Did the Obama administration exploit the IRS to tie-up Republican groups to ensure his re-election?

Just how accurate is President Obama’s claim that there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” in the IRS targeting scandal ? The chart’s most startling figure shows how of the 298 groups whose applications for tax exempt status were delayed, a whopping 83% were right-leaning organizations.

The other revelations – conservative groups having to answer more than 3 times as many questions as liberal groups and being approved for non-profit status 45% of the time versus 70% of the time for liberal groups – buoy the position that the IRS did in fact target conservative groups.
(Graphic courtesy Reason.com )

The IRS' stalling of the applications has cost some groups thousands in donations and grants, while other groups have not been able to survive. A communications director for a Texas-based conservative group told The Christian Post earlier that the IRS's stalling cost his group $80,000 in donations and grants. (Juan Leon in IJReview)

See Will 'Lost' IRS Emails Reveal a Corrupt White House? IBD Editorial

Prof. Barry Rubin's death revives interest in video interview about his views on west's Mid-East policies

Barry Rubin, a prominent Middle East policy analyst, died in
Israel on Monday following an 18-month struggle with lung cancer. Prof. Rubin survived just past his 64th birthday.  He is survived by his journalist wife, Judith Colp Rubin, and their daughter and son.

Barry Rubin’s reach in the world of Middle East scholarship was broad and deep.  He served as director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, a columnist at The Jerusalem Post, the editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs and a contributor to the PJ Media website.

History-buff Rubins participated in Civil War re-enactments

Rubin, a D.C. native, had been a Fulbright scholar and a fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received his doctorate from Georgetown University in 1978. He was a noted skeptic of Palestinian nationalism, saying that Islamism was too deeply embedded in the region to accommodate a true peace with Israel.


“Clearly, the Obama administration does not understand Middle Eastern regimes and terrorist organizations, and if it doesn’t, it will meet miserable defeats,” he wrote on Jan. 12 at PJMedia.

His passing revives interest in his ideas. We re-publish an article of Mr. Rubin's on the Obama administration's Middle East policy, supplemented with a TV interview he did with us in 2011.

"The Solution: How to Deal with Obama Middle-East Policy" by Barry Rubin 

It is likely that the efforts of the Obama Administration during its second term will fail, not only because of its lack of understanding of the region and its ideology, but also due to the specific agenda.  No Middle Eastern country (only hostile ones or movements) can depend on the United States.  And to clarify this further:  No country -- including Israel -- can depend on the Obama Administration.

But as I noted above, this U.S. policy of Obama’s second term will fail. For example, the main goals of the second term are four big issues:

1)  Israel-Palestinian peace

2) Egypt government coalition with Muslim Brotherhood

3) Syrian civil war resolution with rebel victory

4)  U.S.-Iran rapprochement resolving nuclear issue.

Video 1- Leftist journalistic-bias intentionally whitewashes malevolence of Muslim Brotherhood

Yet because of irreconcilable differences, these may well be unresolvable. Due to such failures and hardline radical positions (Palestinians, Muslim Brotherhood, Syrian Islamists and regime, Iranian regime), the next administration would probably be forced back on recognition of extremism, support of allies, and U.S. interests.

Thus, regarding the “peace process,” we may well see the typical pattern in which the Palestinians wreck the peace process by rejecting or demanding even more concessions. Once again, it will only be necessary to wait until American negotiators learn better why their goals are impossible. Radicals will just raise their demands and demonstrate their anti-Americanism, and necessary priorities will shift.

Muslim Brotherhood influence in Obama-Hillary Admin- Rep. Michelle Bachmann stokes immune response against Islamization at Christian Zionist confab

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) carried her battle against the Islamist influence of the Obama Administration into her address before the Washington Summit of Christians United for Israel (C.U.F.I.) on Tuesday evening, July 18th.



She objected to Obama and Hillary Clinton's invitation to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood party President Mohammed Morsi to the U.S., in contravention of prohibitions against dealing with terrorist organizations.

