Yid with Lid

A provision in the Obamacare bill signed by the President mandates that all businesses issue a 1099 form for all vendor payments totaling $600 or more on an annual basis. Scheduled to begin in 2012, this new vastly expands current requirements and places an incredible burden on both small businesses, the IRS and for those environmentalists in the room, trees. 
Think about it for a moment. Imagine all the 1099s office supply stores will receive from small business owners. Imagine the back-office policies, procedures and new staff they will need to gather the forms and store data from these tens-of-thousands, if not millions, of forms.And they not only will be reviving 1099s, they will be issuing the forms. Imagine the burden to small businesses. Congressional Republicans are trying to change all that.House Republicans will try to use legislation by Ways and Means Chairman Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) that extends Build America Bonds to repeal the mandate requiring small businesses to file 1099 forms to the IRS for any purchase over $600.
"This expanded 1099 reporting mandate has really gotten under the skin of small business owners, and rightly so," said Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council president and CEO Karen Kerrigan in prepared remarks. "The burden of the new mandate will be tedious, time-consuming, and costly. Business owners across the country are furious that Congress slid the measure in a massive health care bill without understanding its deep impact."

House Republicans claim the mandate's expense will take money away from businesses that otherwise could have been used to hire additional workers or retain existing ones.
The mandate was added to the health care bill to ensure small business tax compliance. Even the National Taxpayer Advocate within the IRS is dissing the 1099 provision
An estimated 40 million taxpayers will be subject to the requirement, including 26 million who run sole proprietorships, according to a report released this week by National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson.. Olson's office, which operates independently within the IRS, flagged the new reporting requirements as one of its priority issues for the next year. Like many who have delved into the details of the new rules, Olson is concerned about their far-reaching scope and potential unintended consequences.

"The new reporting burden, particularly as it falls on small businesses, may turn out to be disproportionate as compared with any resulting improvement in tax compliance," the Taxpayer Advocate Service wrote in a report released this week.In its letters to the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) asked for a repeal of the provision:
"We believe section 9006 of the Act should be repealed because the provision imposes extremely burdensome information reporting requirements on business taxpayers that cannot be justified in terms of the limited utility such information reports will provide to the government."

The letter went on to say, "The expansion of information reporting may prove to be so burdensome to small businesses that we believe it will significantly contribute to the hurdles to growth and formation that businesses face."

While acknowledging the IRS's concern to reduce the tax gap and indicating support for that task, the AICPA suggested that, "the extraordinary burden in this instance far outweighs the potential benefits."The Republican proposal to repeal with mandate is paid for by reigning in subsidy overpayments related to the new healthcare law. The offset would better ensure that individuals taking part in the insurance Exchange are eligible for the subsidies claimed on their tax forms. Lets hope the GOP is successful (my wife the CPA is exploring the possibility of putting a cot in her office for tax season-not a pleasant thought).

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By Barry Rubin

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s July 27 speech in Turkey will not live on in history. But it should, as an example of the decline of Western diplomacy, of suicide by Political Correctness, as a textbook example of how not to conduct international affairs.

It crossed my mind that the speech was written by the Foreign Office for the express purpose of making Cameron look foolish, but then I realized that he and his top advisors probably have no idea why it was such a disaster.

Suppose you are the British prime minister going to Turkey, or to just about any country, what should you say? The theme should be: We can cooperate and do mutually beneficial things. Here’s what I can do for you, here’s what I’d like you to do for me. And here’s what you must not do in order to reap the benefits of my friendship and favor.

Obviously, you need to dress that up in appropriate language. But everything should be conditional. The message to be delivered is that it is in your interest to respect my interests.

Cameron did the precise and exact opposite. His message was: The UK needs Turkey. Turkey is wonderful. Its behavior has been perfect. We are desperate or your help.

What is the effect? A man goes into a bazaar, points to a carpet and says: That is the most beautiful carpet I have ever seen. I must have it no matter what the price! How much is it?

In addition, Cameron committed some other howling mistakes, several of which will amaze you. So please stick with me as I explain and document this. You won’t be disappointed. And remember this is not just a matter of one speech, it is a fitting symbol for the entire contemporary Western diplomatic approach to the Middle East and much more to the world as well. By the way, it is doomed to fail miserably.

Before we begin, remember that this is no longer the old Turkish Republic. Cameron is lavishing praise on an Islamist-oriented regime which has aligned itself with Iran and revolutionary Islamist groups. And all of Cameron’s pandering, as if he were a Western barbarian in the court of the all-powerful Ottoman sultan, is driving a knife into the heart of a Turkish opposition which is genuinely friendly toward the West and horrified by the current regime’s subversion of Turkish democracy.

Cameron began by saying:

“I’ve come to Ankara today to establish a new partnership between Britain and Turkey. I think this is a vital strategic relationship for our country.”

Note the cringing here. A proper prime minister might have said: “I think this is a vital strategic relationship for our countries.” In other words, the speaker would stress there is a mutual benefit. Instead, this polite approach makes it sound as if Turkey is doing the United Kingdom a favor by having a strategic relationship to it while Turkey doesn't need Britain at all.

And this is precisely the interpretation put on such things in the local context: The Turkish regime can take its Western alliances for granted while taking the side of the West's radical Islamist enemies.
And here it is again:

“People ask me why [I’m visiting] Turkey and why so soon. I’ll tell you why. Because Turkey is vital for our economy. Vital for our security. And vital for our politics and diplomacy.” So Turkey holds all the cards and the West can do nothing but give concessions in hope of winning favor in its eyes. One should remember that a major theme of Iran, Syria, and this Turkish regime is that nothing can be achieved without them and so the West must bow to their will and do everything they want. Cameron is feeding this monster.

According to him, there are no problems with Turkey on security:

“Turkey is a great NATO ally. And Turkey shares our determination to fight terrorism in all its forms – whether from Al Qaeda or the PKK. [But not, he fails to mention, from Hamas or Hizballah!] But perhaps more significant still is the fact that Turkey’s unique position at the meeting point of East and West gives it an unrivalled influence in helping us get to grips with some of the greatest threats to our collective security.”

Look, you don’t go to a country and criticize it (unless the country is Israel. Now why is that?) but you don’t tell them that everything they are doing is great because if that’s true they will keep on doing it and know there is no cost. Turkey under this regime is not a pro-Western state helping the West against its “Eastern” enemies—as Turkey was between, say, 1950 and 2000—or is it a neutral meeting ground. At present, Turkey is on the enemy side.

He continues:

“Which Muslim majority country has a long-established relationship with Israel while at the same time championing the rights of the Palestinian people? Which European country could have the greatest chance of persuading Iran to change course on its nuclear policy?”

Now this is after the Turkish regime trashed the relationship with Israel and stabbed the United States and UK in the back by cutting its own deal with Iran and even voting against sanctions at the UN. This is the policy Cameron praises! And then after all these things he adds:

“Whether in Afghanistan or the Middle East, Turkey has a credibility that others in the West just can’t hope to have. So I’ve come here to make the case for Turkey to use this credibility, to go further in enhancing our security and working for peace across our world.”

Does this include Turkish regime support for Hamas and Hizballah, alignment with Iran and Syria? He should be hinting gently that Turkey is losing its credibility because of the regime’s behavior. And therefore Turkey needs to change its behavior, a point that the opposition will be arguing in the next election. By this time I can see the opposition tearing it hair out as another Western leader heaps praise on the regime. And have no doubt the regime will use all this in next year’s elections:

Extremist? Transforming Turkey toward Islamism? What do you mean? The West loves us!

Cameron then goes on and makes it clear that Turkey would be doing the EU a favor by joining it, not the tiniest hint of leverage, that Turkish membership might depend on the regime’s behavior. He could have said:

While I, of course, support you, the path would be easier if…. Followed by some polite and proper hints done with full British charm.

But it gets worse. Cameron is about to insult several of Britain’s closest allies, including Germany and France, by making opposition to Turkey’s entrance into the EU as a form of racism and Islamophobia. For example, he says that opponents are:

“The prejudiced. Those who willfully misunderstand Islam. They see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists. They think the problem is Islam itself. And they think the values of Islam can just never be compatible with the values of other religions, societies, or cultures.”

