China Just About To Overtake God Damn America As #1 Economy Due To Obama’s Failed Policies

Here’s an interesting fact: who is more “socialist”: Barack Obama’s God Damn America Or the (communist) People’s Republic of China?

The really scary thing is that it’s not even close: Barack Obama is FAR more communist than anyone in China.

Consider that your tax rate in the People’s Republic of China is 25% vs. your top federal tax rate in God Damn America of 39%.  And those Chinese don’t pay the state taxes that we also have to pay over here in good ole God Damn America.

If you want to understand why China owns us AND gets to eat our lunch at the same time, realize that the United States has THE highest corporate tax rate on planet earth.  AND a president who keeps saying the highest on earth still isn’t high enough.

I’ve watched dozens of Democrats who argue for higher taxes get asked the question, “How much should the rate be?”   And not ONE of them has ever answered.  The reason being THEY WILL NEVER GRAB ENOUGH OF OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY OR ENOUGH POWER TO DOMINATE OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVES.

The last time this measure was taken when George W. Bush was still president, China had well under HALF (43%) the economy of America.  But under Barack Obama and under Barack Obama’s “God damn America” policies, we have tanked so fast it gives me vertigo to think about it:

China Set to Overtake U.S. as Biggest Economy in PPP Measure
By Bloomberg News
April 30, 2014 4:32 PM EDT   69 Comments

China is poised to overtake the U.S. as the world’s biggest economy earlier than expected, possibly as soon as this year, using calculations that take purchasing power into account.

China’s economy was 87 percent of the size of the U.S. in 2011, based on so-called purchasing power parity, the International Comparison Program said in a statement yesterday in Washington. The program, which involves organizations including the World Bank and United Nations, had put the figure at 43 percent in 2005.

The latest tally adds to the debate on how the world’s top two economic powers are progressing. Projecting growth rates from 2011 onwards suggests China’s size when measured in PPP may surpass the U.S. in 2014, which would be years earlier than many economists had previously estimated, according to Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“There’s a symbolic element to this, to China overtaking the U.S., and that seems to be happening,” said Subramanian, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute. The latest data “plays to the idea that China is very big and getting bigger. It’s not to be underestimated.”

In a book published in September 2011, Subramanian estimated China became the world’s largest economy in 2010. While this was too early, the International Monetary Fund’s projections in its World Economic Outlook show China will move to the top in 2019, which is too late, he said today.

U.S. Share

The U.S. share of global GDP was 17.1 percent in 2011, while China was 14.9 percent, according to the ICP figures based on purchasing power parity, which seeks to compare how far money goes in each country. PPP calculates gross domestic product using exchange rates that adjust for price differences of the same goods between nations.

Yet China was well behind the U.S. based on another comparison, which looks at GDP in U.S. dollars at market exchange rates. By that approach, the U.S. share of 22.1 percent was more than double that of China’s 10.4 percent, the ICP data show.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. prefers to use market exchange rates for its “hard-nosed business cycle analysis,” said David Hensley, the bank’s director of global economic coordination in New York. That approach “gives a better sense of the resources that a country has command over.”

While JPMorgan keeps an eye on PPP comparisons as a secondary measure, it’s a hypothetical calculation which assumes one price level across all countries, Hensley said.

Different World

“That’s not the world we live in,” said Hensley. In addition to problems in measuring PPP, it “inflates the relative size and importance and command over resources that countries like China, India, Brazil or Russia have. That can create mistakes in judgment if you’re not careful.”

Hensley estimates that based on market exchange rates, the U.S. will stay in the lead until about 2024, when China crosses over as the world’s biggest economy, he said.

Changes in methodology contributed to the speed of China’s rise, according to the ICP report. Using market rates, U.S. gross domestic product was $16.2 trillion in 2012, compared with China’s $8.2 trillion. India vaulted into third place, ahead of Japan, the latest ICP figures also show.

This is what we voted for and this is what we deserve.

According to the Bible, America either will not exist or will be so weak that it will not matter one scintilla in the last days.

And while the fascist media keeps distracting us with one bright and shiny object after another, America is NOTHING like what it was just a few years ago as Obama has gutted America giant chunk by giant chunk.

The ONLY thing that makes the United States matter today – now that Obama has dismantled America’s military and pissed away our national security prestige – is the fact that since the end of World War II, the United States has served as the global reserve currency (with all commodities being bought and sold in U.S. dollars).

I have a vision of how that is going to change: now that Obama has gutted the American military and literally made America weaker than at any time since BEFORE our enemies decided to attack us to begin World War II, and now that Obama has so pissed away American credibility with his never mind “red lines” and his feckless response to Russian aggression that eerily parallels Hitler’s aggression in Europe, why does the United States even matter?

The major economies known as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have all made it clear that they want to dump the US as the global reserve currency (see also here).  We have lost more than enough influence both strategically, militarily, economically and morally under Obama that it is only a matter of time before we don’t have enough people who need us relative to the growing list of countries that hate us.  Note that Obama has done EVERYTHING to cut the list of the former countries and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to reduce the number of the latter.  In every region in the world, we are very clearly in worst shape than we were in when we cursed ourselves by electing Obama.  We have distanced ourselves from our former friends and emboldened and increased our current enemies.

