A power-player in N.J. politics and Christie mentor, Samson’s connection to Bridgegate remains unclear
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Saudi Arabia, the brutal authoritarian theocracy that the democracy-promoting Washington claims as one of its closest allies, has a bit of a history of pressuring the U.S. into Middle East wars. The 1991 First Gulf War to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait was fought largely in defense of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom also encouraged the Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2003. And the Saudi king has repeatedly urged Washington to attack Iran to secure Saudi interests in the Sunni-Shia regional divide.
Saudi Arabia also has a rather incriminating and duplicitous history of harboring Islamic extremists of the al-Qaeda, jihadist type. They helped the U.S. fund the mujahideen in Afghanistan. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis (and they were directed by a Saudi, named Osama bin Laden). There is even a classified record that members of Congress have claimed indicates the Saudi government’s role in the 9/11 attacks.
Since the start of Syria’s civil war, foreign jihadists have been flooding the country – many of them coming from Saudi Arabia. Al Monitor reports:
Estimates of the number of Saudis fighting in Syria range as high as 2,500. Some are hardened veterans of earlier jihads in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Iraq. A few are compatriots of Osama bin Laden. Others traveled to Syria from the kingdom, despite individual travel bans imposed for dissident activities at home. Some traveled directly through major Saudi airports, leading many observers to conclude they were encouraged by the authorities to leave the kingdom and go fight Assad. For over two years, the Saudi government seemed to turn a blind eye to travel by its citizens — even political dissidents — to Syria.
Kuwait, which has close ties to the Saudi government, “is a major source of private funding for Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s official arm in Syria,” Al Monitor reports.
Interesting enough, but that is not the big piece of news from this Al Monitor report. The big news is this: “King Abdullah will make a major push for a more vigorous American effort to oust Assad when he hosts Obama [late next month]. The Saudis have been openly disappointed that Obama has not used force to get rid of Assad or provided more assistance to training and arming the Syrian opposition.” Now, the report says, the Saudis are trying to persuade Obama to impose regime change in Syria by promising to cut back on its support for jihadists.
To sum up, Saudi Arabia’s policy on Syria amounts to funding groups considered by Washington to be terrorists and to lobbying the President of the United States to destroy the Damascus government. The two initiatives are deeply intertwined given that a collapse of the regime in Syria would mean chaos and huge ungoverned spaces, which foreign funded jihadists could thrive in.
I’ve been hammering away on the issue of entangling alliance for months now, but where is the outrage on Saudi Arabia? The U.S. government continues to help prop up and arm the Saudi government and yet it supports terrorism and is trying to suck the U.S. into another dangerous and endless military quagmire in the Middle East. Where are the belligerent members of Congress, the Peter Kings and Charles Schumers, condemning Saudi Arabia? They condemn other countries for much less.
REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
After a tenuous defense Friday night, the office of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Saturday blasted The New York Times and former Port Authority official David Wildstein, whose lawyer on Friday said that “evidence exists” implicating Christie in the George Washington Bridge scandal.
Christie’s camp wrote an email to political allies and friends entitled, “5 Things You Should Know About The Bombshell That’s Not A Bombshell.” The email was first reported by Politico’s Mike Allen and obtained by Business Insider.
The email first attacked The New York Times, which originally obtained the letter from Alan Zegas, Christie’s attorney, on Friday. The Times changed the lede of its story from saying Wildstein had the evidence to the more passive “evidence exists.”
“A media firestorm was set off by sloppy reporting from the New York Times and their suggestion that there was actually “evidence” when it was a letter alleging that ‘evidence exists,’” Christie’s office wrote in the email.
The next four points in the email defended Christie and attacked Wildstein. The email dug into Wildstein’s background — including a mention of a time when, as a 16-year-old, he sued over a local school board election.
The email also noted that Wildstein has been looking for immunity. His lawyer, Zegas, has said that Wildstein has a “story to tell” if he were granted immunity.
“Bottom line — David Wildstein will do and say anything to save David Wildstein,” the email reads.
