NPR Muslim Brotherhood Investigation Part II

New video: NPR was going to accept Muslim Education Action Center donation and hide it from the government
H/T The Daily Caller:

New video released Thursday afternoon indicates National Public Radio intended to accept a $5 million donation from fictitious Muslim Brotherhood front group Muslim Education Action Center [MEAC] Trust – and that the publicly funded radio network might have helped MEAC make the donation anonymously to protect it from a federal government audit.

When a man posing as Ibrahim Kasaam asked, "It sounded like you were saying NPR would be able to shield us from a government audit, is that correct?" NPR’s senior director of institutional giving, Betsy Liley, responded, “I think that is the case, especially if you are anonymous. I can inquire about that.” According to conservative James O’Keefe, whose Project Veritas organization conducted the NPR sting organization, the man posing as Kasaam made two follow-up phone calls to Liley after their lunch.

Liley said a $5 million donation would amount to about "10 years of support."

Kasaam follows up by asking: "The fact that NPR is not only a tax-exempt organization, but also receives direct contributions from the government — does that invite some sort of government oversight or government examination of contributions, et cetera?"

Liley answered: "They have audited our programs at times and, I think, as part of that, they can look at our audited financials. If you are concerned in any way about that, that’s one reason you might want to be an anonymous donor. And, we would certainly, if that was your interest, want to shield you from that."

VIDEO: NPR Muslim Brotherhood Investigation Part II

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For a Second Time, NPR Claims to Have "Rejected" Phoney Donation; Emails Appear to Say Otherwise
H/T BIGGOVERMENT

NPR's Watergate Moment
H/T BIGGOVERMENT

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In Video: NPR Exec Slams Tea Party, & Conservatives

NPR executives caught on tape bashing conservatives and Tea Party, touting liberals -The Daily Caller

Video at link above:

As reported at Daily Caller today, senior NPR executive Ron Schiller has been caught in a sting video orchestrated by investigative journalist James O’Keefe. O’keefe’s organization set up a fake Muslim Brotherhood group named the Muslim Education Action Center [MEAC] Trust, and approached NPR about donating $5 million to counter what they described as pro-Zionist coverage in the media.

In the video, Schiller compares the Muslim Brotherhood to the women’s movement, calls tea partiers "seriously racist, racist people," and justifies NPR's firing of Juan Williams as an action Schiller was "very proud of."

The statements Schiller and Liley make in the video just get better and better, an eye-popping, monument to their towering arrogance and stupidity. The saddest part is that they personify the kind of presumptuous, conceited attitude endemic to the media left.

They seem to think that Christians, are scary enemies. However, the Muslim Brotherhood who would love to see liberal blood run down the streets in torrents is a-okay with them. Maybe they aren’t as smart as they think they are.

Project Veritas has posted the two-hour uncut version here.

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NPR chief executive officer Vivian Schiller Says: NPR Has "No Particular Bias" and Accusations of Being Liberal is a "Perception Issue."

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Former Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty

Pawlenty to Like - National Review

Excerpts:

As Pawlenty prepares to run for the Republican nomination for president, his main problem is simple: Most Americans have never heard of him. Republicans tend to prefer known commodities: Every winner of the Republican nomination in the last 70 years had a national reputation a year before the primaries. Courage to Stand is not selling well. Yet Pawlenty may just be the Republicans’ strongest presidential candidate for 2012. Compared with his competitors, he is either more conservative, more electable, or both.

Larry Jacobs, who studies politics at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School, comments, “In Minnesota, Pawlenty was always seen as the state’s most charismatic and politically talented politician. Here’s a guy who was a conservative fending off often large Democratic majorities and [he] consistently had over 50 percent approval and dominated public debate. He had a remarkable knack for appealing to people on non-political grounds. . . . Mostly it was the way he talked about public policy and politics. People who fundamentally disagreed with him on public policy found him appealing.”

