Chairman of CAIR-Kansas compares former Marine to KKK member and neo-Nazi

Just before Memorial Day, a day on which Americans honor veterans who served and died for their country, Moussa Elbayoumy, the Lawrence-based chairman of Kansas chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), attacked a former Marine.

John Guandolo, the former Marine officer, is also a former FBI agent, counter-terrorism expert, and the founder of Understanding the Threat, an organization dedicated to providing threat-focused strategic and operational consultation, education, and training for federal, state and local leadership and agencies.

Guandolo was scheduled to train the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office this week on how to ID terrorism threats. However, the seminar was cancelled after CAIR, an Islamofascist group that has had ties to Hamas, protested. The U.S. government has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. In 2007, CAIR was named, along with 245 others, by U.S. Federal prosecutors in a list of unindicted co-conspirators and/or joint venturers in a Hamas funding case involving the Holy Land Foundation. In 2009, the FBI cut its ties to CAIR because of its relationship with Hamas.

According to Elbayoumy, "bringing [Guandolo] in would be like bringing a member of the KKK to teach about African-American culture or a neo-Nazi to teach about Jewish culture."

So a representative of a group that was named a co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case likens a former U.S. Marine and FBI agent to a KKK member or neo-Nazi? That takes a great deal of chutzpah on Elbayoumy's part, especially when you consider that his group is much, much closer to KKK and neo-Nazi ideologies.

"Other Muslims in the community who complained to the Sedgwick Sheriff's office were leaders and spokesmen from the local Muslim Students Associations (the first Muslim Brotherhood organization established in America in 1963) and the Islamic Society of Wichita - a Muslim Brotherhood organization and a subsidiary of the Islamic Society of North America which is the largest MB organization here and a financial support entity for Hamas per the evidence at the HLF trial," Guandolo noted on his blog.

"So, by canceling this training in Kansas, the Sedgwick County Sheriff has not only emboldened our enemy - namely the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas - he has ensured that local law enforcement will NOT get the very training they need to protect and defend their communities," Guandolo added.

Shame of the Sedgwick County sheriff for caving into the Islamofascists. Guandolo's fellow Marines went to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight the Islamofascists there so we wouldn't have to fight them here. The sheriff's decision makes it more likely that we will have to fight them here in the future.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2014/05/21/3467720/national-islamic-group-asks-sedgwick.html#storylink=cpy

John Guandolo

Scott Morgan calls Kris Kobach a "bully"

Scott Morgan of Lawrence announced this week that he would take on Secretary of State Kris Kobach in this August's GOP primary. According to the Lawrence-Journal-World, "Morgan said Kobach wasn't serving the office or Kansas residents by pursuing his agenda. He cited new state laws for voter registration that Morgan said suggested Republicans were afraid to allow new voters in the system and competition.

"This is not who we are as Kansans or Republicans," Morgan said. "Frankly, [Kobach]'s become a bully."

Kobach, of course, was puzzled by Morgan's characterization of him as a bully. One issue that Kobach has been criticized for is his opposition to illegal immigration. But since when is wanting to enforce the laws of our country the behavior of a bully? My wife’s mother came to the U.S. in 1993 and soon after petitioned for my wife's older sister to come here. She finally arrived in the U.S. in 2010. She had to wait well over a decade, pay fees, travel to the U.S. embassy in Manila for interviews, and then do some more waiting. She also had to provide an affidavit of support to ensure that she would not become a ward of the state.

While my sister-in-law was waiting to come to the U.S. legally, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants essentially cut in line before her.Now, I don't know about you, but when I was in grade school it was the kids who cut into line who were the bullies, and not the teachers who made them do the right thing and go to the end of the line to wait their turn.

Is Kobach a bully when it comes to wanting voters to present a photo ID before being allowed to vote? The Washington Post has reported that "Almost three-quarters of all Americans support the idea that people should have to show photo identification to vote." Would Morgan consider all of these Americans to be bullies. South Africa requires photo identificaion to vote. Are that country's leaders bullies?

