Evan Bayh - Democratic Seer - Obama Chief of Staff or Presidential Opponent?

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Evan Bayh, retiring Senator from Indiana and the only Democrat who recognized over a year ago that Obama was straying far off course and the Democrats were in danger of suffering a tremendous defeat, t5ied to warn the president and fellow Democrats of the potential peril.

This soft spoken Hoosier politician was ignored by the Chicago gang in the White House and by the Democratic leadership in the House, Senate and DNC.  As a result the Democrats suffered a historic defeat.  But it is not too late to recogize their mistake and embrace moderte voices like Bayh.

For well over a year I have been urging the president to consider appointing Senator Bayh as his chief of staff.  Bayh is one of few Democrats to have the respect of Republicans while being a supporter ofPresident Obama.  He has always worked on a non-partisan basis on legislation, something few in DC know.

He is still young,  dynamic and at ease with the media.  His tone is conciliatory and he never loses his cool.  The post-Emanuel White House staff failed to protect the president from suffering a humiliating defeat because of their lack of experience, lack of knowledge of national politics and bitter partisanship.  They just did not know how to get things done in our nation's capitol.  In short, he would be the perfect pick to create the bi-partisan forum Obama and his gang have failed to achieve and that the people demand.

Now if Obama does not want Bayh, then it will be business as usual for the White House and then I would urge Democrats to draft Bayh for president in 2012 because it will be the only way the Democrats will keep control of the presidency.  Obama needs to break out of his palace guard and listen to the people while working with his "enemy" as he calls it, the GOP majority in the House and governor's offices.  Without them there will be no Obama agenda.
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There's a New Dawn Over America - The People Spoke

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Yesterday the people of America spoke and their message was loud and clear. If the politicians in both political parties were listening that message should chill them to the bone. America said we are a nation of people, not parties, and the foundation of America is built on principles, not partisan agendas.

To make their point emphatic they dealt the Republicans near fatal losses in 2006 and 2008, and now have decimated the incredible base Obama thought was a mandate by tossing the Democrats out just two years later.

On the surface it was a Republican landslide of historic proportions. The GOP won 65 House seats from the Democrats and 8 Senate seats. In the Senate the Obama margin of 60-40 has now shrunk to just 50-48 with 2 Independents. Three of the most powerful Democrat chairmen were sent into retirement and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saw the most losses to a Majority party since the Great Depression of the 1930's.

But that does not even tell half the story. You see in America our government flows from the people through the state governments to the federal government. Of 38 governors races last night the Republicans won an astounding 27 including sweeping victories throughout the Great Lakes, Midwest, South and Southwest and even recapturing some statehouses in New England. Of course this landslide started a year ago when New Jersey and Virginia governors offices went GOP along with Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts.

At the state government level the change may even be greater as Republicans swept into control in state legislatures from Maine to Minnesota including most of the Obama states from Pennsylvania to Montana. It was one of the most memorable shifting in the balance of power the past century.

But it was not just a Republican victory, it was a statement by the people that they want moderation in the agenda along with conservatism in our spending and debt. Both parties failed the people on these counts the last decade.

America is a right tilting nation in the middle. It is neither far right nor far left. Obama moved too far left in a rather selfish attempt to fix his place in the history books rather than fix the nation. It failed badly and his crown as conquering hero has been firmly knocked off his head. Now it is up to him to choose to lead down the middle of the political spectrum or lose in 2012.

Politicians forgot they serve the people. The people sent them a wake up call wrapped in a 100 foot tsunami. There was an old joke, a conservative is a liberal who got hit in the head by reality. Perhaps there is more truth than we thought in that joke.

So now the people spoke. Did the politicians listen? Stay tuned.

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Turn Down the Hate - Turn Down the Rhetoric

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After about two years of Obama and the neverending campaigns for this issue, that and the other, the nasty mood of the public and polarization of the politicians have taken their toll.  People can't talk to each other, they yell and condemn and challenge and refuse to listen or respect each other.

No longer are people allowed to have different views without being hated and heaven forbid if they dare open their mouth and disagree.  Cable news and entertainment shows, and it is hard to tell them apart anymore, are the masters at capsulizing hate into 30 sound bites.

Well Bill Maher, no stranger to the hate and bait game, tried to bait George Clooney into trashing the conservatives on cable the other day and Clooney would have no part of it.  George, the Hollywood heartthrob and pride of Kentucky, lowered the temperature and talked about the compassion of conservatives and how they have been critical in his Sudan Dufar campaigns.