All these arguments are just plain wrong. The problem precisely is the version of Islam embodied in the current Turkish government. There could be other perfectly pious Muslims ruling Turkey (and Iran, Syria, or the Gaza Strip for that matter) who would interpret Islam in a way relatively compatible with the values of other religions. But not the Islamists!

He also complains of those who “see the history of our world as a clash of civilizations as a choice between East and West. They just don’t get the fact that Turkey can be a great unifier. Because instead of choosing between East and West, Turkey has chosen both.”

But he doesn’t comprehend that the current government of Turkey sees the world as a clash of civilizations. Its foreign minister even wrote a book to that effect, which has never been translated and which the regime is doing its best to conceal. This is not the Turkey of Kamal Ataturk and his successors but rather (at least temporarily) a country ruled by the successors of those who opposed Ataturk.

If I were a German or French journalist my headline would be: Cameron Calls German (or French) policy bigoted and anti-Islamic.

Yet Cameron sails on into even worse grounds. He actually praises a Turkish policy which has gone to the brink of war with Israel, sponsored a flotilla run by radical Islamists intending to create a violent confrontation, and is allied with a revolutionary terrorist group. One has to quote it to believe he actually said the following:

“Turkey’s relationships in the region, both with Israel and with the Arab world, are of incalculable value. No other country has the same potential to build understanding between Israel and the Arab world. I know that Gaza has led to real strains in Turkey’s relationship with Israel. But Turkey is a friend of Israel. And I urge Turkey, and Israel, not to give up on that friendship.

“Let me be clear. The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable. And I have told PM Netanyahu, we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.

“But as, hopefully, we move in the coming weeks to direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians so it’s Turkey that can make the case for peace and Turkey that can help to press the parties to come together, and point the way to a just and viable solution.”

In other words, Turkey is 100 percent right, I have no criticism of Hamas’s behavior, we should accept a permanent revolutionary Islamist, terrorist, genocidal, statelet on the Mediterranean. No problem. And we can ignore the Turkish regime's pro-Hamas policy and provocative behavior because without abandoning that approach Turkey can still play a productive role! This is the diplomatic equivalent of insane behavior on Cameron’s part.

And does Israel want this regime to mediate between it and the Palestinians? Even the Palestinian Authority doesn't want that: it knows that the Turkish regime is allied with its Hamas rivals, for goodness sakes! Doesn't Cameron know this?

I don’t want to take up too much of your time but I cannot let this next gem pass. True, Cameron urged Turkey to continue internal reforms (but there’s no hint of the anti-democratic nature of the regime’s manipulation of such reforms, for example, to seize control of the courts) and the massive repression of dissidents.

He suggests that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and he even criticizes the Turkey-Iran deal. But note the illogical leap:

“Even if Iran were to complete the deal proposed in their recent agreement with Turkey and Brazil, it would still retain around fifty percent of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. So we need Turkey’s help now in making it clear to Iran just how serious we are about engaging fully with the international community.

“We hope that the meeting held in Istanbul between the Turkish, Brazilian and Iranian Foreign Ministers will see Iran move in the right direction.”

That meeting is a conference of Iran’s supporters! Why would it lead Iran in the right direction? How about Turkey’s opposition to sanctions? And again note the beggar’s worldview: “We need Turkey’s help....” Why should Turkey help? What will you give the regime in exchange for its alleged help? What behavior will you overlook in exchange for its alleged help?

This regime wants to help Iran, not against Iran.


Finally, remember that Cameron is a Conservative, the successor of Winston Churchill. That's how deep the appeasement disease has penetrated the Western ruling class

Note: This article was published in PajamasMedia

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) CenterMiddle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle Eastand editor of the (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), The Israel-Arab Reader the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria(Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

As you probably know, the new TV season begins in the middle of September. That's when all the TV networks spruce themselves up and reveal the new programming lineups for the next twelve months. MSNBC has planned a major overall to its lineup.

Faced with years of disaster-level ratings, MSNBC has announced it will change its name to MPTV, Microsoft Progressive Television (the Microsoft name was kept because, well you don't want to upset Microsoft). Along with the name change is a more family friendly TV lineup.

For example in the late morning there will be a block of game shows, the most promising of which is based on the health care bill and called Take the Money or Let Granny Die. Contestants will be offered the chance to guarantee the funds of their social security retirement plans if they agree to withhold expensive medical treatment from an aging grandparent or other elderly relative.

Another daytime show is designed to compete with programs like The People's Court; it's called Arrest President Bush, every day a regular person gets to charge former President Bush or someone from his administration with a crime. The first episode deals with something that progressives have been mourning about for ten years. The episode's called, "He Stole the 2000 Election"

The dinnertime lineup includes a remake of an old Art Linkletter show; it's called Republicans Say the Darndest Things. Each show will feature guests from Media Matters and Daily Kos who will take comments made by Republicans and tell everyone what they really mean. For example according the show, when a Republican says" let's cut the size of the federal government", he is really saying "I despise all minorities"

Not wanting to give up on one of its most valuable assets, the former MSNBC found the perfect show for its political reporter Pat Buchanan. It's called, "The Jews Did It." This is right in Buchanan's wheel house. A documentary series this show will detail all of the things that Buchanan blames on the Jews, from the Iraq War and the bursting of the Housing Bubble to the LA Lakers loss in the last NBA Championship and the cancellation of Law and Order.

Made Just for MPTV is a new version of the popular CSI series, Called CSI Small Town, it follows a crime scene investigation team as they work in small Red State towns. Well at least what matches their vision of Red State towns. Follow these investigators as the search for answers in towns where everyone sits on their front porches clinging to their guns and religion. According to the Progressive TV writers, making their job even more difficult is that they can't do DNA tests or examine dental records because these former MSNBC writers believe that in these small red state towns everybody has the same DNA and no one has any teeth.

There are even Sitcoms on this new version of MSNBC. My favorite is called Everyone Hates Keith. Follow the comedic exploits of arrogant superstar Keith Olbermann as he goes through the day realizing that his opponents hate him, but not understanding that his "friends," co-workers, family and even his parish priest despise the sight of him.

Perhaps the number one upcoming television program on MPTV will be broadcast in early November. It's called Election Results. On this show we find out which party will be in control of Congress. Will the people understand that the Democratic Party knows what is good for them or will they vote GOP? Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann will star in this special as they make up excuses about why the American vote has resulted in major losses for the Progressive Democratic Party. Look for exclusive segments on the racism of Middle America and why Americans are stupid.

To those of you who will complain about the loss of the ideological point of view of MSNBC I say rubbish. MPTV, the new MSNBC will be broadcasting the same progressive propaganda as the old news network, the only differences are that it cuts out the pretense of being fair and puts the selling of the progressive agenda into a more entertaining package.

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Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who was charged in May with illegally downloading classified material, specifically a classified video, has now been tied to the release of the secret Afghanistan War Documents leaked to Wikileaks and published this past Sunday.

According to the WSJ investigators have found concrete evidence linking Pfc. Bradley Manning with the leak of classified Afghanistan war reports, a defense official said. Those reports say investigators checked Manning's computer and found he had indeed downloaded the Afghanistan war logs, which span from 2004 until 2009, the official said.

The investigation is also looking at who might have helped Pfc. Manning provide the documents to WikiLeaks, a web-based group that earlier this week released 76,000 secret reports from Afghanistan.

Because of the focus on civilians who helped Pfc. Manning, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department have been brought into aid the investigation lead by the Army Criminal Investigation Command.

Defense officials are also combing through Pfc. Manning's computers in a bid to figure out what other material he may have stolen as they try to anticipate what other material WikiLeaks may have.

Military officials said that the documents already released contain names of Afghans who have aided the allied force, information that could potentially endanger some of those people.Beyond that, the documents can become a rallying cry and recruitment tool for al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists.
...Almost immediately after the release of the documents, investigators began focusing on Pfc. Manning, who had suggested to a former hacker he had obtained access to a similar cache of war logs from Iraq.

