When I attended college, (and no, kiddies, I did not arrive on horseback) tuition at the then Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis), was a measly couple of hundred bucks per semester.

Nowadays, you can buy a brand new deep-breathing SUV for what a semester in college costs.

Therefore, there are a lot of unpaid-for student loans floating around out there.

In fact, today, in the United States of America, the estimated amount of student loan debt owed by Americans is $1 Trillion.

But, have no fear, kiddies. President Barack Hussein Obama is going to kiss your boo-boo and make it not hurt as much.

Correction: Not hurt you as much.

Fox News reports:

In keeping with his new campaign theme of “we can’t wait,” President Obama today will roll out a plan to put more money in the pockets of some of the nation’s 36 million student loan recipients.

Obama has broad latitude in this area – certainly broader than the first two parts of his western campaign trip, underwater mortgages and subsidies for hiring veterans – because one of his early legislative initiatives was to have the federal government take over the student lending business in America.

Obama argued for the measure in 2009 as a cost-savings initiative, saying that the old system of privately issued, government secured loans reduced the amount of available money for needy students and also prevented the feds from making the system more efficient.

But Obama is now seeking to use that new power to obtain a taxpayer-financed stimulus that Congress won’t approve. The idea is to cap student loan repayment rates at 10 percent of a debtor’s income that goes above the poverty line, and then limiting the life of a loan to 20 years.

Take this example: If Suzy Creamcheese gets into George Washington University and borrows from the government the requisite $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree, her repayment schedule will be based on what she earns. If Suzy opts to heed the president’s call for public service, and takes a job as a city social worker earning $25,000, her payments would be limited to $1,411 a year after the $10,890 of poverty-level income is subtracted from her total exposure.

Twenty years at that rate would have taxpayers recoup only $28,220 of their $212,000 loan to Suzy.

The president will also allow student debtors to refinance and consolidate loans on more favorable terms, further decreasing the payoff for taxpayers.

Obama’s move comes at a moment when many economists are warning of a college debt bubble that is distorting college tuition rates and threatening to further damage credit markets. The president’s move is intended to make college more affordable for more people, which will, in turn allow universities to jack up their rates.

Obama accomplishes three beneficial things by doing this…beneficial to him that is:

1.  He lines the pockets of his homies, the pin-headed academicians.

2.  He bypasses Congress.

You know, that whole System of Checks and Balances Thingy?

3.  He pulls off a bribe of gi-normous proportions, hoping for a quid pro quo: 

I saved you student loan holders a ton of money, now you have to vote for me in 2012.

Obama is trying to recapture the magic of the 2008 election, in which young minds full of mush led the misguided charge to enthrone their messiah.

Per tartan.org, (The Tartan is Carnegie Mellon University’s student-run newspaper, established in 1906) posted 11/10/2008:

Between 22 and 24 million young Americans ages 18–29 voted, resulting in an estimated youth voter turnout (the percentage of eligible voters who actually cast a vote) of between 49.3 and 54.5 percent, according to an exit poll analysis released Nov. 4 by CIRCLE, a nonpartisan research center at Tufts University. This is an increase of 1 to 6 percentage points over the estimated youth turnout in 2004, and an increase of between 8 and 13 percentage points over the turnout in the 2000 election. The all-time highest youth turnout was 55.4 percent in 1972, the first year that 18-year-olds could vote in a presidential election.

Sixty-six percent of young voters cast their ballot for Barack Obama, the largest-ever showing for a presidential candidate in this age group. Young people preferred Obama to John McCain by a two-to-one ratio, according to a survey of young voters conducted by Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan initiative dedicated to youth voters, and Luntz Maslansky Strategic Research, a market research company, and released Nov. 6.

“Young people absolutely made the difference in this election,” said Erika Johansson, a project coordinator for Declare Yourself. “Without them, he would have lost the election.”

Obama won the age group of 18- to 29-year-olds, in addition to the 30–44 and 45–59 brackets.

