anguish and voted Republican for the first time in their lives. The Republicans, after all, had dropped the hated prohibitionists and adopted gold.

The election of 1896 inaugurated the fourth party system in America. From a third party system of closely fought, seesawing races between a pietist-statist Republican Party and a liturgical-libertarian Democratic Party, the fourth party system consisted of a majority centrist Republican Party as against a minority pietist Democratic Party. After a few years, the Democrats lost their pietist nature, and they too became a centrist (though usually minority) party, with a moderately statist ideology scarcely distinguishable from the Republicans. So went the fourth party system until 1932.

A charming anecdote, told us by Richard Jensen, sums up much of the 1896 election. The heavily German city of Milwaukee had been mainly Democratic for years. The German Lutherans and Catholics in America were devoted, in particular, to the gold standard and were bitter enemies of inflation. The Democratic nomination for Congress in Milwaukee had been obtained by a Populist-Democrat, Richard Schilling. Sounding for all the world like modern monetarists or Keynesians, Schilling tried to explain to the assembled Germans of Milwaukee in a campaign speech that it didn't really matter what commodity was chosen as money, that "gold, silver, copper, paper, sauerkraut, or sausages" would do equally well as money. At that point, the German masses of Milwaukee laughed Schilling off the stage, and the shrewdly opportunistic Republicans adopted as their campaign slogan, "Schilling and Sauerkraut" and swept Milwaukee.

The Greenbackers and later the pro-silver, inflationist, Bryanite Populist Party were not "agrarian parties"; they were collections of pietists aiming to stamp out personal and political sin. Thus, as Kleppner points out,
The Greenback Party was less an amalgamation of economic pressure groups than an ad hoc coalition of "True Believers," "ideologues," who launched their party as a "quasi-religious" movement that bore the indelible hallmark of "a transfiguring faith."
The Greenbackers perceived their movement as the "religion of the Master in motion among men." And the Populists described their 1890 free-silver contest in Kansas not as a "political campaign," but as "a religious revival, a crusade, a pentecost of politics in which a tongue of flame sat upon every man, and each spake as the spirit gave him utterance."

The people had "heard the word and could preach the gospel of Populism." It was no accident, we see now, that the Greenbackers almost invariably endorsed prohibition, compulsory public schooling, and crushing of parochial schools. Or that Populists in many states "declared unequivocally for prohibition" or entered various forms of fusion with the Prohibition Party.

The Transformation of 1896 and the death of the third party system meant the end of America's great laissez-faire, hard-money libertarian party. The Democratic Party was no longer the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland. With no further political embodiment for laissez-faire in existence, and with both parties offering "an echo not a choice," public interest in politics steadily declined. A power vacuum was left in American politics for the new corporate statist ideology of progressivism, which swept both parties (and created a short-lived Progressive Party) in America after 1900.

The Progressive Era of 1900–1918 fastened a welfare-warfare state on America that has set the mold for the rest of the 20th century. Statism arrived after 1900 not because of inflation or deflation, but because a unique set of conditions had destroyed the Democrats as a laissez-faire party and left a power vacuum for the triumph of the new ideology of compulsory cartelization through a partnership of big government, business, unions, technocrats, and intellectuals.



Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was dean of the Austrian School. He was an economist, economic historian, and libertarian political philosopher. See Murray N. Rothbard's article archives.

This article is excerpted from A History of Monkey and Banking in the United States, part 1, "The History of Money and Banking Before the 20th Century" (2002).

http://mises.org/daily/5649/The-Transformation-of-the-American-Party-System

**JP** Daily Quran and Hadith

THE NAME OF "ALLAH"
Assalamu'alaikum Wa Rahmatullah e Wa Barakatuhu,

 

 



 




 


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****People oppose things because they are ignorant of them****

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The founding of the United States of America

The good old days; when there was no such thing as the Republican
Party.

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Bullying

Robert Reich (served under Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and
was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton) made a point
about bullying in a speech he gave recently...

As you all know, Robert Reich is a small man, only 4' 10" tall, and he
told about how he was bullied when he was young and in school.
"I didn't like being beat up. It served no purpose".

But one of the bigger kids befriended him and protected him from the
bully's. "He didn't let them bully me anymore".
Then while in college his friend went down south to march with Martin
Luther King Jr. for civil rights.

"The cops arrested him, tortured him, and then killed him. Those are
the bully's. They killed my friend. At that moment I decided to devote
the rest of my life to fighting the bully's where ever they may be".

---
We know who they are...
Republitards.

