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The Doctor of Common Sense

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Is the Lefts Economic Plan Good

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By: Armstrong Williams

Naturally I disagree
with much of the opposition and my well-meaning colleagues on the left in
regards to Keynes and his school of economics. Many in this school of thought
cannot accept the fact that Keynesian economics has never worked; it did not
work in the depression nor has it worked any time since then. The only time
stimulus has “worked” is after the economy has already recovered and
then becomes overheated by the stimulus. Keynesian economics is an excuse for
politicians to buy off special interest and voters with other people’s money.
Let me address some of the opposition’s specific points.

First, stimulus
spending creates jobs. False: stimulus spending financed by taxes substitutes
relatively inefficient government spending for private spending, in other words
government spending “crowds out” private spending. The opposition may
disagree that public spending is less efficient but the recent analysis of the
government spending does not support their point of view.

Second, many will
tell you that it is not taxation but debt that is financing the government
spending; thus it is not crowding out private spending. I maintain that
government debt crowds out private borrowing and investment. Many of my
anti-capitalist colleagues say that government spending is not crowding out private
investment because interest rates are low. Therefore there is plenty of money
to finance private investment. Unfortunately, in an attempt to protect
depositors, and the government guarantee of such deposits, the bank regulators
have increased the credit underwriting requirements on banks. Consequently,
they are not lending to small and medium sized businesses.

Interest rates are
low because the Fed is printing money and as a result significantly increasing
the money supply thereby making money less expensive. The irony of artificially
low interest rates is that it reduces the income of pensioners and savers. This
in effect shifts money and consumption from savers and transfers it to the
government who is borrowing at artificially low rates.

The business
community realizes that the increased money supply is financing government
spending and the private sector must eventually pay the piper. Consequently,
the business community is not investing as much as it might because it is
concerned about inflation and higher future taxes to pay for the borrowing.
Since business investment takes time for a return, the business man making an
investment now expecting a return 2 or 3 years from now knows that his taxes
are going to be increased with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the 3.8%
new Obama care tax on unearned earnings. Thus the businessman is not investing
today because he knows his return is being significantly reduced 2 years from
now.

Third, their argument
of skyrocketing business investment is based on historically low investment in
2009 created by the worst recession since the Great Depression. Investors in
2011 are merely “catching up.” Investment is not above the trend
line.

Fourth, the left’s
idea to stimulate the economy through a tax credit for firms that increase
employment shows a fundamental lack of understanding of why companies increase
employment. Jobs are a by-product of increased sales and revenues. Companies do
not like to hire employees. They are expensive, require management and cannot
be easily laid off in the event of incompetence or loss of business. Companies
increase employment because they have additional business that needs to be
processed, and they cannot process it through overtime or increased capital. No
businessman in his right mind would hire someone merely because labor is 10%
cheaper because of tax credits. He would only increase employment if that is
his only alternative to process additional business. If he has additional
business, then he will hire additional employees regardless of the 10% credit.
Therefore the credit is an inefficient way to increase employment and waste of
taxpayer money.

Fifth, their plan for
a serious budget reduction in the future does not work without a big initial
down payment in spending cuts. Today’s Congress cannot bind future congresses,
and Congress has been notoriously unreliable with respect to the fiscal
management of the country’s finances. Only a naive observer of America’s
today’s political environment could believe that congress will constrain
spending to bring the deficit under control when the economy improves. The only
point that the left may have is that fiscal stimulus may have a small temporary
benefit when the money is originally spent, but the extent of the benefit
depends on how the money is spent, e.g. infrastructure, tax rebates, government
program, etc., and technical arguments about the multiplier effect of the
spending. However, it has a negative impact when it is finally paid for.

http://townhall.com/columnists/armstrongwilliams/2011/12/29/the_economy_through_the_eyes_of_the_opposition

 

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Is Obama’s foreign policy good for America?

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By Caroline B. Glick

In recent months, a curious argument has surfaced in favor
of US President Barack Obama. His supporters argue that Obama’s foreign policy
has been a massive success. If he had as much freedom of action on domestic
affairs as he has on foreign affairs, they argue, his achievements in all areas
would be without peer.