According to a National Journal/Heartland Monitor Poll, published in June of this year, Obama’s approval ratings among 18 to 29 year olds had fallen 10 points from 2008’s 66%, coming in at 56%.

Even more telling:

Sixteen percent (16%) of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken the week ending Sunday, October 23.

That’s 16% of Americans.  Therefore, college students were included in the survey.

Something tells me that Obama’s “Student Stimulus” will be just as ineffective as the original.

Last Tuesday, in an interview with ABC’s Jake tapper, President Barack Hussein Obama had nothing but praise for the astroturfed “Occupy” Protesters, who have not-so-spontaneously popped up across the country, howling against capitalism as they tweet on their I-phones:

I understand the frustrations being expressed in those protests.

In some ways, they’re not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party. Both on the left and the right, I think people feel separated from their government. They feel that their institutions aren’t looking out for them.

According to Obama, the most important thing he can do as president is express solidarity with the protesters and redouble his commitment to achieving what he described as a more egalitarian (socialist) society.

The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded. And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.

We’re at a critical moment in this country where if we can regain some of the values that helped build this country that people, I think, long for, when they feel that everybody gets a fair shake but we’re also asking a fair share from everybody, if we can go back to that then I think a lot of that anger, that frustration dissipates.

There’s a very good reason that Obama loves him some “Occupiers”.  According to Andrew Breitbart’s biggovernment.com:

Just twenty or so years ago, Barack Obama wouldn’t just have supported the Occupy protests.

He would have organized them.

From Stanley Kurtz’s essential Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, pp. 117-8:

In fact, Obama personally helped plan one of UNO’s most confrontational actions of the eighties [in 1988]: a break-in meant to intimidate a coalition of local business and neighborhood leaders into dropping a landfill expansion deal.

We know of Obama’s involvement in this demonstration only because his supporters in 2008 felt it necessary to rebut charges that, contrary to his claims of inter-racial healing, he had organized exclusively with blacks. Only then did Obama’s former colleagues from UNO [United Neighborhood Organization, a largely Mexican group] of Chicago reveal that he had helped to plan and lead this multi-ethnic demonstration against landfill expansion on Chicago’s South Side.

…Shouting “No deals!” somewhere between eighty and a hundred UNO-DCP [Developing Communities Project, a black group organized by Obama] marched to a local bank. There they broke into a meeting being conducted by the bank president and local community leaders. The group was exploring the possibility of a deal with Waste Management. The protestors, presumably including Obama, surrounded the meeting table while [Mary-Ellen] Montes [of UNO] told the negotiators, “We will fight you every step of the way.”

Obama was also likely involved with other aggressive UNO protests, including protests for school reform, through which he likely met former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers is involved in the Occupy protests today.

In the 1990s, Obama maintained his ties to radical activists, and “channel[ed] foundation funding to his confrontational Alinskyite colleagues.”

It’s clear that Obama’s ties to the Occupy movement–its forbears, its tactics, and some of its current luminaries–run deep.

This is what “community organizing” looks like.

As I reported in my article, The Great Disconnect, Part 2:  Columbia, Community Organizing, and “Hahvahd”, posted July 1, 2010:

From 1985 – 1988, Obama was a Community Organizer in Chicago.  What does a Community Organizer do?  I’m glad you asked.

Per Byron York in an article found at nationalreview.com:

Community organizing is most identified with the left-wing Chicago activist Saul Alinsky (1909-72), who pretty much defined the profession. In his classic book, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky wrote that a successful organizer should be “an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions.” Once such hostilities were “whipped up to a fighting pitch,” Alinsky continued, the organizer steered his group toward confrontation, in the form of picketing, demonstrating, and general hell-raising.