Morgan apparently is confused concerning how bullies act. Here's a good example of actual bullying:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2010/05/21/As-SEIU-Terrorizes-Bank-Employee---s-Son--HuffPo-and-MediaMatters-Omit-Deadbeat-Union---s--90-Million-Debt

Here's another example. This was done by a Kansas group that is an affiliate of the national group mentioned in my first link on bullying:

http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/immigration-activists-mob-kansas-secretary-of-states-home.html

Margie Wakefield begins race with "extremist" smear

Margie Wakefield, a Lawrence attorney, announced yesterday that she will be a Democratic Party candidate to challenge GOP Rep. Lynn Jenkins for the Kansas Second District congressional seat. Demonstrating that she will be more of a name-caller than a problem-solver, Wakefield told the audience, "Kansas will lead the country this year in a backlash against the extremists and obstructionists that hold elected office now."

Liberals/progressives/socialists have been using the "extremist" smear against conservatives for many decades now. Sometimes it works, such as when Democrat Dennis Moore used it against Republican Vince Snowbarger in the 3rd District race in 1998. Moore won that race, but then went on the be named a "Liberal Hero" by Americans for Democratic Action, the largest liberal lobbying organization in the U.S., in 1999.

More often than not, the "extremist" smear does not work in Kansas, and for good reason: Members of Wakefield's party are the ones out of the mainstream in Kansas. That Wakefield would use the term suggests that she is being directed by advisers in D.C. and really doesn't have any original ideas of her own.

In her essay "'Extremism' or the Art of Smearing," Ayn Rand characterized the "extremist" smear as an "anti-concept." According to Rand, "The purpose of 'anti-concepts' is to obliterate certain concepts without public discussion; and, as a means to that end, to make public discussion unintelligible, and to induce the same disintegration in the mind of any man who accepts them, rendering him incapable of clear thinking or rational judgment. No mind is better than the precision of its concepts." Further, "If an uncompromising stand is to be smeared as 'extremism,' then that smear is directed at any devotion to values, any loyalty to principles, any profound conviction, any consistency, any steadfastness, any passion, any dedication to an unbreached, inviolate truth—any man of integrity."

Keep that in mind as Wakefield continues with the "extremist" nonsense.

Also, keep in mind that Wakefield hopes to join a Democratic Party caucus in D.C. that has 80 members who belong to the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).  CPC was founded by socialist Bernie Sanders and five other members of the U.S. House in 1991. Another founder was Rep. Ron Dellums (D-CA), who was also a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). In fact, DSA helped set up CPC and describes CPC as the "socialist caucus in Congress." According to DSA's website, "Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community organizing movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party. We work with those movements to strengthen the party’s left wing, represented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus."

DSA is an affiliate of the Socialist International, which, according to Michael Harrington, the chairman of DSA until his death in 1989, claims "direct descent from Marx’s International Workingmen’s Association." Other affiliates of the Socialist International include the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua and Fatah, the Palestinian political party that was classified as a terrorist organization by the United States Department of State and United States Congress until it renounced terrorism in 1988.

As the late Balint Vazsonyi, who first exposed that CPC’s official webpage was originally hosted on DSA’s website during the late 1990s, noted in 2002, "every single tenet of the Socialist International is the exact opposite of the principles upon which America was founded, and which define the U.S. Constitution." That’s the same Constitution CPC members took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend.

Lynn Jenkins is no extremist. If Wakefield wants to see true extremists, she should take a good look at the members of her party in D.C.

- For more information on the CPC-DSA connection, see www.chapter19.us.

Do we spend enough on education?

Imagine that you are back in 1970 and listening to the U.S. Secretary of Education (that position did not exist in 1970--the word "education" does not appear at all in the U.S. Constitution) speak about the amount of money invested in education. "This country will commit to doubling the total expenditure per pupil in public elementary and secondary schools by the year 2010.” she says. “And when I say double, I mean in dollars adjusted for inflation."

If you heard that, what would you think? The secretary set an unattainable goal? If such a goal were reached, there would more than enough money for public schools? Even if that goal were reached, it would not be enough money?