Arnold Ahlert discusses the flap between Rep. Michelle Bachman "Islamists the Islamists Within" in FrontPage Magazine

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann and four other House colleagues are making things uncomfortable for an Obama administration that has a decided tolerance for Islamists. In doing so, Bachmann and company have raised two important questions.

First, they want to know how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aide, deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin, got security clearance, despite having relatives with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Second, they would like an investigation conducted regarding the “potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration” of the Obama administration. For their efforts, they were challenged by Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN). Ms. Bachmann’s response, detailing her concerns and those of her colleagues, reveals the extent to which this administration has been tainted–or quite possibly corrupted–by Islamist influences.  (. . .)

Bachmann also reveals that “despite statements backed up by considerable evidence in court raising concerns about many of the Muslim Brotherhood front groups,” various departments in the Obama administration continue to engage in “outreach” programs with these same organizations “as if the evidence…doesn’t exist.” 

Lastly, she reveals that, despite the FBI officially cutting ties with CAIR after the Holy Land trial, “the White House Director for Community Partnerships admitted that this administration has had ‘hundreds’ of meeting with CAIR” and that the White House “has worked to conceal these ties (in one case, with ISNA and MPAC).”

Bachmann sends Ellison letter in response to Muslim Brotherhood comments" St Cloud Times, July 15, 2012

Bachmann also says an investigation of “potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration” of President Barack Obama’s administration is needed because of interactions between federal agencies and what she calls U.S. front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Islamist group that recently came to power in Egypt.

One of Bachmann’s June 13 letters singles out Huma Abedin, a deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and wife of former New York congressman Anthony Weiner.

Bachmann’s letter says three members of Abedin’s family have had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, notes that her job affords her routine access to Clinton, and says the State Department has taken recent actions “that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.”

US on global alert for Iranian attack to jeopardize Shalit-for-Hamas terrorists swap

After being caught out, Iran is behaving as though it is under threat of war, its fury fueled by the US-Egyptian-Israeli-Hamas prisoner deal which threatens to cut the Islamic Republic out of Palestinian affairs and curtail its influence in the Gaza Strip, an important outpost.

With a valuable Middle East holding about to be lost, Iran is capable of unleashing terrorists for acts that would force the hands of the United States and Israel. By drawing Hamas into such operations, Tehran would seek to torpedo the Shalit deal a moment before its consummation.


(Video courtesy: Al Arabiyah)

US on global alert for Iranian reprisal that may jeopardize Shalit release 

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 12, 2011,  As Israelis joyously celebrated news of the forthcoming release of their soldier from five years in Hamas captivity, US officials in Washington released details of the plot instigated by Iran to murder Saudi ambassador Al-Jubeir, one of King Abdullah's closest advisers. 

US Atty Gen Eric Holder & FBI Dir Robert Mueller (AP)

US Attorney General Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller named Iranian-American Mansour Arbabsiar, 56,and a second man, Gohlam Shakuri, an Iranian official, in a five-count criminal complaint filed Tuesday afternoon in the federal court in New York. It included counts of conspiracy to kill a foreign official and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, a bomb.  Shakuri is still at large in Iran. Holder identified him as an Iran-based member of the Al Qods force. 

US officials are deeply concerned that Tehran may not take lying down Washington's charge that the Revolutionary Guards' Al Qods Brigades were complicit in the assassination plot or the success of a prisoner exchange deal releasing the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity. 

After being caught out, Iran is behaving as though it is under threat of war, its fury fueled by the US-Egyptian-Israeli-Hamas prisoner deal which threatens to cut the Islamic Republic out of Palestinian affairs and curtail its influence in the Gaza Strip, an important outpost. 

With a valuable Middle East holding about to be lost, Iran is capable of unleashing terrorists for acts that would force the hands of the United States and Israel. By drawing Hamas into such operations, Tehran would seek to torpedo the Shalit deal a moment before its consummation. 