Obama was hired by Jerry Kellman, a New Yorker who had gotten into organizing in the 1960s.  Kellman was trying to help laid-off factory workers on the far South Side of Chicago, in a nearly 100% black community.   He led a group, the Calumet Community Religious Conference, that had been created by several local Catholic churches in the industrial community.   Kellman was advised to hire a black organizer for a new spinoff from CCRC.  They called it the Developing Communities Project, designed to focus solely on the Chicago part of the area.

One of Obama’s projects while he was there, was to try to build an alliance of white and black churches and enlist them in the cause of social justice.  Obama had a problem, though.   He didn’t go to church himself.   And that, brothers and sisters, is how Obama, drawn to the preaching of Rev. Jeremiah Wright (and a political opportunity), joined Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street.

If you ask Obama’s fellow Community Organizers what his most significant accomplishments were, they’ll say two things: the expansion of a city summer-job program for South Side teenagers and the removal of asbestos from one of the area’s oldest housing projects.   Those  were his biggest victories.

Only in America, could a “Community Organizer” go on to sit in the most important seat of power in the Free World…and still be nothing more than a “Community Organizer”.

Republican Primary Candidate Herman Cain has caught a lot of flack over his 9-9-9 Economic plan.

Just when the storm concerning Cain’s plan has started to die down, rival Candidate Texas Governor Rick Perry finally announced his economic plan on Monday:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry unveiled a sweeping economic agenda Monday highlighted by a plan to level a voluntary 20 percent “flat tax” on all taxpayers who will accept it in place of what they’re paying now.

The plan, outlined in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column a day before the Texas governor was set to unveil it in South Carolina, also calls for capping federal spending at 18 percent of the country’s GDP while allowing younger earners to privatize their Social Security accounts. Taxpayers who don’t want to pay a 20 percent flat income tax, he said, can keep their current rate.

Perry offers several proposals that appear designed to sweeten the offer – and to counter criticism that the flat tax is regressive, taking a proportionally bigger bite from smaller incomes. His plan would preserve popular deductions for mortgage interest and donations to charity for households earning less than $500,000 a year. It would increase the standard deduction to $12,500.

Calling his agenda “Cut, Balance and Grow” — a clear nod to congressional Republicans, who have proposed a “Cut, Cap and Balance” budget bill — Perry says his proposal is the best way to cure the nation’s ailing economy.

“Cut, Balance and Grow strikes a major blow against the Washington-knows-best mindset,” Perry said. “It takes money from spendthrift bureaucrats and returns it to families. It puts fewer job-killing regulations on employers and more restrictions on politicians. It gives more freedom to Americans to control their own destiny. And just as importantly, the Cut, Balance and Grow plan paves the way for the job creation, balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility we need to get America working again.”

Per forbes.com, just as with any economic proposal, there are pros and cons to a flat tax:

Proponents of the flat tax system claim that it would do away with the complicated tax code and tax forms. Using one form, you would add your income (pension, salary, other income) and pay 17% on the sum. Deductions and credits would be eliminated under this plan. Opponents of the flat tax system claim that it would favor the wealthy and could put a higher tax burden on those who earn less.

For example, person A makes $40,000 a year and would pay $6,800 in income taxes, leaving them with $33,200 of net income. A person making $250,000 would pay $42,500 in income taxes, leaving them with $207,500 of net income. There’s been discussion of establishing a taxable income floor so that individuals making less than a certain amount would not pay taxes.

The funny thing is…

Steve Forbes proposed a flat tax rate of 17% in his book, Flat Tax Revolution. However, everyone gets an exemption: $13,200 for adults ($17,160 for single mothers) and $4,000 for dependents. A family of four would not pay taxes if they made less than $46,000. The estate tax and the Alternative Minimum tax would be done away with. In addition, any income that is saved or invested is tax exempt. That means no taxes on capital gains, Social Security benefits, interest, or dividends. Corporations could expense all investments, doing away with depreciation schedules, and would only be taxed on American-made products.