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Re: Fux News

Right coward.
You were supposed (then you were sending friends you know...lol) to
come up here and get me a long time ago... what happened?
You ain't done shit yet, and you never will, cause you have no will.
----
I don't even know who you are ... other than a socialist liberal
bitch.
If I was 'supposed' to get you I already have

And what you gonna do?
Nothin.
Come on up when you grow some balls. You'll be on my turf then coward.
---
bring some socialist liberal minorities with you so that I can
maximize my loads

As if I'm scared of some guy who sits behind a computer all day making
web pages...
you gotta be kidding me pussy boy.
What you gonna do? Finger me to death with those typing fingers of
yours?
lol, what a dumbass you are.
----
go whine to your dead and rotting mother, bitch

On Oct 10, 2:54 pm, studio <tl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Oct 10, 3:37 pm, plainolamerican <plainolameri...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > coward
> > ---
> > anytime ... anywhere ... bring our favorite weapons and your will
>
> Right coward.
> You were supposed (then you were sending friends you know...lol) to
> come up here and get me a long time ago... what happened?
> You ain't done shit yet, and you never will, cause you have no will.
>
> And what you gonna do?
> Nothin.
> Come on up when you grow some balls. You'll be on my turf then coward.
>
> As if I'm scared of some guy who sits behind a computer all day making
> web pages...
> you gotta be kidding me pussy boy.
> What you gonna do? Finger me to death with those typing fingers of
> yours?
> lol, what a dumbass you are.

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Re: Fux News

Right coward.
You were supposed (then you were sending friends you know...lol) to
come up here and get me a long time ago... what happened?
You ain't done shit yet, and you never will, cause you have no will.
----
I don't even know who you are ... other than a socialist liberal
bitch.
I was 'supposed' to get you I already have ... I just cause enough
tissue damage to kill you

And what you gonna do?
Nothin.
Come on up when you grow some balls. You'll be on my turf then coward.
---
bring some socialist liberal minorities with you so that I can
maximize my loads

As if I'm scared of some guy who sits behind a computer all day making
web pages...
you gotta be kidding me pussy boy.
What you gonna do? Finger me to death with those typing fingers of
yours?
lol, what a dumbass you are.
----
go whine to your dead jewish mother, bitch

On Oct 10, 2:54 pm, studio <tl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Oct 10, 3:37 pm, plainolamerican <plainolameri...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > coward
> > ---
> > anytime ... anywhere ... bring our favorite weapons and your will
>
> Right coward.
> You were supposed (then you were sending friends you know...lol) to
> come up here and get me a long time ago... what happened?
> You ain't done shit yet, and you never will, cause you have no will.
>
> And what you gonna do?
> Nothin.
> Come on up when you grow some balls. You'll be on my turf then coward.
>
> As if I'm scared of some guy who sits behind a computer all day making
> web pages...
> you gotta be kidding me pussy boy.
> What you gonna do? Finger me to death with those typing fingers of
> yours?
> lol, what a dumbass you are.

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Fwd: FireDogLake lies about OccupyDC




FireDogLake shoddy reportage on OccupyDC

The leftover blogosphere was designed to be an echo chamber for lies, as little Leni Reifenstahl wannabes try to get jobs with some Soros funded group by providing spin for the Obama regime and their fascist masters.

FireDogLake is actually usually better than the other cogs in the fascist machine, often pointing our Obama's hypocrisy in the drug war, with DADT, on Bradley Manning's imprisonment without trial etc, while Madcow and the whores at Media Matters or NPR or MSNBC provide cover on these issues.

The current daisy chain of spin involves an American Spectator reporter named Patrick Howley, who infiltrated Occupy DC to take photos and mock them. He was at the incident where Occupiers tried to Occupy the Air and Space Museum, and by his own report was in the first batch to rush past a security guard. He has apparently re-written his story to reduce his legal liability for trespass, disorderly conduct, etc. FDL and other propaganda organs, including lisping blogger Ezra Klein at the Washington Post, are claiming that Howley started and was soley responsible for the trespass. The problem is that FDL reproduces a photo from the leftover smear site OpEdNews, which it juxtaposes with Howley's FaceBook photo to prove that it was him. And the photo is of Howley taking a photo while a large, chunky Occupier gets physical with a security guard, not Howley. Looks like he was covering the altercation, not starting it.

My experience with leftover media is that every story they tell is always a lie, even when chunks of fact are stirred in. Good liars know that a good lie has many factual elements, with just a little spin to produce an erroneous conclusion.