Expressing this view, Karen Finney a former Democratic
spokeswoman who often defends the party in the US media told the Huffington
Post, “Look at the progress the president can make when he doesn’t have
Republicans obstructing him.”

According to a Gallup poll from early November, the US
public also believes that Obama’s foreign policy has been successful. Whereas
67 percent of Americans disapproved of Obama’s handling of the economy and the
federal budget deficit, 63 percent of Americans approved of his terrorism
strategy. So too, 52 percent approved of his decision to remove US forces from
Iraq. In general 49 percent of Americans approved of Obama’s handling of
foreign affairs while 44 percent disapproved.

These support levels tell us a great deal about the
insularity of the American public. For when one assesses the impact to date of
Obama’s foreign policy it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that if the US
public was more aware of the actual consequences of his policies, his approval
rating in foreign affairs would be even lower than his approval rating in
domestic policy. Indeed, a cursory examination of the impact so far of Obama’s
foreign policies in country after country and region after region indicates
that his policies have been more damaging to US national interests than those
of any president since Jimmy Carter. And unlike Obama, Americans widely
recognized that Carter’s foreign policies were failed and dangerous.

The failure of Obama’s foreign policies to date has been
nowhere more evident than in the Middle East.

Take Iraq for instance. Obama and his supporters claim that
the withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq is one of his great accomplishments.
By pulling out, Obama kept his promise to voters to end the war in “a
responsible manner.” And as the polling data indicate, most Americans are
willing to give him credit for the move.

But the situation on the ground is dangerous and getting
worse every day. Earlier this month, just ahead of the departure of the last US
forces from Iraq, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited with Obama at
the White House. Immediately after he returned home, the Shiite premier began a
ruthless campaign against his Sunni coalition partners in a no-holds barred bid
to transform the Iraqi government and armed forces into partisan institutions
controlled by his Dawa Party.

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Forces commanded by Maliki’s son arrested and allegedly
tortured several of the Sunni Vice President Tariq al Hashimi’s bodyguards.
They forced the guards to implicate Hashimi in terror plots. Maliki
subsequently issued an arrest warrant for Hashimi. So too, he issued an arrest
warrant for the Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq and fired him without
permission from the Iraqi parliament.

Hashimi and Mutlaq are now in hiding in Erbil. Maliki is
demanding that the Kurdish regional government extradite them to Baghdad for
trial.

Maliki’s actions have driven Sunni leaders in the Sunni
provinces of Diyala, Anbar and Salahadin to demand autonomy under Iraq’s
federal system. He has responded by deploying loyal forces to the provinces to
fight the local militias.

The situation is so explosive that three prominent Sunni
leaders, former prime minister Ayad Allawi, who heads the Iraqiya party,
Parliament Speaker Osama Nujaifi, and Finance Minister Rafe al-Essawi published
an op-ed in the New York Times on Tuesday begging Obama to rein in Maliki in
order to prevent Iraq from plunging into civil war.

Then there is Egypt. Obama’s decision in February to abandon
then president Hosni Mubarak, the US’s most dependable ally in the Arab world
in favor of the protesters in Tahrir Square was hailed by his supporters as a
victory for democracy and freedom against tyranny. By supporting the protesters
against the US ally, Obama argued that he was advancing US interests by showing
the Muslim world the US favored the people over their leaders.

Ten months later, the Egyptian people have responded to this
populist policy by giving jihadist parties a two-thirds majority in Egypt’s
parliamentary elections. For the first time in thirty years, the strategic
anchor of US power in the Arab world — the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty — is
in danger. Indeed, there is no reason to believe it will survive.

According to the Gallup poll, 48 percent of Americans
approve of Obama’s handling of the war in Afghanistan and 44 percent
disapprove. Here too, it is far from clear what there is to approve of. Against
the public entreaties of the US commanders on the ground, Obama is carrying
through on his pledge to withdraw all US surge troops from Afghanistan by the
US presidential elections in November. In the meantime, the US is engaged in
negotiations with the Taliban. The purpose of these negotiations is to reach a
political agreement that would set the conditions for the Taliban to return to
power after a US pullout. That is, the purpose of the talks is to set the
conditions for a US defeat in Afghanistan.

