Gerald Arthur “Jerry” Sandusky (born January 26, 1944^[2]) is a retired American football coach and convicted serial child molester. Sandusky served as an assistant coach for his entire career, mostly at Pennsylvania State University under Joe Paterno (from 1969 to 1999), and was one of the most notable major college football coaches never to have held a head coaching position. He received Assistant Coach of the Year awards in 1986 and 1999.^[3] Sandusky authored several books related to his football coaching experiences.

JdN: Joe Paterno

In 1977, Sandusky founded The Second Mile, a non-profit charity serving Pennsylvania underprivileged and at-risk youth.^[4] After Sandusky retired as assistant coach at Penn State, he continued working with The Second Mile at Penn State; even maintaining an office at Penn State until 2011. He met his victims through The Second Mile, and several of those who met Sandusky, as children participating in the organization, testified against Sandusky in his sexual abuse trial.

In 2011, following a two-year grand jury investigation, Sandusky was arrested and charged with 52 counts of sexual abuse of young boys over a 15-year period.^[5] Four of the charges were subsequently dropped, leaving 48 counts remaining. On June 22, 2012, Sandusky was found guilty on 45 of the 48 charges. Though he has not been sentenced yet, several legal experts say Sandusky will almost certainly spend the rest of his life in prison.^[6][7]

Early life and family

Sandusky was born in Washington, Pennsylvania, the only son of Evelyn Mae (née Lee), an Irish Catholic homemaker who came from a small Pennsylvania coal-mining town,^[8] and Arthur Sandusky, whose parents, Edward and Josephine Sendecki, had immigrated from Poland to East Vandergrift, Pennsylvania.

[…]

Freeh report

The report by a special investigative group headed by former FBI director Louis Freeh had been commissioned by the Penn State Board of Trustees. After interviewing over 400 people and reviewing over 3.5 million documents, the crux of the report’s findings, which were released July 12, 2012, state:

Taking into account the available witness statements and evidence, the Special Investigative Counsel finds that it is more reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at the University — Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley — repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from authorities, the University’s Board of Trustees, the Penn State community, and the public at large.^[86]

The Freeh Report states that although the “avoidance of the consequences of bad publicity” was the main driver in failing to protect child abuse victims and report to authorities, the report outlines other causes as well, among which were: “A striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims by the most senior leaders of the University”; a failure of oversight by the Board of Trustees; a University President “who discouraged discussion and dissent”; “a lack of awareness of child abuse issues”; and “a culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community”.^[87]

The report outlines how all four men were aware of the 1998 abuse incident in the locker-room shower, and had followed its investigation at the time.^[88] Freeh’s investigation uncovered a file kept by Schultz in which he wrote notes about Sandusky’s 1998 incident. For instance, Schultz wrote: “Is this opening of Pandora’s box?” He also wondered, “other children?”^[39] Freeh stated that Schultz had “actively sought to conceal those records”.^[89][90]

The evidentiary weight of Freeh’s report draws heavily upon retrieved emails from 1998 and 2001, which Freeh referred to as “the most important evidence” in the report.^[90] The report asserts that these emails demonstrate that in 1998 Paterno knew of the investigation of Sandusky, and followed it closely;^[91] and suggest that it was Paterno, “long regarded as the single most powerful official at the university,” who persuaded Spanier, Curley, and Schultz not to formally report Sandusky to law enforcement or child welfare authorities. According to The New York Times, the university’s handling of the 2001 report of Sandusky raping a young boy is “one of the most damning episodes laid out by Mr. Freeh’s investigation…”^[92]

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And now this NEW shocker:

