Global Realities= Dangerous Territory with Loss of Checks and Balances

President-Elect Obama Faces a Dangerous World

So much will ride on the new president’s willingness — or refusal — to accept and act upon global realities.

As voters stepped into the polls, they came armed with their opinions, their emotions, their gut feelings, their peer pressure, their community organizers’ suggestions and a variety of other decision-making tools that will never supplant bare-bones knowledge on the issues.

Last time around, it was Diddy warning citizens to “Vote or Die,” but last year a study by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press nearly gave the world of punditry a collective heart attack. Looking at the survey somberly reminds us that these are the people who voted, volunteered, were perhaps cajoled into registering by an ambitious, compensated town crier with a clipboard.

Only 36 percent of Pew respondents could name Vladimir Putin as the president of Russia — even when he’d been president for nearly eight years. Only two-thirds could name their own state’s governor. Sixty-nine percent could even identify our vice president, even with Dick Cheney’s starring role as the butt of liberal jokes. Just 37 could peg the chief justice of the Supreme Court as leaning conservative, and even fewer respondents, 32 percent, could name Sunni as the Islam branch opposite Shia. And on, and on.

Too many American voters sleepwalk through the world, and yet lined up to pick the next leader of the free world. And now, Barack Obama, you have the weight of the world on your shoulders — a world where many of its inhabitants would like to see a weaker United States so that they can feel stronger themselves, and have won agreement from many on the American left. You have constituents and global onlookers alike who think that the reputation of the U.S. is paramount to doing the right — even if unpopular — thing.

Here are five things you should remember about the world today — and that you should cling to stronger than upper-class citizens’ money:

Read the rest2Next

Source:Pajamas Media

The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along..
In politics, stupidity is not a handicap. – Napoleon Bonaparte

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. – George Bush

George Washington’s: Advice to us

Computer Systems Of Both Obama and McCain Campaigns Victims of Foreign Entity Cyberattack

Do you know where one of the “front lines” is in international war / finance / fraud? Computers. At least President Elect Obama now knows this first hand.

1)The computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyberattack by an unknown “foreign entity,” prompting a federal investigation, NEWSWEEK reports today.

At the Obama headquarters in midsummer, technology experts detected what they initially thought was a computer virus—a case of “phishing,” a form of hacking often employed to steal passwords or credit-card numbers. But by the next day, both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: “You have a problem way bigger than what you understand,” an agent told Obama’s team. “You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system.” The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, to the same effect: “You have a real problem … and you have to deal with it.”
—————
Officials at the FBI and the White House told the Obama campaign that they believed a foreign entity or organization sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps’ policy positions—information that might be useful in negotiations with a future administration. The Feds assured the Obama team that it had not been hacked by its political opponents. (Obama technical experts later speculated that the hackers were Russian or Chinese.) A security firm retained by the Obama campaign took steps to secure its computer system and end the intrusion. White House and FBI officials had no comment earlier this week.

Nothing like being a victim to alert a person to the danger. I wonder if any technology-related policies will benefit from Obama’s victimization.

2)Meanwhile, in Russia, things are heating up. Foxnews has a piece about Russian President Medvedev “sending a signal” to the US.

Russia will deploy missiles near NATO member Poland in response to U.S. missile defense plans, President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday in his first state of the nation speech.

Medvedev also singled out the United States for criticism, casting Russia’s war with Georgia in August and the global financial turmoil as consequences of aggressive, selfish U.S. policies.

Speaking just hours after Obama was declared the victor in the U.S. presidential election, Medvedev said he hoped the incoming administration will take steps to improve badly damaged U.S. ties with Russia. He suggested it is up to the U.S. — not the Kremlin — to seek to improve relations.

“I stress that we have no problem with the American people, no inborn anti-Americanism. And we hope that our partners, the U.S. administration, will make a choice in favor of full-fledged relations with Russia,” Medvedev said.

Well, here we go. A Russian demand for a new American President to kiss some butt. Hmmmmm.

sources: NEWSWEEK Foxnews NoQuarterusa

Russia believes Media Supporting Obama/Media Surprised?

Even Russia Sees It– The US Media Is Openly Supporting Obama

This week Newt Gingrich said the way the media elites treat Governor Sarah Palin is like the way the Polish Communists used to treat opposition leader Lech Walesa. Newt even compared the US media to Pravda.

Now Russia agrees.
A Russian elections committee sees major bias by the US media in this year’s national elections.
Via Ace of Spades and The National Post:

Russia’s Central Elections Committee has also assigned its Centre for the Study of Election Technology to review the U. S. election campaign.