The administration hails its success in overthrowing Libyan
dictator Muammar Qaddafi without sacrificing a single US soldier. And
certainly, this was a success. However, Qaddafi’s opponents, who are now taking
charge of the country, are arguably worse for the US than Qaddafi was. They
include a significant number of al Qaida terrorists and are dominated by
jihadist forces. Attempts by the NATO-backed provisional government to convince
them to disarm have failed completely.

Since Qaddafi was overthrown, large quantities of advanced
weapons from his arsenal — allegedly including stockpiles of weapons of mass
destruction — have gone missing. Significant quantities of Libyan
shoulder-to-air missiles have made their way to Gaza since Qaddafi’s overthrow.

In Syria, while the administration insists that dictator
Bashar Assad’s days in power are numbered, it is doing essentially nothing to
support the Syrian opposition. Fearing the instability that would ensue if a
civil war were to break out in Iran’s Arab protectorate, the US has chosen to
effectively sit on its hands and so cancel any leverage it ought to wield over
the shape of things to come.

As to Iran, Obama’s policies have brought about a situation
where the regime in Teheran does not fear a US military strike on its nuclear
installations. Obama’s open opposition to the prospect of an Israeli strike
against Iran’s nuclear installations has similarly convinced the regime that it
can proceed without fear in its nuclear project.

Iran’s threat this week to close the Straits of Hormuz in
the event that the US imposes an embargo on Iranian oil exports is being widely
characterized by the US media as a sign of desperation on the part of the
regime. But it is hard to see how this characterization aligns with reality. It
is far more appropriate to view Iran’s easy threats as a sign of contempt for
Obama and for US power projection under his leadership.

If Iran’s ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons are thwarted,
it will be despite Obama, not because of him.

Then there is the so-called peace process between Israel and
the Palestinians. Due to Obama’s unbridled hostility towards Israel, there is
no chance whatsoever that Israel and the PLO will reach a peace deal for the
foreseeable future. Instead, Fatah and Hamas have agreed to unify their forces.
The only thing standing in the way of a Hamas takeover of the PLO is the US
Congress’s threat to cut off US aid to the Palestinian Authority. For his part,
Obama has gone out of his way to discredit the Congressional threat by serving
as an indefatigable lobbyist for maintaining US financial support for the PA.

Of course, the Middle East is not the only region where the
deleterious consequences of Obama’s foreign policy are being felt. From Europe,
to Africa, to Asia, to Latin America, Obama’s determination to embrace US
adversaries like Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez has weakened pro-US forces and
strengthened US foes.

So how is that that while Carter was perceived by the
majority of the American public as a foreign policy failure, a large plurality
of Americans views Obama’s foreign policy as a success?

Obama’s success in hiding his failures from the American
public owes to two related factors. First, to date the US has not been forced
to contend directly with the consequences of his failures.

Carter’s failures were impossible to ignore because the
blowback from his failures was immediate, unmistakable and harsh. His betrayal
of the Shah of Iran led directly to the takeover of the US Embassy in Teheran
and the hostage crisis. Carter could not spin to his advantage the daily
stories about the hostages. He could not influence CBS evening news anchor
Walter Cronkite’s decision to end every broadcast by reminding viewers how many
days the hostages had been in captivity.

So too, the consequences of Carter’s weakness in confronting
the Soviet Union were impossible to ignore or minimize with images of Soviet
tank columns invading Afghanistan dominating the news.

To date, Obama’s foreign policy failures have yet to explode
in a manner that can make the average American aware of them.

Then too, Obama and his advisors have been extremely adept
in presenting his tactical achievements as strategic victories. So it is that
the administration has successfully cast the killing of Osama bin Laden as a
strategic victory in the war on terror. Obama has upheld the mission, as well
as the killing of al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki as proof of his competence in
securing US interests. And to a large degree, the US public has accepted his
claims.