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THE MEN WHO COVERED-UP FOR JERRY SANDUSKYPosted On: August 1st, 2012Source: http://americanfreepress.net CLICK HERE to send this article to a friend! Share This! Why did so many individuals cover-up for serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky, including those within The Second Mile (TSM), the Pennsylvania State Attorney General�s office, and a leading official at Pennsylvania State University (PSU)? With recent revelations by Philadelphia school police officer Greg Bucceroni that a pedophile network operated out of TSM, consider these other factors:� Although his name will not be provided at this point until further proof is obtained, evidence exists that an extremely high-ranking former TSM employee and his wife were involved in a �swingers club� operating out of a local State College, Pa. nightclub. This �swingers club� is an open secret among Happy Valley residents, with the meeting place in close proximity to TSM�s former headquarters.� Speaking of swingers, former PSU President Graham Spanier once wrote an academic paper entitled Mate Swapping: Perceptions, Value Orientations, and Participation in a Midwestern Community. Its overview begins, �This article attempts to illuminate the understanding of swinging, or mate swapping, an increasingly common form of extramarital sexual activity. A theoretical formulation argues that swinging is a form of extramarital sexual activity which serves to define as good and acceptable a behavior that in other forms and in the past has been considered deviant or immoral.�During his tenure at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), Spanier was described as a �long time friend and associate� of Ronald Roskens, the former chancellor and president of UNL. Roskens, in turn, served as a close advisor to a man named Lawrence King, who operated a massive pedophile network in Nebraska that came to be known as �The Franklin Scandal.�Roskens received his termination notice after being photographed with young naked boys at his residence. Gary Caradori, a private investigator that delved into the Franklin Cover-up, wrote of the circumstances surrounding Rosken�s firing. �I was informed that Roskens was terminated by the state because of sexual activities reported to the Regents and verified by them. Roskens was reported to have had young men at his residence for sexual encounters.� [Sound familiar to Sandusky�s activities?]On July 11, 1990, after obtaining pornographic-pedophile photographs that would have irreversibly exposed the Franklin Cover-Up, Caradori was murdered when his Piper aircraft exploded in mid-air, killing him and his eight-year-old son.Of course, while serving as PSU President, two highly controversial events occurred on Spanier�s watch. In November 2000, one of these �happenings� was called CUNTFEST: a Declaration of Independence. To promote this brouhaha, huge banners with the words CUNTFEST were hoisted from campus buildings.The second, held only months later in February, went by the name Sex Faire. Games at this gala included �Pin the Clitoris on the Vulva,� �Smut and other Great Literature,� plus �Orgasm Bingo.� In addition, a �Tent of Consent� allowed participants to engage in whatever type of consensual sexual activity they so desired.When enraged legislators asked Spanier if he thought these two events were immoral, he responded, �It depends on what your definition of immoral is.�Oddly enough, Spanier publicly pronounced that he sought to make PSU the most homosexual-friendly university in America. Moreover, while serving as Chancellor at the UNL, Spanier requested that all faculty post pink triangles on their office doors in order to show their support for gay and lesbian students.Finally, it was none other than Spanier that granted pedophile Jerry Sandusky �emeritus� status at PSU, thus allowing Sandusky access to campus shower facilities, an office, parking pass, and a computer. Strangely, Sandusky was merely an assistant football coach. Why would Spanier, who had only been at PSU for three years up until that time, take it upon himself to personally grant such an esteemed title on this man?Conversely, when a sports agent was caught buying a PSU football player $400 worth of clothing, Spanier banned the rep from campus. Spanier insisted, �[He] fooled around with the integrity of this university, and I won�t stand for that.�Yet, Spanier bestowed emeritus status on Sandusky, who was none-too-subtly forced into �retirement� after his initial 1998 shower stall incident.