We should all learn a lesson from this exchange from the show.

Maher: We have Rob Reiner on the panel tonight. One of his big issues is gay marriage. He’s not gay, that we know. This is a big issue with you, Sudan. You’re not Sudanese.

Clooney: No.

Maher: I think this is a big difference between liberals and conservatives. You know, I don’t think conservatives are bad people. I think they have a hard time being empathetic to people who are not like them at all.

Clooney: Okay, now wait. I’ll tell you why – [the audience begins to applaud Maher’s remark]. Hang on a minute though. I’ll tell you why that’s not necessarily true, because this movement, the Sudanese movement, Darfur, the north south agreement, were really truly embraced by the Right even more so than the Left… They really were. I mean, Sam Brownback and I did press conferences together and, you know. When I talked to the senator, I said, “We don’t agree on a whole lot of stuff, but we both agree on this one.” And I’ve found that, over the years, on this particular issue specifically, and in a lot of the African countries, you can get a lot of conservative help.

I just met with Senator Dick Lugar, who’s the ranking member of [the] Foreign Relations [Committee…] [Lugar is] now in Khartoum, which is the capital where Omar Bashir is. [Lugar’s] going there to meet with them and then going to the south. We’re really trying to get everyone involved as much as possible, and they want to do it. All these guys, believe me, it’s a very big issue on the Right as well. We want everybody together doing this…

(end of transcript)
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NBC News Turns Back Clock to Huntley - Brinkley days of Election Coverage

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One of my biggest media complaints is how modern news reports condense all news into 30 second sound bites when the truth is most news stories deserve much more coverage.

Well tonight NBC News has turned back the clock to the good old days of broadcast journalism when people we trusted gave us the news, people like Huntley Brinkley on NBC.

Save Savannah

They are the only broadcast network going to prime time news coverage from 9-11 eastern with constant news coverage of the elections, and coverage will resume after the local news from 11:30 to 3:30 am.

Brian Williams and the news staff will finally give us the type of balanced news coverage we deserve and NBC should be cheered for restoring journalism values to network coverage.
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There's Something about Sarah - Palin that is - that drives Politicians Crazy

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What is it about Sarah Palin, our favorite backwoods voice in the wilderness fighting the battles for the forgotten multitudes? How could a basketball playing, rifle toting, mom from the north country be a threat to the professional politicians and Lame Street media who control our once proud nation?

I could understand if it was just Obama and the liberal elitist Democrats, but Sarah has seen the very beneficiaries of the Republican Party she resuscitated from life support two short years ago and led them to the brink of a historic victory today turn on her as well.

Well I have a theory. Palin, while coming from the Republican Party, realized that it was getting harder and harder to tell the professional Democrats from the professional Republicans. Though both parties claimed their own platform and agenda, once elected it was nearly impossible to tell the difference.

Our government is corrupted pure and simple. Money, in the form of campaign contributions, has corrupted our political process and our politicians to the point that preservation of the institution of the corrupt campaign laws dominates all other concerns of congress and the president.

The people be damned! The life blood of politicians is having their veins filled with precious campaign cash. The economy, energy independence, environment, health care cost, homes and mortgages, all are secondary to the flow of cash into campaign accounts.

The same corrupt dollars trickle through the politicians into the bank accounts of the money hungry media who suck up billions of dollars per election in campaign advertising. The very reporters who write about the politicians are dependent on the "corrupt" campaign dollars that feed the politicians to also keep them employed.

Is it any wonder that neither the politicians nor the news media ever talk about the need for campaign finance reform to cutoff the flow of dollars to the politicians and news media? No matter how much lip service politicians give to budget cuts, reducing the influence of special interests, or lowering the deficit, campaign finance reform is essential to making Washington work.

Sarah Palin has been in the vortex of campaign politics and been in the farthest outposts from the reaches of campaign money from special interests as she has crisscrossed in country in support of the more than 32 grassroots candidates she endorsed. Yet she has remained a political outsider, a grassroots advocate and a defender of principles.

After surviving the wrath of the liberal east from the political pundits to the liberal Democrats who made it a top priority to silence the voice from the wilderness, she now faces the money brokers from the other side of the political spectrum, the conservative king makers, and her threat to them is just as real as her threat to Obama and his liberal media.

Not surprisingly, they have moved to complete her destruction finishing the job started by Obama's Chicago gang and the liberal elitist media two years ago. Make no mistake, a true populist politician like Palin threatens all forms of professional corruption in our nation's capitol whether the good old boys are Democrats or Republicans.