Because it is impossible to know when Obama’s failures will
begin to directly impact the America people, it is possible that he will not
pay a political price for them in the 2012 elections. Be that as it may, the
Republican presidential contenders would provide an invaluable service to both
themselves and the American public as a whole if they make exposing Obama’s
disastrous stewardship of US foreign policy a central plank of their campaigns.

At a minimum, forewarned is forearmed. And the dimensions of
Obama’s failures are so enormous, that it is clear that the American people
will suffer their consequences for years to come.

 

http://jewishworldreview.com/1211/glick123011.php3

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Corruption at MF Global

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By Jim McElhatton- The Washington Times

During two days of
recent congressional hearings into how as much as $1.2 billion disappeared from
MF Global customer accounts, the chief operating officer of the imploding
investment firm responded again and again that he did not know.

Yet as the House and Senate interrogated Bradley I. Abelow
and other top executives at MF Global Holdings Ltd., lawmakers did not mention
Mr. Abelow’s role as a financial adviser for the Environmental Protection
Agency, which as of Tuesday listed him as the chairman of its financial
advisory board.

Even as he finds himself the public face of a bankruptcy and
admitted to lawmakers that he had no idea how client funds disappeared,
Congress and the administration have voiced no public concern about Mr.
Abelow’s role advising the $8.6 billion government agency on its finances.

“EPA relying on Wall Street for financial guidance is like
the blind leading the blind,” said Jeff Ruch, president of Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in
Washington.

“In Abelow, you have a Wall Street executive who just
presided over the disappearance of $1 billion in investor funds purporting to
help guide federal infrastructure financing.”

The EPA did not respond to multiple messages concerning Mr.
Abelow’s status with the board, though the EPA’s website still reports that he
is its chairman and notes his job at MF Global.

When first questioned about Mr. Abelow’s ties to the EPA in
early November, just after MF Global declared bankruptcy, EPA officials issued
a short statement saying only that he was appointed as chairman of the board on
March 10, 2010, and that he is not paid for his position.

Officials declined to say whether they were reviewing his
continued service for the board.

An MF Global spokeswoman told The Washington Times shortly
after the bankruptcy filing that Mr. Abelow was reviewing all of his outside
commitments and obligations.

The EPA’s financial advisory board was chartered in 1989 to
“provide advice and analysis to EPA’s administrator on paying for the growing
costs of environmental protection,” according to the EPA’s website. The agency
says members include “prominent experts from all levels of government,
including elected officials, the finance and banking communities, business and
industry and national organizations.”

It’s unclear how Mr. Abelow landed the chairmanship of the
EPA financial panel, a position he noted in his biography on the MF Global
website, which has since been removed.

He has ties to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson through former
New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Each served at different times as the governor’s
chief of staff. When Mr. Corzine lost his bid for re-election and later joined
MF Global, Mr. Abelow followed.

During his testimony to the House, Mr. Abelow said his total
compensation at MF Global was a guaranteed $3 million. He joined the firm in
September 2010 as chief operating officer, then was named president in March.

At appearances before House and Senate committees, Mr.
Abelow expressed sorrow for the company’s more than 2,500 employees who are
facing unemployment and investors who have been unable to recoup their funds.

“As the president and chief operating officer of MF Global,
I am deeply sorry for the hardship they have all endured,” Mr. Abelow told the
Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry on Dec. 13.

While I know that nothing I say can ease their pain, I hope
that through my testimony today, I can help this committee understand what
happened at MF Global and how we are attempting to unwind the company in a
manner that provides maximum value for all parties.”

He was asked repeatedly, along with Mr. Corzine, what
happened to missing customer funds. More than a dozen times in response to
lawmakers’ questions, he said he did not know, could not recall or wasn’t aware
of various details.

“We’re looking at the top people of the company who are
responsible for the overall internal controls of this company and so, Mr.
Abelow, where’s the money?” Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat, asked in
one such exchange.

“Senator, as I said in my statement, I do not know where the
money is,” Mr. Abelow replied.

Asked by Rep. Michael E. Capuano, Massachusetts Democrat,
the identity of the company’s biggest creditor 10 days before MF Global’s
bankruptcy, Mr. Abelow replied, “I apologize; I simply don’t know.”

