On Rush Limbaugh’s show of May 28^th, he spent a great deal of time talking about how the progressive elite use foundations. He was responding to Hillary Clinton’s call for the wealthy to pay more in taxes and be more like Brazil (apparently, our new role model.) Rush suggested that Hillary did not have to worry about paying these taxes herself, as they have a lot of money tucked away in their foundations where they will not be taxed.

This is just another problem with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to consider, along with all the other mega foundations, and it’s a pretty big one.  Although it would be unfair to accuse them of forming a foundation for financial reasons only, it sure doesn’t hurt. By doing this, you are in essence withholding taxes and seeing that it is spent in the way you want it spent. That sounds like a better gig than the Federal Reserve even has!

My focus in writing this series is to consider the progressive and perhaps even irresponsible areas where huge amounts of foundation money are going, rather than being taxed, and the effects it can have on everyone. Of course, eliminating tax deductions across the board and going with a flat tax would wreak havoc on this scheme, which may be a big reason why you never see any action on a flat or fair tax structure.

I think most would agree that the big foundations are both tax shelters and philanthropic. You have to consider, though, whether you want to continue to allow the progressive elite to divert millions of tax free dollars into their pet causes and candidates, especially in these tough economic times.  As we lose more and more control, those in power will gain more and more through increased taxes on the average Joe and control of foundation money. They don’t necessarily have to be elected to run your life.

In Part Four, we’ll take a look at the Gates support for the huge, worldwide microloan scheme.

Iran’s game has been going on far too long, but it looks like the West finally isn’t buying it anymore. The regime has announced that they will accept a deal to have a large amount of their uranium shipped out of the country and will receive uranium enriched enough for medical purposes in return. This would theoretically stop Iran from expanding its capacity to enrich uranium to the 90% purity level needed to act as fuel in a nuclear bomb.

Defense Secretary Gates replied to this “breakthrough” by saying,

“The reality is that they have done nothing to reassure the international community that they are prepared to . . . stop their progress toward making a nuclear weapon.”

The German Foreign Minister was even more dismissive, saying,

“If it’s not more than we heard yesterday, then I have to say unfortunately this is not a new transparency.”

Too often the conversation focuses on if Iran will use “the” bomb once it gets it. All indications are that Iran does not intend to build one or even a few nuclear weapons and then go on the war path. The infrastructure Iran is building goes far beyond that. Iran wants the capacity to quickly build a nuclear arsenal and to have that capacity become so vast that no surgical strike can destroy it— leaving the West and Israel with full-fledged war and regime change as the only alternative to recognizing Iran as a nuclear-armed, regional hegemon. And as I’ve written previously, the script to pull this off has already been written. Click here to see exactly how Iran is planning to become a nuclear weapons state and minimize the risks involved.

"I am disappointed, however, that the report does not adequately recognize the specific threat posed by violent Islamist extremism to our military, a threat directly addressed by Senator Collins and me in a January 13 letter to Secretary Gates. I believe firmly that if DoD educates its personnel about violent Islamist extremism - and how terrorists distort the Islamic faith to promote violence - we will increase trust between the thousands of Muslim-Americans serving honorably in the military and their colleagues."

No one has ever adequately explained how exactly terrorists "distort the Islamic faith." Could it be by promoting attacks on "innocent civilians"? See here for why that couldn't be it, but that's the best the Islamic apologists in the West can do. And despite their signal failure to produce the Moderate Islam upon which American foreign policy, thousands of lives, and billions of dollars depend, everyone in Official Washington simply takes it on faith that this great Santa Claus really exists, and will soon bestow his gifts upon a waiting world.

Also, is the point of the Fort Hood investigation really to "increase trust between the thousands of Muslim-Americans serving honorably in the military and their colleagues," or to prevent future jihad attacks? It seems as if making Muslims comfortable in the U.S. military is more of a priority than making sure that another one of them doesn't go jihad.

For those of us concerned about President Barack Obama’s seriousness in prosecuting the War in Afghanistan, last night Sean Hannity offered a brand new cause for doubt – and it’s a doozy:

Video: Sean Hannity, 12/7/09

Hannity highlighted a Washington Post report recounting a jaw-dropping set of White House meetings with General Stanley McChrystal:

In June, McChrystal noted, he had arrived in Afghanistan and set about fulfilling his assignment. His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a slide: “Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population.”  “Is that really what you think your mission is?” one of those in the Situation Room asked.

On the face of it, it was impossible — the Taliban were part of the fabric of the Pashtun belt of southern Afghanistan, culturally if not ideologically supported by a significant part of the population. “We don’t need to do that,” Gates said, according to a participant. “That’s an open-ended, forever commitment.”  But that was precisely his mission, McChrystal responded, and it was enshrined in the Strategic Implementation Plan — the execution orders for the March strategy, written by the NSC staff […]

“It was clear that Stan took a very literal interpretation of the intent” of the NSC document, said Jones, who had signed the orders himself. “I’m not sure that in his position I wouldn’t have done the same thing, as a military commander.” But what McChrystal created in his assessment “was obviously something much bigger and more longer-lasting . . . than we had intended.”

Whatever the administration might have said in March, officials explained to McChrystal, it now wanted something less absolute: to reverse the Taliban’s momentum, deter it and try to persuade a significant number of its members to switch sides. “We certainly want them not to be able to overthrow the government,” Jones said.