� Jerry Sandusky selected State College, Pa. attorney Joseph Amendola to represent him at his recent child sex abuse trial. This writer is by no means implying that Amendola had any involvement in a pedophile prostitution ring. However, Amendola did impregnate a 16-year-old girl that he represented as a client in 1996. This teenage girl gave birth to their child prior to turning 18. � During his grand jury testimony, TSM CEO Jack Raykovitz confessed that PSU athletic director Tim Curley informed him about the 2001 �shower incident� that Mike McQueary witnessed. In a July 16, 2012 article, Dave Marcheskie of Harrisburg, Pa.�s WHTM stated, �The report states that Raykovitz spoke with Sandusky soon after the meeting with Curley. Sandusky admitted to Raykovitz that he �showered with boys, but nothing more� according to the report. Still, TSM took no action.� JdN: Jack Raykovitz, Jew. He paid himself and his wife hundreds of thousands a year in salary. Even after Sandusky was observed in compromising situations on at least three separate occasions, Matt Moore and Michael Rubinkam of the Associated Press wrote on May 25, 2012, �Longtime CEO Jack Raykovitz came under fire for failing to inform the charity�s board about 2001 and 2008 abuse allegations against the retired coach. Infuriated board members told AP in December that had they been kept in the loop, they could have taken steps to better protect children a decade ago.� Why did Jack Raykovitz remain silent for so long? � At Sandusky�s sexual abuse trial, prosecutor Joe McGettigan told jurors during his opening statement, �The Second Mile, no matter what it�s reported purpose, was a victim factory for the defendant, an assembly line for adolescent children to be abused, sodomized, and anally raped.� � This writer�who sat inside a Bellefonte, Pa. courtroom on the trial�s opening day�observed McGettigan relate a horrifying tale. Sandusky had lists with the names of TSM boys on them. Some of these kids had asterisks beside their names. After investigating this matter, it became clear to prosecutors that Sandusky had placed asterisks alongside the boys who didn�t have a father in the home. Are we to believe that not a single person, especially licensed child psychologist Jack Raykovitz, knew anything of this abuse for over a decade? � On November 28, 2011, veteran journalist William Keisling extended the cover-up all the way to current Pa. Governor Tom Corbett. �On Labor Day weekend, 1996, a state senator from York, Pa., Dan Delp, enjoys a weekend of drinking and sex with a 19-year-old girl supplied through contacts with the York County, Pa. district attorney�s office. When the pedophile sex scandal becomes public, the case is quickly referred to Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett. Corbett and his close allies would time and again obstruct and cover up the sex ring�for more than fifteen years. Jim Sneddon was the editor and publisher of the York Dispatch. Sneddon recounts how the attorney for the daily newspaper, Niles Benn, secretly hired a private detective to uncover the truth about the �VIP� sex ring. But then Sneddon was fired, and the newspaper and its lawyer concealed the work of their private eye. York Police Commissioner Herbert Grofcsik says even he was powerless to expose the courthouse sex ring. Yet the truth slowly emerged. As well, AG Tom Corbett�s political agenda and modus operandi began to emerge. A prominent figure would be sacrificed, but the VIP sex and prostitution ring would be concealed and protected for years. This was done not only to protect Corbett�s political allies, but also to protect Corbett�s own political fortunes and ambitions.� Similarly, in 2011, another prominent figure�Joe Paterno�would become one of Tom Corbett�s sacrificial lambs to divert attention away from pedophiles lurking within TSM. Keisling continued, �Over the coming years, at every turn, [Grofcsik] and others would say the Pennsylvania Attorney General�s office, and Tom Corbett, stood in the way of stopping VIPs from having sex with children. Later, court officers would openly boast of enjoying sex with children, and praise Corbett for protecting their illicit activities.� During a June 15, 2012 interview with this writer, Keisling emphatically stated, �Corbett was the obstacle. These are the worst sorts of people doing the worst sorts of things. These are not good people. Tom Corbett got money from TSM, plus he gave money to them. What does it say that Corbett�s attorney general�s office had the case for three years and did nothing about it? It�s systemic corruption. These people are morally bankrupt.� In the end, it�s not surprising that Sandusky was permitted to run rampant as a serial pedophile for three decades, especially considering the high-concentration of individuals listed above�who were all located in one geographic locale�that did nothing whatsoever to stop him.