On paper, Pawlenty is a great candidate. He was a successful governor of a deep-blue state — Minnesota last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1972 — for two terms. And he’s from an electorally important region of the country, maybe the key swing region for Republicans.

But Republicans may be about to make their long-awaited breakthrough in the upper Midwest. After the 2010 elections, they now have three of the region’s Senate seats again. They also have both houses of the legislature in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. They captured the governorships in Michigan and Wisconsin and came close to holding the one in Minnesota. They picked up congressional seats in these states, too. Nominating Pawlenty would increase the Republicans’ chances of winning either Wisconsin or Minnesota. If they do that, they would still need to win back several of the states Bush won in 2004 but McCain lost in 2008. But they wouldn’t have to win Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, or Iowa. The path to victory would get appreciably easier.

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NO TOLERANCE FOR PUBLIC CORRUPTION

JOHN F. FLOYD: Breaking the back of corruption in Montgomery - The Gadsden Times

Excerpts:

"I read with great interest the verbal gymnastics on ethics reform between Rep. Craig Ford, D-Gadsden, minority leader in the Alabama House of Representatives, and newly elected Alabama state senator Phil Williams, R-Rainbow City.

The difference in the two evaluations of the recently passed ethics bill are astounding.

Ford obviously has no clue as to the tsunami that hit the Democrats in the November elections. For the first time in 136 years, the Republicans control the three branches of government in Montgomery, and the primary reason is the corrupt Legislature that has made Alabama politics the laughingstock of the rest of the United States.

Ford tried to label the ethics reform bill as "political payback," and he could be right. However, what is wrong with political payback when it corrects decades of corruption on Goat Hill in Montgomery?

For years, politicians in the Alabama State House have felt insulated from being held accountable for their political actions.

My father told me as a young man, "Son, when a person gets elected to state office in Montgomery, he thinks it is a license to steal."

Based on Ford’s commentary in The Gadsden Times on Dec. 28, he doesn’t understand hijacking of the Republican primary by the Democrats was the straw that broke the camel’s back — the back of the Democratic Party and its henchmen, Paul Hubbert and the AEA.

Williams stated in his commentary "None of the naysayers [Ford and the Democrats] has made a dent in ethics reform, or even approached the subject, despite having been the majority in the state Legislature forever. Don’t believe the lies. We ended PAC-to-PAC transfers, cut lobbyists’ influences, stopped double dipping, mandated ethics training and more. In short, in just a few days, the Republican majority took out 136 years of trash."

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John F. Floyd is a Gadsden native who graduated from Gadsden High School in 1954. He formerly was director of United Kingdom manufacturing, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., vice president of manufacturing and international operations, General Tire & Rubber Co., and director of manufacturing, Chrysler Corp. He can be reached at cteau@aol.com

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"There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character." --H.L. Mencken

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2012 GOP Presidential Candidate: Former Gov. of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty

Tim Pawlenty's Freedom First PAC

Gov. Pawlenty gave a speech to Alabama Republicans in Montgomery. Before Gov. Pawlenty spoke to the group, former Alabama GOP Chair Mike Hubbard announced that Gov. Pawlenty showed up at the speech bearing gifts. Hubbard told the audience of about 700 Alabama Republicans that Gov. Pawlenty hand-delivered a $100,000 check. The funds were earmarked to help Republicans win the Alabama House and Senate.

Tim Pawlenty was the Governor of Minnesota. Elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006, he has used innovative and conservative leadership to balance his state’s budget every year without raising taxes, cut spending, reform health care and improve schools. Under his leadership, Minnesota is among the healthiest states in the nation, and has the highest school test scores, as well as a leading economy. As Governor, he has cut taxes by nearly $800 million.

The first in his family to graduate from college, Gov. Pawlenty went on to earn his law degree and served as a criminal prosecutor. He was elected to the local city council in 1989 and to the state House of Representatives three years later, where he rose to become the Republican majority leader. Gov. Pawlenty is married to Mary, a former district judge, with whom he has two daughters, Anna and Mara.