A preliminary report prepared by the group, after studying U. S. media coverage on the NBC, CBS and ABC television networks since September, has concluded Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, has a “hidden advantage.”

A preliminary report obtained by the Russian daily online newspaper Kommersant concludes the U. S. television networks devoted more time to Republican candidate John McCain, but “the material that makes up that time difference can be assessed as negative.”

The Russian study also said Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential pick, has been subjected to more criticism than her Democratic counterpart, Senator Joe Biden.

It adds that when the presidential candidates’ platforms are described, Mr. Obama’s is described last, to make it look better, and when platforms are compared, “Obama’s is presented preferable.”

The observations appear to ape western criticisms of Russia’s elections in which international observers have complained Russia’s television networks are overwhelmingly pro-Kremlin and offer unbalanced and unfair coverage of opposition candidates.

Mark Levin has more on the media’s open and brazen in their attempts to influence the outcome of this election.

Even liberal Bob Kerrey sees the obvious media bias this year.

Note they’re releasing this defensively, to prove that Russia’s own media abuses are just par for the course, no worse than that in the US.

And, apart from the murder of opposition journalists, they’re pretty much right.

hat tip: Gateway Pundit

Media is going to have to pay up to get close and personal..Surprise Surprise! It’s the Money Honey!

At last, the media is beginning to realize just how it will be treated in the event of an Obama Administration:

The Obama campaign is putting a hefty price tag on the best camera and reporting positions for news organizations covering Barack Obama’s outdoor election night activities in downtown Chicago. If a reporter wants access to the file center–which will be the best place to find Obama officials and spokesmen–be prepared to write a check for $935. The cheapest place a reporter could stand on a riser with a view is $880.

That $935 covers one reporter in a heated file tent, power, cable tv, internet and food. I am told by an Obama spokesman who did not want his name used that this just covers costs and they are not turning a profit on this. The planners could have built in more al a carte options.

This is an outrageous pay to play plan that caters to national elite outlets with deep pockets.

I am not asking for a free ride–but this is pricey and does not take into account some reporters won’t need power, cable, internet or food but will crave the access more than the food. As I was talking to this unnamed spokesman about this enormously expensive set-up, he did say–that a news outlet could rotate people in and out of the tent on that one credential. Great.

A general media area will be created where a reporter could watch for free, but the set-up is separate, unequal and clearly second class when it comes to getting top access to campaign people.

Doubtless, the Obama people think that covering Obama is a privilege and an honor, one that the media will gladly pay through the nose for. On the upside, perhaps such displays of arrogance will convince the media to stop covering for the Obama campaign’s gaffes. Hope springs eternal, anyway.

Source : Red State

Dead Heat Rising

This sounds like an interesting book…You can find J.Rosenberg on mysidebar.

Transcript from Glenn Beck interview with Joel Rosenberg

Dead Heat By Joel Rosenberg

GLENN:   How about Barack Obama saying that he wants to meet with the leaders of Iran?  What do you say?  Jimmy Carter says let’s meet with Syria, that will be fantastic.  Meanwhile Israel is preparing for war.  Israel is doing these drills.  Do we have Joel Rosenberg on the phone?  He’s in Jerusalem.  Hello, Joel.

ROSENBERG:  Hello, Glenn, how are you doing?  Three days away.  Hang in there.

GLENN:  Three days.  Then I’m free at last, free at last.  Joel, tell me about the drills that are happening right now in Israel and they say, you know, this is just ordinary run-of-the-mill stuff but you say it’s not, right?

ROSENBERG:  No, this is very, very significant.  The entire country of Israel is engaged in a five-day exercise, the largest emergency drill ever performed in this country, a country of 7 million people.  1.7 million schoolchildren today had a race in the bomb shelters practicing as one part of the nationwide effort to prepare for a massive avalanche of missiles coming down from Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.  We just met with the Israel welfare minister this morning, one of the senior advisors to primary Olmert to be briefed, a number of evangelical leaders we’ve got over here for an epicenter conference tomorrow.  And he basically made the case that the existential threat to Israel is Iran.  They have no doubt here in Israel that Iran is feverishly trying to build, buy or steal nuclear weapons.  What they don’t understand is why Russia is helping them and why the United States and NATO seems to be asleep at the switch.