The full email is below:
5 Things You Should Know About The Bombshell That’s Not A Bombshell
1. New York Times Bombshell Not A Bombshell. A media firestorm was set off by sloppy reporting from the New York Times and their suggestion that there was actually “evidence” when it was a letter alleging that “evidence exists.” Forced to change the lead almost immediately, the Times was roundly criticized, and its editor was forced to issue this extraordinary statement to the Huffington Post:
2. As he has said repeatedly, Governor Christie had no involvement, knowledge or understanding of the real motives behind David Wildstein’s scheme to close lanes on the George Washington Bridge.
3. The Governor first learned lanes at the George Washington Bridge were even closed from press accounts after the fact. Even then he was under the belief it was a traffic study. He first learned David Wildstein and Bridget Kelly closed lanes for political purposes when it was reported on January 8th.
4. In David Wildstein’s past, people and newspaper accounts have described him as “tumultuous” and someone who “made moves that were not productive.”
5. David Wildstein has been publicly asking for immunity since the beginning, been held in contempt by the New Jersey legislature for refusing to testify, failed to provide this so-called “evidence” when he was first subpoenaed by the NJ Legislature and is looking for the Port Authority to pay his legal bills.
Bottom line – David Wildstein will do and say anything to save David Wildstein.
UPDATE 1-GM selling remaining Ally stake -report
http://currenteconomictrendsandnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/8a30e__p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif
DETROIT Dec 4 (Reuters) – General Motors Co is selling its remaining stake in its former lending arm, Ally Financial Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The private placement deal is worth about $ 900 million, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Officials with GM and Ally declined to comment. GM which owned a 9.9 percent stake in Ally at the end of September.
Once a part of GM, Ally was formerly known as GMAC. GM has been rebuilding its finance operations since selling a controlling stake in GMAC to private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management in 2006.
In November 2012, GM agreed to pay $ 4.2 billion for Ally’s European and Latin American auto lending operations as it moved to expand its in-house financing at its GM Financial unit as a way to boost sales. GM closed on those deals in April and October this year.
Last month, Ally bought back $ 5.9 billion worth of its shares from the U.S. Treasury and has repaid more than 70 percent of the total aid provided by the government.
Ally received a $ 17.2 billion bailout during the financial crisis. Last month, the Federal Reserve approved the company’s 2013 capital plan, clearing the way for repayment to Treasury.
Ally has struggled to recover from the mortgage meltdown. Last year, it put its troubled home loan subsidiary Residential Capital LLC into bankruptcy to stanch the bleeding from bad mortgages.
Shortly after returning* to his cherished chair as Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman said “The relations with the USA is the angular stone, without it we won’t be able to manipulate[!] the current world.” This is a bit brutish, but expected. Soon he learned that things had changed since the last time he sat in his favorite chair. On November 20, 2013, he dropped his first political bomb of the season. |  USA Secretary of State and UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs |
The USA-Israel love affair is cooling down. A few days ago, a leading politician close to Netanyahu said “Kerry Crossed a Red Line”, this was strengthened by an important lawyer who said “US Secretary of State is the enemy of the Jews”.
 Hebrew Media Cartoon | Lieberman’s bomb was dropped while French President Hollande was finishing a strategic visit to Israel, which was full of nuclear innuendos (French-Israeli Attack on Iran?). A fast student, Lieberman fixed his initial assessment. Israel does not need the USA anymore. |
Afraid of the ricochets of his own words, Lieberman chose the Sapir College near Gaza as delivery point. Speaking at the Sderot Conference for Society, he knew that until he and his words reached the Jerusalemite political arena a new crisis would render them obsolete.
Lieberman’s Gems
 Sapir (Hebrew rendering of sapphire) College near Gaza | “In times when the relations with the USA are diminishing, Israel needs to search for new allies with common interests.” “Americans are struggling with many challenges, problems in North Korea, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Iran, in Syria, in Egypt, in China, and they have also their own economic problems. Thus, I ask what our place in the international arena is?” |
While his rural audience was busy with more immediate issues, he continued “There is one Jewish country and 57 Muslim countries. From the start, we are in an inferior position.” Note that he assumes that peace is not possible and that all Muslim countries behave as one. “All countries search for investments or external help,” he added oddly.
Unable to coherently analyze reality, he moved to personal anecdotes. He told about his meeting with a current European Prime Minister while the latter was in the opposition. He didn’t identify him by name, but the reference to British PM Cameron is quite clear. “Back then he spoke about Israel and the Middle East as if he were a member of Yisrael Beiteinu’s [Lieberman"s extreme-right party] rightwing. Now, I see that he has adopted anti-Israeli positions.”
