Tag Archives: government

Another Chinese Attack

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…this time against the White House’s computers.

White House sources partly confirmed an alarming report that US government computers were breached by Chinese hackers.

“This was a spear phishing attack against an unclassified network,” a White House official told FoxNews.com.

Spear phishing consists of attempts directed at specific individuals.  Sure enough, “This [White House Communications Agency] guy opened an email he wasn’t supposed to open,” according to a law enforcement official investigating the attack.

Most likely, this was a preliminary, probing attack, in preparation for a later, more fully developed assault.  Or a demonstration of things to come if we don’t step back.

Sure enough,

[a] White House official downplayed that report, saying that the system involved was not a sensitive nuclear system, and no evidence indicated that information was actually taken.

That’s OK, then.  The fact of the successful probe is itself no big deal.  Sure.

Is AARP Tax-Exempt?

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The short answer is yes—it’s a 501(c)4 non-profit.  Follow-up question: should it continue in that status?

If the information outlined in Kimberly Strassel’s Wall Street Journal article last Friday is accurate, I suggest the follow-up’s answer should be “No.”

…AARP worked through 2009-10 as an extension of a Democratic White House, toiling daily to pass [Obamacare].  We know that despite AARP’s awareness that its seniors overwhelmingly opposed the bill, the “nonpartisan membership organization” chose to serve the president’s agenda.

71 pages of emails tell the story.  For instance,

As early as July 2009, Mr. Sloane [AARP Senior Vice President David] was sending the administration—”as promised”—his “message points” on Medicare.  Ms. DeParle [an Obama senior aide Nancy-Ann] assured him “I think you will hear some of your lines tomorrow” in President Obama’s speech—which he did.  Mr. Rother [AARP Policy Chief John] advised the White House on its outreach, discouraging Mr. Obama from addressing seniors since “he may not be the most effective messinger [sic]…at least to the McCain constituency.”  Better to manage these folks, he counsels, through the “authoritative voices of doctors and nurses.”

And

Ms. LeaMond [AARP Executive Vice President Nancy] worried that the Medicare spin wasn’t working against public criticism of the bill.  She emailed Mr. Messina [another Obama senior aide Jim] and Ms. DeParle that she was “seized” with “concerns about extended coherent, strong messaging by Republicans on the Medicare savings.”  To pull off the legislation, she mused, “we”—the White House and AARP—will need a “concerted strategy.”

And so on, including AARP internal polling passed on to DeParle and Messina that indicated AARP’s membership opposed the developing Obamacare by 98%.  This last isn’t legally relevant to AARP’s tax exempt status; it just shows how…out of touch…AARP management was with its membership.

Plainly, the aggregate of these emails demonstrates violation of the non-partisan requirement for such non-profits.

RTWT.

Controlling Religion

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Last Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes, reports The Weekly Standard, the Democratic Party’s Presidential Candidate, Barack Obama, was asked this question by Steve Kroft:

Have the events that took place in the Middle East, the recent events in the Middle East given you any pause about your support for the governments that have come to power following the Arab Spring?

Obama gave this answer, in part [emphasis mine]:

…I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road because—you know, in a lot of these places—the one organizing principle—has been Islam. The one part of society that hasn’t been controlled completely by the government.

So, in this man’s eyes, Islam—and by extension, all religion?—must be under government control, and not left to the individual consciences of the men and women involved?

He seems to have implemented this view with his attacks on religion here at home—his HHS ruling on contraceptives and abortifacients, for instance; his VA’s attacks on prayer in our National Cemetery System; his Justice Department’s lack of support for (if not outright obstruction of) defending military memorials because some of the symbology looks like religious icons; his attempted omission of any reference to God from the Democratic Party platform, until public outcry forced him into a square-filler insertion of a passing referent; and so on.

Hmm….

So Now Our Government

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…is apologizing for the uniquely American value of free speech?  And we tax payers are paying for this shameful behavior with our own dollars!?

This from Fox News:

The American Embassy in Islamabad, in a bid to tamp down public rage over the anti-Islam film produced in the US, is spending $70,000 to air an ad on Pakistani television that features President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton denouncing the video.

And beyond this appalling obsequiousness, there’s this blatant duck and cover [emphasis added]:

In the ad, Obama is seen talking about America’s tradition of religious tolerance and Clinton is seen saying that the US government had nothing to do with the video….

It’s not us—we in government didn’t do it.

It gets…better:

[State’s spokeswoman Victoria] Nuland said it was common practice to pay to air public service announcements in Pakistan and noted that the embassy there had done it at least one other time, in the aftermath of a deadly 2005 earthquake that hit the country.

So, here’s our government putting its apology for American values on a par with expressing sympathy for a tragedy.

Can we afford four more years of retreat and timidity concerning American rights and culture?

Even Progressive Europe

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…recognizes the foreign policy of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama to be an abject failure.  Spiegel Online International quotes a few of the German papers’ recognition of this.

The left-leaning [Spiegel‘s characterization here and below] Berliner Zeitung:
Four years ago, Obama pledged to seek reconciliation with the Muslim world. Now, it is doubtful whether he has succeeded. The US and its European allies now have to ask themselves how much support they still enjoy in the countries of the Arab Spring.

The center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung
America hardly has influence in the region any longer, and now sees itself confronted with anti-American sentiment in places where it no longer controls the dictators. Meanwhile, forces that simultaneously exploit and spurn America are gaining influence.

The conservative Die Welt
US President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy is in ruins.  …Washington has provided the image of a distracted superpower in the process of decline to the societies there. This image of weakness is being exploited by Salafists and al-Qaida….

And so on.