Mr. Abelow’s role at the EPA never surfaced during his testimony
before either of the congressional committees this month.

MF Global declared bankruptcy Oct. 31 after telling
regulators that the company had about $6.3 billion in debt from Ireland, Italy,
Spain and other European countries and after credit-ratings services downgraded
the company’s status to “junk,” the company said in court records.

Bankruptcy filings describe Mr. Abelow’s role at the company
as overseeing day-to-day execution of company strategy and holding “direct
responsibility for risk, operations, client services,” among other corporate
activities.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/27/mf-global-chief-missing-12b-financial-adviser-epa/?page=2

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Crying Over Kim Jong IL is Like Crying Over The Devil

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My People Better Be Crying Over Me
By: NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Wailing and clutching at their hearts, tens of thousands of North Koreans lined the snowy streets of Pyongyang on Wednesday as the hearse carrying late leader Kim Jong Il’s wound its way through the capital for a final farewell.

Son and successor Kim Jong Un led the procession, which is part of a two-day state funeral. Top military and party officials, including uncle Jang Song Thaek, were also part of the lead group.

Sobs and wails filled the air along the memorial route, which state media said was about 25 miles long.

At the end of the procession, Kim Jong Un walked along with the limousine with his hand cocked in a salute. He stood head-bowed with top officials as rifles fired 21 times, then saluted again as goose-stepping soldiers carrying flags and rifles marched by.

The funeral procession, which began and ended at Kumsusan Memorial Palace, passed by huge crowds of mourners, most of them standing in the snow with their heads bare. Many screamed, stamped their feet, flailed their arms and wept as soldiers struggled to keep them from spilling onto the road.

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/28/9756804-sobbing-in-streets-as-dictator-kim-jong-ils-state-funeral-begins

NOW THE REAL STORY:

“Take a Look at what Kim Jong IL did to his people and you will
come to the conclusion that the only reason these people were crying was out of
fear. They are happy that this Communist Dictator is dead. The media keeps referring
to this evil dictator has the Dear Leader. The only one that this evil man was
dear to is the Devil.” Why did they not let the media in all of the other years
that this Bastard was living? The Propaganda machines are in full effect.  (This Commentary By: Elmer Williams)

 

(These Facts Are From About.Com By: Kallie Szczepanski)

During the 1980s, according to foreign analysts, Kim Jong-il
was involved in at least two acts of state-sponsored terrorism. The first was a
1983 bombing in Rangoon, Burma, which left 17 South Korean government officials
dead. The second, a 1987 bombing of Korean Airlines flight 858, killed all 115
people on board.

 

These incidents were an early sign that Kim Jong-il would
take a harder-line approach to international relations than his father had. The
younger Kim also demanded absolute obedience and respect from the people, and
was willing to dole out extreme punishments to any who disobeyed.

 

The Supreme Leader:

On July 8, 1994, Kim Il-sung died of a heart attack at age
82. He was named “Eternal President,” and laid to rest in the Kumsusan Memorial
Palace in Pyongyang.

 

As a result of his father’s “eternal” status, Kim Jong-il
was not officially the President of North Korea. Although he was Kim Il-sung’s
chosen successor, the younger Kim may have been an unpopular choice among the
Party faithful. His take-over of the government was a slow and cautious
process. It was several years after Kim Il-sung’s death before foreign
observers were sure that Kim Jong-il truly would become North Korea’s next
leader.

 

Domestic Policy:

As North Korea’s leader, Kim distanced himself even from
North Korea’s traditional allies, Russia and the People’s Republic of China. He
also instituted a “Military-First” policy, devoting the majority of the
country’s resources to the armed forces. Those policies, combined with a cycle
of devastating droughts followed by catastrophic floods, caused widespread
famine throughout the 1990s and early 21st century.

 

Huge shipments of food aid from traditional foes such as
South Korea, Japan, and the United States arrived too late to save an estimated
200,000 to 3.5 million North Korean famine victims.