08/08 @ 11:06 : Waterbury, Connecticut, US

Mitt Romney’s campaign stop in Jerusalem has been criticized for the grossness of the subservience that the candidate exhibited toward Israel. This reaction was surely factored in by his handlers. Liberals, internationalists, human rights advocates might demur, but Romney’s intended audience was none of these people. Nor was it the Arab world, nor was it American voters, with a possible exception for the state of Florida. Romney was aiming to reach two distinct but related target groups: first, a small set of extremely wealthy donors, and second, a group composed of one person, Benjamin Netanyahu. Both have long been potent players in American elections. Both were already helping Romney. It was necessary and useful at this time to cement the alliance in public.

Judged in the light of that purpose, Romney’s visit must be counted a success. And it was a success in one other respect. The billionaires and the prime minister wanted Romney to bring the United States closer to supporting a war with Iran. Romney obliged, and we are now closer to war. He recognized, he said, the “right” of Israel to defend itself. Who ever denied that right? He meant: the righteousness of a preventive attack on Iran. This left open the question, Does Iran have the right to defend itself? A question that Americans and Israelis, as effectively propagandized as we have been, can be trusted not even to ask. So Romney’s intervention in Jerusalem amounted to approval of war — and a war before November if Netanyahu happens to find that desirable. As a candidate in an election season, Romney gave the green light to a power whose engagement in war would involve the United States.

Nothing like this has ever happened before in American politics. But then, there has never been anything in history remotely like the present relationship between the United States and Israel. President Obama, who is thought to be lukewarm by Romney’s supporters, in March described our alliance with Israel as “sacrosanct.” A month earlier, he had assured Israel and its warmest American partisans that his administration was marching in “lockstep” with Israel in our approach to Iran. All this Obama said and did in deference to Benjamin Netanyahu and without regard to American interests. For he had been told by the CIA that Iran is not working at present on a nuclear weapon, and he was warned by the Pentagon that a war with Iran would be a regional disaster for the United States. Even so, he gave Netanyahu in effect a yellow light: proceed with caution. And to sweeten the transaction, he promised to issue no traffic ticket if Israel speeds up. It was the same at this year’s AIPAC convention where Obama again assured Netanyahu: “I have Israel’s back.”

A corny line from the playbook of the younger Bush, suggesting a false analogy between a gunfight and a world war, but Obama at the start of an election year knew very well what the script called for.

It has been said by members of the Israel lobby that Obama’s actions speak louder than his words, and that his actions have hurt Israel. Let us recall some of the actions. In response to the onslaught on Gaza in December-January 2008-2009, in which 1,300 Palestinians were killed and 13 Israelis, Obama observed a silence which he has never broken. When, in November 2010, Netanyahu balked at the proposal of a 90-day partial extension of the freeze on West Bank settlement expansion, Obama offered twenty F-35 fighter jets if he would change his mind; Netanyahu refused, and Obama gave him the jets anyway. Only a week ago, the president donated another $70 million, on top of U.S. assistance already given, to build up the Israeli “Iron Dome” defense against rockets. Yet it is felt that Obama’s love of Israel has been insufficiently demonstrative. The reason is simple but it is seldom mentioned quite candidly.

Twice, in the last four years, this president lapsed from the post-1992 American protocol toward Israel of undiluted flattery and largesse. In June 2009 he called for a settlement freeze, and in May 2011 he spoke of the 1967 lines as the starting point for the creation of an independent Palestine. Now, the de facto policy of the Netanyahu government is annexation of the West Bank. These diplomatic hints and reminders from the president were therefore as unwelcome as they were unexpected.

As for Iran, Israelis themselves (except Netanyahu and those in his immediate circle) are a good deal more cautious than their American neoconservative supporters. At a public meeting in April, in the Israeli city of Kfar Saba, Yuval Diskin, who in 2011 retired as head of Shin Bet (the Israeli FBI), said that he had “no faith” in Netanyahu’s policy or his instincts on Iran. Two days later the former chief of Mossad, Meir Dagan, emphatically concurred and praised Diskin for his honesty.