Sources in Washington therefore criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for jumping the gun by his announcing the deal Tuesday for domestic political kudos. "Prisoner swaps are counted successful only after or during the fact," said one official. 

Other Western intelligence sources commented that by letting the cat out of the bag a week in advance, Israel gave Iran and Hizballah time to sabotage it. Both maintain a strong presence of undercover agents in the Gaza Strip who are fully capable of blowing away the deal Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal struck with Israel in the framework of an accord with the United States for packing up his Hamas bureau and command centers and moving them out of Damascus.

Obama's White House Iftar banquet list omits controversial Islamic attendees

The Daily Caller reports:

Iftar is the evening meal when Muslims break their fast during the month of Ramadan.

“It was a lot more low-key … It was a more intimate event this year,” said Haris Tarin, the Washington director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, whose invitation was kept off the published list. “I have no idea why they didn’t publish [MPAC’s invite] … I’m going to learn about that a little bit more,” he told The Daily Caller.

Mohamed Magid also attended but did not appear on the White House’s publish list. Magid is imam of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque in Northern Virginia and the current president of the Islamic Society of North America. Along with MPAC, Magid’s two organizations have drawn criticism from a loose network of online critics who claim they are sympathetic to Islamist groups.

Whether intentional or not, the shorter list limited the risk of a political embarrassment for the White House because it downplayed the attendance of several ideological Islamist groups, including MPAC, said Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a pro-Western Muslim group. But the White House also failed to invite any of the 25 pro-liberty American Muslim groups and individuals in Jasser’s American Islamic Leadership Coalition, he said.

The public guest list did include ambassadors from Muslim-majority democratic countries, such as Iraq and Bangladesh, as well as the ambassador of Israel, roughly 20 percent of whose population is Muslim. Also included were numerous ambassadors from Islamic countries that do not accept democracy or welcome non-Islamic religions. These included Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and both Yemen and Bahrain, whose governments have violently suppressed public demonstrations this year.

Obama, Jasser complained, “has not been clear on what America stands for, on the freedom agenda in the Middle East, [so] he ends up at an Iftar dinner that panders to ambassadors” who oppose American’s vision of freedom, Jasser said.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/11/obamas-iftar-guest-list-omits-controversial-attendees/#ixzz1UlZrB5nh

"Obama Undermining Moderate Muslims"- writes Khaled abu Toameh

by Khaled abu Toameh in Hudson - New York

The United States administration's recent decision to establish contacts with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood organization is a severe blow to moderate, secular Muslims who are trying to achieve democracy and prosperity in their countries.

The U.S. announcement will only undermine the so-called "Facebook Uprising" that has been sweeping the Arab and Muslim world in the past few months.

This is an uprising spearheaded by secular Muslims who have, until now, succeeded in marginalizing Islamic fundamentalist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood did not play any role in toppling the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Nor does the organization seem to have any significant role in the anti-government uprisings in Yemen, Syria and Libya.

But the Obama administration's decision to engage the Muslim Brotherhood will pump life into the organization and bolster its supporters in the rest of the Arab and Muslim countries.

Moreover, the decision sends a message to radical Muslims that they are marching in the right direction and it is only a matter of time before the rest of the world, including the Leader of the Free World, recognizes them as legitimate players.

Those who want to conduct dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood are also endorsing the organization's political and religious allies, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah.

These organizations seek to impose strict Islamic teachings and laws on all Muslims and Arabs. Their common goal is to take the Arabs and Muslims several centuries back.

Israeli stablility more important than ever, declares former Minn. Senator Norm Coleman

Former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman speaking with DemoCast at the recent Milken Institute Global Conference on Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 believes in the importance for liberty to maintain vigilance against encroaching Islamist imperialism.

Newly-porous, halls-of-power are ripe for infiltration by Islamist movements - in both the Middle East and the West, Sen. Coleman feels.