 

Foreign Policy:

In 1998, South Korea’s President Kim Dae-jung instituted a
“Sunshine Policy” toward the North. This was meant to improve relations between
the two Koreas, freeze the North’s nuclear program, and foster economic
cooperation, as a first step toward reunification of the peninsula. The Sunshine
Policy suffered a number of setbacks, with most egregious coming on October 9,
2006 — the day North Korea successfully conducted its first underground nuclear
test.

 

Kim Jong-il puzzled surrounding powers and the U.S. with his
erratic policies on the nuclear issue and other important matters.

 

Human Rights Abuses:

Kim Jong-il has also faced international pressure over human
rights abuses. The North Korean government runs a series of “re-education
camps” that hold as many as 50,000 citizens of all ages prisoner for political
“crimes” such as failure to adore the Dear Leader.

 

In addition, Kim was reviled for the kidnapping of Japanese
and South Korean citizens off of beaches by North Korean submarine crews for
use as intelligence community language and culture trainers. Such kidnappings
have all but ceased today, but many of South Korea’s beaches still sport rolls
of concertina wire just above the high-tide line.

 

Quirks and Spending Habits:

Kim Jong-il was known for his eccentric and extravagant
tastes. He imports $700,000 worth of Hennessy cognac per year, ate lobster,
caviar, and the finest sushi every day, and loved Hollywood movies such as
“Rambo” and the “Friday the 13th” series. Kim also enjoyed racing cars, and had
a fleet of Mercedes Benz S500 luxury sedans. Reportedly, the dictator also
loved roasted donkey meat.

 

Kim Jong Il was a big fan of guitar legend Eric Clapton, and
once invited the musician to play in Pyongyang. Clapton did not accept the
invitation.

 

Personal Life and the “Cult of Personality”:

Kim was extremely secretive about his personal life. It is
believed that he married once, had one child from this marriage, and that he
also had three mistresses and two other children.

 

Kim’s oldest son, Kim Jong-nam, was disgraced by a 2001
arrest in Tokyo for traveling with a forged passport. His position as the
successor to his father was ruined by this incident, although reports suggested
that he was trying to get back into Kim Jong-il’s good graces when the Dear
Leader passed away. The third son, Kim Jong-un, was groomed instead to succeed
Kim Jong-il, whose health began to decline seriously after 2005.

 

Like any good dictator, Kim Jong-il built an elaborate cult
of personality. Pictures of him and his late father adorned all public
buildings, and criticism of the Kims is punishable by imprisonment in the
concentration camps. Both men’s birthdays are important national holidays. All
media sources are controlled by the State, of course, so praise for the “Dear
Leader” was broadcast constantly over the radio and in newspapers.

 

Some outside observers believe that this obedience and
adulation arises from actual love and respect either for Kim Jong-il, or for
the memory of his father. Most, however, believe that the citizens of North
Korea are motivated more by fear than by hero worship.

 

Kim Jong-il’s Death:

Kim Jong-il died during a train trip on December 17, 2011.
This was one of his series of internal trips in order to supervise and advise
the industrial and agricultural producers of North Korea. According to official
news reports, he died of a heart attack due to overwork.

 

Immediately after his death, his third son Kim Jong-un was
named as the “Great Successor” to his father. It remains to be seen
whether the new leader will be able to rule with the same iron will as his
father and grandfather. In any case, uncertainty in North Korea means
instability in East Asia – and with nuclear weapons in the picture, that is a
frightening thought indeed.

http://asianhistory.about.com/od/profilesofasianleaders/p/BioKimJongil.htm

 

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9 Year Old Girls, Body Chopped Up by an Animal Neighbor

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FORT WAYNE, Ind. –  A babysitter and trusted neighbor has confessed that he bludgeoned a 9-year-old Indiana girl to death with a brick then dismembered her, hiding her head, hands and feet at his home and dumping the rest of her remains nearby, police said Tuesday.

AllenCountysheriff’s investigators said in an affidavit that 39-year-old Michael Plumadore admits he killed Aliahna Lemmon on Thursday.

According to the affidavit, Plumadore told police that after beating Aliahna to death, he stuffed her body into trash bags and hid her in the freezer at his home in a rundown trailer park in Fort Wayne. He said he later chopped up her body and stuffed her remains into freezer bags.