Thus the money brokers who rode on the back of Palin to take back America from the disingenuous Obama agenda as seen from the Tea Party movement that is sweeping through local, state and federal elections today, have already initiated a strategy to discredit her role and minimize her impact on politics in America.

They must stop her before she can rally the public to support the one goal she has fought for her entire political career, shutting down the close alliance between special interests and politicians though unlimited campaign cash with meaningful campaign finance reform.

Just as Obama, the Democratic leadership and the liberal media totally underestimated her survival instinct and her connection to the people on Main Street, so do the GOP power brokers who never understood that it is the people, not the special interest brokers, who know what is best for America.

Palin began a long and lonely journey in Alaska to fight corruption and ethics violations in government. Due to circumstances beyond her control she was thrown into the national spotlight and never blinked. But her mission is far from over, and her commitment to the people is unbending.

The old political establishment from both Democrats and Republicans, both conservatives and liberals have only agreed on one thing these past two years and that is stopping Sarah Palin. She stands alone among all public figures in focusing the public spotlight on what is wrong with our system of politics and focusing pubic attention on the need for meaningful campaign finance reform if we are ever to take back America.

If the political parties don't come together and clean up the mess they have created, I suspect Sarah Palin will do what is best for the people and help start a third political party to bring about the end of special interests. Both parties need to remember the people like Palin are first patriotic Americans, then members of a political party. Think carefully before you push her out the door, for the people may already be on the other side.

If I were betting I would say Sarah Palin is a lot more concerned about helping guide the national agenda to change the political system than getting elected president.  Maybe our politicians should consider working with her on the same goals rather than working to stop her.

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Who Gets Boasting Rights? Beck or Stewart?

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Glenn Beck Rally

Jon Stewart Rally

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The Battle of the Presidents - Bush versus Obama

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With the two Bush Presidents at the World Series and George, Jr. throwing out the first ball, we finally have brought Bush out into the open and though he has never had a bad thing to say about Obama who has had a lot of bad things to say about Bush, we get to compare the two presidents.



Check out the following two videos of Bush, then Obama throwing out balls at baseball games.  You decide which has the best arm and which throws like an Ivy Leaguer.



Gotcha on the last question since both are Ivy Leaguers and Bush is the only president to graduate from Harvard and Yale.

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Latest BCS Polls Point to Alabama - Nebraska for National Championship

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So here is the latest BCS poll and my personal favorites, Nebraska, Arizona and Iowa continue their climb back to the top.  Okay so maybe they aren't there yet but they will be by the end of the season.  In fact all three are still at the top of their conferences.

So how does that result in my conclusion this early in the season that it will be Alabama versus Nebraska for the national championship when they are ranked 6 and 7 in the BCS poll?  Oregon loses to Arizona, Auburn loses to Alabama, TCU, Boise State and Utah continue to drop in the polls because they do not have the competitive schedules of Alabama and Nebraska.

Besides, one of the best rivalaries of the 1970's and '80's were the bowl games when the two schools squared off under the legendary coaches Bear Bryant and Bob Devany and a national championship was always on the line.  Anyway, that's my take, what is yours?

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Ted Sorenson - Intellectual Blood Bank to JFK - Dies

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Coming from the Great Plains and always dreaming of being a presidential advisor, speech writer and a journalist, Ted Kennedy of neighboring Nebraska was always a hero. JFK was the first president I campaigned for in my life and not just because I went to Catholic schools, but because my grandfather had drilled into me the importance of knowing current events. Every weekend he tested me on the events in the nation and world and you really don't want to make an Irishman mad or disappointed in you.

So early on I knew about Sorenson from Nebraska in the inner circles of Kennedy's Camelot and was aware of the brilliant work he performed writing JFK's speeches. I could not imagine how someone from the Midwest and the University of Nebraska was as smart as all the Harvard people surrounding Kennedy. Sorenson taught me that everyone can rise to their potential.

Later on I had occasion to meet Sorenson and was more impressed. However, what was most impressive to me about this brilliant word man was that Kennedy himself admitted that some of his best speeches were written by Sorenson and even referred to him as his "intellectual blood bank". People like Sorenson who helped people like JFK build bridges are sorely missed in the partisan polarization that exists in politics today.

Theodore Chaikin "Ted" Sorensen (May 8, 1928– October 31, 2010) was an American presidential advisor, lawyer and writer, best known as President John F. Kennedy’s special counsel and adviser, legendary speechwriter, and alter ego. President Kennedy once called him his “intellectual blood bank.” He was Of Counsel at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. He died on October 31, 2010, following a stroke.