GLENN:  Let me just switch gears with you here because I mean, you know, we’ve got Iran installing more centrifuges.  You know, I’ve been talking about this for years that Iran is the head of the snake over there.  This is just an evil, evil group of people that are preparing for the Mahdi which if you — I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this, Joel.  If you look at the 12th Mahdi and the way these nut jobs over in Iraq interprets the Qur’an and everything else, this guy looks an awful lot like the antichrist, doesn’t he?

ROSENBERG:  He does, but he’s not.  The Bible describes antichrist with a capital A and a little A.

GLENN:  Right.

ROSENBERG:  Meaning there’s no question that what Ahmadinejad is in the spirit of the antichrist and what I mean by that is he wants to annihilate Judaeo-Christian civilization.

GLENN:  I’m not talking about Ahmadinejad.  I’m talking about the 12th Imam.

ROSENBERG:  Oh, absolutely.  There’s certainly that same feeling.  Now, the Bible describes in Daniel 9 that the antichrist will come from Roman origins, from the people who destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D., but that being said this will certainly be a false Messiah of which Jesus described in Matthew 24, three times in one chapter describing what to watch for in the last days.  Jesus said watch for false Messiahs and this will be one of them.  Now, what I don’t know honestly, Glenn, is that is it possible that in the next few weeks or months or years someone is actually going to emerge that CNN and Fox and MSNBC and all these other networks will start to cover, Time will have them on the cover and could end up being the Mahdi of the year.  I don’t know.  You know, we don’t know what they’re talking about.  What we know is that Ahmadinejad and his allies believe so passionately that this Mahdi, this Islamic Messiah is coming and what’s driving their foreign policy in Iran right now is their belief that they need to get ready for this Mahdi by annihilating two countries:  Israel whom they call the little Satan, and the United States whom they call the great Satan.  And anyone in Washington who doesn’t understand the theological drive that’s pushing Iranian foreign policy is at risk of being blindsided by an evil they may not see coming.

GLENN:  Well, here’s the thing that most people don’t understand and I didn’t understand it for a long time, we’re the great Satan and little Satan, blah, blah, blah.  What they mean by that is it is the same story line that Christians have.  For the most part it’s basically the same story except Israel is the little A antichrist and we are the big A antichrist.  They don’t — we look at it as a person.  They look at it as a country or an overwhelming force, right?

ROSENBERG:  They do.  Now, there is in the Qur’an an actual character named the Gajal (ph) who becomes an actual sort of antichrist figure, an actual person.  But you are absolutely right.  Radical Islam is a mirror image and therefore a massive distortion of the Jewish and Christian scriptures but there’s a lot of similarities.  It’s just completely opposite.

GLENN:  Right.

ROSENBERG:  They have a war of Gog and Magog, a Russian Iranian alliance that attacks Israel but they feel it wins.

GLENN:  Wait, wait.  I just want you to slow down on that.

ROSENBERG:  Okay.

GLENN:  Gog and Magog, anybody who is a Christian grew up hearing Gog and Magog and you don’t even know what it is.  It is Iran and Russia aligning themselves.  It’s already been done.  It’s an amazing thing when you look at — well, let me ask you this because this is what you do for a living now, Joel.  Would you say that most of the big things are either, have already been done or they are on the verge of being done?  The players and the pieces are in place to be able to get you to the end time?

ROSENBERG:  Absolutely.  You know, there are a thousand prophecies in the Bible.  More than 500 of them have already been fulfilled.  The last almost 500 of them deal with specific events that happen in the last days.  Now, I’m literally looking out of my window in a hotel looking at the Mount of Olives and the temple mount here in Jerusalem as I speak to you and on the Mount of Olives Jesus was asked by the disciples, hey, when are you coming back and what should we watch for, what are the signs of your return.  Now, Jesus could have given a very Washington political answer, a Rumsfeld answer:  No comment, next question.  But he doesn’t.  He answered the question.  And when you look at that list and you look at events that are happening in this world today, it’s kind of eerie because you can check them off one by one and then when you expand that list to look at other references to, quote, the last days or the latter times in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, you start saying, my goodness.

For example, you just described this prophecy of the war of Gog and Magog which as you and I have talked about before is Russia and Iran.  Now, what’s amazing about that is that Russia and Iran have never had an alliance with each other in the 2500 years since Ezekiel wrote the prophecy.  Now, is that proof that the prophecy is going to be fulfilled in our lifetime, much less soon?  No, you’ve got to be careful not to overreach.  However —

GLENN:  People have been saying this for thousands of years.

ROSENBERG:  Yes.  However, for 2,500 years this alliance, this political and military alliance in those two countries has never happened.  It’s why heads are starting to turn.  And when you add all the other things, the preparations that ultra orthodox Jews are making, for example, to building their Temple, this is kind of interesting.