Forbes wanted to implement a Flat Tax because…

The current U.S. tax system is so complicated, it costs taxpayers a lot just to implement it. On average, it takes 28 hours and 30 minutes to figure out what you owe – whether you do your own taxes, or you work the hours needed to pay someone else to do the taxes. The cost in lost productivity is $200 billion. That’s not counting the 97,440 IRS employees’ salaries.

A fictional tax return given by Money magazine to 45 tax preparers resulted in 45 different tax calculations. Even a Treasury Department study found that callers to the IRS toll-free help lines got the wrong answers 25% of the time.(Source: MISES)

Governor Perry evidently believes that endorsing a Flat Tax will make him competitive in the Republican Primary Race, once again.

He has to do something.  His rapid, inexorable decline in the popularity polls has taken him from number one among the Republican Contenders to third place.

When the Houston Chronicle asked him about his decline in the public polls back on October 14th, Gov. Perry blew it off by calling it “a distraction,” saying Americans are worried about jobs and not candidates’ standing in the endless surveys.

…“Polls are going to go up and down – this is going to be a long race,” the three-term governor said on NBC News’ “Today Show.” “I don’t worry much about polls.”

Perry downplayed comments by his wife Anita in South Carolina on [the previous] Thursday that he had been “brutalized” by Republican rivals and the news media. “Family members always take these campaigns a little more personally than the candidates do,” Perry said. “I have been shot at and then missed, shot at and hit for 20 years running for public office… We have ups and downs.”

Perry dubbed the tumult of the presidential campaign “just distractions” for most Americans, adding: “They want to hear a conversation about who is going to get this country back working again and that’s what I’m staying focused on.”

Okay.  But wouldn’t lessening the corporate tax  rate, in order to encourage businesses to start hiring again, thus jump-starting the economy, be the first step to get Americans working again, before announcing a Flat Tax? 

Or, are you just trying to outdo Herman Cain and become the flavor of the month again?

And, by the way, how does the Texas Dream Act get Americans working again?

Inquiring minds want to know.

The other day, I wrote an article concerning how the Muslim Brotherhood was waiting in the wings to take over Libya, now that Moammar Gadhafi has assumed room temperature.

I hate it when I’m right.

Per telegraph.co.uk:

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de fact president, had already declared that Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its “basic source”.

But that formulation can be interpreted in many ways – it was also the basis of Egypt’s largely secular constitution under President Hosni Mubarak, and remains so after his fall.

Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi’s era that he said was in conflict with Sharia – that banning polygamy.

In a blow to those who hoped to see Libya’s economy integrate further into the western world, he announced that in future bank regulations would ban the charging of interest, in line with Sharia. “Interest creates disease and hatred among people,” he said.

Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates, and other Muslim countries, have pioneered the development of Sharia-compliant banks which charge fees rather than interest for loans but they normally run alongside western-style banks.

In the first instance, interest on low-value loans would be waived altogether, he said.

Libya is already the most conservative state in north Africa, banning the sale of alcohol. Mr Abdul-Jalil’s decision – made in advance of the introduction of any democratic process – will please the Islamists who have played a strong role in opposition to Col Gaddafi’s rule and in the uprising but worry the many young liberal Libyans who, while usually observant Muslims, take their political cues from the West.

What is Sharia Law? According to the official website of the Council on Foreign Relations, cfr.org:

Also meaning “path” in Arabic, sharia guides all aspects of Muslim life including daily routines, familial and religious obligations, and financial dealings. It is derived primarily from the Quran and the Sunna–the sayings, practices, and teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. Precedents and analogy applied by Muslim scholars are used to address new issues. The consensus of the Muslim community also plays a role in defining this theological manual.

Sharia developed several hundred years after the Prophet Mohammed’s death in 632 CE as the Islamic empire expanded to the edge of North Africa in the West and to China in the East. Since the Prophet Mohammed was considered the most pious of all believers, his life and ways became a model for all other Muslims and were collected by scholars into what is known as the hadith. As each locality tried to reconcile local customs and Islam, hadith literature grew and developed into distinct schools of Islamic thought: the Sunni schools, Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanafi; and the Shiite school, Ja’fari. Named after the scholars that inspired them, they differ in the weight each applies to the sources from which sharia is derived, the Quran, hadith, Islamic scholars, and consensus of the community.