A request for comment to Pfc. Manning's military counsel was not immediately returned. In the past, the lawyers have referred all questions to public affairs officers who have declined to comment.

Pfc. Manning, 22 years old, was charged by the military earlier this month with illegally taking and disseminating a classified video as well as secret State Department files.

Defense officials have said the video taken by Pfc. Manning was the one released by WikiLeaks showing a U.S. military helicopter firing on a group of people in Baghdad. Two Reuters journalists and seven others were killed in the incident.Investigators began examining Pfc. Manning's actions in May when Adrian Lamo, the former computer hacker, alerted authorities that the private had potentially stolen classified documents.

In a series of Internet chats, Pfc. Manning told Mr. Lamo he had passed classified documents to WikiLeaks.This post will be updated as more info arises.Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

By adding four little words, President Obama will be able to get around the First Amendment, and he is doing his best to get those four words added. The words are "electronic communication transactional records" and the President wants them added to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. The purpose of the addition is to make it easier for the FBI to make companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The words agents deem is what is frightening. It is the FBI agents, or more specifically the FBI's boss Attorney General and Stedman Graham look-alike Eric Holder along with the President deciding who is relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation. We are talking about the same administration who's Department of Homeland Security declared that returning soldiers, pro-life advocates, and right-wing bloggers should be watched as potential terrorists.
 Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication.

But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.

Stewart A. Baker, a former senior Bush administration Homeland Security official, said the proposed change would broaden the bureau's authority. "It'll be faster and easier to get the data," said Baker, who practices national security and surveillance law. "And for some Internet providers, it'll mean giving a lot more information to the FBI in response to an NSL." And we are OK with that?
Many Internet service providers have resisted the government's demands to turn over electronic records, arguing that surveillance law as written does not allow them to do so, industry lawyers say. One senior administration government official, who would discuss the proposed change only on condition of anonymity, countered that "most" Internet or e-mail providers do turn over such data. To critics, the move is another example of an administration retreating from campaign pledges to enhance civil liberties in relation to national security. The proposal is "incredibly bold, given the amount of electronic data the government is already getting," said Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel. OMG I agree with the ACLU?  What's wrong with getting a search warrant?
The critics say its effect would be to greatly expand the amount and type of personal data the government can obtain without a court order. "You're bringing a big category of data -- records reflecting who someone is communicating with in the digital world, Web browsing history and potentially location information -- outside of judicial review," said Michael Sussmann, a Justice Department lawyer under President Bill Clinton who now represents Internet and other firms. Privacy concernsOne issue with both the proposal and the current law is that the phrase "electronic communication transactional records" is not defined anywhere in statute. "Our biggest concern is that an expanded NSL power might be used to obtain Internet search queries and Web histories detailing every Web site visited and every file downloaded," said Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has sued AT&T for assisting the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program.

He said he does not object to the government obtaining access to electronic records, provided it has a judge's approval. .....Obtaining such records with an NSL, as opposed to a court order, "allows us to intercede in plots earlier than we would if our hands were tied and we were unable to get this data in a way that was quick and efficient," the senior administration official said.

But the value of such data is the reason a court should approve its disclosure, said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "It's much more sensitive than the other information, like name, address and telephone number, that the FBI gets with national security letters," he said. "It shows associational information protected by the First Amendment and is much less public than things like where you live." In a campaign position paper the President bashed Bush's policy of warrant-less wiretaps
"Barack Obama opposed the Bush Administration's initial policy on warrantless wiretaps because it crossed the line between protecting our national security and eroding the civil liberties of American citizens. As president, Obama would update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide greater oversight and accountability to the congressional intelligence committees to prevent future threats to the rule of law."So warrant-less wiretaps are bad, but looking at who your facebook friends are absolutely fine.Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

Its hard to come up with the right word to cuss out WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for facilitating the release of the 91,000 documents that in all probability put many lives in danger. The Austrialian government certainly thinks so (Assange is a native Australian)
The Australian Defence Association (ADA) states on July 28, 2010, that Assange and his website WikiLeaks "could have committed a serious criminal offence in helping an enemy of the Australian Defence Force (ADF)" and "Moreover, as an Australian citizen, Wikileaks' Julian Assange may also be guilty of a serious criminal offence by assisting an enemy the ADF is fighting on behalf of all Australians, especially if the assistance was intentionalCould the “the White House” have been complacent in the release of the most dangerous of the documents. In an interview with Judge Napalitano for his Saturday Morning show on FBC (and promoted on Shepard Smith's show)  Assange claims to have contacted the White House weeks ago and offered them the opportunity to provide WikiLeaks with criteria for reviewing the documents as to ensure no lives would be put in danger by the release. Assange said WikiLeaks received no response from the White House.

Shepard Smith had John Hunt check with the White House who said they were never contacted by Assange. Then Hunt contacted Assange who said was that they contacted the White House through the New York Times. Hunt pointed out that statement was consistent with Robert Gibbs earlier statement that White House was in contact with the New York Times about the release of the documents before WikiLeaks published them.

Watch the video below and you decide:


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Once again, Andrew Sullivan demonstrates that when it comes to the Middle East he is wrong about both the past and the present.  Its hard to understand what is wrong with the guy,  he is either suffering from some sort of dementia, is biased, or just plain stupid. Now he is attacking my good friend Barry Rubin, but it doesn't seem as if he read the article he is criticizing. Whatever his problem is, its time for the Atlantic to take away his computer until the malady is figured out. He is embarrassing himself and the proud tradition of the Magazine.


Andrew Sullivan Attacks Me Without Bothering to Consider What I Wrote

By Barry Rubin

One of the amazing things about the intellectual scene today is that people attack you without any reference to what you actually say. It is as if you were talking to someone deaf who has his hearing aid turned off. You want to explain that there must be a misunderstanding only to find that the person doesn't care: he just wants to scream insults at you so that nobody actually considers whether you are making an accurate point.

When I was growing up, someone considered your actual arguments and responded to them with rational arguments of their own. Some of us still do that.

Instead, Andrew Sullivan writes:

"Barry Rubin joins the chorus from the neocon right claiming that `Turkey is on the enemy side.'"

Let's consider this sentence. First, rather than argue the facts he merely throws in two words intended to get people to demonize you and not listen: neocon right. Hey, nothing more need be said! But the central question is whether the original statement was true or not, right?

Then there's that word "joins." I've been studying Turkey now for 35 years. I've been there about 25 times. Regarding the direction of the regime, I've been saying the same thing for about two years, long before there was a collapse of Turkish-Israel relations.

If I've joined anyone it's the Turkish socialists and liberals. Here's one of many examples: a Turkish woman from the left who angrily told me, "We've been warning the West about these people for years and they just won't listen."

In fact, though, I think I was the first person to say that the Turkish regime (NOT Turkey) has gone over to the other side. I have written literally dozens of articles proving it. I have quoted Iran's leader and Syria's government as having publicly stated it. Might Sullivan want to consult the evidence I have compiled? Of course not.

And then he makes a remarkably revealing illogical argument:
"It was once a given on the right that keeping Turkey close to the West was essential in defusing Islamism and winning the war on terror. But once Turkey took on Israel, that ended, because the war many neocons are waging is for Israel, right or wrong, not the West at large."This has an implication of antisemitism, doesn't it? All those people are only angry at Turkey because it has fallen out with Israel, referring mainly to the flotilla issue. This makes me think of the argument in the 1930s that people were only critical of Germany because they were Jews or only cared about Jewish interests.

But, yes, it has been a given on both left, center, and right that keeping Turkey close to the West was essential. Yet what if the Turkish regime is no longer close to the West? Everyone's opinion is still the same, it's the situation that's changed.

So how to keep Turkey close to the West? Act to constrain the current regime and, in appropriate ways of course, to help the opposition win the elections a year from now. Oh, dear! Then Turkey would have a socialist prime minister instead of an Islamist one. Seems to me that's what liberals would prefer.