What does it mean for an American like Romney, unskilled in international politics and innocent of the complexities of the Middle East, to back the pressure now being exerted by Netanyahu against the advice of the American president and against the advice of high-ranking intelligence and military officers in Israel? It means that Romney is not a friend of Israel so much as he is a friend of Netanyahu. Or rather, for Romney, as for the billionaires he had in tow, the personal is political. For them, Netanyahu is Israel. A point to which we shall return.

Joe Biden and Leon Panetta in recent months have taken care to issue statements along the lines of Obama himself, implying American avoidance of any war short of necessity, but adding that Israel is a sovereign nation and America does not pretend to control it. And yet we give Israel fighter jets, Iron Dome technology, and more than three billion dollars a year in foreign aid. If there is ever again an American president capable of deciding to concern himself more with the soundness of policy than with his chances in the next election, that president will have considerable control over Israel. Obama, however, works slowly and he starts worrying about the next election a year ahead. That does not leave much margin for inventive policy or persuasion. On the Middle East, his boldness in theory and timidity in practice seems to have roused the adventurism of Romney’s neoconservative advisers. But Obama does occasionally offer convincing signs of not wanting the war with Iran that the Pentagon says would be a disaster. Romney, by contrast, with his quarterback-audible in Jerusalem, signaled that a war would be fine with him.

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JdN: Romney with a yarmulke cap on at the Wailing Wall (built by the Romans, so this is a bogus Jewish holy site in any case). Why do we never EVER see Jews wear a cross to show friendship toward Christians??

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What are the actual stakes for Israel? Netanyahu has called the possession of a nuclear weapon by Iran an “existential threat,” but nobody known for sanity, including his own defense minister Ehud Barak, has agreed with him about this. An existential threat conjures an image of war-loving Iran poised on the brink of exterminating the Jews of Israel. The evidence for that intention is a statement by the anti-Semitic president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who did indeed say that history would wipe the “Zionist entity” off the map. What only readers who follow politics are likely to know is that Ahmadinejad is not the most powerful figure in Iran and that after the next election he may be out of a job. The cost to the mullahs of bombing Israel, with a weapon they are not yet close to possessing, would be massive retaliation by Israel, whose nuclear arsenal is estimated between 200 and 300 weapons. That picture is so improbable that Netanyahu has been forced to adopt a different stratagem.

On the argument that he now presses, even low-enrichment uranium is a danger in the hands of Iran. Obama and the European capitals, in the October 2009 negotiations, had offered Iran an agreement allowing 5% enrichment, and at the time Netanyahu raised no public objection. He now says he will not settle for any enrichment at all by Iran. He is lowering the threshold to justify an attack. And Romney last week in Jerusalem, with the support of his war party advisers, fell into step in with the Netanyahu ultimatum. Nothing less than zero enrichment will satisfy Mitt Romney.

Still, if Iran is not an existential threat, why is the wish to attack Iran so strong in Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition? The reason is fear of Iran as a regional competitor. A powerful hostile nation induces any rival to hesitate before wielding power as often as it would like. An Iran with a serious armed force could not equal Israel, or thoroughly deter Israel, but it would doubtless inhibit Israeli military ventures in the Arab world. And that, for an advocate of Greater Israel, is intolerable. Israeli designs must go forward unhindered. So Netanyahu is asking for American support against Iran for much the same reason that his predecessor Yitzhak Shamir wanted America to go to war with Iraq in 1991. Iraq, like Iran, was pursuing nuclear research but had no nuclear weapon. In 1991, however, Iraq did have a formidable army, and Israel had an interest in seeing that army destroyed. Some side effects of the elimination of Iraq as a military power are now a familiar part of the regional landscape: the air, land, and sea blockade on Gaza, and the Israeli annexation of the West Bank, which proceeds with fresh evictions every day.

Romney was asked by a reporter at the Western Wall if he endorsed the annexation of the West Bank by Israel. The question was put to him three times, and three times Romney ignored it.