Fortunately, the National Center for Education Statistics, which is located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, keeps records on education spending, so we can check out the real figures concerning our fictitious Secretary of Education’s goal. During the 1970-71 school year, the total expenditure per pupil in public elementary and secondary schools was $1,049. If we adjust for inflation, that $1,049 was the equivalent of $5,823 in 2010. If we were to make the Secretary of Education’s goal for the 2010-11 school year, the total expenditure per pupil in public elementary and secondary schools for that year would have to have been $11,646. Did we make it? Not quite, but we were very close. The actual total expenditure per pupil in 2010-11 was $11,153. 

After nearly doubling the total expenditure per pupil since 1970, it would be reasonable to expect that our students are now performing at a higher level than their counterparts during the early 1970s. Unfortunately, that is not the case. “The long-term trend data for the National Assessment of Educational Progress was released today and the news is not good for students in high school,” Education Week reported on April 28, 2009. “Average scores have remained flat for 17-year-olds both in reading and math since the early 1970s, when the assessments were first given.”

In other words, we have nearly doubled our spending on education since 1970, yet we have received absolutely no gain from that investment.

I was thinking of this situation after Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, members of the Kansas National Education Association, and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Paul Davis showed up for a protest in Topeka on May 17. "We must fund our public schools, and we must give children the ladder of education and economic opportunity," said Weingarten. Last year, CBS News quoted Weingarten as saying, “When people talk about other countries out-educating the United States, it needs to be remembered that those other nations are out-investing us in education as well.”

As you can see from the chart on this page, it is true that students in other countries are outperforming our students. However, is it true that those countries are investing more in education than we are? According to the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, which compared the U.S. to 11 other nations, “The U.S. is the clear leader in total annual spending, but ranks 9th in Science performance and 10th in Math.” The U.S. spends more than twice as per school-aged child than Japan and South Korea, and more than four times as much as Russia.

In a 2009 speech promoting the Affordable Care Act (ACA), President Barack Obama said, “We spend one and a half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren't any healthier for it.” That was the Democrats’ rationale for healthcare reform, which, ostensibly, would lower the cost of healthcare per person and make us healthier. Yet when we spend twice as much per student on education than other countries, but our students aren’t any smarter for it, Weingarten, the KNEA, and Davis do not suggest that we need educational reform to lower the costs and improve student performance. Instead, they say that we need to spend even more on education and ignore the performance part of the equation.

Obviously, education will be a major issue in Kansas this year. This issue deserves a reasoned and intelligent discussion amongst candidates for federal and state offices. If Davis and other politicians are going to argue that we need to spend even more on education, it seems to me that they should first assure us that the taxpayers’ money is currently being spent as wisely and effectively as possible.

Peter Hancock portrays left-wing group as a consumer-protection group

In an May 11 article about a possible FBI investigation involving former officials in Gov. Sam Brownback's administration, Lawrence Journal-World reporter/political activist Peter Hancock shared several quotes from Craig Holman of Public Citizen, which Hancock characterized as "a Washington-based group that advocates for consumer protection and campaign finance reform."

This is yet another example of why it is important to look behind the people associated with groups with innocuous-sounding names. We can find Public Citizen's board of directors on its website.

Public Citizen Foundation board members include David Halperin, who "has advised groups including Greenpeace, Democracy for America, Public.Resource.Org, and, in the 1990s, Public Citizen." Democracy for America is listed as an organization that is part of the "Progressive Infrastructure" in Erica Payne's The Practical Progressive: How to Build a Twenty-first Century Political Movement. Halperin was also an adviser to Howard Dean's presidential campaign and a senior vice president of the Center for American Progress, which is also part of the "Progressive Infrastructure."

Cynthia Refro, another foundation board member, was a consultant to the Iraq Peace Fund of the Tides Foundation. Wade Rathke was a founding board member of the Tides Foundation and continues to serve as senior advisor of the San Francisco-based organization. Rathke was also the founder of ACORN.

The Public Citizen, Inc. board includes Barbara Ehrenreich and Jim Hightower, who are both associated with Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Ehrenreich is a DSA honorary chair, while DSA honored Hightower with its Eugene V. Debs Award in 1995. That award, presented annually, is named after the Socialist Party presidential candidate.

Joy Howell, another board member, was the communications director to U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.).