One day, soon, as a result of our rapid decline under Obama, the world is going to cut its losses and dump the United States as the reserve currency.  We are facing a world in which we have too few friends, too many enemies, a growing list of enemies who are gaining power over us, and not enough influence to change a damn thing.  Russia and China and India will lead the effort to dump the dollar and we won’t be able to stop it.  And we will implode as no society in the history of planet earth has EVER imploded.  Because when you have a house of cards built on more than $225 trillion dollars of debt, you are going to fall HARD when you fall.

The worst of the Great Depression will seem like a pleasant stroll along a sunny beach compared to what’s in store for God damn America.

This is a nation that voted to perish.  And it is going to get – as God damn America – exactly what it voted for.

 

Jesus, Son Of Man, Son Of God (Part 4): The Trinity In The Old Testament

There are a lot of spiritually and scripturally ignorant people who view the doctrine of the Trinity as a problem.  The doctrine of the Trinity is not a problem at all; rather, it is an OBVIOUS ANSWER to the “problem” of the biblical data which assure us that the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God.

Question: Does the Old Testament allow for the doctrine of the Trinity?

Answer: You betcha it does.
I. Uniqueness, Unity, and Diversity: a brief study on the nature of the God who would send the Messiah and give us the Bible.

A. God’s Uniqueness and Unity presented in the midst of a pagan world.

1. The fundamental point of OT theology is the uniqueness and unity of Israel’s God as opposed to the polytheism of Israel’s neighbors.

a. All the religions of the nations surrounding Israel were basically nature cults, designed to enlist the aid of the pantheon and ensure the fertility of the land.
b. Humans were basically created because the gods were lazy and needed someone to do the work so they could play and stay drunk.
c. In contrast, Duet 6:4 claims, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”  Yahweh alone is the true and living God.  He is unique and it is therefore humanity’s obligation to worship Him alone.  We also find that, unlike the pantheons (e.g. the Baal pantheon) God is not divided.  In Num 6:27, God’s “name” is singular in number (“put My name upon the people”).

2. But the above emphasis on the unity of God’s being seems to be supplemented by a kind of mulitiplicity suggesting distinct centers of consciousness, as we are about to see.
3.  And further, Israel knew that the “Lord is one,” but it also became aware of one called “Seed,” “Branch,” “Wisdom,” “Prophet,” and “King” (as well as [another?] one called “Spirit of God” and “Holy Spirit.”).

B. The diversity of the one true God revealed in the Pentateuch.

1. A study of “the Lord is one” (‘ehad /echad. Strong’s #259) in Deut 6:4.

a. “’Ehad” is closely identified with “yahad” (“to be united”) and “ro’sh (“first, head).” It stresses unity while also recognizing the potential for diversity within that oneness. A good translation for this sense would be “a compound unity/oneness.” The word “compound” is defined as being “composed of two or more parts, elements or ingredients.” Read Num 13:23 and Gen 1:5 for illustration.
b. Here are a FEW of the MANY times when ‘ehad/echad is used in this manner:

1) Gen. 1:5: The yom echad (first day) is a combination of two things – the evening and the morning as a compound unity.
2) Gen. 2:24: Adam and Eve became l-visar echad (one flesh). They were one, but two and they were two, but one.
3) Gen. 3:22: Adam and Eve became “one” (echad) with God. But they did not lose their personhood when they became “one” with God.
4) Gen. 11:6: The people were one (echad). They were, thus, “one” and “many” at the same time.
5) Gen. 34:16, 22: The Shechemites wanted to become “one people” (l-`am echad) with the Jews.
6) Ex 24:3 describes all the people as speaking “with one voice.”
7) In Ex 26:6,11; 36:13 the NIV translates “‘ehad” as “a unit.” The tabernacle curtains were fastened together to form one unit.
7) II Chron. 30:12: God gave the people “one heart” (lev echad). Obviously, the thousands of individual hearts were “one” in a compound or composite sense.
7) Ezra 2:64: The “congregation” (kol-haqahal) of forty two thousand, three hundred and sixty persons was described as “one” (k-echad). Similarly, in Jud 20:8 and 1 Sam 11:7 the word “’ehad” is used in the phrase “as one man” (all the people arose as one man).
8) Jer. 32:39: Under the New Covenant, God will give His people “one heart” (lev echad).

c. There ARE times where the word ‘ehad/echad is used as “one” in the sense affirmed by strict Unitarian monotheists (such as Deut 17:6 (“only one witness” as opposed to “two or three witnesses”) and Ex 9:6 (“but not one animal”). But all Christians need to demonstrate here is that there is a powerful sense of ‘ehad/echad as a compound oneness throughout the Bible. Thus the Trinity is in the door EVEN in the Shema of Deut 6:4, the monotheistic Jews’ most powerful claim of strict monotheism. It is simply intellectually dishonest not to recognize that fact. And NOTE that when we speak of human witnesses and animals, we are speaking of one AMONG MANY. We are merely speaking about one particular human or animal among many others. So this is hardly the strongest case for ‘ehad being used in a strict Unitarian sense.
d. By contrast, there IS another Hebrew word – “yachid” (Strong’s #3173) – which means an absolute or solitary oneness. It is even translated “solitary” in Psalm 68:6 and refers to someone who is absolutely alone. This is its general meaning throughout Scripture. Unitarians should naturally expect to find that the word yachid applied to God in the Bible. On the other hand, Trinitarians would not expect to find yachid used of God because they believe that there are three Persons within the Godhead. So who is right? When we turn to the Bible, what do we find? The authors of Scripture NEVER applied yachid to God. They never described God as a solitary person. This is simply devastating to the Unitarian position of strict monotheism.
e. “The Lord is one” of Deut 6:4 is a powerful contrast with the polytheism that surrounded Israel. It is clear that God is one in some profound sense, and that, as one, He is unique and worship is to be accorded to Him alone. But it does NOT in any way rule out the doctrine of the Trinity. Quite the contrary: it allows for it as much as “one team” allows for 11 or even 53 49er football players to be on the field.