Sorensen was born in Nebraska, the son of Christian A. Sorensen, a Danish American and the future attorney general of Nebraska, and Annis Chaikin, who was of Russian Jewish descent. He graduated from Lincoln High School in 1945. He earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and attended law school at the same university, graduating first in his class.

Sorensen was President Kennedy's Special Counsel & Adviser, and primary speechwriter, the role for which he is best remembered today. He was particularly famous for having helped draft the inaugural address in which Kennedy exhorted listeners to "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." This call to service is the phrase still most closely associated with the Kennedy administration. Although Sorensen played an important part in the composition of the Inaugural Address, "the speech and its famous turn of phrase that everyone remembers was," Sorensen firmly states (counter to what the majority of authors, journalists and other media sources have claimed), "written by Kennedy himself."

In the early months of the administration the scope of Sorensen's responsibilities lay within the domestic agenda; however, after the Bay of Pigs debacle Kennedy asked Sorensen to take part in foreign policy discussions as well. During the Cuban Missile Crisis Sorensen served as a member of ExComm and was named by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara as one of the "true inner circle" members who advised the president, the others being Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, General Maxwell D. Taylor (the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs), former Ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewellyn Thompson and McNamara himself.[6] Sorensen played a critical role in drafting Kennedy's correspondence with Nikita Khrushchev and worked on Kennedy's first address to the nation about the crisis on October 22.

Sorensen was devastated by Kennedy's assassination, which he called "the most deeply traumatic experience of my life...I had never considered a future without him."[7] He submitted a letter of resignation to President Johnson the day after the assassination but was persuaded to stay through the transition. Sorensen drafted Johnson's first address to Congress as well as the 1964 State of the Union. He officially resigned February 29, 1964, and was the first member of the Kennedy Administration to do so.

Prior to his resignation, Sorensen stated his intent to write Kennedy's biography, calling it "the book that President Kennedy had intended to write with my help after his second term." He was not the only Kennedy aide to turn to writing; historian and Special Assistant Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. wrote his Pulitzer-winning memoir A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House during the same time span. Sorensen's biography Kennedy was published in 1965 and became an international bestseller.
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Save the Economy - Vote Republican!

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If you want to know what the stock market is going to do in reaction to the midterm elections, here is a bit of inside information. The greater the victory by the Republicans the greater the economy and stock market will improve. So if you want to speed up the economic recovery, vote Republican.

In most off year elections the minority party wins the most seats and the stock market always gains more on average after a midterm election than after a presidential election. Obama should know, he got elected and the stock market promptly crashed.

The market has been slowly trending up this year as the Republican victory got nearer. The larger the GOP victory tomorrow, the stronger the market will react for the better.

Part is a result of the anti-business attitude of our young president, part is a result of the social leaning agenda of Obama and the Democrats, part is because of the record setting deficit spending and record increase in the national debt under Obama, and part is the historical pattern of minority success in midterm elections.

Make no mistake, the Republicans are going to win and win big.

According to Brian Gendreau, market strategist for Financial Network, in the period from 1922 to 2006, the average gain of the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the 90 trading days following midterm elections (roughly November until mid-March) was 8.5%, according to a new study he authored.

That's almost 5% higher than the Dow's gains in presidential election years.

During the midterm elections the only time the ruling party gained seats in both the House of Representatives and Senate was in the 2002 elections, and the market fell afterward - making it the only time since 1942 that the Dow has fallen after a midterm election.

In the days before midterms, the market generally tends to perform well, just as it has this year.

"The market starts to go up beforehand and it just doesn't stop," said Gendreau.

While past performance is no indication of future success, consider this: The Standard & Poor's 500 Index has posted gains for every 200-trading day period following mid-term congressional elections since 1942. Stocks surge, on average, by a whopping 18.3% in those 200 days, according to the Leuthold Group, a Minneapolis-based investment-research firm.

The S&P index chalked up its biggest 200-day gain, 30.5%, in 1942, as the tide began to turn in World War II. The smallest gain, 3.9%, came in 1946, as investors worried that the economy would sink into another depression.

Like I said, save the economy, vote Republican!
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Sarah Palin calls CBS Reporters "Corrupt Bastards" - CBS Responds in Doubletalk

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If ever there was a clear case of how Sarah Palin is treated by the Lame Street media it is this latest gun battle. Sarah hear a tape of KTVA television reporters planning stories to smear the Palin backed Tea Party candidate in Alaska, Joe Miller, and understandably went public calling the actions and words of the reporters acts by "corrupt bastards".