The channeling to the settlers of West Bank aquifers, the uprooting of Palestinian olive groves, the expulsion of Bedouin shepherds from their grazing lands all are done under the ostensible explanation of military necessity by Israel. Anyone who recalls the Jim Crow society of the American South in the 1950s knows the real purpose of such actions: to assert and make visible by force the superiority of one caste of people over another, and to drive the inferior people from places of value.

At the King David Hotel, Romney addressed campaign donors from America who had traveled thousands of miles to another country to affirm their loyalty. But loyalty to what and whom? Are the United States and Israel the same country? This was one of the weirdest exhibitions of transnational financial muscle in recorded history. It probably has no precedent. Will it have a sequel? Let us try a thought experiment. Imagine the American reaction to an American presidential candidate who calls a meeting of wealthy Italian-Americans in Vatican City in order to declare their unconditional fidelity to the Pope. The United States was once the country of protestant nonconformity. What is happening to us?

The ad-lib comments that Romney spoke on this occasion have received plenty of notice, but they cannot be quoted too often. They display with a fine economy the good-natured insolence of Romney himself alongside the conventional racism of the Republican Party and its roots in Social Darwinism. “As you come here,” he said,

and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality.

Such was his revelation for the self-made party donors, as well as the heir and heiress billionaires. But there was more: “As I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.” Among the other things of course was “the hand of providence,” the non-denominational shorthand notation for Tetragrammaton or Jesus Yahweh Smith. But the key word here was culture. There is a good culture, we know, of self-respect and commercial success and technology. And that culture looks a lot like Israel. Then there is a culture of poverty and inertia and resentment, and it looks like the West Bank. The occupation has nothing to do with the difference. For the slow-of-wit, Romney clarified his idea by adding that a similar disparity exists between other neighboring countries like Mexico and the United States.

Note that this division between the deserving and less deserving peoples scarcely departs from the old anti-Semitism. It uses the same clichés: the despised people are crafty but sullen, lacking in Western energy, discipline, and refinement. The prejudice has now been turned against another Semitic tribe, the Palestinians. The Jews of Israel, by contrast, are praised for their adaptation to the ways of commerce, and are treated as honorary Christians.

Pass from Romney to his audience. These people, as reported by the New York Times, were high net-worth individuals whose total holdings may well have approached half a trillion. We will never know, since they have multiple accounts in the Cayman Islands, where some of them also have alternate private residences. But it is worth following up a few details of the Times story by Jodi Rudoren and Ashley Parker. “Sheldon Adelson…wore a pin that said ‘Romney’ in Hebrew letters,” yet Adelson is troubled, these days, by an investigation of the links between his casino holdings in Las Vegas and Macau.

“Much of Mr. Adelson’s casino profits that go to him come from his casino in Macau,” John McCain pointed out in a recent interview. “Maybe,” McCain speculated, “in a roundabout way, foreign money is coming into an American political campaign.” Also not so roundabout. The money coming from the crowd at the King David Hotel evidently came from Americans and was going back into an American campaign. What, then, was the symbolic importance of having it routed through an event in Israel timed to begin at the end of the religious day of mourning Tisha B’Av?

Other members of the Romney-Netanyahu billionaire entourage were touched on briefly in the Times account. Cheryl Halpern, a New Jersey Republican and big party donor, was named by George W. Bush the successor to Kenneth Tomlinson as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and served in that office during the years 2005-07. She disciplined NPR for political bias and, along with Tomlinson, succeeded in bending the tone and content of NPR toward the platitudes and human interest by which it is mainly known today. John Miller, the chief executive of the National Beef Packing Company, helped Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick to find the $244 million they needed for the startup of a private equity fund, Solamere Capital, which in its early days shared an address with the Romney campaign headquarters.