2. A study of “In the beginning God created” (Elohim).

a. The 3rd word in the Hebrew Bible (‘In the beginning God’) conveys a clear sense of plurality in God.
b. “Im” (in “Elohim”) is a masculine plural suffix, which clearly allows – if not demands – for a plurality of persons.
c. This plural form (the singular is “’Eloah”) occurs ONLY in Hebrew and is not found in any other Semitic language (including Aramaic). THERE IS NO PLURAL FORM OF GOD IN ARAMAIC, ONLY IN HEBREW.  You seriously have to wonder why ONLY the Jews used the plural form if they were supposed to be strict Unitarian monotheists.
d. The singular form “Eloah” IS used in the Old Testament, but why is the plural form “Elohim” used FAR, FAR more???   Note that the singular form does NOT damage Trinitarian doctrine because Trinitarians AGREE that “God is ONE in His nature; we hold that God is ONE in Nature and THREE in Person.  The question here is why the plural form of God “Elohim” is used at ALL if God is the strict Unitarian entity of the radical strict monotheism of Islam and Judaism???
e. It is simply a fact that Israel, in distinction from all the nations, had a unique sense of plurality in the one true God whom they worshipped in addition to the fact that God is One.

3. A study of the use of plural pronouns and verbs.

a. Plural pronouns are used to describe the actions of God (Gen 1:26; 3:22; 11:7).

– This phenomenon of plural pronouns points to a plurality of persons within the Godhead.
– Religious liberals who like to call this a “plural of majesty” fail to be properly disappointed by the fact that there is NO example of a “plural of majesty” in the Ancient Near East. (And no Hebrew king ever uses “we” or “us” to describe himself). The very earliest usage of such a plural of majesty is in 4th century AD Byzantine – some 800 years AFTER the OT was written.

b. The OT occasionally uses plural verbs when God is the subject and a singular form of the verb would be expected.

– wooden literal translation of Gen 35:7 is “because there the gods they had revealed themselves to him [Jacob].”
– Liberals don’t want to acknowledge the deity of Jesus Christ, and they therefore refuse to acknowledge any grounds for the doctrine of the Trinity in the OT. If the facts get in the way, so much the worse for the facts!

4. A study of the enigmatic figure called the angel of the Lord (Gen 16:7-14). The angel of the Lord is apparently distinguished from “Yahweh” (v. 11b) and then identified with Yahweh, El, and Elohim (v. 13).

– Note that in Gen 16:10 the Angel of the Lord says, “I will multiply your offspring.” Contrast that with appearances of angels who are NOT “the Angel of the Lord,” such as Gabriel in announcing to Mary.
– In Luke 1:28 Gabriel says, “The Lord is with you.” In Luke 1:30 Gabriel says, “Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive…” And when Mary asked, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Gabriel responded in Luke 1:35, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”
– Contrast Gabriel’s “God will do these things” with the Angel of the Lord who said “I will do these things.”
– Who is this Angel of the Lord? He is the Preincarnate Christ

5. A study of the three “mystery men” who appeared to Abraham. Yahweh appeared to Abraham (18:1); when he lifted up his eyes he saw three men (v. 2).

– Notice in Gen 18:1 “the LORD” (Yahweh) appeared to Abraham. How does “the LORD” appear? In the form of three men standing before him.
– Why three men? Because God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  If you think you’ve got a response that somehow rules out the doctrine of the Trinity, let’s hear it.
– The doctrine of the Trinity is MORE than allowed in the Old Testament.  And as we continue to study the Person of Messiah as revealed in Old Testament prophecy, the fact that God is three Persons will scream louder and louder and louder.
– Just as God progressively revealed His sacrificial system and His law and His Messiah in the Old Testament prophecy, He similarly progressively revealed His Triune nature.

6. A study of the three-fold repetition of divine blessing with the three-fold repetition of the divine name. Paul saw in Num 6:24-26 a foreshadowing of the Trinity (2 Cor 13:14).

– Numbers 6:24-26 says, “‘”The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.”‘
– 2 Corinthians 13:14 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”

THIS is the language of the Bible that revealed the coming of the Person – the DIVINE Person, the Second Person of the Trinity – of the coming Messiah.

America Cut Off Like Spoiled Brat: China Planning To Massively Divest Itself Of U.S. Debt

Imagine you’re a rich kid, a spoiled brat.  All your life, you’ve lived on daddy’s money.  But you’ve finally taken that one giant step too far and daddy has pulled the money plug on you.

What would you do?

You’d better figure it out quick.  Because it’s just about to happen to you and to everybody else. 

Because China is beyond fed up with Obama’s hopey-changey:

China Proposes To Cut Two Thirds Of Its $3 Trillion In USD Holdings
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/24/2011

All those who were hoping global stock markets would surge tomorrow based on a ridiculous rumor that China would revalue the CNY by 10% will have to wait. Instead, China has decided to serve the world another surprise. Following last week’s announcement by PBoC Governor Zhou (Where’s Waldo) Xiaochuan that the country’s excessive stockpile of USD reserves has to be urgently diversified, today we get a sense of just how big the upcoming Chinese defection from the “buy US debt” Nash equilibrium will be. Not surprisingly, China appears to be getting ready to cut its USD reserves by roughly the amount of dollars that was recently printed by the Fed, or $2 trilion or so. And to think that this comes just as news that the Japanese pension fund will soon be dumping who knows what. So, once again, how about that “end of QE” again?