She added that CBS might stand for the Corrupt Bastards Club in deference to the Katie Couric effort to embarrass her during a CBS campaign interview. The CBS network in NYC was inundated with calls about it and promptly put out the following statement:

“KTVA News is owned by the Alaska Broadcasting Co., not CBS. No CBS staffers were involved and CBS has no knowledge of and no comment.

Conveniently, CBS forgot to mention that KTVA is, in fact, a CBS affiliate just as Palin stated. One supposes they meant to imply they had nothing to do with KTVA. According to Wikipedia, "In the broadcasting industry (especially in North America), a network affiliate (or affiliated station) is a local broadcaster which carries some or all of the program line-up of a television or radio network, but is owned by a company other than the owner of the network.

That would indicate that KTVA is a CBS affiliate, contrary to the omission by CBS, and there is usually direct ties between the news departments of the network and their affiliates. With all the efforts by CBS to discredit Sarah Palin since 2008, did CBS news ever use the CBS affiliate reporters at KTVA for field reports from Alaska? Most likely, and if they did they are trained and indoctrinated in he network ways.

The actual CBS affiliate, KTVA, responded in an equally bizarre fashion. The station’s General Manager Jerry Bever vehemently denies that, responding on KTVA.com:

“While the recording is real, the allegations are untrue,” adding, “The perception that this garbled, out of context recording may leave is unfortunate, but to allege that our staff was discussing or planning to create or fabricate stories regarding candidate Miller is absurd. The complete conversation was about what others might be able to do to cause disruption within the Miller campaign, not what KTVA could do.”

The clips I heard clearly indicated the reporters were discussing ways to trap the campaign into bad press by searching out sex offenders in crowds at a Miller event or causing "chaos" at a campaign event and showing a fight. Try as they might, someone got caught planning a very un-journalism like attack on Miller and Palin was dead right, it does reflect the Corrupt Bastards in the media who attempt to manufacture the news.
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al-Qaeda attempts to disrupt American Election with bombs aimed at Chicago Synagogues

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In an election eve present to America Osama bin Laden continues to deliver on his long standing promise to disrupt the American system and destroy our economy with the election eve discovery of two explosive devices apparently designed to bomb Jewish synagogues in our President's hometown of Chicago.

Whether the devices could have done any damage or not remains to be determined by forensics experts in the UK and Dubai, who intercepted the packages enroute from Yemen at local airports outside of London and in Dubai.  US anti-terrorism experts are joining them to evaluate the materials.

While it remains to be seen if this episode that captured the attention of the American news media for the entire day was a media stunt to disract attention from the election or a real threat to America, it does show that bin Laden is alive and well and America better not take terrorism lightly.

Recently it has been France, the UK and Germany whose intelligence agencies have been stopping the terrorist acts before deaths and destruction have been inflicted on the people of Europe but the two packages discovered by European authorities this time were headed for America and were possibly intended to go off the same time President Obama was campaiging in Chicago this weekend although neither was going to a location where the President was scheduled to appear.

Still, the fact the packages were on the way and might have been the first successful terrorist attacks since Obama was elected and might have occurred in the same town where the president was appearing fit the typical modus operandi of bin Laden who is a master at intimidation along with being a deadly enemy of the USA.

Reportedly living in relative comfort at a house in Pakistan rather than the dingy caves we have been led to believe, bin Laden, who was trained and funded by the USA to fight the Russians in Afghanistan before turning on us over Israeli policy, continues to be the most visible example of how we are not winning the war on terrorism.

Several additional packages sent from Yemen were intercepted in New York and Philadelphia but nothing was found.  Still, the fact the international intelligence communities cooperated with Americans and were able to stop all shipments before reaching trheir intended locations shows cooperation among nations is better than ever

While the extent of the threat remains to be seen, it is a reminder that nearly ten years after 9-11 Osama bin Laden has not given up his efforts to drive the US out of Arab nations and the Middle East.
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Terrorism's Roots - Yemen - Osama bin Laden & Yemen

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TELEGRAPH UK


Yemen focus


For most people, al-Qaeda and its chief Osama bin Laden are inextricably linked to Afghanistan but it was in Yemen that al-Qaeda's war against the West began.