 

Media & political elites remiss in misunderstanding the truths about Islamism & anti-Semitism

Why They Celebrate Murdering Children.  Islam is as Islam does.  
by Andrew McCarthy in National Review Online  March 16, 2011

Palestinians welcome news of slain family of Jews

Muslims are frequently found carrying out the Koranic directive to “strike terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.” Actually, make that the Koranic theme, so often is it reiterated in the scriptures devout Muslims take to be the verbatim commands of Allah. (See, e.g., Suras 3:151, 8:12–13, 8:60, 9:5, 33:25–27, 59:2–4, 59:13.) And that is beside the hadith, scriptures in which Mohammed, taken to be the perfect Muslim role model, boasts, “I have been made victorious with terror.” (Bukhari 4.52.220 — just scroll down from here, through the glories promised to Muslims who wage jihad against the infidels.  

Muslims, in fact, are more often exhorted by their scriptures to brutalize non-Muslims than Christians are urged by the gospels to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. Yet, though we assume the latter are meant to take the message to heart, we are somehow sure Islam doesn’t really mean what it says — that when Muslims strike terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, it must be Israel’s fault, or America’s, or something, anything, other than Islam, the only common denominator in these attacks. . . . 

Rep. Peter King is to be applauded for forcing Congress to notice the phenomenon we so gingerly call Muslim “radicalization.” The question that really begs for hearings, though, is why we continue pretending not to know what causes it.

Obama bungles Mubarak crisis, "shatters the mystique of America's superpower status"; Iran sails warships Red Sea to oppose Egypt & Israel

Two excellent columns about the Obama Administration's bungling Mubarak's crisis:
As the lies come crashing down by Caroline Glick

The Obama administration's decision to ban relevant language from the official US policy discourse was ideologically motivated. And in choosing ideology over reality, the Obama administration has induced a situation where rather than construct policies to deal with reality, at all levels, US officials have been charged with constructing policies to deny and ignore reality.

Against this backdrop it becomes fairly clear why the Obama administration's handling of the political turmoil in Egypt has been so incompetent.

Upon entering office, Obama made a determined effort to ignore the political instability percolating under the surface throughout the authoritarian Arab world. US government officials were instructed to curtail programs aimed at developing liberal alternatives to authoritarianism and the Muslim Brotherhood. The justification for this behavior was again ideological.

The Obama administration's ideologically driven strategic ineptitude is evident everywhere.

From its slavish devotion to appeasing Iran, its single-minded insistence on withdrawing from Iraq, its announced commitment to withdrawing from Afghanistan, to its tolerance of Hugo Chavez, and its infantile reset button diplomacy towards Russia, the Obama administration's foreign policy is on a collision course with reality.

But nowhere is its premeditated incompetence more evident than in its obsession with the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.

Our leaders are doubtlessly tempted to simply take the path of least resistance and join Obama and his merry band of blind men as they move from lie to lie to defend their ideology from reality. ...

But doing so will not protect us when the dangers sown by the US's strategic dementia provoke the next conflagration.

Israel's best option is to simply tell the truth as loudly and forcefully as it can and base our policies on it. While doing so will win Israel no friends in the Obama administration or in Europe, it will prepare us for the day when the wall of lies they are building from Islamabad to Cairo to Ramallah come crashing down.

Egyptian women supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood demonstrate in this Tahrir Square video against Pres. Hosni Mubarak as a supporter Israel and America, the "infidel" states they've been inculcated to hate.
(Video courtesy NTEB2012)

Prof. Barry Rubin, back from the Herzliya Policy Conference around his office at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, returns to analyze: "Egypt: Mubarak's not the one who should resign."

... The quality of the American leadership has grown worse.

There has been an attempt to spin President Husni Mubarak’s speech as some type of victory for the Obama Administration. Yet within hours this effort collapsed. The nation’s highest intelligence officials showed they had no idea what the Muslim Brotherhood represents, joked that they didn’t know any more than did CNN, and provided completely inaccurate information on the course of events in Egypt.

It was the Egyptian army that decided that Mubarak had to go in order to preserve its own power and privileges.