From Xinhua:

 

 

China’s foreign exchange reserves increased by 197.4 billion U.S. dollars in the first three months of this year to 3.04 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of March.

Xia Bin, a member of the monetary policy committee of the central bank, said on Tuesday that 1 trillion U.S. dollars would be sufficient. He added that China should invest its foreign exchange reserves more strategically, using them to acquire resources and technology needed for the real economy.

And as if the public sector making it all too clear what is about to happen was not enough, here is the private one as well:

 

 

China should reduce its excessive foreign exchange reserves and further diversify its holdings, Tang Shuangning, chairman of China Everbright Group, said on Saturday.

The amount of foreign exchange reserves should be restricted to between 800 billion to 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars, Tang told a forum in Beijing, saying that the current reserve amount is too high.

Tang’s remarks echoed the stance of Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China’s central bank, who said on Monday that China’s foreign exchange reserves “exceed our reasonable requirement” and that the government should upgrade and diversify its foreign exchange management using the excessive reserves.

Tang also said that China should further diversify its foreign exchange holdings. He suggested five channels for using the reserves, including replenishing state-owned capital in key sectors and enterprises, purchasing strategic resources, expanding overseas investment, issuing foreign bonds and improving national welfare in areas like education and health.

However, these strategies can only treat the symptoms but not the root cause, he said, noting that the key is to reform the mechanism of how the reserves are generated and managed.

The last sentence says it all. While China is certainly tired of recycling US Dollars, it still has no viable alternative, especially as long as its own currency is relegated to the C-grade of not even SDR-backing currencies. But that will all change very soon. Once the push for broad Chinese currency acceptance is in play, the CNY and the USD will be unpegged, promptly followed by China dumping the bulk of its USD exposure, and also sending the world a message that US debt is no longer a viable investment opportunity. In fact, we are confident that the reval is a likely a key preceding step to any strategic decision vis-a-vis US FX exposure (read bond purchasing/selling intentions). As such, all those Americans pushing China to revalue, may want to consider that such an action could well guarantee hyperinflation, once the Fed is stuck as being the only buyer of US debt.

It’s not like the Chinese didn’t try to warn us:

The Chinese government contacted our tax-cheating Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and said:

“We want some kind of a guarantee that your money is going to be worth something if you keep spending so much over there and devalue not only your currency but the currencies throughout the world… We hate you guys.  Once you start issuing $1 trillion, $2 trillion, or more dollars, we know the dollar is going to depreciate.”

But of course, that is precisely what Obama did: issue $1 trillion, then $2 trillion, then so on and so forth, in new spending.  And now our dollar is tanking into poo-poo land.

Adjusted U.S. Dollar Plunges To Lowest Level Since 1973

More bad news in God damn America:

Soft US dollar, tough choices
By James Mackintosh
Published: March 7 2011 22:48 | Last updated: March 7 2011 22:48

So the US Federal Reserve is not exempt from the laws of supply and demand. Theory suggests creating more dollars should make each worth less. Sure enough, the Fed’s own measure of the trade-weighted dollar in real terms – the best way to do long-term currency comparisons – is at its lowest since the dollar floated in 1973.

For those of you who need a picture to understand what is being said, I shall do my best to provide:

For those of you who simply could not see this coming, I have another useful illustration for you:

I am just so shocked.  I thought QE2 would be a smashing success after the wonders of QE1.

We need another massive stimulus.  Failure squared = success.

This chart explains something profound:

You can bet on gold because Obama can’t ruin it’s value.  You can bet on oil because Obama is making it more and more valuable with his moronic policies.

But DON’T bet on the dollar.  Don’t bet on anything that Obama can get his fumble-fingered mitts on.

Here’s a similar snapshot of reality:

It sounds like a Murphy’s law: “When a total fool occupies the White House, the value of gold increases proportionately.”

Reckless Obama Borrowing, Spending Killing America Even Faster Than Critics Feared

My “expert” opinion: this is a really, really bad thing Obama is leading us into.

U.S.’s $13 Trillion Debt Poised to Overtake GDP: Chart of Day
By Garfield Reynolds and Wes Goodman

June 4 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.”

The CHART OF THE DAY tracks U.S. gross domestic product and the government’s total debt, which rose past $13 trillion for the first time this month. The amount owed will surpass GDP in 2012, based on forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. The lower panel shows U.S. annual GDP growth as tracked by the IMF, which projects the world’s largest economy to expand at a slower pace than the 3.2 percent average during the past five decades.

“Over the long term, interest rates on government debt will likely have to rise to attract investors,” said Hiroki Shimazu, a market economist in Tokyo at Nikko Cordial Securities Inc., a unit of Japan’s third-largest publicly traded bank. “That will be a big burden on the government and the people.”

Gross, who runs the world’s largest mutual fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California, said in his June outlook report that “the debt super cycle trend” suggests U.S. economic growth won’t be enough to support the borrowings “if real interest rates were ever to go up instead of down.”

Dan Fuss, who manages the Loomis Sayles Bond Fund, which beat 94 percent of competitors the past year, said last week that he sold all of his Treasury bonds because of prospects interest rates will rise as the U.S. borrows unprecedented amounts. Obama is borrowing record amounts to fund spending programs to help the economy recover from its longest recession since the 1930s.