Praveen Swami, Diplomatic Editor
Published: 8:35PM BST 29 Oct 2010


It is bin Laden's ancestral home and in December, 1998, it was where a little-known Islamist group responded to his calls for attacks on US and British targets by kidnapping sixteen tourists. Three British citizens and one Australian were killed when Yemeni forces stormed the kidnappers' safe house, 175 miles south of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.


Since then al-Qaeda has branched into a global network and built new terror training camps and bases across Asia.


But now it has returned and Yemen is once again emerging as the global jihadist movement's new citadel.


Increasingly plots targeting the west have had a Yemen connection - often involving al-Qaeda operatives inspired and trained by the organisation's key leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was raised in Yemen, educated at US universities, a mentor for three of members of the al-Qaeda hijack squad which carried out the 9/11 attacks.


No hard data exists on just how many terrorists al-Qaeda has at its disposal in Yemen, but most intelligence estimates run to several hundred. Most are Yemeni, but authorities in that country have arrested at least 50 foreign nationals linked to al-Qaeda - among them, British, US, French and Malaysian citizens.


Jonathan Evans, the director-general of the Security Service, said last month that threats to the UK are increasingly emanating from Yemen and Somalia - not just the war-torn lands along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.


Yemen has been engaged in a bitter battle against these forces, using its air force and artillery to target the al-Qaeda bases. Colonel Mohamed al-Khodr, the head of security in the troubled South Yemen province of Abyan said earlier this month that his country's forces were "engaged in what amounts to guerrilla war". He admitted that "we have not managed to win the battle and are facing difficulties". More than 50 Yemeni security force personnel have been killed by al-Qaeda this year


Yemen's al-Qaeda faction is known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and was yesterday accused by US Homelands Security of involvement in the cargo plane terror alert. It is led by is Nasser Abdul Karim al-Wuhayshi, a former personal assistant to bin Laden. Al-Wuhayshi was arrested by Iranian authorities and extradited to Yemen, but escaped from prison in 2006.


Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has demonstrated a high degree of ability to hit Yemen were it most hurts - hitting the diplomats, aid workers and tourists who are so essential to the country's cash-strapped economy. Earlier this month, al-Qaeda terrorists targeted the deputy chief of the UK's embassy in Sana'a, Fionna Gibb. In April, an al-Qaeda suicide bomber almost succeeded in assassinating Tim Torlott, Britain's ambassador to Yemen. Last year, the jihadist group targeted a convoy bearing the families of four South Koreans it had killed in an earlier suicide attack.


The group is responsible for the publication of the al-Qaeda magazine which gives advice to would-be militants. The latest edition included a section on how to mow people down with a pickup truck and other tips on how to kill Americans. It indicated that the terrorist network was moving away from terror "spectaculars" towards smaller scale operations.


Yemen's evolution as a jihadist launch-pad dates back to the 1980s, when hundreds of its citizens joined in the jihad against the Soviet Union's forces in Saudi Arabia. Though born to a Syrian mother, and raised in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's father Mohammad bin Laden hailed from the mountainous Hadramawt-region village of Ribaat Bashen, and the al-Qaeda chief often said he dreamt of one day returning there.


The Afghan jihad veterans played an important role in Yemen's political life after they returned. In 1994, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's president, recruited their services to defeat left-wing separatists in the south; many later received government handouts and rewards. Sheikh Abdulmajid Zindani, a former bin Laden associate, remains among the country's most influential people.


British nationals played a key role in some of al-Qaeda's first attacks in Yemen. In December 1998 and January 1999, British nationals belonging to an organisation calling itself the Supporters of Shariah (Islamic Law) were convicted of attempting to blow up British targets in Yemen. The organisation was led by Mustafa Kamel Mustafa - a man better known by his jihadist nom de guerre, Abu Hamza.


The son of an Egyptian military officer, and a former nightclub bouncer, al Masri discovered radical Islamism while he was a student at Brighton Polytechnic.
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He is currently in prison in Belmarsh awaiting the outcome of a US request for his extradition on terrorist charges.
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Osama bin Laden threatens France - Sarkozy says France will not be intimidated

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Paris, France (CNN) -- The French government will not be swayed by a threatening message apparently recorded by Osama Bin Laden, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday.

"It goes without saying that France does not let its politics be dictated by anyone, and certainly not by terrorists," Sarkozy said while attending the European Union summit in Brussels Friday.


Bin Laden warned France to get its troops out of Afghanistan and not to oppress Muslims at home in a tape broadcast by the Al-Jazeera network Wednesday and authenticated by the French Foreign Ministry on Thursday.