When the New York Times can write,

"American officials said Mr. Panetta was basing his statement not on secret intelligence but on media broadcasts,” It seems that Panetta—not Mubarak--should resign not so much for getting the story wrong but for not understanding what his job is supposed to be.

The president of the United States leapt into an issue he didn’t understand, put forward a bad policy, showed he didn’t comprehend the most basic principles of statecraft and diplomacy, publicly celebrated as if he were making a campaign speech projected events in Egypt that didn’t happen, and then admitted that he had no idea what was going on.

Even some of his biggest left-wing fans had to admit this was a debacle. "The mystique of America's superpower status has been shattered," said Steve Clemons, of the New America Foundation.

From the Middle East itself, the reviews are indeed shattering. The Saudis, just about the most cautious and conservative government there is in the world, publicly rebuked President Obama on his strategy. This is not primarily an issue concerning Israel. It’s an issue affecting anyone in the Middle East who opposes revolutionary Islamism and looks to the United States as a protector.

Iran's destroyer docks in Jeddah opposite Israel & Egypt

Prof. Rubin adds the news that:  two Islamic Republic of Iran warships just visited the Saudi port of Jeddah in the Red Sea. No, that wasn't a misprint, I said "Red Sea," and not "Persian Gulf." This is the first time Iranian warships have been in the Red Sea, just down the coast from Israel and just across from Egypt.

Not only is this a strategic alarm bell for the United States and Israel but also for the Saudis themselves. Bereft now of their last significant Arab ally and feeling unable to depend on the United States, the Saudis are facing their worst strategic situation since the 1950s at a time when Iran is spreading its influence and racing toward nuclear weapons.

Obama's liberal foreign-policies mocked as "clueless" in hilarious music video from Israel's LatmaTV

Israeli satire troupe, LatmaTV, sends-up another hilarious musical parody of leftist culture and politics. Using music from "Fiddler on the Roof" they transform "If I Were a Rich Man" into "If I Wasn't Clueless" to remind us how Obama's foreign policies should be assuring global stability, instead of fomenting political instability.


(Audio switches from captions to English language at 1:44)

Allen West wants South Floridians to help him rescue America from leftist Obama Administration tolerance of Jihadism and encroaching shariah

Lt. Col. Allen West, congressional candidate from South Florida, expresses his understanding of global jihad and Pres. Obama's pacifist foreign policies towards America's jihadist enemies. A military hero against Islamist militantism, he tells reporter, Tommy Chandler, his preparedness to defend America on the battlefields and domestically, from tolerance of subversive Jihadism. Filmed by DemoCast in Washington, D.C., March 2009 at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Far-leftism advisory: 11-year old boy exposes school-marm's leftism; Soviet emigrants describe life under socialism, value of American liberty

ACT! for America's San Fernando Valley Chapter July meeting, organized by Chapter Leader Nancy Bonus, video features: 11-yr-old school boy, Sam Besserman, who exposed his middle-school teacher's imposing her non-curricular, leftist agenda over the classroom- published in an article in American Thinker, "A Conservative Kid Tries to Survive in California School."



Emigrants from the former Soviet Union express their experiences in the socialist, statist system, and their concern observing how statism is growing under Pres. Obama's administration.

Flag Day patriots' special: Jon Voight denounces Administration's foreign policy- in exclusive video interview with Democracy Broadcasting

In this dramatic interview, Mr. Voight gives his views about the Obama Administration's foreign policy enabling a moral inversion - facilitating Jihadist & liberals' demonizing of Israel through the U.N. - emboldening the Islamist axis weakening the image of America of protecting the world's oppressed against Islamism.