“The incremental borrower of funds in the U.S. capital markets is rapidly becoming the U.S. Treasury,” Boston-based Fuss said. “Do you really want to buy the debt of the biggest issuer?”

This is just part of “God damn America.”  It’s less oil-fouled than some of the other parts of God damn America, but it is a nasty part, nevertheless.

So we’re about to go bankrupt, basically.  Obama is digging a gigantic hole, and the entire American economy is going to plunge into that hole, never to emerge again.

I knew Obama was going to be a disaster.  I’ve been saying it and saying it.  But the rate at which he is destroying the country, both through deliberate, intentional action (e.g., his insane spending, the failed but shockingly expensive Porkulus, ObamaCare) and through complete and total failure to lead (e.g., the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, the rise of domestic terrorism, illegal immigration), is astonishing even to my worst case scenarios from last year.

The next time we find out that a candidate for president spent 23 years in a church whose pastor says, “Not God bless America, God damn America!!!” maybe people will think twice before voting for the fool.

Waterboarded 183 Times? Mainstream Media’s ‘Big Lies’

The American Media have read their copies of Mein Kampf, underlined key passages, and put them to use in their propaganda.

Recently the media, the pundits, the late show comics, and prominent Democrats – including the Teleprompter of the United States – have repeatedly advanced the completely false charge that “90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors … come from the United States.”  It’s a complete lie.  A lie that Democrats have tried to use for political effect.

In reality, the overwhelming majority of guns confiscated from drug cartels come from foreign countries, or from Mexico itself.  Of the small percentage that had serial numbers submitted to the United States, 90% OF THOSE GUNS came from the U.S.  And those guns were legal handguns, rifles, and shotguns – NOT assault rifles [WHY would drug cartels want semi-automatic “assault weapons” from the U.S. when they could buy the full-auto real deal somewhere else?]

Now we learn about another massive lie that liberals have used to great political effect:

Despite Reports, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Not Waterboarded 183 Times
The number of times Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded was the focus of major media attention — and highly misleading.

By Joseph Abrams
FOX NEWS
Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The New York Times reported last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, was waterboarded 183 times in one month by CIA interrogators. The “183 times” was widely circulated by news outlets throughout the world.

It was shocking. And it was highly misleading. The number is a vast inflation, according to information from a U.S. official and the testimony of the terrorists themselves.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the interrogation program told FOX News that the much-cited figure represents the number of times water was poured onto Mohammed’s face — not the number of times the CIA applied the simulated-drowning technique on the terror suspect. According to a 2007 Red Cross report, he was subjected a total of “five sessions of ill-treatment.”

“The water was poured 183 times — there were 183 pours,” the official explained, adding that “each pour was a matter of seconds.” […]

The confusion stems from language in the Justice Department legal memos that President Obama released on April 16. They contain the numbers, but they fail to explain exactly what they represent. […]

Pours, not waterboards.

A close look at a Red Cross report on the interrogations makes the numbers even clearer.

As the Red Cross noted: “The suffocation procedure was applied [to Abu Zubaydah] during five sessions of ill-treatment … in 2002. During each session, apart from one, the suffocation technique was applied once or twice; on one occasion it was applied three times.”

The total number of applications: between eight and 10 — not the 83 mentioned in the Times.

Mohammed similarly told the Red Cross that “I was also subjected to ‘water-boarding’ on five occasions, all of which occurred during the first month.” Those were his five “sessions”; the precise number of applications is not known but is a fraction of the 183 figure.

All of those individual pours were scrupulously counted by the CIA, according to the memos, to abide by the procedures set up for the waterboardings.

“[I]t is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented: how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process,” read a memo from May 10, 2005. […]

The media picked up this distortion and – for their own ideological purposes – ran with it rather than fact check it.  Ordinary bloggers realized that the numbers simply didn’t add up:

Bloggers who read the memos last week noted that the CIA’s math “doesn’t add up” … and they could barely even guess how the detainees could have been waterboarded an astounding 286 times in one month.

Are we seriously supposed to believe that these cynical, hardened professional journalists had absolutely no idea that something was desperately wrong with what they were reporting?

The media – and the Obama administration – deliberately perpetuated falsehoods because they wanted to convey two false “truths”: 1) the waterboarding of two terror suspects (266 times!!!) “clearly” constituted torture.  And 2) the waterboarding technique “obviously” had no effect since it had to be used so many times.

There’s something very troubling.  President Obama deliberately released confusing memos, made absolutely no effort to clarify to the American people what those memos actually meant, and then refused to provide any more information that would have put those carefully selected memos into context.  It was all a giant lie.

We come back to the FACT of the subheading of an article:  “The former head of the CIA told FOX News last year that five years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, 60 percent of the knowledge of the U.S. intelligence community about Al Qaeda came from enhanced interrogation techniques.”

In other words, the CIA under Bush learned 60% of everything they gathered on al Qaeda by basically waterboarding.  And Barack Obama has just left the US intelligence community more than half blind as a result of his naive, politically correct moralizing hypocrisy.

But the propagandists of both the Obama administration and the media didn’t want us to know this; what they wanted us to “know” was the LIE that terror suspects were waterboarded 266 times.

They want the story to be about “Who practiced torture, and who is pledging to restore American virtue?” rather than, “Who kept us safe, and who is going to place this country at terrible risk?”

Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (James Murphy translation, page 134):

“All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true in itself – that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.  These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.”

Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, summarized Hitler’s “big lie” theory, saying that if a lie is repeated enough times it would become widely accepted as truth.

This is exactly what the Obama administration and the ideological leftwing mainstream media (both in the “news” and in the opinion-shaping late night programs) have repeatedly been doing.

Mark Twain famously said,

“A lie can be half-way round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”

And this story that these two suspects were repeatedly, tortuously waterboarded 266 times is now all over the world, thanks to our Liar-in-Chief and his Joseph Goebbels minions.

And Hitler said,

For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

Our professional liars – who call themselves “journalists” – understand that, and know that their lies will continue to wield impact even long after they are demonstrated to have been false all along.

Barack Obama, his Democrat lackeys, and the mainstream media, are FAR more evil in deliberately misrepresenting the truth for political partisan purposes than the Bush officials and the CIA interrogators who tried to keep this country safe after it suffered its worst attack in history.

And thus we descend into the Fascist States of America.ir

Obama’s Disgrace America Tour Off To Great Start

Let’s reflect on the past few weeks.

First Obama treats the Prime Minister of Britain – America’s closest historic ally – like dirt and then has his State Department announce that “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.”

But that’s okay; he’s balancing that despicable treatment by doling out more of the same shoddy treatment to the 2nd greatest ally of the United States, Israel.

Apparently, Obama seeks to appease the countries who despise us by turning his back on the countries who have loved us.

Then he goes on his “Apologize for being an American” tour during the G-20 summit. He didn’t get any meaningful commitments from anybody to give us any kind of meaningful help in our “good war” in Afghanistan, and he got absolutely nobody to follow his “let’s all keep on recklessly spending” stimulus plan. But he gave up American economic sovereignty by ceding control over to an international body anyway. At least Judas got 20 pieces of silver for his betrayal; Obama got nothing for his.

During that tour, Obama had the gall to apologize to France – to FRANCE! – for American arrogance. That pretty much proves that Obama believes America is the most arrogant country in the history of the world.

And he bowed down before the king of Saudi Arabia before lying about the fact that he had bowed. The first American president to break with the tradition that American presidents do not bow down to kings. The tradition of “sic semper tyrannis” is officially over.

Then – after bowing down before a Muslim king – Obama went to Turkey to renounce American Christianity, and all the founding history that went with it.

With his genuflection to serve as a capstone foreign policy moment for American submission, Obama then journeyed to Mexico to tell them to blame America for all their problems, and repeats the already utterly disproven demagoguery that “More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States” to support his thesis. Pretty smart, this: he gets to demonize America for selling guns to Mexican drug cartels and at the same time he gets to undermine the 2nd Amendment.

And then we went to the Americas Conference to appear as the “poor ignoramus” that Hugo Chavez said he was a few weeks earlier:

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama was at best an “ignoramus” for saying the socialist leader exported terrorism and obstructed progress in Latin America.

“He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he’s a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality,” said Chavez, who heads a group of left-wing Latin American leaders opposed to the U.S. influence in the region.

Geez. I never would have believed Hugo Chavez would ever be right about anything. Hugo Chavez should look in a mirror, of course, but he’s absolutely spot-on in his assessment of Obama.

The governments of the United States and Venezuela finally agree upon something; and Obama and Chavez subsequently shook on it to confirm the fact: Barack Obama IS a poor ignoramus.

Well, at least he didn’t bow down before him, although some have suggested that perhaps if Obama bows down before the Ayatollah of Iran and Kim Jong Il of North Korea perhaps they’d abandon their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Why nuke us if we’re already subservient?

And then Chavez took another photo op moment to present Obama with a book that presents the Marxist-socialist thesis that America is the source of evil that is responsible for all of Latin America’s problems. Chavez DID say the poor ignoramus needed to read up on his Marxist fabrication of history, after all.

Sad thing is I bet Obama reads every page of the book Chavez gave him. And believes it.

After listening to a deranged speech in which Daniel Ortega demonized and blamed the United States for every problem in Latin America (having clearly read Obama’s new book), Obama’s response was as telling as it was depressing:

“I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.”

It’s NOT about YOU, dammit! This guy just pissed all over your country – the country that you took an oath to DEFEND, by the way – and all you care about is whether he blamed YOU the way you’ve blamed George Bush 5,000 times?  STAND UP FOR AMERICA! Tell the world we’re NOT the hateful country that sleazeballs such as Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and Ortega claim.  But, no; you’ve done even more blaming of America than Ortega during the last several weeks.

Very recently, Obama continued the disgrace America tour by releasing CIA memos so he could refer to “the dark and painful chapter in our history.” Yet another attempt to rub our nose in our morbid and completely illegitimate desire to protect ourselves from the lethal hatred of terrorists. CIA officials are supposed to be thankful that Obama did not reward them for their efforts to protect the country by having them criminally prosecuted. It was apparently vitally important that our terrorist enemies be made to realize that they no longer have absolutely anything whatsoever to fear from being captured by American forces. All they have to do is lawyer up while enjoying three hots and a cot while they destroy our country just like the ACLU does – from within – by using our own institutions against us.

The disgrace America tour goes on and on under Barrack Hussein. Let’s not forget the sermons from Obama’s spiritual leader for 23 years: this IS “God damn America,” after all.