As for the claim that it's all about Israel, in fact, I have been talking for months about:

• Internal repression in Turkey, including the arrests of hundreds of peaceful dissidents on charges of attempting to overthrow the government with violence. Turks have been writing eloquently about this issue.

• Changes to bring the media and court system under government control. The regime and its supporters have bought up much of the media and intimidated the rest. It is now proposing constitutional changes to cripple the judiciary. People in Turkey are scared. Many say they no longer recognize their country.

• Turkish regime support for Iran and its nuclear weapons' program. This now includes cutting a separate deal with Tehran against U.S. wishes and voting against sanctions. The prime minister has stated that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, therefore calling President Obama a liar.

• The regime's engagement with Hamas and Hizballah. As I have pointed out, the regime does NOT support the "Palestinian people" but merely Hamas, a fellow Islamist group.

Much of my material has come from the Turkish opposition, mainly Kemalist secularists and democratic socialists.

Yet none of this matters, right? It's only all about Israel, we are supposed to believe, and talking about everything else is just an excuse!

Sullivan has, however, taught me something important: why such people must keep harping on Israel. Forget about the canary in the coal mine analogy. The Israel card's use is to make people blind, to shut them up, to throw out every other issue and piece of evidence. They hope that anti-Israel passion (plus dark hints of a Jewish conspiracy) will keep people from actually looking at what's happening.

On top of this, the main theme of my article Sullivan was attacking was quite different from his claims. Here are the key sentences:

"Suppose you are the British prime minister going to Turkey, or to just about any country. What should you say? The theme should be: We can cooperate and do mutually beneficial things. Here’s what I can do for you; here’s what I’d like you to do for me. And here’s what you must not do in order to reap the benefits of my friendship and favor.

"Obviously, you need to dress that up in appropriate language. But everything should be conditional. The message to be delivered is that it is in your interest to respect my interests.

"Cameron did the precise and exact opposite. His message was: The UK needs Turkey. Turkey is wonderful. Its behavior has been perfect. We are desperate for your help.

"What is the effect? A man goes into a bazaar, points to a carpet, and says, 'That is the most beautiful carpet I have ever seen. I must have it no matter what the price! How much is it?'”

Does that sound like a call for war?

Mr. Sullivan: There is something in diplomacy between war and appeasement. It is called carrots and sticks, costs and benefits, quid pro quo. Cameron's speech was a mess because he abandoned that principle and resorted only to simple-minded flattery. Middle Eastern peoples--Muslim or otherwise--know what that signals: weakness, which invites ridicule and aggressiveness.

Sullivan also ignores my point--which I think is rather significant--that Cameron foolishly insulted France and Germany by strongly implying that the only reason they oppose Turkey's EU membership is because they were bigots. If Sullivan had been Britain's prime minister I guess he would have called them "neocon rightists."

If Cameron had not mentioned Israel at all I would have written precisely the same article on all these points.

Sullivan continued:
"Keep it up, prime minister. Advance the interests of Britain, and resist the war of civilizations the far right wants to gin up. We will only defeat Islamism if we keep an open hand stretched to Islam. Isolating and demonizing Turkey's evolution as a regional Muslim power - prepared to be Israel's ally if Israel stops the persecution and colonization of the Palestinans - is about as dumb a geo-strategic move as one could imagine."The issue is not a "war of civilizations" but a war of ideologies. Is Sullivan really so dense that he doesn't understand that the people most similar to him in Turkey hate and fear the current regime? Doesn't Sullivan understand that the governments of most Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East don't want the West to support the Islamists?

(Here's a list: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. And even the Palestinian Authority and the democratic forces in Lebanon. These are almost all Muslims, too, aren't they? And then let's add the majority of Muslims in Turkey and in Iran as well!)

Turkey is not evolving into being a regional Muslim power as some kind of national project. This is in fact the policy of one party in Turkey which has less than 30 percent support according to recent public opinion polls, with probably twice as many Turks favoring non-Islamist opposition parties.

And what does deifying the current Turkish government have to do with keeping an "open hand stretched to Islam"? Almost all Turks are Muslims, they just aren't political Islamists. That's why the West gets along with Egypt, Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia, for example, who are all Muslims but not on the side of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah.

It was a Socialist leader who once said that antisemitism was the socialism of fools. Today, the insane use of Israel as the cause of all issues and problems is the tool used to make fools on the left support the most reactionary forces on the Middle Eastern extreme right. And then, to make it laughable, they do so in the name of fighting evil rightists!

Incidentally, don't think I didn't notice Sullivan's sleazy little trick: he didn't link to my article so those reading his blog item cannot easily check out what I actually said rather than what he claimed. That's the kind of behavior that tells a great deal about Sullivan's intellectual dishonesty.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) CenterMiddle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle Eastand editor of the (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), The Israel-Arab Reader the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria(Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).  Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

In the middle of the health-care debate, Texas Republican Congressman Kevin Brady working with the minority staff of the House Way's and Means committee issued a chart that laid out the new bureaucracy involved in the Obamacare version. Though complicated, that was the simple version. Congressman Brady and his team just issued a new version of the chart which illustrates the actual bill. and to be honest it boggles the mind. This time the provisions of the 2,800 page bill  would fit on three pages so the group had to combine some areas (look for the tri-colored dots on the chart below).

The Take away of the chart should not only be the government takeover of 16.7% of the American Economy, but also the massive growth in the size of government, both will lead to a loss of personal liberty.

The Secretary of HHS picks up over six hundred new areas of responsibility in the new bill, which is why HHS is big and int the middle of the new chart .

A PDF of the Chart is embedded below, you can click on it to download and enlarge. On top of the chart is posted a blow-up view of the key to the chart.



Obama Care Chart Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

Achieving environmental justice (EJ) is an Agency priority and should be factored into every decision. Incorporating EJ considerations into the Action Development Process (ADP) represents a commitment to ensuring that all Americans, regardless of age, race, economic status, or ethnicity, have access to clean water, clean air, and healthy communities. It is vital that all Agency staff identify and address disproportionate environmental and public health impacts experienced by minority, low-income, and indigenous populations.Thus begins a new guide issued by the Environmental Protection agency, they call it "Environmental Justice" in actuality it is talking about Social Justice. All environmental rules are now to be evaluated on how they will impact minority areas and Native American tribes. Fair Treatment means that no group of people should bear a disproportionate burden of environmental harms and risks, including those resulting from the negative environmental consequences of industrial, governmental, and commercial operations or programs and policies.

The guide states that  in the process of developing rules, policy statements, risk assessments, and other regulatory actions,  EPA managers and staffers must first ask themselves, “Does this action involve a topic that is likely to be of particular interest to or have particular impact upon minority, low-income, or indigenous populations, or tribes?”

If the answer is yes, the rule-writers must reach out to the affected minority and/or low-income communities. One section of the guide explains how EPA rule-writers may have to make “special efforts” to connect with people who may be uneducated or non-English-speaking.
Meaningful Involvement means that: 1) potentially affected community members have an appropriate opportunity to participate in decisions about a proposed activity that will affect their environment and/or health; 2) the public’s contribution can influence the regulatory agency’s decision; 3) the concerns of all participants involved will be considered in the decision-making process; and 4) the decision-makers seek out and facilitate the involvement of those potentially affected.Taking this to its logical extension, can the EPA look at fuel efficient cars and the smog in cities such as New York and Los Angeles and rule (with the help of the President), that everyone is entitled to equal access of a Hybrid? Maybe because of the lower income of urban minorities they can sue cities to provide them at low cost to minorities because every is entitled to that low emission auto.