Paul Singer, founder of the $20 billion hedge fund Elliott Associates and its affiliate Elliott Management, operates a “vulture fund” that specializes in buying up third-world debt. Elliott trawls for assets that have drastically fallen in value, and then sues countries for full value, with a legal threat if they refuse. It goes after vulnerable nations like Panama, Peru, Argentina, and Congo, offering rigor-mortis prices to the panicked holders of collapsing bonds, before it compels the derelict governments to buy them back at a swollen price or suffer international disgrace and an utter loss of autonomy at the hands of financiers. The ingenuity and detective work that goes into Elliott is perhaps another clue to what Romney means by culture. But where Romney’s Bain bought, gutted, repackaged and sold factories and store chains, and held in thrall occasionally the happiness of a town or a pension plan, Elliott transfixes the life holdings of large tracts of the world, including tribes and peoples whose names its officers will not have known how to pronounce until they began to reduce them to finance fodder. Will the vulture funds take out a second mortgage on the Parthenon? “Elliott hasn’t [yet] built up a hold-out position in Greek debt, according to an individual close to the firm. Last year it profited instead by trading Greek credit default swaps.”

These people, so important because of their money, are united in their belief that Israel stands in grave peril because of the neglect or hostility of Barack Obama. Yet Obama’s actions toward Israel — the gifts of weapons and security systems, the reflex vetoes on U.N. resolutions — have been dangerous if anything by their one-sided solicitousness on behalf of Israel. Obama has conducted himself toward Israel, in fact, as he has acted toward establishments like the American military and the Wall Street banks and brokerage houses. He mentions his power of refusal chiefly in order to show that, in some technical sense, that power does exist. But his use of the power has been, in all of these contexts, nominal and decorative. Again and again he has said he could bring results and has not brought them: tougher bank regulations, faster withdrawal from Afghanistan, “hands-on” presidential engagement in negotiations to create a Palestinian state and achieve peace with Iran. In all of these settings, Obama’s practice has been hands-off, no matter what he may have pledged. Still, it is true that Romney would be a distinct improvement from the point of view of Netanyahu. Rhetorically, as well as in fact, he would be hands-on in Israel’s favor at all times.

Because the Tisha B’Av spectacle was so bizarre, almost grotesque, one cannot help asking again: why were those American donors going to Israel to cheer an American candidate in an American election? Is being an American no longer good enough? In a speech in Israel in 2010, Sheldon Adelson regretted that “the uniform that I wore in the military unfortunately was not an Israeli uniform, it was an American uniform.” Such an attitude of abasement or self-subordination toward Israel, often accompanied by a peculiar vicarious nostalgia, is not confined to American Jews or billionaires. On arriving in Jerusalem in March 2010, Joe Biden said “It’s good to be home.” What was he thinking?

As Netanyahu looks at these postures of genuflection, it is no wonder that he feels himself entitled to criticize an American president in front of the American Congress, or to “vet” Republican vice-presidential hopefuls such as Chris Christie and Rob Portman. If Netanyahu is now the most effective bundler in the Republican Party, why should he not have a say in the party’s choice of a vice-president?

George Washington thought that being Americans should be enough for us. In his great Farewell Address, he also gave some reasons why attachment to a foreign power, no matter how sentimental the affection, could only impair American liberty and independence and serve to draw the country into unnecessary wars. “Nothing,” said Washington,

is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. . . .Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. . . .The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity.

Can there be any doubt what George Washington would have made of the scene of Mitt Romney and his high-rolling backers at the King David Hotel?

Washington summed up his criticism of such attachments in these climactic words of warning:

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. . . .Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other.

A contrary understanding has become so familiar in our politics that it is hard to recall when anyone last worried about excessive partiality for one nation.

We should expect no compunction, no reservation, no self-consciousness regarding the “passionate attachment” to a “favorite nation” by Romney and his foreign policy team. Part of the reason lies in the composition of the team itself. They are, to a man, alumni of the Cheney circle and the post-2001 Patriot Act security establishment, and close affiliates of the Israel lobby. But another reason for the partiality goes far back in Romney’s own life. He has been a friend of Netanyahu since their younger American corporate years together; the two have gone to each other for advice ever since, as Michael Barbaro disclosed in an April 8 story in the New York Times: they consult casually and with implicit trust, in every walk of political practice, from discussing the right strategy against Iran to canvassing the sharpest method for cutting state pensions. They share, said Barbaro (with less irony than he needed), “the same profoundly analytical view of the world.”