Oh yes, and if you point that the photo they use does not fit the story in the comments section of the story at FireDogLake, the moderator will censor the comment. Cowardly and typical.

American Spectator Editor Admits to Being Agent Provocateur at D.C. Museum

By: Charlie Grapski Sunday October 9, 2011 1:13 am
  
TweetTweet3546 
digg stumbleupon

The following photograph taken by opednews.com shows a confrontation in the lobby of the National Air and Space Museum between two individuals and an officer shortly before video shows officers with the Museum's security forces rush outside indiscriminately pepper-spraying numerous individuals.

Photobucket

It appears that one of the two in the confrontation with the security officer is Patrick Howley, Assistant Editor of The American Spectator.  [See the following photograph in which Howley's Facebook Profile Photo is side-by-side with the person pictured at the Air and Space Museum]

Photobucket

Immediately after the incident began hitting the newswires Howley published a "Breaking News" story with The American Spectator online in which he reveals that he had consciously infiltrated the group on Friday with the intent to discredit the movement.  He states that "as far as anyone knew I was part of this cause — a cause that I had infiltrated the day before in order to mock and undermine in the pages ofThe American Spectator — and I wasn't giving up before I had my story."

According to Howley's story he joined the group in its march toward the Air and Space Museum but the protesters on the march were unwilling to be confrontational.  He states "they lack the nerve to confront authority. From estimates within the protest, only ten people were pepper-sprayed, and as far as I could tell I was the only one who got inside."

He claims that upon arrival at the Museum the group of approximately one hundred protesters split into two factions with the smaller of the two "rushing the doors," the majority "staying behind."  Howley then admits in his piece that he snuck past the guard at the first entrance in order to "infiltrate" the building and then confronted another guard.  He then "sprinted toward the door" at which time he was first hit with pepper-spray.

As he describes his next actions "I forced myself into the doors and sprinted blindly across the floor of the Air and Space Museum, drawing the attention of hundreds of stunned khaki-clad tourists (some of whom began snapping off disposable-camera portraits of me)."

Fully inside, despite the orders of the security guards that the Museum was closed to the public, Howley made his way upstairs – to the location where a banner was unfurled protesting the Museum's exhibit of unmanned drone weapons.

"I strained to glance behind me at the dozens of protesters I was sure were backing me up, and then I got hit again, this time with a cold realization: I was the only one who had made it through the doors. As two guards pointed at me and started running, I dodged a circle of gawking old housewives and bolted upstairs."

He then found himself "stumbling around aircraft displays with just enough vision to keep tabs on my uniformed pursuers. "The museum is now closed!" screamed one of the guards as alarms sounded. "Everyone make your way to the exits immediately!" Using my jacket to cover my face — which I could feel swelling to Elephant Man proportions — I ducked through the confused tourists and raced out the exit. "Hey, you!" shouted a female guard reaching for my arm. "Get back here!" But I was already down the steps and out of sight."

Howley  refers to the Museum as "the scene of my crime."  In light of his detailed description of his activities today the fact that they clearly document the commission of the crime of trespassing on federal property, if not the intent to incite a riot there, these admissions should not be taken lightly or ignored.  As a result of Howley's activities  a large number of people were subjected to pepper-spray attacks including journalists and tourists who had nothing to do with the protest.  Given the negative light that the press is attempting to spin this incident with regard to the ongoing occupations, from Wall Street and D.C. and now spreading to Main Streets across the country, the presence and admitted activities of this self-proclaimed agent provacateur should be brought to the attention of federal law enforcement officials.

It is highly likely that the events that occurred would not have taken the turn they did if it were not for Howley's admitted adventure in an effort to discredit the Occupy movement.  So before the public, the media, and officials turn their attention negatively towards the protests and the protesters there needs to be a critical eye turned on the role of the  American Spectator and the role played in these events by its editorial staff.  If arrests were made at this incident, and even if none were, the admissions of Howley published brazenly in the pages of his Conservative magazine and bragged about on his Facebook page should lead to an official investigation into his role and that of his employer in the events in Washington D.C. today and should be seen as at least part of the causal nexus that led to the inappropriate use of force that along with Howley negatively affected many who were innocent of any crime other than being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Ironically Howley concludes the story of his adventure mocking the lack of courage of the protesters, who he admitted did not seek – as he did – to confront the authorities, by praising the courage of the guards who twice pepper-sprayed him.