GLENN:  How much of that is done and in storage?  I’ve heard that the Temple, everything that is needed is done and is in storage just waiting for the space.

ROSENBERG:  Well, the architectural plans are finished, the outfits, the clothing that the priests will wear are finished.  The implements that will be used for Temple sacrifice are largely finished.  And two years ago — actually three years ago now, the summer of 2005 the Sanhedrin, the group of 71 rabbis that will govern the Temple was reconvened for the first time in 1600 years.  So I call these strobe lights that you are coming in on a runway.  We’re not entirely sure how far from touchdown that we are but when you look at the preparations being done in Iraq to rebuild the literal ancient city of Babylon, they’re underway.

I interviewed the Iraqi finance minister for my book “Epicenter.”  He’s a senior Iraqi advisor to the prime minister and he described for me — it’s on the record in “Epicenter,” he described for me the plans they have to rebuild that city and the tremendous cultural center with Holiday Inn and an amusement park.  It’s quite fascinating.  Look, a lot of people say, you know, how do we even know that — I mean, people have been saying for thousands of years the end of the year, blah, blah, blah.  I understand that.  But I’m standing right now in the nation of Israel which did not exist for 2,000 years and the only document on the planet that says it will exist in the last days is the Bible, and 60 years ago this country was reborn.  Jews started coming back to the Holy Land.  The ancient ruins have been rebuilt.  The deserts are blooming.  We’ve taken hundreds of evangelical leaders over the last few days through this country to see that Israel is the super sign, the one that you say, okay.  When the Bible says look for wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famine, persecution of the believers in the last days, yes, that’s all happening but it’s always happened.  What makes it different now is that Israel has been reborn as a country and that Russia and Iran are forming and alliance to annihilate her.  It’s got — you know, these are what I’ve been writing these novels about, nonfiction book “Epicenter.”  This new book, “Dead Heat” is the aftermath.  But the point us even for a skeptic, even for a cynic you have to say, goodness gracious, there are some trend lines that don’t make sense outside of the prophecies of the Bible.

GLENN:  I tell you, Joel, we want to continue our conversation in a couple of weeks if you don’t mind.

ROSENBERG:  Sure, absolutely.

GLENN:  You are coming back and I’d like to do a series with you on radio and television about the different things that you’re seeing and kind of spell it all out.  I just finished your book last week, week before last.

ROSENBERG: “Dead Heat.”

GLENN:  I mean, it’s just tremendous.

ROSENBERG:  Thank you.

GLENN:  I told you this last night on television it’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone explain.  The United States is not mentioned in the book of Revelation.  Nowhere does it say the United States or refer to us or anything like that.

ROSENBERG:  Right.

GLENN:  And people have said, well, that’s just because we’re all going to be in — we’re such a perfect, kind, Jesus-loving nation that we’re all going to go up in the rapture.  And I’m like, have you read the news lately?  But your book, you take a different bet on it that we’re going to be vaporized, that several cities will be vaporized.  I think — and you mention this in the book.  You know, it could have been an economic vaporization or anything.  I mean, there’s a million things that could take us down right now that would make us not able to participate in the, you know, in the destruction or the defense of Israel.

ROSENBERG:  Well, that’s right.  Now, I want to be clear with you on radio as I was on television last night which was the first line of this new novel, “Dead Heat” is I pray to God this one never comes true.  The eerie way of the fictional elements seeming to come true and I don’t want people to think that the Bible predicts the United States is going to get hit with nuclear terrorism.  I don’t.  What I’m laying out is a fictional scenario that I think is potential consistent with the scriptures and which give people a chance to think through what might that look like and how might we be blindsided in the midst of a dead heat, in the midst of a campaign in which the country’s so focused on an election which the race is so tight and the country is so bitterly divided that we are just not looking when we get hit by something that we should have seen coming but we didn’t.

GLENN:  It’s a frightening thing.  Joel Rosenberg, the author of “Dead Heat.”  Listen, if you read the “Left Behind” series, like the “Left Behind” series, this is left behind, I think, this is “Left Behind” for talk radio listeners.  This is all of the real life things that are going on right now and you can look at them and go, oh, my gosh, and you can see it.  It doesn’t start on an airplane with everybody disappearing.  It takes you all the way through on the real life things that are going on.  It’s a “Dead Heat,” Joel Rosenberg.  Great book, sir, and stay safe in Israel, will you?

ROSENBERG:  Enjoy your vacation and I look forward to seeing you when we get back.