On Oct. 9, after awaking to the news that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama listened to McChrystal’s presentation. The “mission” slide included the same words: “Defeat the Taliban.” But a red box had been added beside it saying that the mission was being redefined, Jones said. Another participant recalled that the word “degrade” had been proposed to replace “defeat.”

Already briefed on the previous day’s discussion, the president “looked at it and said: ‘To be fair, this is what we told the commander to do. Now, the question is, have we directed him to do more than what is realistic? Should there be a sharpening . . . a refinement?’” one participant recalled.  Said a senior White House adviser who took extensive notes of the meeting: “The big moment when the mission became a narrower one was when we realized we’re not going to kill every last member of the Taliban.” [Emphasis added.]

Good Lord, where to begin?  That the Administration gave the mission commander orders it either never really believed in or didn’t bother to think through carefully?  That the man who signed the orders apparently did so with the expectation they wouldn’t be carried out “literally”?  Or maybe the suggestion that “defeating” an enemy means killing “every last member” of it, anything short of which is failure?  I’ll be that’s a new one among military historians.

Allahpundit thinks this farce is the natural result of how few times the commander-in-chief has bothered to meet with McChrystal, and is indicative of Obama’s lack of interest in foreign policy in favor of his real passions like health care.  Whatever the cause of this insanity, it once again demonstrates the deadly folly of expecting liberals to competently defend the nation.  President Obama should let Senator John McCain (R-AZ) give him a refresher course:

The rationale for war is to break the enemy’s will. That’s the whole rationale for war.  Do you break the enemy’s will by saying, “We’re going to be there,” or send a message we’re going to be there for a year and a half or so and then we’re going to begin to leave, no matter what the circumstances are?  Or do you tell them, “We’re going to win and we’re going to break your will, and then we’re going to leave”?

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Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College.  He also blogs at the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.

Related posts:

1. Retreat in Afghanistan
2. Afghanistan: 52 Days And Still Waiting For A Decision
3. The Clock Is Ticking, Mr. President

So all those worries about a definite date when the American troops absolutely, positively have to be out, that "date certain" (lots of people love saying that phrase - to them it sounds so Covington-and-Burlingish), are perhaps not necessary. For those who think the Afghan game worth the American candle, and judging by Mullen, Gates and others, the gloss to be put on Obama's phrases admits of such flexibility about the phrase that not even W. C. Fields should bother his pretty little head and spend time "looking for loopholes." The "loopholes," Gates and Mullen assure us, are already there.

And then there are those who have had the opposite reaction, who are made furious by Obama's decision. Many of these are his original, true-blue supporters. What do they talk about? They talk mainly about money. They are horrified - rightly - that another one or two hundred billion dollars is going to be spent in Afghanistan. They are well aware of what that money could do. Why, just $400 million of it would restore the cuts in Medicare that the Senate approved the other day. There would be no debate, there would not have to be any debate, about health care if the sums squandered in Afghanistan and Iraq had been kept at home. Nor would there be a problem with paying for road and bridge repairs all over the country, for tuition assistance for practically everyone, for energy projects. Oh, they have a point all right, those who talk about the money.

But they would be in a stronger position if one did not suspect that many of them also, at the same time, have no great interest in resisting, or even in recognizing, the Jihad. No one I have listened to who is against continuing the effort in Afghanistan has suggested all the other, much less expensive, more effective ways, to divide and demoralize the enemy, and to weaken the hold that the ideology of Islam has on its adherents. No one, in fact, mentions Islam at all, mentions the ways in which both the outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan are irrelevant to the instruments of Jihad that really count, above all in the historic heart of the West, Europe. No one mentions the Money Weapon, and how it makes no sense to keep spending money - any money at all -- on Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. No one mentions the need, if indeed one were to believe (no one should) that "jobs" would lessen the recruitment rate for the Taliban - for Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E., and other fabulously rich Arab sheikdoms to be contributing billions and tens of billions to those states. For it was they who funded, they who diplomatically recognized, they who gave every assistance, through institutions and individuals, to the Taliban, and then the Taliban gave succor and refuge and aid to Al Qaeda.

So on the one hand, there are the Republican loyalists, the people who still implicitly must think (do they think?) that Muslims are essentially swell, that Islam itself is not a problem, that only some "violent extremists" are the problem -- though no one, ever, has come up with a single text, a single passage, that those "violent extremists" rely on that is not from the Qur'an, Hadith, or from the example furnished by Muhammad in the Sira. No one has dared to define the ideology of "violent extremists" that somehow is supposed to set them apart from the ideology of Islam itself. And of course they can't. What they could do is instead ask themselves another question: in what ways do those who are not "violent extremists" manage to pursue the same goal, using slyer methods, especially in the Western world? And what are those instruments of Jihad - the very same Jihad, with the very same goals, but pursued through qitaal, or combat, and terrorism, by those "violent extremists" whom we all agree are very bad? If the ultimate goals are the same, shouldn't we look to see not only how to diminish terrorism, but to deal with all the other weapons of Jihad - the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, demographic conquest? This is something about which the Republican Senators and Congressmen are silent. They think they can continue to claim to be "tough-minded" by supporting troops, and more troops - that is, by supporting the squandering of men, money, materiel, and morale, both civilian and political. And they are opposed by people who won't discuss Islam, as an ideology, at all, but will only talk about all the money that could be spent on other things.