I like Gov. Pawlenty. His responses come across as conversational and uncanned, unlike most politicos who tend to regurgitate memorized talking points that make them sound like robots. He also comes from a humble background [working class from the meat packing industry.] I like the guy. He has been able to foster a conservative agenda in a very liberal state. The biggest criticism I've heard about him is that he is boring. I would remind people that Obama was elected purely because of his perceived "star power." How's that working out? I'll skip the pizazz in favor of a proven record of accomplishment any day. As of now I'm liking his chances. I say two years out.

Gov. Pawlenty has two main strengths that could serve him very well. First off, he's very solid in every way. He knows what he believes in, he stands up for it [politely but very firmly] and he does not budge from his stands very often. While he's not particularly charismatic, these traits make him very electable next to Mr. Obama - he tends to come across, to anyone who listens to him for more than a sound bite, as, first and foremost, competent.

Second, while he is both a fiscal and social conservative, he has a knack for not seeming like either, in an honest and earnest way. Sure, he's not the most conservative candidate in the field, but is solidly conservative on almost every issue conservatives care about, and is able to express those views in a non threatening way. I think this gives him an ability to speak to the middle as a moderate, but govern as a conservative, and not seem to have compromised either way.

His achievements will undoubtably be well documented by others, but among them, he's been to Iraq 5 times and Afghanistan 3 times visiting MNG troops, and is reasonably fluent on foreign policy. He's made small moves to save money, like having his Lt. Gov. also serve as the transportation secretary and draw only one salary. When the state legislature adjourned without a budget agreement last year, he "unallotted" several billion dollars. And all that was done with a very, very Democratic leaning legislature for almost all of his two terms, and while still keeping his approval ratings above water [and near 60% for part of his terms] in a state that's probably still a D+9 or so state overall.

He's not a firebrand on the campaign trail; he doesn't ignite the room with his rhetoric, nor does he compel you to listen with his charm and wit. Because of this, his greatest challenge will be getting noticed and getting through the primary. While I think he'd be a shoo in for the presidency against Obama, I don't know how he gets past the primaries without some high profile help - a fan who can get him noticed but isn't running, for example.

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Free People with a Free Market

This is a somewhat longish post and the article it is based on is even longer one still. But the fact is it makes the disparity between the two sides readily apparent.

The Crisis of the American Intellectual

We live in a world today where much of the wealth generated is based on ideas and less on physical manifestations of things. Those physical objects we do need are increasingly cheaper to produce and easier to utilize because the objects are smarter.

What Mead does not state outright but in a round about way implies it is that our current institutions are out of touch. Not in the mindset sense, but in a real physical sense. If for example one were to apply Moore’s Law, that each 18 months that processing power would double and the size of the device shrink, then the Federal government would today be about 535 people plus about another 1000 staff. Everything else would have been automated out of existence.

Which brings the conservative movement the opportunity. The Left has traditionally sermonized that the Right were/are throwbacks. The exact opposite is true. Conservatives need to find those voices to make the case. Somebody out there has the voice and the talent in both areas and needs to speak up.

Also, while I despise the Dem’s ideology and their policies, I don’t despise the people who call themselves Democrats. Mainly, I look at them as undereducated in real life and overdoctrinized in theories of Utopian societies. However, this is not how most liberal leftists look at and talk about Republicans. They demonize the very idea of being a Republican.

Do we wish to accept a cradle-to-grave welfare state, in which more Americans depend on the government than on themselves, or do we want to promote an opportunity society that promotes human flourishing, connecting effort with reward?

We must make the case in a positive way about the benefits of Freedom and respect for individual rights plus a free market system. Based on voluntary action versus the ever deteriating situation of Statist/Interventionist government coersion and confiscation run by a small elite.

To destroy the Liberals and their machine one must tarnish their goals by providing that clear winning alternative--Free People with a Free Market.

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"Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well." --Dwight Eisenhower

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