Will this new set of rules lead to higher taxes on non-minorities to pay for the conversion of minorities homes to fuel efficiency, using the global warming hoax a straw dog for basic redistribution of income?  Or it will it be another excuse to tax the big bad companies for the same reasons?
 The densely populated communities closest to the I-710 freeway in Los Angeles County are severely impacted by pollution from goods movement and industrial activity. The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are the entry point of 40 percent of all imports to the United States and 20 percent of diesel particulate emissions in Southern California. Approximately 1,200 premature deaths are associated with diesel emissions from goods movement in the South Coast Air Basin. The I-710 freeway passes through 15 cities and unincorporated areas with a population of more than 1 million residents— about 70 percent of which are minority and disproportionately low-income.The area is dense with truck traffic, industrial facilities, residences, schools, daycares, and senior centers. The region exceeds national air quality standard for 1-hour and 8-hour ozone and particulate matter 2.5 and 10. The South Coast Air Quality Management District, California Air Resources Board, and EPA are working vigorously to address the air quality issues in the region. It certainly can be interpreted that way. Read the report below and decide for yourself.Considering Ej in Rule Making Guide 07 2010 Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

Remember when Barack Obama promised us that transparency would be the touchstone of his administration? Well here is another example of how the Obama administration will not "touch that touchstone" with a ten foot pole.

According to the Security and Exchange Commission a provision in that new financial regulation bill exempts it from complying with almost all Freedom of Information Act requests.
The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.


That argument comes despite the President saying that one of the cornerstones of the sweeping new legislation was more transparent financial markets. Indeed, in touting the new law, Obama specifically said it would “increase transparency in financial dealings."


The SEC cited the new law Tuesday in a FOIA action brought by FOX Business Network. Steven Mintz, founding partner of law firm Mintz & Gold LLC in New York, lamented what he described as “the backroom deal that was cut between Congress and the SEC to keep the SEC’s failures secret. The only losers here are the American public.”


If the SEC’s interpretation stands, Mintz, who represents FOX Business Network, predicted “the next time there is a Bernie Madoff failure the American public will not be able to obtain the SEC documents that describe the failure,” referring to the shamed broker whose Ponzi scheme cost investors billions. Think about it, in the new law the SEC will have even more power to shut down companies for "irregularities." But if this new provision holds up, they don't have to explain why.  Didn't the president say the government will be transparent, "so the people will know what decisions are being made, how they are being made, and whether their interests are being well served." To quote the NAACP I guess we were snookered on that one.

Criticism of the provision has been swift. “It allows the SEC to block the public’s access to virtually all SEC records,” said Gary Aguirre, a former SEC staff attorney-turned-whistleblower who had accused the agency of thwarting an investigation into hedge fund Pequot Asset Management in 2005. “It permits the SEC to promulgate its own rules and regulations regarding the disclosure of records without getting the approval of the Office of Management and Budget, which typically applies to all federal agencies.”


Aguirre used FOIA requests in his own lawsuit against the SEC, which the SEC settled this year by paying him $755,000. Aguirre, who was fired in September 2005, argued that supervisors at the SEC stymied an investigation of Pequot – a charge that prompted an investigation by the Senate Judiciary and Finance committees. The SEC closed the case in 2006, but would re-open it three years later. This year, Pequot and its founder, Arthur Samberg, were forced to pay $28 million to settle insider-tradingMSFT: 26.07 ,-0.09 ,-0.34%). The settlement with Aguirre came shortly later. charges related to shares of Microsoft (


“From November 2008 through January 2009, I relied heavily on records obtained from the SEC through FOIA in communications to the FBI, Senate investigators, and the SEC in arguing the SEC had botched its initial investigation of Pequot’s trading in Microsoft securities and thus the SEC should reopen it, which it did,” Aguirre said. “The new legislation closes access to such records, even when the investigation is closed. “It is hard to imagine how the bill could be more counterproductive,” Aguirre added. With this new law the SEC can even be shielded from sharing information with companies it is investigating.

FOX Business Network sued the SEC in March 2009 over its failure to produce documents related to its failed investigations into alleged investment frauds being perpetrated by Madoff and R. Allen Stanford. Following the Madoff and Stanford arrests it, was revealed that the SEC conducted investigations into both men prior to their arrests but failed to uncover their alleged frauds.


FOX Business made its initial request to the SEC in February 2009 seeking any information related to the agency’s response to complaints, tips and inquiries or any potential violations of the securities law or wrongdoing by Stanford.


FOX Business has also filed lawsuits against the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve over their failure to respond to FOIA requests regarding use of the bailout funds and the Fed’s extended loan facilities. In February, the Federal Court in New York sided with FOX Business and ordered the Treasury to comply with its requests.


Last year, the network won a legal victory to force the release of documents related to New York University’s lawsuit against Madoff feeder Ezra Merkin. FOX Business’ FOIA requests have so far led the SEC to release several important and damaging documents: ...“FOX News and the congressional oversight panel has pushed, pushed, pushed, for transparency, give us the documents, let us look at everything. Your Freedom of Information Act suit, which ultimately produced 250,000 pages of documentation, was a very important part of our report. We were able to rely on the documents that you pried out for a significant part of our being able to put this report together,” Warren said.


The SEC first made its intention to block further FOIA requests known on Tuesday. FOX Business was preparing for another round of “skirmishes” with the SEC, according to Mintz, when the agency called and said it intended to use Section 929I of the 2000-page legislation to refuse FBN’s ongoing requests for information. Fox Business and its lawyers will challenge the SEC’s interpretation of the law and Barack Obama's new affront to the public's right to know.Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

A View From Israel by Prof. Robert S. Wistrich

This year, Tisha B'Av (the annual Jewish fast day commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem) once again reminded us of the dangers of “gratuitous hatred” without rhyme or reason for one’s fellow Jews; the kind of hatred for its own sake, which seems more recently to have become part of our everyday Israeli reality. Divisions between Ultra-Orthodox and Secular Jews or the bitter antagonism towards the settlers in the West Bank are of course not new, but they have lost nothing of their malevolent edge. No less distressing are the actions of those Israeli lecturers who defend the international anti-Israel boycott in the name of academic freedom and the much larger numbers of those who denounce any criticism or sanctions against these boycotters as “McCarthyism”.

Such harsh polemics are happening at a time of unprecedented hatred towards Israel as a nation within the international community. The hysteria surrounding the Gaza flotilla brought this trend to new heights of hypocrisy. It reflects the ongoing campaign of branding Israel as the “Jew” of nations - libeling it as a racist, bloodthirsty, pariah-state. At the same time, American Jewish support for Israel’s policies, especially among liberals, has also been increasingly eroded. This has potentially dangerous consequences for our relations with the Diaspora, already tense over the issue of non-Orthodox conversions.

True, the majority of Americans still show remarkable empathy with Israel’s dilemmas and President Obama has more recently chosen to adopt a somewhat friendlier tone to Israel’s prime minister. Many European leaders, while less supportive than the United States, are by no means blind to Israel’s security needs, to the Iranian threat or to the disastrous implications of Hamas’s violent rule in Gaza. Nevertheless, the international weakening of Israel’s legitimacy as a state remains deeply troubling. It has been accompanied by an unprecedented explosion of global anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism during the past few years.

The assault from without is not unconnected with a growing sense of spiritual disorientation and deeply conflicted Jewish identities within Israeli society. This trend is, if anything, the most dangerous of all since social, economic and cultural alienation are centrifugal forces – accelerating the divisive schisms that already exist in Israeli society. Against such a background, the disaffectation of the Israeli academic elite from the Zionist ethos is bound to have particularly demoralizing consequences.

For some of the anti-Zionist or “post-Zionist” intellectuals the foundation of the Jewish state in 1948 is evidently the “original sin” that has caused all subsequent Middle Eastern wars. They have, in effect, uncritically adopted the Palestinian narrative, which is not only supported by almost all Muslim holy warriors and many radical leftists, but has also infiltrated an influential sector of mainstream Western opinion. If we are to move forward we will have to find more creative means to circumvent this destructive discourse and show the world that another path is possible – one which rejects Jihadi barbarism and terror but also excessive reliance on Israeli force alone. This will not be easy. We do need to be more sensitive to the suffering of our Arab and Palestinian neighbors. But they too must take responsibility for their own terrorist nihilism, self-deception, and historic guilt (such as the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands). They must once and for all end their tolerance of genocidal incitement to holy war against Israel.