 

Police said Plumadore told them he had hidden Aliahna’s head, feet and hands at his trailer and discarded her other remains at a nearby business. Police obtained a warrant to search his trailer on Monday and found the body parts.

The affidavit does not provide details about why Plumadore killed the child.

A judge ordered Plumadore held without bail or bond at an initial hearing Tuesday, sheriff’s department spokesman Cpl. Jeremy Tinkel said. He has yet to be formally charged in Aliahna’s death.

Aliahna and her two younger sisters were staying with Plumadore because their mother had been sick with the flu.

Plumadore told The Journal Gazette on Sunday that Aliahna disappeared from his home Friday morning while he was sleeping after having gone to a gas station about a mile away to buy a cigar.

Authorities have said the store’s surveillance video shows him there about that time.

Aliahna wasn’t reported missing until Friday night. Plumadore said the younger girls told him their mother had picked her up and he didn’t realize until hours later that this wasn’t true.

On Saturday, more than 100 emergency workers searched for Aliahna around the trailer park on the city’s north side where Aliahna and Plumadore lived. FBI agents were there Monday.

A state website shows that 15 registered sex offenders live in the park that numbers about two dozen homes. Plumadore is not on Indiana’s registered sex offenders list. He has a criminal record in Florida and North Carolina that includes convictions for trespassing and assault.

The girl’s relatives told the newspaper that Plumadore had cared for Aliahna’s ailing grandfather until his death early this month and was living in her grandfather’s mobile home.

“He was a trusted family friend,” Aliahna’s step-grandfather, David Story, told The Associated Press late Monday, saying he was surprised by the arrest.

Sheriff Ken Fries said investigators questioned Plumadore on Friday and Saturday and that he was arrested Monday after being interviewed by detectives for several hours more.

“The story just didn’t make sense to our investigators or to me when I first heard it,” Fries said Monday night. “I thought this is the guy we needed to focus on. If we are going to find her, he’s going to be the one who has the answers for us.”

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/12/27/neighbor-chopped-up-missing-indiana-girl-with-hacksaw-police-say/   

 

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Is Ron Paul a Racist?

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I Did Not Write Those Letters

By David Frum, CNN Contributor

Washington (CNN) –Texas congressman Ron Paul now leads among Iowa Republicans and has tied Newt Gingrich for second in New Hampshire. Republican conservatives have cycled through a series of “Not Mitts.” Is it now Paul’s turn?

Paul’s core following has been small but fervid. However, Paul now is gaining a larger following, especially among younger voters attracted by his message of drug legalization and his comprehensive — if utterly wrong-headed — explanation of the country’s economic crisis.

Unexpectedly, young voters seem also to appreciate Paul’s grandfatherly anti-charisma: his self-presentation as a good-natured old codger, charmingly baffled by the modern world. The ill-fitting suits, the quavering voice and the slack-jawed laugh all support the image of an anti-politician, the lone voice of integrity in a sullied word.

There is however a flaw in this benign image of Paul: the now-notorious newsletters published under his name in the early 1990s. Paul collected nearly a million dollars in one year from newsletters suffused with paranoia, racial bigotry and support for the period’s violent militia movements. Four years ago, Jamie Kirchick of the New Republic unearthed partial collections of the newsletters in the libraries of the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society. From Kirchick’s subsequent report:

“Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. ‘Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began,’ read one typical passage.

“According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with ‘ “civil rights,” quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.’ It also denounced ‘the media’ for believing that ‘America’s number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks.’ ”

There’s a lot more in this vein.

Paul now claims that he did not write the newsletters, was unaware of their contents at the time and now has no idea who did write them.

It’s fair to say that almost no one who has followed the controversy believes that Paul is telling the truth about any of this. The authorship of the newsletters is an open secret in the libertarian world: they were produced by a community of writers led by Paul aides Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard, who wrote a newsletter of their own at the same time that expressed similar ideas in similar language. The racism of the newsletters — and the elaborate lying subsequently deployed to evade responsibility for the newsletters — say much about the ethics of Paul himself and the circle around him.