I end by reflecting on the words of Mark Levin from Liberty And Tyranny, page 18:

For the Statist, the international community and international organizations serve as useful sources for importing disaffection with the civil society. The Statist urges Americans to view themselves with through the lenses of those who resent and even hate them. He needs Americans to become less confident, to doubt their institutions, and to accept the status assigned to them by outsiders – as isolationists, invaders, occupiers, oppressors, and exploiters. The Statist wants Americans to see themselves as backward, foolishly holding to their quaint notions of individual liberty, private property, family, and faith, long diminished or jettisoned in other countries. They need to listen to the voices of condemnation from world capitals and self-appointed global watchdogs hostile to America’s superior standard of living. America is said to be out of step and regressive, justifying the surrendering of its sovereignty through treaties and other arrangements that benefit the greater “humanity.” And it would not hurt if America admitted its past transgressions, made reparations, and accepted its fate as just another aging nation – one among many.

How to Demagogue the Economy

Want some good news that you probably haven’t heard? The United States has the best economy on the planet!

Here’s the May 15, 2008 story by CNN.Money.com:

GENEVA (AP) — The United States topped world competitiveness rankings for the 15th straight year, but its economy is showing the same signs of weakness that sank booming Japan in the early 1990s, according to an annual survey released Thursday.

Asian tigers Singapore and Hong Kong ranked just behind the U.S., as they did last year. Switzerland jumped two places to fourth, while Luxembourg rounded out the top five most competitive national economies, said the Lausanne, Switzerland-based IMD business school, publisher of the World Competitiveness Yearbook.

“The big question is whether the United States will be No. 1 after this year,” project director Stephane Garelli said, adding that the report was based on 2007 data that do not fully reflect all of the problems in U.S. financial markets. “Everyone is catching up very quickly, but so far the U.S. economy is showing a lot of resilience.”

The study lists 55 economies according to 331 criteria that measure how the nations create and maintain conditions favorable to businesses.

The U.S. position was cemented by its domestic economy, which is the world’s strongest, topping all others in its amount of investments, stock purchases and commercial service exports. The U.S. also ranks as the easiest place to secure venture capital for business development and dominates all other economies in key technology criteria such as computers in use, according to the report.

But Garelli warned that U.S. economic health is vulnerable because of its heavy reliance on the financial sector for corporate profits.

The 2008 report says there are parallels between now and two decades ago, when the business school first started to study competitiveness and “Japan’s competitiveness seemed unassailable, with a strong domination in economic dynamism, industrial efficiency and innovation.”

“Then all hell broke loose,” it added. “The stock market went into reverse in 1989, land prices collapsed in 1992, credit cooperatives and regional banks came under attack in 1994, large banks teetered on the edge of bankruptcy in 1997, and a major credit crunch occurred in 1998. Does this ring a bell?”

While the report called the similarities “frightening,” Garelli said there are important differences between the Japan that stagnated for nearly a decade and the U.S. economy teetering on the brink of a recession now.

Japan’s decision-makers were bureaucrats or politicians who reacted too slowly. The U.S. administration, by contrast, is full of business and financial experts that know when things need to be shaken up.

“The U.S. always seems to find the means to reinvent itself in ways that Japan – and much of Europe – often lacks,” he said.

Rounding out the top 10 most competitive nations were Denmark, Australia, Canada, Sweden and the Netherlands. Slovenia rose eight places to 32nd – a jump matched by Poland, which is now 44th. Greece slipped the furthest, six places down to 42nd.

China and India both dropped two places in the report, to 17th and 29th, respectively. Russia fell four spots to 49th.

Venezuela was ranked last for the third year in a row, immediately preceded by Ukraine, South Africa, Argentina and Indonesia.

The United States economy is rated as the strongest and most competitive in the world for the fifteenth year in a row. This is frankly astounding news, given the fact that we are routinely told that President Bush has horribly mismanaged the economy, that we are in a terrible recession, and that no president has been this incompetent since Herbert Hoover (and go ahead and have one from the Washington Post for the road).

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich is actually talking about a depression, proving he’s diminutive in more than just height. Goodness sakes people, it’s really quite remarkable how stupid and irrational people with average to above-average IQs can become when they buy into a completely warped view of the world.

Another interesting story is the economic mythology that we are continually presented about the Clinton years. If you believe what you are routinely spoon fed, you know that President Clinton left President Bush with a budget surplus and a strong economy. False and false again.

First of all, President Clinton did not balance the budget; what he did was fiddle with the numbers by paying off the public debt by borrowing from the intergovernmental debt (particularly from the Social Security Trust Fund). If you think that’s a legitimate way to balance the budget, kindly check yourself in to the nearest mental health facility for evaluation. But even with such shenanigans, the last Clinton budget was $133.29 billion in the red.

It is simply not true that President Bush balanced the budget in anything resembling a meaningful or legitimate sense.

Furthermore, President Clinton left President Bush an economy that was already stumbling into recession.
The GDP declined into the negative range in the third quarter of the year 2000.

Wikipedia points out, “The U.S. economy shrank in three non-consecutive quarters in the early 2000s (the third quarter of 2000, the first quarter of 2001, and the third quarter of 2001).

Using the stock market as an unofficial benchmark, a recession would have begun in March 2000 when the NASDAQ crashed following the collapse of the Dot-com bubble.”

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, the GDP was at a negative growth of 0.5% in the third quarter of the year 2000. There was another 0.5% negative GDP growth in the first quarter of 2001, and a -1.4% quarter in the third quarter of 2001.