This will necessitate a major effort of intellectual honesty, introspection and self-criticism on all sides. It also requires considerable political will, broad international support and an unequivocal recognition of the identity of “the other” and his legitimate rights. In order to come with clean hands to the table, we Israelis might begin by putting our own house in order. A good start would be to display greater empathy, tolerance and solidarity with the problems of the underprivileged - whether Jewish or Arab - in our own society. We also need to more positively internalize the tragic lessons of divisioness and fragmentation in our own history, so that we can achieve a minimal consensus on what kind of Israel it is that we really want – both for ourselves, our neighbors, and the wider world.

Prof. Robert S. Wistrich is the director of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/) and the author of A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House, January 2010). Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

By Barry Rubin

It is really amazing how dealing with Israel and Jewish issues makes people stupid. And that’s true on both sides of the political spectrum. Indeed, statements are made that are so obviously and ludicrously wrong in the fact of easily visible evidence that it is downright astonishing that people aren’t laughed at for making such statements.

Here are two from recent hours.

Oliver Stone, left-wing filmmaker suggested that it is absurd to talk so much about the Holocaust since more Russians than Jews were killed. (Perhaps Stone is a racist—I’m just being ironic—since the nation that suffered the greatest losses from fascism was China.)

According to Stone the reason for the focus on the Holocaust is:

“The Jewish domination of the media….There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years.”

Note the easy way that Stone (it’s called antisemitism, by the way) conflates Israel and the Holocaust. There is no lobby over the Holocaust, now is there?

Moreover how can Stone—like many others such as Walt and Mearsheimer—talk about a pro-Israel domination of the media while the media has been, arguably for the last thirty years, so antagonistic toward Israel?

We constantly hear that anti-Israel views are censored and rare when anyone with eyes and ears can see they are in the overwhelming majority in academia and the mass media. The fact that these people cannot convince the majority is not due to a conspiracy or repression but to the inability of their weak and false arguments to convince Americans otherwise.

The most powerful lobby in the United States is the American people and as polls show—despite all the elite efforts mentioned above—overwhelmingly pro-Israel.

And how can one speak of Israel’s domination of the U.S. government at a time when there is the most (I’ll explain the awkward phrase in a moment) un-Israel-dominated presidency in memory?

I won’t take the time to point out in detail here the ludicrousness of saying that Israel has dominated U.S. policy but I’ve talked about that in numerous books.

Now at almost precisely the same time we get another statement that just doesn’t hold up. I am not comparing the two in moral terms but only in the ease with which they can be shown to be wrong and how they illustrate the two ends of the political spectrum.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center has announced the launching of a major campaign, “Warning Americans about the consequences of President Obama abandoning Israel.” The announcement adds:

“Israel's very existence is at stake and the threats of a second Holocaust have never been greater--all at a time when America, Israel's one great trusted friend and ally has embarked on a course of outreach to America's and Israel's enemies. The American people must be alerted to the dire nature of this threat.”

While I certainly have my criticisms of Obama’s policy he is scarcely abandoning Israel, a country not about to collapse by the way. U.S.-Israel defense cooperation has continued at high levels. At the present time, and probably for many months to come, bilateral relations are in good shape.

The United States has reached out to enemies but let’s put it in perspective. The engagement with Iran wasted a year but has failed and been abandoned in practice. The reaching out to Syria has failed and is fairly inactive at present. While the administration has helped Hamas by forcing changes in the sanctions’ regime, it has kept strict limits on any contacts with Hamas, and Hizballah as well.

If you talk to Israeli policymakers and officials in private, whatever their concerns and discontents, they are far from panicking about bilateral relations.

Part of the reason, of course, is constraints on the Obama Administration which fall far short of Stone’s fantasies but are real: congressional and popular support for Israel being the main one.

There is also the extremism of those enemies which forces even the Obama Administration to recognize large portions of reality. Iran refused any compromise and insists on being provocative; Hamas and Hizballah won’t moderate; Syria continues to support terrorists in Iraq and acts aggressively against Lebanon. All of these factors have maintained or even increased their hate-America propaganda even under Obama. For that matter, the Palestinian Authority won’t even listen to Obama’s pleas for direct talks with Israel.

By the way, the extremism of the extremists has been a major factor in U.S. policy, far in excess of any Jewish control. Remember that a lot of Arab regimes sided with the USSR in the Cold War, for example, which had a big effect on U.S. policy, as did the aggressive policies toward other Arab states of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Iran. These are points that Stone in his ignorance has no clue about.

What is needed now is sense in analyzing the Middle East, not engaging in fantasy stereotypes based on ideological preconceptions.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) CenterMiddle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle Eastand editor of the (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), The Israel-Arab Reader the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria(Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

Before I begin, I promise you that the story below is NOT a joke nor it is it some sort of satire. The truth is the global warming nut jobs have really gotten this ridiculous.

On the other hand, you have to give the global warming moonbats some credit, they are very creative, every time something bad happens, they find away to blame it on global warming.  Over the past year, these pages have recorded claims that global warming caused the heavy US snow this winter, the bitterly cold winter in Europe, the melting of the Arctic Ice Cap, a new ice age, nor'easters, violence, even even bird suicides. Lets face it, if they found a way to blame the death of Michael Jackson on global warming they would (although I understand they are still working on it).

Their latest piece of nonsense is that global warming will cause additional illegal immigration from Mexico.
Between 1.4 million and 6.7 million Mexicans could migrate to the U.S. by 2080 as climate change reduces crop yields and agricultural production in Mexico, according to a study published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The number could amount to 10% of the current population of Mexicans ages 15 to 65.

"Assuming that the climate projections are correct, gradually over the next several decades heading toward the end of the century, it becomes one of the more important factors in driving Mexicans across the border, all other things being equal," said study author Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.

Of course, Oppenheimer acknowledged, all things will not remain equal. Changes could occur in U.S. immigration and border policy or in Mexico's economy and its reliance on agriculture. But he said this was a simplified first step in studying the effect of global warming on migration.

"Our primary objectives were, No. 1, to give policymakers something to think about and, No. 2, to give researchers a spur to start answering some of the more complicated questions," Oppenheimer said.

Oppenheimer teamed up with two economists, Alan B. Krueger and Shuaizhang Feng, to study the connection between agricultural decline and migration. They looked at Mexican emigration, crop yield and climate data from 1995 to 2005 to make estimates about the next 70 years.

In the past, Oppenheimer said, Mexican farmers from rural areas fled to the United States when they could no longer grow their crops. If the rising temperatures dry out the land and reduce yield as expected, many more farmers could do the same.

Philip Martin, an expert in agricultural economics at UC Davis, said that he hadn't read the study but that making estimates based solely on climate change was virtually impossible.

"It is just awfully hard to separate climate change from the many, many other factors that affect people's decisions whether to stay in agriculture or move," he said.

Over the last 20 years, Mexico has seen a decline in the percentage of people who live in rural areas, Martin said. But much of that is because of economic growth in the nation. "As countries get richer, people leave agriculture," he said.

Nevertheless, Martin agreed that global warming could make farming more difficult and lead to more emigration.

Douglas Massey, a sociology professor at Princeton, also agreed that climate change could lead to emigration from Mexico, but much of that will depend on labor demand in the U.S.

"Environmental change is not going to produce migrants from Mexico unless there are jobs to go to," he said in an e-mail.

According to the study, other countries and regions dependent on agriculture could also see a similar exodus. Among the areas mentioned are much of Africa, India, Bangladesh and Latin America.

But Massey expressed skepticism about generalizing to other countries, because Mexico and the U.S. have a 60-year migrant history and share a 2,000-mile border. Mexico is also well connected to the U.S. labor demand through social networks. Its just amazing the way the global warming moonbats find a way to drive fear by attaching their hoax to the news of the day/ Its almost as if they are like Law and Order, "ripped from the headlines." Just wait, next week there will be an article that proves Charlie Rangel became a crook because of global warming. Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

I have to admit, when I first heard about the Oliver Stone interview where he accused the Jewish Lobby of controlling the Media and US foreign policy, an uneasy chill ran down my spine. In editorials across the Arab world Stone was praised as being accurate and scholarly.