"If you want to tyrannize and think that it is your right to ban the free women from wearing the burqa, isn't it our right to expel your occupying forces, your men from our lands by striking them by the neck?" the speaker demands, in reference to recently passed French legislation barring women from covering their faces in public.


"This message only confirms the reality of the terrorist threat against which the French authorities have taken and continue to take appropriate measures," the ministry said in a statement Thursday.

Sarkozy wins Pension Reform - saves French economy


PARIS (Dow Jones)--Anti-government industrial action and protests continued to diminish Friday after President Nicolas Sarkozy's contentious pension reform was voted into law.




"We have the satisfaction of having accomplished our duty" on pension reform, Dominique Paille, a spokesman for Sarkozy's conservative UMP party told French television.


The pension reform cleared parliamentary hurdles Wednesday but will be delayed a week or two as the opposition Socialist party, as expected, appeals to the country's constitutional court which for its part is expected to dismiss the appeal.


Sarkozy has "by and large won the pensions battle," Douglas Webber, a political science professor at the Fontainebleau-based international business school INSEAD said. "Despite a few concessions, he's got pretty much what he wanted, keeping his political majority intact and united at the same time," Webber added.


Publicly, Sarkozy was modest. "There is only one winner in this affair and that's the social security system and the French people," Sarkozy told reporters on Friday. "French people's pensions will be funded," he added.


After a union-led national day of protest and strikes Thursday fizzled out, striking refinery workers were heading back to work Friday and a crippling strike at the key Fos-Lavera oil port came to an end.
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Obamaville - Obama Dominates Television Comedy and Entertainment but What has he done for the People?

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Our young and inexperienced president has continued to dominate the television entertainment, talk, comedy and sports shows since he took office where he is in control of the agenda and can get an occasional laugh. In fact, no other president in history has come close to the number of appearances Obama has made on Oprah, the View, Jon Stewart, Letterman, Leno an on and on.

At the same time our kind of telegenic president, who now allows comedians to call him "Dude", has only held two real news conferences the past year. Even George Bush made himself available to the news media far, far more than Obama. Why are the Obama people so dedicated to protecting him from news questions while making it seem as if he is always available?

I suppose if my domestic legislative accomplishments could not be understood, like health care, financial reform and the stimulus, and my foreign accomplishments did not exist, like failures to stop Iran, North Korea, Israel, Afghanistan, Russia or China from doing things we don't like I might not want to face the music either.

As the economy stumbles along, unemployment remains far higher than we were promised when we gave Obama his trillion dollar stimulus, health care costs continue to spiral up, wars get worse and relations keep deteriorating, it is probably better that Obama be kept far away from the news media on the comedy and entertainment shows.

Heaven forbid if the news media, what used to be the watchdogs of the public, ever got to know the truth about what Obama is doing.
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Obamaville - Obama Preaches to Black Choir as Clinton Attempts to stop Black Candidate

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As President Obama continues his Don Quixote type wanderings searching for a place where he is welcome to campaign, his henchmen like former President Bill Clinton are out trying to play Godfather on his behalf and get the Black candidate for Senate in Florida to withdraw so the White Independent candidate can win.

Obama may be trying to shore up his base and get the Black community to once again blindly follow his lead to the polls and vote Democratic but his behind the scene efforts to cherry pick those Democrats he wants to win continues through surrogates like Clinton. It is a pattern we have seen before as Clinton also tried to get the Democrat who won the Pennsylvania Senate primary to withdraw because he ran against Obama's handpicked choice.

In Florida Black Democrat Kendrick Meek condemned the tactics of Obama, Clinton and Charlie Christ, the Obama favorite, for attempting to dictate what choice the voters had in the election. In Pennsylvania the people voted against the President.

But come Tuesday the Black voters may think twice about the president they elected and how he has spent much of his first two years ignoring the Black politicians while assuming the Black voters will continue to blindly do as they are told.

The same political strategy was used by Obama on the Hispanic community in which he promised them an immigration reform bill then failed to even introduce the bill. Yet he still expects them to blindly support him, his candidates and his agenda whatever that might be.