 Iranian Jews on Nuclear Program |
“I asked a common friend ‘How did this happen?’ He answered ‘What do you expect from him? He has unemployment, he has problems, and he needs investments and donors. These come from the countries in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. So, what can we expect from him?’
“We don’t have such economic leverage. The relations USA-Israel is cooling down… Israel needs to search for new allies with common interests.
“We must search for those countries that do not run after the money, that do not need the Muslim World. These are countries in need of technological and agricultural knowledge. That is what we can offer.”
Lieberman is infamous for untimely and, to be frank, hallucinated declarations. In the past, he said “Palestinian Authority doesn’t exist,” while the government he was a member in was officially dealing with it.
He chose a remote place to deliver his bombshell, but his timing was less calculated. In two days, on Friday, USA Secretary of State will arrive at Jerusalem. Netanyahu, arriving from Russia, to where he travelled after French President left Jerusalem, will greet him.
Lieberman, you have a sapphire opportunity here to meet your American peer and tell him what you said in Sderot. Prove that you are a serious man. “Thank you for your cooperation all these years, here is a golden watch as thanks. Good bye!” Will you?
Lieberman in Hebrew: “Israel Needs New Ally” (Not USA) |
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Special Notice – Persecuted by Israel, Maimed by Bolivia
Under the leadership of Mr. Evo Morales, recipient of the 2006 Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights, I have been declared a Political Prisoner of Bolivia. My situation is acute, Western Human Rights organizations care not about those speaking against Israel, they do not care about those suffering under the violent hands of one of the main suppliers of “special sugar” to the West. |  |
I apologize for this obviously incomplete email, the reason for my withholding much of what is relevant will become obvious. |
* On November 6, 2013, a Jerusalemite court unanimously acquitted Avigdor Lieberman of all charges placed by a civil servant who disliked Lieberman’s policies. See McCarthyism Loses Israeli Battle: Lieberman Acquitted
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Photo by Yskin/flickr
As if the radical left’s knee-jerk support for abortion in almost any conceivable circumstance is not reprehensible enough, one prominent speaker recently advocating making the murderous act mandatory.
Appearing as part of a panel on a current affairs program in Australia, author and gay activist Dan Savage offered some deeply disturbing views while taking questions from the audience.
“Which so-called dangerous idea do you each think would have the greatest potential to change the world for the better if it were implemented?” one woman asked. With little hesitation, Savage chimed in his belief children should be snatched out of the womb and murdered without even consulting the mothers carrying them.
“There’s too many [expletive deleted] people on the planet,” he exclaimed, adding that “in my darker moments I’m anti-choice.”
His definition of the term does not mean he wants to curtail abortion, however. In fact, he advocates for the polar opposite outcome.
“I think abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years,” he continued.
Obviously, his heartless and outrageous comments caused plenty of discussion; and Savage has been roundly criticized for his position. As someone who builds his own brand by making the most outlandish statements imaginable, though, he is likely thrilled with the attention.
While his expression of such views is troubling on its own, the Obama administration’s apparent support of his offensive mission is far more disconcerting.
Despite the fact this profane monster is one of the biggest bullies in today’s marketplace of ideas, the White House infamously helped Savage raise funds “It Gets Better,” a purported anti-bullying campaign geared toward homosexuals.
Though he is adamant about protecting the feelings of those who share his sexual perversion, Savage has no qualms about trampling on those with whom he disagrees.
In the same televised appearance, he blamed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins for the suicide deaths of homosexuals.
Claiming Perkins “sits on a pile of dead kids every day when he goes to work,” Savage said he doesn’t “understand how real Christians let that little [expletive deleted] get away with that.”
Once again, the leftists in today’s deeply damaged culture contend only conservatives should be silenced when presenting ostensibly controversial views. Liberal bullies, on the other hand, deserve a presidential fundraiser.
–B. Christopher Agee
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President Obama has worked alongside Nancy Pelosi for five years, but his appreciation for her has gone from polite blandishments to something akin to rediscovery.
While raising money for House Democrats in Boston Wednesday night, the president said the minority leader from California “has just constantly surprised me by just how good, how tough, how visionary and how committed she is, and dedicated to the well-being of not just her own constituents but the American people.”