In 2008, Voight played Jonas Hodges, the villain, in the seventh season of the hit Fox drama 24, a role that many argue is based on real life figures Alfried Krupp, Johann Rall and Erik Prince. Voight plays the CEO of a fictitious Arms industry called Starkwood, which has loose resemblances to Blackwater USA and ThyssenKrupp. Voight made his first appearance in the two-hour prequel episode 24: Redemption on November 23. (Wikipedia)

Caroline Glick plays out the ominous endgame of Obama's obsession with Israel and laxity towards Iran

Center for Security Policy's Sr. Middle East fellow, Caroline Glick, explains why the Obama administration's policies towards Iran and Israel are counterproductive for the security of the world. Ms. Glick explains why it is critical, in her view, for the world to deny Iran the development of nuclear weapons - at any cost (and why Obama's focus on Israel diverts and distracts global attention to the world's detriment).

Islamists & their advocates re-directing US security, policy on Iran, Israel, and Middle-East

Islamist-regime advocates are infiltrating Washington through the Obama Administration and are undermining U.S. security policy, former counter-Communist intelligence expert, Prof. Clare Lopez cautions.

In "Rise of the Iran Lobby", a white-paper which she published earlier this year through the Center for Security Policy, Ms. Lopez illustrated how a network which includes well-known American diplomats, congressional representatives, figures from academia and the think tank world - with ties to the clerical regime in Tehran - would be co-opting America's foreign policy in the Middle East, and specifically towards the dangerous Islamic Republic of Iran.

It is imperative to recognize the role being played by what amount to their (CAIR, NIAC) interlocking (or at least overlapping) boards of directors, donations from the same foundations and growing access to some key members of Congress and top levels of US policymaking circles. Of special concern is the growing penetration of the Obama Administration by a number of individuals with such associations.

To be sure, efforts at influencing U.S. decision-making are common among a host of legitimate interest roups, including many foreign countries. But in this context, where the guiding force behind such influence operations emanate from the senior-most levels of a regime like Iran’s – which holds the top spot on the State Department list of state-sponsors of terror, makes no secret of its hatred and enmity for the United States and its ally, Israel, and acts in myriad ways to support those who have assassinated, held hostage, kidnapped, killed and tortured American civilians and military personnel over a 30-year period – such operations must be viewed with serious concern.

Specifically, the de facto alliance between CAIR, one of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliates named by the U.S. Department of Justice as an unindicted co- conspirator in the 2007 and 2008 Holy Land Foundation trials, and groups such as NIAC and its predecessor, the American-Iranian Council (AIC), which long have functioned openly as apologists for the Iranian regime, must arouse deep concern that U.S. national security policy is being successfully targeted by Jihadist entities hostile to American interests.

Today, the former counter-Communist CIA agent's predictions are manifesting visibly. The State Department's chief Iran chair, Dennis Ross, has been replaced by a close supporter of the mullah regime, John Limbert. Ed Lasky at American Thinker wonders who is directing these changes:

The controversy regarding the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) - whether it violated US law by not registering as a lobbying group, whether it's views are too closely aligned with those of Tehran, whether it is too close to George Soros, and the problematic views of its founder and head, Trita Parsi - has raged over the last week or so.

One of the most startling developments was produced by a discovery motion that took place as a result of a defamation suit the NIAC filed against one if its critics.

This was a plan to maneuver Dennis Ross out of the Iran chair at the State Department because the NIAC thought he would not as supportive of outreach towards Iran as the NIAC. The NIAC got its wish and then some. Not only was Ross pushed out and into the netherworld of the National Security Council (where he has not been heard of since) but he was replaced by John Limbert, who serves on the Advisory Council of the NIAC itself.

Who did the dirty deed of dumping Dennis?  ...

All these positions echo those of the National Iranian American Council and certainly comport with the wishes of the Tehran regime. Former Congressman Lee Hamilton's speeches regarding Iran were so highly thought of by the NIAC that the group posted reports of them on its website. The NIAC approved of the Iraq Study Group (the Baker-Hamilton product) report that advocated engagement and working with Iran, and downplayed the value of sanctions.

(Hamilton also wrote a positive blurb for a book that glowing depicted the Iranian-supported Hezbollah terror group ). 

Ms. Clare Lopez' "Rise of the Iran Lobby" is proving to be prophetic - and therefore deserves a fair reading - and heeding.