A document from the state of Ohio says, “In the second half of 2000, traditional manufacturing has experienced negative growth, which qualifies as a recession using the definition of two consecutive quarters of decline.”

Media Matters, the well-funded liberal hate site and attack operation, has cried foul over the National Bureau of Economic Research’s revision of economic data to indicate that there really was a “Clinton recession” that began in the latter half of the year 2000. But, even if the original figures of negative growth given as March-November 2001, it’s still on President Clinton’s record. The simple reality is that the Bush administration’s first fiscal year did not begin until October 1, 2001. There is simply no getting around the fact that Clinton most definitely did NOT leave Bush a strong economy.

Why is there such an overwhelming belief in things that are simply false?

Because the media – which is and has been firmly on the side of the left – is routinely disingenuous with statistics, which can often be tricky even for people who aren’t trying to lie.

The research confirms it:

During the 2000 election, with Bill Clinton as president, the economy was viewed through rose-colored glasses. According to polls, voters didn’t realize that the country was in a recession. Although the economy started shrinking in July 2000, most Americans through the entire year thought that the economy was fine.

But over the last half-year, the media and politicians have said we were in a recession even while the economy was still growing.

Gas prices are going up. The economy is slowing. Talk of recession is seemingly everywhere. While the majority of people rate their personal finances positively, consumer confidence in the economy has plunged to a 16-year low, well below what it was during the last year of the Clinton administration when we were in a recession.

A Nexis search on news stories during the three-month period from July 2000 through September 2000 using the keywords “economy recession US” produces 1,388. By contrast, the same search over just the last month finds 3,166. Or, even more telling, take the three months from July through September last year, when the GDP was growing at a phenomenal 4.9 percent. The same type of Google search shows 2,475 news stories.

Over 78 percent more negative news stories discussed a recession when the economy under a Republican was soaring than occurred under a Democrat when the economy was shrinking.

A little perspective on the economy would be helpful. The average unemployment rate during President Clinton was 5.2 percent. The average under President George W. Bush is just slightly below 5.2. The current unemployment rate is4.8 percent, almost half a percentage point lower than these averages.

The average inflation rate under Clinton was 2.6 percent, under Bush it is 2.7 percent. Indeed, one has to go back to the Kennedy administration to find a lower average rate. True the inflation rate over the last year has gone up to 4 percent, but that is still lower than the average inflation rate under all the presidents from Nixon through Bush’s father.

Gas prices are indeed up 33 percent over the last year, but to get an average of 4 percent means that lots of other prices must have stayed the same or gone down. On other fronts, seasonally adjusted civilian employment is 650,000 people greater than it was a year ago. Personal income grew at a strong half of one percent in just February.

Despite all that, this last week, Barack Obama proclaimed “As most experts know, our economy is in a recession.” Hillary Clinton made similar staements last fall. Yet, as any economist knows, a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, and we haven’t even had one single quarter of negative growth reported. The economy slowed down significantly during the end of last year, but that was after a sizzling annual GDP growth rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter.

Housing has obviously been a big drag on the economy, but many other sectors of the economy, such as exports, have been doing well, some extremely well. For example, aerospace exports increased by over 13 percent last year.

The media’s focus on the negative side of everything surely helps explain people’s pessimism. In a recent interview Fox’s Neil Cavuto claimed this bias “is all part of the media’s plan to get a Democrat in the White House.”

Indeed, research has indicated that media bias is real. Kevin Hassett and I looked at 12,620 newspaper and wire service headlines from 1985 through 2004 for stories on the release of official government releasing numbers on the unemployment rate, number of people employed, gross domestic product (GDP), retail sales, and durable goods.

Even after accounting for how well the economy was doing (e.g., what the unemployment rate was and whether it was going up or down), there was still a big difference in how positive or negative the headlines were. Democratic presidents got about 15 percent more positive headlines than Republicans for the same economic news.

Yet, the hysteria created by this coverage can have another cost. It creates pressure for government to “do something,” even if that rush to do something actually ends up hurting the economy. For example, Obama’s promises last week “to amend our bankruptcy laws so families aren’t forced to stick to the terms of a home loan” will only further drive down the value of mortgage-backed securities, making any unstable financial institutions that hold them even more likely to fail. In the long term, who is going to want to loan money when the contract can be rewritten at a later date?

The news media have generated a lot of fear. Ben Stein has a point when he says “The actual economic conditions are not that bad. I think if we have a recession, if we have a serious recession, a great deal will lie at the media’s feet.” Hopefully a little perspective will enter the picture before even more harm is done.

John Lott is the author of Freedomnomics and a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland.

In particular we can see the fudging of economic perception by one particular media outlet – CNN – in a recent poll they did.

Fox News reported the story this way under the title, “The “R” Word“:

It appears that CNN has decided the U.S. is in a recession even though the economic data do not support that claim.

On its Web site, CNN posted the exit poll results from Tuesday’s West Virginia primary which asked voters if and how the “recession” has affected their family. All the major television networks use the same exit poll questionnaire.

And, while that generic survey asked voters, “Has the current recession or economic slowdown affected you and your family?”

Other networks, including this one, used the term “economic slowdown” when reporting the results. A recession is defined as at least two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. The last quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008 were marked by slow, but positive economic growth.

A blogger is a little angrier about this bias, and backs his temper up with solid data:

Adolph Hitler described the propaganda technique known as the “big lie” in his Mein Kampf as a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

The liberal American media have mastered this technique in a way that would have had Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels slapping his forehead and saying, “I should have thought of that!”