"As I scrambled away from the scene of my crime, a police officer outside the museum gates pointed at my eyes, puffed out of his chest, and shouted: "Yeah, that's right. That's right." He was proud that I had been pepper-sprayed, and, oddly, so was I. I deserved to get a face full of high-grade pepper, and the guards who sprayed me acted with more courage than I saw from any of the protesters. If you're looking for something to commend these days in America, start with those guards."

The admissions of Patrick Howley, published in The American Spectator for all to see, require those across the country, both the public and its officials, to take a closer and more critical look at today's event's in the Nation's capital.  Who was really to blame for the chaos and disruption of a Federal Museum?  Who should be held responsible for those who were harmed in the melee that took place after Howley admits he defied the orders of the legal authorities and stormed into the building?  And how should the story of today's events unfold in the Nation's media over the next several days?


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Re: Michelle Bachman

Michelle Bachman
---
Bachmann took the opportunity at an event last week in Los Angeles to
tell the Republican Jewish Coalition: "I am convinced in my heart and
in my mind that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that
is the end of the United States . . . [W]e have to show that we are
inextricably entwined, that as a nation we have been blessed because
of our relationship with Israel.

choose sides carefully

On Oct 10, 1:15 pm, studio <tl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Calls what's happening on Wall Street and other places "protests".
> Yet she refers to the Tea Party protests as "demonstrations".
> As though their were some kind of big difference?
>
> When are Republitards going to learn plain English?
>
> Answer: Never, they're retards.
>
> Yeah, you better believe it's a protest!
> protest: The act of making a strong public expression of disagreement
> and disapproval.
>
> demonstration: A public display of group feelings (usually of a
> political nature).
>
> So is she saying Conservative feelings have been hurt?
> awwww; too bad little cry babies.

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Re: Michelle Bachman

Studio,
 
The more that you open your mouth, the more you show your ignorance.  The Tea Party is the majority of Americans my friend!  They are your neighbors, they are your family members, and you are one of the mere thousands of a very vocal but small minority, who don't want to see a smaller, limited government, that adheres to the Constitution, and yes, the Constitution is literally a black and white document, there is no grey area, but I digress. 
 
Yours, and the several hundred folks propped up there on Wall Street differ from Tea Partiers in a number of ways,  (as Ann Coulter pointed out,  there is logic and a message to the Tea Party message)  but most importantly, your fifteen minutes of fame, and your Marxist "March To Utopia" is over.  It is laughable how you throw barbs around about the rich trying to shame the poor, when it is you and your ilk who has attempted to utilize the "class warfare" card for the last decade, but especially the last three and a half years! 
 
The Party is over, and I understand your bitterness.  Maybe if you try to read, study, and ecucate yourself,  you will understand why your Marxist/Maoist  dogma won't fly there in America.
 
KeithInKöln

On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 9:25 PM, studio <tlack@hotmail.com> wrote:
On Oct 10, 3:05 pm, Keith In Köln <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> THIS IS WHAT A MOB LOOKS LIKE
> <http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2011-10-05.html>
> October 5, 2011
> I am not the first to note the vast differences between the Wall Street
> protesters and the tea partiers. To name three: The tea partiers have jobs,
> showers and a point.

Keith you have no original thoughts.
Instead you rely on Ann The Man Coulter to protect your greedy
interests with insults and lowest common denominator talking points.
She's a hack who knows exactly how stupid you are to buy her books.

Where's your gun boy!
All Tea Baggers have guns.
So what you waiting for?
Take back your country with your guns cry babies.
Use "the force" and be just like Saddam was and clamp down on *civil*
unrest with uncivilized means??
See where it gets you.
No other country is going to come to your aid with air support powder
boy.
And no one is scared of any threats you and Ann The Man Coulter can
muster.




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Re: Ron Paul Defends Mitt Romney Over Jeffress’ Mormon Comments

On Oct 10, 3:42 pm, plainolamerican <plainolameri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> yeah, I'm evil ...
> when the devil's tired and death is busy they call on me by name

Exactly, thanks for making the point pussy boy.

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Re: Fux News

On Oct 10, 3:37 pm, plainolamerican <plainolameri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> coward
> ---
> anytime ... anywhere ... bring our favorite weapons and your will

Right coward.
You were supposed (then you were sending friends you know...lol) to
come up here and get me a long time ago... what happened?
You ain't done shit yet, and you never will, cause you have no will.

And what you gonna do?
Nothin.
Come on up when you grow some balls. You'll be on my turf then coward.

As if I'm scared of some guy who sits behind a computer all day making
web pages...
you gotta be kidding me pussy boy.
What you gonna do? Finger me to death with those typing fingers of
yours?
lol, what a dumbass you are.

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