Yet Ron Paul is something more (or less) than a racist crank. As Michael Brendan Dougherty aptly observed in the Atlantic last week:

“As crazy as it sounds, Ron Paul’s newsletter writers may not have been sincerely racist at all. They actually thought appearing to be racist was a good political strategy in the 1990s. After that strategy yielded almost nothing — it was abandoned by Paul’s admirers.”

A fellow libertarian offers more detail on Paul’s racism-as-strategy. Paul and his circle aspired “to create a libertarian-conservative fusion … [by] appealing to the worst instincts of working/middle class conservative whites by creating the only anti-left fusion possible with the demise of socialism:  one built on cultural issues. … [The strategy] apparently made some folks (such as Rockwell and Paul) pretty rich selling newsletters predicting the collapse of Western civilization at the hands of the blacks, gays, and multiculturalists.  The explicit strategy was abandoned by around the turn of the century, but not after a lot of bad stuff had been written in all kinds of places.”

Don’t get the idea, however, that racism-as-strategy was some brief, futile dead-end for Paul. Paul exploited bigotry throughout his career, before as well as after the newsletter years. As Dave Weigel and Julian Sanchez reported in the libertarian magazine Reason, “Cato Institute President Ed Crane told Reason he recalls a conversation from some time in the late 1980s in which Paul claimed that his best source of congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for The Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto until it folded in 2001.”

Crane is the president of the premier institution in the libertarian world. If his recollection is correct, Paul was appealing to consumers of Holocaust denial for political purposes half a decade before the newsletters commenced.

Nor is it wholly accurate to describe Paul’s strategy of appealing to the extremes as “abandoned.” Ron Paul delivered the keynote address to the John Birch Society as recently as the summer of 2009. He is a frequent guest on the Alex Jones radio program, the central station for 9/11 Trutherism. As I can attest first-hand, anybody who writes negatively about Paul will see his email inbox fill rapidly with anti-Semitic diatribes.

Not all the “bad stuff” of Ron Paul’s newsletter period was racist, exactly. Some of it was just general-purpose paranoia, designed to trick money out of the pockets of the fearful and gullible. Reuters has unearthed an example of a solicitation letter for the Ron Paul newsletters:

 

The solicitation warns of the coming danger of “new money”:

“I uncovered the New Money plans in my last term in the US Congress, and I held the ugly new bills in my hands. I can tell you – they made my skin crawl!

“These totalitarian bills were tinted pink and blue and brown, and blighted with holograms, diffraction gratings, metal and plastic threads, and chemical alarms. It wasn’t money for a free people. It was a portable inquisition, a paper ‘third degree’ to allow the feds to keep track of American cash, and American citizens.”

[In an e-mail to CNN, Paul’s campaign chairman Jesse Benton said, “Dr. Paul did not write that solicitation and the signature is an auto pen. It does not reflect his thoughts and is out of step with the message he has espoused for 40 years.” He added, “He should have better policed it and… he has assumed responsibility and apologized.”]

The daffy old coot side of Ron Paul’s personality is genuine enough. The crank side is certainly genuine, as are at least some of the racial views. Even after Paul abandoned the crude race-baiting of his 1990s newsletters, he continued to engage in elaborate apologetics for the Confederate side of the Civil War.

Also genuine, however, is the huckster aspect of the Ron Paul persona. That’s the persona that terrifies people who had never before heard of “diffraction grating” that the government might use this optical scanning technology, which can detect counterfeiting, to wiretap their wallets.

Ron Paul’s admirers see him as a man of integrity. They are tragically mistaken about that. Despite his too-dotty-to-lie persona, Ron Paul is not in fact on the level. In evading responsibility for his newsletters, Paul has replied “I don’t know” and “I don’t remember” to queries whose answers he must know and surely remembers. The back story of the newsletters shows a man who, sufficiently saturated in racism and extremism himself, was ready to exploit the even greater racism and extremism of others for financial gain. Ron Paul is the Max Bialystock of monetary cranks — and this latest presidential campaign represents the summit of his bunco artist career, his very own “Springtime for Hitler.”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/26/opinion/frum-ron-paul-newsletters/index.html