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JdN: The goy and his master-race owner

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To readers who know this personal history, it may seem that Romney went to Jerusalem to confirm one detail of Barbaro’s story: “Mr. Romney has suggested that he would not make any significant policy decisions about Israel without consulting Mr. Netanyahu — a level of deference that could raise eyebrows given Mr. Netanyahu’s polarizing reputation, even as it appeals to the neoconservatives and evangelical Christians who are fiercely protective of Israel.” Romney could not fail to consult his personal friend who happens to lead a foreign power, since he has pledged to do so without exception, in all decisions affecting that power. It is exactly the situation that George Washington described and warned against; but Romney seems unaware of any conflict of duties or even a possible tension. During a December primary debate, Barbaro notes,

Mr. Romney criticized Mr. Gingrich for making a disparaging remark about Palestinians, declaring: “Before I made a statement of that nature, I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: ‘Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do?'”

“What would you like me to do.” Those are the words of our intendant decider, and he means to address them, with an implied vow of fidelity, to the leader of another country. Can we read Washington’s words of 1796 addressed “to the people of the United States,” and compare Romney’s words addressed to his donors in Jerusalem, and not feel a deep disturbance? What would you like me to do?

* * *

If you’re a “meat and potatoes” kind of guy (or gal)… and you want to make sure your food storage plan is 100% complete… then it’s critical that you understand the ramifications of the ongoing national drought and how it’s affecting the beef industry.As I write this, the heartland is still reeling from the worst single-year drought in the recent history. The blistering heat has only added insult to injury. During the last few months, our Mid-America recorded one of the hottest 3-month period ever recorded in American history.The damage has been widespread and catastrophic. It’s estimated that half a billion trees have died from lack of water. Once-green pastures are now withered and worthless. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!Some of the nation’s lakes have seen water levels drop by 12 vertical feet. Crazier still, a 5,440-acre lake has dried up completely, leaving dead fish baked into the mud and exposed to the blistering sun. The lake simply no longer exists!

Over 600,000 Cows… Dead!

The beef and cattle industries have suffered massive losses due to the drought. Because there has been so little water to drink… and no grass to eat… hundreds of thousands of cows have died.

Many have died of thirst and hunger. And in an ironic twist, some cows have actually died from too much water — literally drinking themselves to death when they finally get water.

Rather than let their herds die in the parched pastures, many Texas ranchers have had their cows slaughtered ahead of schedule to try to save some of their value. As a result, cattle herds have declined by 600,000 cows — a whopping 12% of the states’ total herds.

Worst of all, the drought is not over yet!

Beef Prices Are Rising Fast

As beef supplies drop, prices go up. Last year, beef prices jumped 9%. They’re expected to climb 5.5% in 2012, but that figure could grow quickly as drought conditions across Texas and Oklahoma are expected to continue due to the La Nina weather pattern that brings dry weather to the area.

Since the U.S. is already facing the imminent threat of hyperinflation combined with catastrophic food shortages, the unprecedented decline in cattle herds and already fast-rising beef prices are both cause for concern.

What will do you when food runs out? Get in the FEMA bus, of course. 😉

Building with massive stone, not gravel.
(This is a paraphrase of an email I got today from a comrade named Dan.)

The issue is a matter of size. There are countless stones out there for people to collect and build with, however they are all mostly gravel stones that the builder could not possibly erect a castle out of, whereas what we need are those massive boulders of granite, basalt, lime stone, diorite, etc. that the ancients used to construct their pantheons.

So, it may be easier to gather, move, and shape small stones, but a great castle or edifice cannot be constructed out of such gravel – no matter how great the quantity of stone you have gathered. There are indeed plenty of “small stones” out there to work with, but they will not build and secure the future that we seek.

http://www.johndenugent.org/site/index.html