Although this news initially horrified me, I now realize that the time to be horrified is over. It is high time to fess up and tell the world the truth: We Jews do control US policy; in fact we run the world. And we've been running things for a very long time, manipulating world events for our own needs.

It's time to reveal the truth that many famous people throughout history were actually Jewish -- part of the plot to perpetuate the myth and keep us in charge.

Martin Luther - yep, a Jew! But that one was pretty obvious. After all, he is famous for quitting his church to form a new one. Ever talk to a Jew about where he prays? He will tell you about the Synagogue he goes to and the one he would never set foot in.

Napoleon was a Jew -- no wonder he wanted to reconvene the Sanhedrin. The French Emperor had this nervous habit of playing with the Star of David hanging on a chain around his neck all the time. The guy would look ridiculous always sticking his hand in his shirt to play with the Star.

Alexander Graham Bell, another closet Jew, the only reason he invented the telephone was so he could call his mother.

Now that a great film director such as Oliver Stone has brought things out in the open, maybe we should be totally honest and start telling the world everything.

For those of you wondering about the media...yep it's Jewish controlled. We have this guy Lenny (a Levite) who lives in Cleveland with his wife and two kids. Lenny inherited the media-control job from his father, Mel, who in 1942 was able to convince the New York Times and other western newspapers to bury coverage of the Holocaust on page 27.

All the news media in the world report to Lenny. As a news director, he is the best we've had for centuries. It was Lenny who thought up the idea that most news media should slant their coverage against Israel. He figured that if reporters give the impression that Jewish blood is cheap, no one would figure out that we were actually running things. A few years ago Lenny won a UJA (Underground Jewish Action) award for coming up with the idea that media should not use the word "terrorist" whenever a Jew was killed.

For those of you who follow football, this year's entire NFL Cinderella story of the New Orleans Saints was Lenny's creation. Lenny's cousin Freddie (on his Mother's side) owns a pizza joint in New Orleans and Lenny owed him a favor, that championship season was great for Freddie's business, take out was up 300%.

The banks? No one believes that silly thing about Jewish bankers in New York controlling all the money. Sure, they're all Jewish, but they come from the Netherlands, not New York. We run the world's monetary system from the EU central office. Our man there is named Harvey Cohn. Harvey runs a tight ship.

I spoke to Harvey today; he agrees that it's time to let the cat out of the bag. But there is one thing he would like to do first. You see, much of the world's "anti-Semitism" is part of the plot to perpetuate the myth that we do not run the world. Heck, Harvey even has Mel Gibson on the payroll (please don't tell anyone it's bad for his image). One country's leadership isn't involved in the scam. Great Britain's government really does hate the Jews. Harvey says that before the word gets out, he wants to use his vast financial powers to cancel every credit card owned by a member of the British government and its royal family (especially Prince Charles).

One thing that may surprise people is that Barack Obama is actually Jewish. He converted five years ago (it's the only way we would let him run for president). I was honored by being invited to his bris. My wife made even made a cheesecake. We told him that he had to pick a Jew like Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff. Obama's anti-Israel policy was also Harvey's brainchild.  With his apparent over-the-top hatred of Israel, no one will believe that he is really Jewish.

As far as foreign policy goes, it's been Jewish controlled for a long time. Even deceased Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was in on it; he just acted like he hated Jews to throw people off the trail.

Oh, and that those tensions with Iraq? Well, Pat Buchanan was right -- our idea. But it has nothing to do with Israel, and everything to with chickpeas. You see, one thing that we don't control is the falafel market, and that is going to change very, very soon.

And by the way, the Saudis were right; Barbie dolls were created as a plot to destroy the minds of Muslim children. And about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, can you believe that some people still think that's a forgery?!

I think the most fun project we have done recently is giving the Iranians missile technology, we put a flaw in the system and can hardly wait for the Iranian government to find out that they are a bunch of tools...Zionist tools. The credit for this idea goes to Secretary of State Hillary (her real name is Hadassah) Clinton. Don't believe me? Why do you think her daughter is marrying a Jew?

Coming out with the truth may lift a terrible burden from our shoulders. No more hiding, no more plotting, just going about the business of ruling the world. There is, however, a downside. What if people don't believe us? What if people were to hate us so much that they start to think we have little control over world events? What if they were to think that the Jews are an ancient people who survived only through love of God and His Torah? What if people were to look at us, not as world dominators, but as the teachers of how to love God and each other? What am I saying? No one could believe that!
Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

By Barry Rubin

A whistleblower has released thousands of documents on the war in Afghanistan. What do they tell us? Three things we already know, in fact all of which have been written about on this blog for the last year.

First, the war is not winnable in the framework put forward by the Obama Administration. The idea of reforming Afghan society, creating a strong and honest central government, and building a powerful military while winning the hearts and minds of Aghans isn't going to work.

The goal should be the far more modest one of keeping the Taliban and revolutionary Islamist groups from gaining power, which can be achieved by supporting a range of forces in the country, unfortunately often corrupt and undemocratic ones.

Second, a lot more civilians are being killed than we hear about. War, especially this kind of war, makes that unavoidable. The difference, of course, is that the U.S. and its allies kill civilians by accident; the Taliban kills them on purpose and follows strategies intended to get civilians killed.

This is precisely what has happened for Israel in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip but the world--and often Western countries--want to pretend this is something peculiar to Israel rather than inevitable under these conditions. Indeed, Israel does better at avoiding civilian casualties than does the United States and European countries involved in such conflicts. If this was admitted, the UN dictatorship-led condemnations, the misled boycott movements, and all the rest would disappear.

Third, the documents reveal that Pakistan's government, and certainly the army and intelligence, have been working with the Taliban. Despite receiving billions of dollars of U.S. aid, Pakistan has generally protected al-Qaida and the Taliban while sponsoring terrorism against India.

To a large extent, Pakistan is on the other side in the current international conflict. It fights the Taliban only when the local branch of that group threatens the regime itself. The government shields terrorists, helps Iran on obtaining nuclear weapons, and even actively assisted in India's equivalent of September 11, the Mumbai attack.

All of these points were clear using analytical methods and publicly available sources. They have been, however, largely ignored. Now that so many internal U.S. government reports saying the same thing have been made available, reaching these conclusions should be unavoidable.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) CenterMiddle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle Eastand editor of the (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), The Israel-Arab Reader the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria(Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

By Barry Rubin

Ah, the good old days. It's March 1958. In Egypt, President Gamal Abdel Nasser is mobilizing the Arab street to overthrow more traditional or moderate regimes, spouting anti-Western demagoguery.

One of the main such is in Iraq, the government of Nuri al-Said.

How can the Iraqis compete with Nasser, knowing that they have to counter his propaganda or die? Simple! The Israeli boogy-man. (How things have--not--changed!) So an Iraqi newspaper publishes the photo below, a clumsy forgery to "prove" Nasser is really a Zionist agent who just held a meeting with Israeli General Moshe Dayan.

It didn't do the Iraqi government any good. A few weeks later, a coup throws out the monarchy and the British-allied regime, replacing it is a radical Arab nationalist government with a lot of Communist influence. Nuri is brutally murdered. The Arab nationalist regime then massacres the Communists and five years later is itself overthrown. And so on.
The scapegoating of Israel, falsification of material about that country, and prostituting of media in such campaigns is nothing new. But the game has now become worldwide. Those engaged in such pursuits might ponder how such efforts didn't save those who engaged in them in the past.

I've found many fascinating items in the U.S. and British government records that show the Middle East hasn't changed so much. But in those days before Photoshop, doing a credible job of faking photos was harder, as you can see. Thanks to Professor Michael Doran who came upon this in the National Archives.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) CenterMiddle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle Eastand editor of the (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), The Israel-Arab Reader the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria(Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

Being shot at by Taliban forces or having to constantly watch every move you make for IEDs is horrible pressure, and according to Barbara Boxer its the same kind of pressure one has to deal with as a member of congress.  Yes, Ms "Call Me Senator" has struck again.
At a campaign event over the weekend in Inglewood, California, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer seemingly equated being a politician to serving in the military –- and an Iraq War veteran supporting Boxer’s November opponent is calling on her to apologize.