Obviously, Public Citizen is a far-left organization, yet Hancock presented it as being merely a consumer-protection group.

(Liberal) Women for Kansas

Clockwise from left: Lisa Callahan, Janet Wright, Emira Palacios, Laura Dungan and Wakeelah Martinez
have formed a new political group called Women for Kansas. (April 28, 2014) Mike Hutmacher/ The Wichita Eagle

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2014/05/04/3439157/newly-formed-group-urging-women.html#storylink=cpy

The Wichita Eagle had an article in its May 4 edition about a new political group called Women for Kansas. According to the article, Women for Kansas' "initial goal is to defeat Brownback and Secretary of State Kris Kobach at the polls this fall. The group supports Democrats Paul Davis and Jean Schodorf to replace them."

The Eagle presented Women for Kansas as a bipartisan group of women who just got involved in politics because of their concerns with Brownback and Kobach. However, the reporter did not discuss exactly who these women are. It is extremely important for conservatives to look at the people involved with these groups to see who they are and what else they have done in the past. I recognized Emira Palacios name because I wrote about her in my book, Chapter 19: Defeating the Socialist Coalition and Restoring Our Constitutional Republic: 

I did not realize the full extent of the Socialist Coalition’s involvement with the immigration issue until Sunflower Community Action (SCA), a Wichita-based group, bused nearly 300 people to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s home on June 15, 2013 to protest his views on illegal immigration. Fortunately, Kobach and his family, which includes four young daughters, were not home when the mob arrived.

I had never heard of SCA before, but after a quick Internet search found that the group is part of National People’s Action (NPA), a Chicago-based community organizing network with affiliates in fourteen states. In fact, Emira Palacios, a coordinator with SCA, also serves as NPA’s vice president and secretary. Palacios came to this country as an illegal immigrant more than twenty-five years ago. (SCA’s executive director, Sulma Arias, was also an illegal immigrant.) 

In the past, NPA has engaged in protests similar to the one at Kobach’s home. For example, in March 2004, NPA protested outside the home of Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s chief political advisor, to show their support for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or the DREAM Act. “If President Bush wants our [re-election] vote, he has to give us the dream,” Palacios said. According to CNN, “Palacios said Rove agreed to meet with group leaders in his garage but then chastised them for protesting in front of his house and scaring his children.” 

On May 16, 2010, Nina Easton, a Fortune magazine journalist and Fox News contributor, called police around 4:10 p.m. to report that there were at least 500 protesters on her neighbor’s property in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The neighbor, Bank of America executive Greg Baer, was not home at the time. However, his fourteen-year-old son was. Out of fear, he locked himself in a bathroom. The protest was organized by NPA and SEIU. 

A month before the protest at Baer’s home, NPA and SEIU staged a similar protest at the home of JP Morgan Chase executive Peter Scher.

NPA was founded in 1972 by Shel Trapp and Gale Cincotta, Alinskyite community organizers based in Chicago. How far to the left is Palacios' SCA? According to the group’s website, in high school, Louis Goseland, SCA’s director of organizing, “threw himself at any opportunity to organize his fellow students and quickly found himself immersed in the local activist community.” “From an early age, I was exposed to the power of organized people,” Goseland writes. “My mother was a long time member of the Communications Workers of America, my grandmother is a long-time activist for the rights of women, and my father is a radical in every sense of the word.” Democratic Socialists of America has identified Goseland as a DSA member who participated in Occupy Wichita. Two of the three books Goseland recommends SCA's website are Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky and Dynamics of Organizing by Shel Trapp. In June 2013, Goseland’s groups on Facebook included Wichita Democratic Socialists, Occupy Wichita and Kansas, Socialist Party USA, and WSU College Democrats. 

Did the Eagle mention Palacios' leadership roles in the radical SCA and NPA? No. The reporter merely noted that she is "a facilitator at Seed House-Casa de la Semilla in Wichita."

A visit to Women for Kansas' website also turns up some interesting information. As I noted earlier this week, Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger is an honorary chair of the group. She apparently has no problem teaming up with a woman who thought it was all right to demonstrate at the home of a fellow Republican.