Less publicly he’s described Pelosi as “tough as nails,” confiding his respect for her ability to corral votes in her conference, even when some of her Democratic members initially feel less than united.
Whether Obama is correct that Pelosi occasionally subsumes her personal druthers or those of her San Francisco constituents in order to extricate the president, their party, John Boehner, or the country from jams is beside the point. Obama’s recent gushing that the 14-term congresswoman is a valued weapon against Washington’s dysfunction is a message welcomed by Democrats who viewed a government shutdown and the country’s near-default as a consequence of erratic House Republicans.
For years the president has been telling Democratic donors that Pelosi “perhaps” could be returned as speaker — a position she lost to Boehner after the Democrats’ 2010 midterm wipe-out. It’s a posture that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney deadpanned with sarcasm Thursday is “a shocking position to hold.” In other words, would Obama really suggest anything else to his party?
But the president is nearly at the end of a year devoid of major legislative breakthroughs, and he blames Republicans in the House. Pelosi, he suggests, is more helpful than Democrats comprehend while they remain in the minority in the lower chamber. But if they win back the majority next year, the president thinks his second term could gain some altitude.
“The interests of the American people will be better served if I’ve got Nancy Pelosi standing by my side and we get the agenda done,” the president said Thursday night.
When Democrats controlled the House during Obama’s first two years in office, Pelosi and her lieutenants helped enact a stimulus bill, controversial bank bailouts and the Affordable Care Act. The House also passed climate change legislation. But as a consequence, she lost her gavel to Boehner when Republicans gained 63 seats in the 2010 midterm elections.
Pelosi last week said Obamacare was not the Democrats’ undoing at the polls. She said the GOP was able to capitalize on the unpopularity of the Troubled Asset Relief Program that used taxpayer funds to buoy some of the nation’s largest financial institutions in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
“One of the most damaging votes that our members had to take was the TARP, 700-plus billion dollars to bail out Wall Street in the view of the public,” she said during a news conference last week on Capitol Hill. “We didn’t see it that way. We saw it as rescuing our economy from a financial services meltdown.”
“People never even got over that vote,” she added. “It really in some ways gave birth to the Tea Party. … That was really the vote that sort of soured people. … And they judged many other things in light of” that action.
This month, Pelosi led her members to deliver the necessary votes to end a 17-day government shutdown and avert a debt ceiling crisis after the speaker failed to muster consensus inside his divided GOP caucus. All 198 Democrats who voted gave their assent, while 144 Republicans voted no.
Those are among the House votes Obama has in mind when he praises Pelosi’s command of her troops.
Whether she’ll be speaker in 2015 is a separate question. It presumes an unlikely sweep for Democrats — and the conference’s decision to crown her rather than any of the younger members who might represent the next generation of party leadership.
Nonpartisan House analysts describe the chances of Democrats taking back the House as iffy, but not impossible, a year from now. According to an Oct. 31 analysis by the Cook Political Report, Democrats would need to win all solidly Democratic districts (165); all the “likely” Democratic districts (counted as 12); all the districts that lean Democratic (15); all of the tossup races (12); plus 14 of the 16 races in districts labeled “lean GOP.” Democrats — now numbering 201 to the GOP’s 234 — need a net gain of 17 seats to secure a House majority of 218 votes.
Charlie Cook, in an Oct. 22 column in National Journal, wrote that House control may turn on whether Republicans lose their footing, more than on Obama’s or Pelosi’s efforts to propel Democrats to victory. “One of the top Democrats in the House told us privately months ago, ‘Democrats can’t take the House but Republicans can lose it.’ Well said,” Cook wrote.
Nonetheless, Obama has in mind a brisk schedule through the end of the year to raise money to help House Democrats in those races, and next year he’ll campaign for candidates in many of the districts he captured in 2012.
An unlikely comeback in the House could transform the flagging Obama presidency, in which Washington gridlock has taken a toll.
“Our former speaker and, hopefully, soon-to-be speaker once again, Nancy Pelosi,” the president said when he introduced his smiling “partner” in Boston.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, joins Martin Bashir to argue in favor of President Barack Obama’s approach on Syria – and chastise her fellow senator, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, over his comment that President Obama is trying to ally the United States with al Qaeda.