“We know that if you have veterans in one place where they can befriend each other and talk to each other. You know when you’ve gone through similar things you need to share it. I don’t care whether you are a policeman or a fireman or a veteran or by chance a member of Congress,” the California senator said. “[Democratic Rep.] Maxine [Waters] and I could look at each other and roll our eyes. We know what we are up against. And it is hard for people who are not there to understand the pressure and the great things that go along with it and the tough things that go along with it.”


“Barbara Boxer’s disrespectful comments underscore just how out of touch she has become after her 28 years in Washington,“ Veterans for Carly Coalition Co-Chairman Lt. Commander Paul Chabot said in a press release, in response to Boxer’s comments. “Equating the experiences of members of Congress with those of brave soldiers who have fought to defend our country is just the latest example in a failed career marked by disrespect for our men and women in uniform.”


Chabot added, “Barbara Boxer owes an immediate apology to all members of America’s armed forces.”Boxer has a bit of a history of being arrogant to the military.  Remember what happened last year when an Army brigadier general referred to her by the military term of respect for a female, “ma’am” during a committee hearing?
“You know, do me a favor,” a visibly annoyed Boxer told the general testifying before her committee. “Could you say ‘senator’ instead of ‘ma’am’? It’s just a thing. I worked hard to get that title, so I’d appreciate it.”Boxer was also one of the 25 Senators to vote against condemning Moveon.org’s infamous 2007 attacking Gen. David Petraeus, with the headline that read “General Betray Us.”

Allow me to suggest that we cannot really blame Boxer, after all by most insider accounts, she does not have the intelligence to be a Senator, or to speak in public.Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

Uh-Oh it seems as if  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is losing touch with reality. The Hill is reporting that Reid is saying that the more people know about Obamacare the more they love it. And ignoring the facts, he says public opinion is turning against the repeal of Obamacare:
Reid...said public opinion is shifting in favor of the new healthcare law Democrats passed through Congress earlier this year and predicted more and more voters would reject Republicans’ calls for repealing the legislation.  The more people know about healthcare, the better they like it, said Reid, who listed several aspects of the new law he sees as popular.

The Senate Democratic leader is reflecting a sense among Democrats that playing up benefits within the healthcare law that would be threatened by a GOP repeal will help incumbent Democrats this fall. “All the polls around the country, including Nevada, indicate that when people are presented with: ‘Do you want to do away with giving 25,000 small businesses in Nevada a 3 percent discount on the healthcare?’ they all say no,” Reid explained in an interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network. “ ‘Do you want to have Medicare extended for 19 years like we did it?’ They say yes. You don’t want to repeal that. ‘Do you want to open the doughnut hole again?’ They say no, so the more people know about healthcare, the better they like it.” Reid is forgetting the parts about crippling the economy or driving doctors away from medicare, or having the government determine whether or not its worthwhile to give you life saving medical treatments that tend to "put people off."

The latest Rasmussen poll shows that 58% of Americans what Obamacare repealed including 48% who strongly favor repeal. Support for repeal is up two points from a week ago but is consistent with findings recorded over the past several month. Weekly tracking surveys have found support for repeal has ranged from 52% to 63%. Gee that doesn't sound like support for repeal is falling.

A look at opinions by party affiliation show that both Republicans (86%)  and independents (64%)  support repeal and only the members of Reid's own party object to repeal (66%).

Either Reid has totally lost touch with reality, or he is just not smart enough to read the handwriting on the wall. But now it has become clearer that his own son Rory who is running for governor  of Nevada is quick to point out. He's my father," Rory said of Harry. "Not my political mentor."Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

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Charlie Rangel is in real trouble. The list of charges against him is long;  failed to pay taxes on his Dominican villa; accepted a corporate-paid junket to the Caribbean; failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets; and that he's violated Congressional gift rules by renting four heavily subsidized apartments in NYC; used congressional resources to secure donations for City College's Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service. Things look bleak for Charlie, and now his own party is distancing from him as if he has contracted a highly contagious, fatal illness. 

For example the NY Daily News has reported:
Sen. Chuck Schumer gave Rep. Charles Rangel the cold shoulder on Sunday as liberal Dems upped the pressure on the congressman to cut a deal on ethics charges.

In the first reaction from Team Schumer to committee moves against Rangel, a spokesman put out a standoffish statement: "The senator is going to give Cong. Rangel a chance to get his case out there before coming to any judgment."Maybe Schumer is not the best example, after all, he would drive down to Del Rey Beach to run over his own mother if it would get him one more vote. Politico is reporting that the party leadership is trying to get him to cut a deal, admit his wrong-doing and get the heck out of the way.Increasingly impatient House Democratic leaders are prodding Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) to make a deal with the ethics committee before charges against him are unveiled on Thursday, top Democratic officials told POLITICO.
Fellow Democrats told POLITICO that they believe he’s dragging his feet in a futile effort at total vindication. Democrats worry that his stubbornness could add to their losses in November by helping Republicans, who have vowed to build a “culture of corruption” narrative using ads, mailings and talking points.

A senior Democratic aide said leaders will insist Rangel resolve the accusations before the August break. The leaders calculate that the political consequences could be grave if the matter drags out, and are considering going public with their demand if Rangel does not act on his own.

“Democrats don't want to give Republicans an opportunity this summer,” the aide said. “Rangel is very well liked, but no one is willing to lose their seat or chairmanship over him.”

House Republicans have developed extensive plans for using the ethics charges to inflict pain on Democratic candidates, including targeting recipients of donations from Rangel, a prolific fundraiser. The ethics committee is holding off publishing the charges against Rangel in a last chance attempt to get him to accept a deal. He can remain in Congress by accepting a previous offer from the ethics committee, which included an apology, the officials said.

Privately, colleagues say that since Rangel is unlikely regain the gavel as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the fight isn’t worth it — for him, or for them.

“This will be the third straight week Democrats are off message — the first two weeks courtesy of the White House, with [Robert] Gibbs’ comments and the [Shirley] Sherrod controversy,” the aide said.

“Leadership knows that this is not the way that vulnerable Democrats want to head into the August break. Look for Rangel to face increasing pressure for a quick resolution.”

At a Friday news conference in Harlem, Rangel vowed to stay in Congress: “I’m in the kitchen, and I’m not walking out.” If Rangel truly believes he is innocent, he should get the opportunity to defend himself. Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

Back in January there was a warning. American Hating/Chavez loving director announced his ten-part documentary for Showtime, called "Oliver Stone's Secret History of America," by promising a different look at Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin:
Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply," Stone said at the conference. "Stalin has a complete other story. Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any person.I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes, to understand their point of view. You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate."Today, the other shoe dropped. In an interview with the Sunday Times of London, he blamed the Jewish-Dominated media for preventing Hitler from being portrayed in context.
“Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support.”

He also seeks to put his atrocities in proportion: “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30m.”

Why such a focus on the Holocaust then? “The Jewish domination of the media,” he says. “There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years.”Why a focus on the Holocaust, because the Jews were singled out to be rounded up and killed only because of their religion. That's not to say that Russians did not die, in fact more Russians died than people from any other country. So his "more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people" is merely an attempt to diminish the genocide Shoah by counting up dead bodies. No wonder why the director is a defender of Hugo Chavez who has put the Venezuelan Jewish Community in danger.

As for Stalin, now that Stone "walked in his shoes" he should realized that as leader of the Soviet Union Josef walked in Hitler's shoes.  It is estimated that he killed between 20-30 million of his own people.

Stone's father was Jewish, and it makes one wonder what Oliver Stones dad did to the young boy to make him spread Anti-Jewish stereotypical lies that the the Jews control the media and/or US foreign policy.Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com