Another honorary chair is a Johnson County lawyer named Judith Deedy. Deedy has been in the news lately because she is the executive director of a group called Game On for Kansas Schools. Game On portrays itself as "a nonpartisan grassroots effort."  However, an inadvertent email exposes that claim as a lie. That email demonstrated that Game On is taking direction from the Davis gubernatorial campaign. Deedy is also a member of the Mainstream Coalition. Despite its name, the Mainstream Coalition is far from mainstream. I wrote a report on the group 15 years ago, which you can read here.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out the game plan here. Groups with innocuous-sounding names are preparing to form a coalition to defeat Brownback and Kobach this fall. These groups will all be closely aligned with the Davis and Schodorf campaigns, but will be portrayed as grass-roots efforts by those in the media who are ignorant and/or complicit. Sandy Praeger will assist these groups as a prominent Republican in the state to give the groups bipartisan cover. Note that Praeger is also part of an anti-Brownback group called Reroute the Roadmap. Two other Republican women, Rochelle Chronister and Sheila Frahm, also founded this group. Like Praeger, Chronister and Frahm, who lost to Brownback in the 1996 GOP primary election for the seat vacated by Bob Dole, are honorary chairs of Women for Kansas. Three Democrat women, Joan Wagnon, Laura Kelly, and Jill Docking, also founded Reroute the Roadmap. Docking, of course, is Paul Davis' running mate.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2014/05/04/3439157/newly-formed-group-urging-women.html#storylink=cpy

   

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2014/05/04/3439157/newly-formed-group-urging-women.html#storylink=cpy

Hoeflich's Hokum

It was the part of America which had always been most “radical”— that indefinite word, which probably means “most critical of piracy.” - Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here


Lawrence Journal-World columnist Mike Hoeflich has an opinion piece today entitled "Something's wrong in Kansas." Hoeflich is not happy with the direction Governor Sam Brownback and his fellow "radical" Republicans are taking Kansas, and he wants readers to know that he is darn angry about it. Unfortunately, angry people often make ridiculous comments because their emotions overpower their thinking.

After noting that he is angry, Hoeflich writes, "The lives and welfare of Kansans depend upon the actions of the Legislature." Think about that. Hoeflich believes that your life and your welfare depend on the actions of 125 part-time legislators in Topeka. Apparently, Hoeflich believes the legislature controls our lives. "Control," after all, is defined as "the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events." Of course, the more money governments have, the more power they have to exercise this control. This could very well explain why Hoeflich is so angry that "Revenues in April fell substantially from those that had been projected."

Hoeflich also offered the obligatory, left-winger's nod to former Senator Bob Dole. "Senator Dole was known for his willingness and ability to make compromises 'across the aisle' in order to ensure that government did its job of serving the people," Hoeflich writes. Of course, Dole did most of that compromising while he was a member of the minority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Also, note that Dole compromised our way to a multi-trillion-dollar national debt. Dole's compromises were much like a compromise between water and arsenic.

Hoeflich then went on to criticize ideology. "Ideology has replaced politics," he writes. "Ideology has replaced sound economic and fiscal policy. Ideology has replaced common sense."

Left-wingers have this odd belief that those with differing points of view are ideological, while they are pragmatists with common sense. David Axelrod made this claim regarding Barack Obama in 2009. "I think President Obama is a committed, practicing nonideologue," Axelrod said. "He's consumed neither tactics nor ideology. He is more concerned about outcomes than he is about process and categorizations." Of course, this is the same Obama who during the 2008 primaries said he would not lower the capital-gains rate even though that would raise more revenues because it wouldn't be "fair." That is what an ideologue would say.

Of course, we all have an ideology, which, after all, is merely "a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy." Some of us are conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians, while others are liberals, progressives, socialists, and even liberal fascists. Without the ideas and ideals that make up an ideology, you would have politics replacing ideology. We saw an example of this when Dole ran for president in 1996. While speaking at a campaign event, Dole said, "I'll be anything you want me to be; I'll be Ronald Reagan if that's what you want."

Of course, Dole could never be Ronald Reagan. Reagan was a strong leader with a conservative ideology; Dole was merely a politician with no ideas or ideals.