Judicial Watch: Kagan’s Possible Ties to Saudis, binLaden, and Goldman Sachs

from Judicial Watch:

In a disturbing revelation for a Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan took millions of dollars from the Saudis as dean of Harvard Law School and a chunk of it reportedly came from 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

The bin Laden family has donated millions of dollars to the Ivy League university over the years, including generous endowments for the school’s Islamic law program and others to finance scholarships for students from Muslim countries. The family has a fondness for Harvard because Osama bin Laden’s brother, Abdullah, received a master’s degree from the school in the 1990s and a doctorate in 2000.

When Kagan took over as dean of the law school in 2003, she launched an aggressive and unprecedented fundraising campaign that raked in a whopping $476.5 million, the most lucrative in the law school’s history. Renowned as a prolific fundraiser, Kagan was tapped to head the law school after spending a few years as a professor there when her job in the Clinton White House ended. In addition to the $476.5 million generated by the targeted campaign—dubbed “Setting the Standard”—Kagan helped raise an extra $60 million for the Harvard Law School Fund.

A chunk of the cash came from the Saudis—and probably the bin Ladens—who have bankrolled many key programs at the Cambridge Massachusetts school over the years. In fact, Harvard has accepted so much cash from the bin Ladens that the Cambridge City Council passed a resolution calling upon the university to donate compensation money for victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Harvard officials refused.

Kagan’s Saudi/bin Laden money connection probably served as an inspiration in protecting the Saudi kingdom against a lawsuit for financing the 2001 terror attacks. Thousands of family members of 9/11 victims sued Saudi Arabia and several members of its royal family for actively aiding in financing the attacks through front groups posing as charities. As Solicitor General, Kagan blocked the lawsuit, citing the “potentially significant foreign-relations consequences of subjecting another sovereign state to suit.”

Another skeleton in Kagan’s closet is her financial ties to Goldman Sachs, the global investment firm embroiled in a major fraud scandal. For four years Kagan worked as an “advisor” at the Wall Street titan that donates generously to Democrats. She received a $10,000 annual “stipend” for her advice even though she was quite busy at the time raising money at Harvard and serving as dean of its law school.

For the full article: http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2010/may/kagan-has-saudi-bin-laden-money-ties

Gene Simmons of KISS Salutes the Troops

The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Powerful Performance

     I posted this video a few days ago, but it is such a powerful performance by Judy Garland that I wanted to post it again on this Memorial Day.

Memorial Day: Remembering Our Fallen Heroes

Obama Spends Day Playing Hoops and Attending Family BBQ, While Louisiana Fights the Sludge

       In his press conference Thursday, President Obama commented that his duaghter Malia has asked if he’s “plugged the hole yet”. The President chose to bring his children into the politics of the BP oil spill and the questioning of his administration’s response, or lack thereof. Always being the patronizing leader telling us to use the teachable moments, he just missed the greatest one.

     Friday, he flew to the Gulf Coast while the First Family organized themselves at the Hyde Park home in Chicago. He toured the beaches, and made himself look somewhat ignorant when he  tried to discuss the tar balls on the beach. While he assumed the tar to be a part of the disaster, a New York Times reporter commented that the beaches have tar regularly… that in fact she gets it in her bathing suit. Of course, Obama, acting Presidential, made a cude remark about her statement. His remark, hadBush made it, would have been media fodder.

     The President gave all of three hours on his second trip in the 40 day crisis. The President could have made this a teachable moment for not just his daughters, but the region and the country, if he had packed up Mother Robinson, Malia and Sasha, Bo, MO, Mo’s brother Craig and his family, and made Louisiana the site of their weekend getaway. His daughters and his nephews could have had a firsthand view of the crisis, and could have earned some community service hours for school. Mrs. Obama and the President could have spent time, outside of photo op view, talking to the locals about what they see the lonfterm impacts are going to be on their lives. The First Family could have helped the tourism of the Gulf Coastal area by showing that Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas are waiting to take care of the tourists.

     Instead, a few hours in the Gulf Coast, and then its back to Chicago for hoops at the University of Chicago, then he donned the jeans and sandals, and headed over to a neighbor’s house for a BBQ. President Obama, the BBQ is great in New Orleans!

Peggy Noonan: He Was Supposed to be Competent

from the Wall Street Journal:

I don’t see how the president’s position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president’s political judgment and instincts.

There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don’t see how you politically survive this.

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They’re in one reality, he’s in another.

This is what happened with Katrina, and Katrina did at least two big things politically. The first was draw together everything people didn’t like about the Bush administration, everything it didn’t like about two wars and high spending and illegal immigration, and brought those strands into a heavy knot that just sat there, soggily, and came to symbolize Bushism. The second was illustrate that even though the federal government in our time has continually taken on new missions and responsibilities, the more it took on, the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs. Conservatives got this point—they know it without being told—but liberals and progressives did not. They thought Katrina was the result only of George W. Bush’s incompetence and conservatives’ failure to “believe in government.” But Mr. Obama was supposed to be competent.

In time—after the 2010 elections go badly—they are going to start to peel off. The political operative James Carville, the most vocal and influential of the president’s Gulf critics, signaled to Democrats this week that they can start to peel off. He did it through the passion of his denunciations.

for full article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704269204575270950789108846.html

The Ragged Old Flag

This was just performed live in Nashville at a Tea Party rally:

Ad on Obama’s Poor Response to Oil Spill, In Their Own Words

Battle Hymn of the Republic

BP Propaganda During Obama Gulf Coast Visit; Chairman Mao would Be Proud

(CNN) — A Gulf Coast official accused BP of shipping workers into Grand Isle, Louisiana, for President Barack Obama’s visit to the oil-stricken area Friday and sending them away once the president left the region.

Early Friday morning, “a number of buses brought in approximately 300 to 400 workers that had been recruited all week,” Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts told CNN’s “Situation Room.”

Roberts said the workers were offered $12 an hour to come out to the scene at Grand Isle and work in what he called a “dog and pony show.”

But, when Obama departed, so did the workers, he said, adding that he’s never seen more than 20 workers at the Grand Isle cleanup site since the effort started.

for full article: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/28/gulf.oil.spill.bp/index.html?hpt=T1

Note: This is a typical activity in China, right out of Mao’s playbook.