To what degree the Blacks and Hispanics will allow themselves to be taken for granted remains to be seen but voter enthusiasm from these key Democratic constituencies is way down and for good reason, they are tired of being used. So far only Obama's Wall Street financiers have benefitted from the Obama agenda.
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Both the Media and Political Parties are clueless about the Tea Party

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After watching the evolution of the Tea Party over the past two years I often wonder if the Main street and Lame Street media who cover the Tea Party have listened to a word said by Tea Party participants. Since we know they condemned the Tea Party back in the beginning as dangerous radical fringe, and we know some in the media like Nora O'Donnell of NBC have been bitterly jealous or hateful of Tea Party leaders like Sarah Palin. Just yesterday O'Donnell said she was sick of hearing how Palin is "attractive and appealing".

So our first exposure to the Tea Party was the health care town hall fiascos of the Democrats when Nancy Pelosi said her congressmen were physically threatened by these radicals and her pit bull Steny Hoyer organized his own mercenaries to control the tea people, his being the SEIU thugs who claimed to put Obama in office.

Obama, Pelosi, Reid and all the liberal Democrats quickly joined the media trashing of the Tea Party people and apparently they thought the Tea people would just go away. Then along came the election to fill Teddy Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat and the radical Tea Party helped propel a Republican unknown named Scott Brown to a stunning capture of the Kennedy seat.

From that point on the Tea party treatment in the media changed, though not necessarily for the better. For the next year the media looked for every nut case, oddball sign and strange utterance from anyone even remotely connected to the Tea party in an effort to prove these were not ordinary citizens but were escaped mental patients.

But the scorn and disbelief by the media and politicians paled compared to the actions by the political parties as both joined in a holy war against the Tea party as both began to realize their old boy political network was threatened by these outsiders.

You see, the Tea party advocated a conservative platform aimed solely at the top issues of every citizen in America. Well, at least all the citizens except Obama and the Democrats who only seemed able to talk about health care, financial reform, and some stimulus that would keep unemployment under 8%. As the unemployment shot up to 9.7% it was obvious Obama and the Democrats had filed to see the light.

The Tea Party people wanted less government, a balanced budget and a reduced national deficit. Quite the radical agenda. There were no social issues. It didn't matter if you were Republican, Democrat or Independent, all were welcome to the Tea party movement.

It was about this time Sarah Palin and others took a very big chance and embraced the Tea Party movement and the grassroots candidates being fostered by the Tea party. The good old boys who controlled the GOP party had to be having fits and may even turned on Sarah to punish her for helping the enemy, outsiders that could not be controlled.

By the time the early primaries of this year came around the Tea party was knocking off Republican favorites and someone in the GOP machine woke up and realized if they embraced the Tea party primary winners, the Republican advantage in the off year election could be turned into a landslide.

Despite continuing efforts by a media appalled by the fact normal Tea party people thought they should be elected, and in spite of the media and Obama/Pelosi efforts to discredit and laugh off the Tea party, the outside radicals caught the attention of Main Street America and suddenly became a powerful political force Independent of the two old political parties.

Main Street Independents were first to embrace the ideals of the Tea party followed by disgruntled members of both the Democrat and Republican parties who were disgusted with the direction of both mainstream parties. Late last spring when the number of registered Independents in America surged past the registered Democrats and Republicans for the first time in over 100 years it struck a note of terror in even the old professional politicians.

Of course the media were the last to stop trashing the Tea party as the Lame Street media have never been known to catch on to popular opinion that conflicts with their own prejudices. Over 100 viable Tea party candidates got nominated to major offices and hundreds more are viable candidates for state legislatures and other local offices yet still the media focuses all attention on the political mistakes of a handful of Tea party candidates while ignoring the many legitimate candidates.

Just today the liberal mouth pieces of MSNBC were blaming the Republicans for letting "inferior" Tea party candidates run and win in primary elections when the GOP could have won the general election with traditional GOP candidates.

They still don't get it. The Tea party is not and never has been a Republican creation. Right now it is the only party in America that stands on it's principles. The Tea party would rather lose an election trying to get an outsider elected than back a candidate who will change positions to get elected. Such integrity no longer seems to exist with professional politicians or parties.

The Tea party winners will swell the GOP landslide because the GOP is opposed to the Obama agenda, pure and simple. It is the Obama agenda that has totally ignored the needs of the people. After the election, if the Tea party winners embrace campaign and campaign finance reform and force through, in order to stop special interests and the selling of America, long overdue changes, both political parties and the media will lose control of the national agenda and America will be returned to the People where it belongs.

By the way, the professional politicians might have pocketed more than TWO BILLION DOLLARS in campaign contributions, but the Main Street Lame Street media has pocketed over THREE BILLION DOLLARS in media buys from the same politicians and special interests. So just who do we think is owned by the billions in spending?
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