Wait a minute. Didn’t Obama say that brighter days were ahead in Libya after the killing of Gadhafi?

 So this is a momentous day in the history of Libya. The dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted. And with this enormous promise, the Libyan people now have a great responsibility — to build an inclusive and tolerant and democratic Libya that stands as the ultimate rebuke to Gaddafi’s dictatorship. We look forward to the announcement of the country’s liberation, the quick formation of an interim government, and a stable transition to Libya’s first free and fair elections. And we call on our Libyan friends to continue to work with the international community to secure dangerous materials, and to respect the human rights of all Libyans –- including those who have been detained.

Oops.  I think you missed that prediction, Kreskin.

The problem is, according to The Council of Foreign Relations, the jury is still out as to whether Democracy and Sharia Law can co-exist:

In a 2007 University of Maryland poll (PDF), more than 60 percent of the populations in Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, and Indonesia responded that democracy was a good way to govern their respective countries, while at the same time, an average of 71 percent agreed with requiring “strict application of [sharia] law in every Islamic country.” Whether democracy and Islam can coexist is a topic of heated debate. Some Islamists argue democracy is a purely Western concept imposed on Muslim countries. Others feel Islam necessitates a democratic system and that democracy has a basis in the Quran since “mutual consultation” among the people is commended (42:38 Quran). John L. Esposito and John O. Voll explain the debate in a 2001 article in the journal Humanities.

Noah Feldman, a former CFR adjunct senior fellow, writes in a 2008 New York Times Magazine article that the full incorporation of Islamic law is viewed as creating “a path to just and legitimate government in much of the Muslim world.” It places duplicitous rulers alongside their constituents under the rule of God. “For many Muslims today, living in corrupt autocracies, the call for [sharia] is not a call for sexism, obscurantism or savage punishment but for an Islamic version of what the West considers its most prized principle of political justice: the rule of law,” Feldman argues.

On the other hand, some Muslim scholars say that secular government is the best way to observe sharia. “Enforcing a [sharia] through coercive power of the state negates its religious nature, because Muslims would be observing the law of the state and not freely performing their religious obligation as Muslims,” says Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, a professor of law at Emory University and author of a book on the future of sharia.

That  makes two countries in the volatile Middle East, Egypt and Libya,  who have headed straight toward a fervent embrace of radical Sharia Law, after disposing of their secular despots, cheered on by President Barack Hussein Obama and his State Department practitioners of Smart Power!

And this helps the United States, how?

In the past few months, during the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, and now Moammar Gadhafi, have all assumed room temperature.

Friday, Obama announced that all American Troops will be gone from Iraq by the end of this year, completing a campaign goal he made in 2008 when he proclaimed the war in Iraq a misguided mistake by his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.

All of these “victories” mean that Obama’s re-election should be a no-brainer, right?

Wrong.

As reported at gallup.com:

President Barack Obama’s 11th quarter in office was the worst of his administration, based on his quarterly average job approval ratings. His 41% approval average is down six percentage points from his 10th quarter in office, and is nearly four points below his previous low of 45% during his seventh quarter.

These results are based on Gallup Daily tracking from July 20-Oct. 19, 2011. During this time, Obama’s approval rating ranged narrowly between 38% and 43% for all but a few days of the quarter. The 38% approval ratings, registered on several occasions, are the lowest of his presidency to date.

The most notable event in Obama’s 11th quarter was probably the negotiations to raise the federal debt ceiling in late July and early August. Shortly after the agreement was reached, the stock market plummeted after Standard and Poor’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating. Later, the government’s jobs report showed no new net jobs were created in August, a sign the economy was still a long way from recovery. The president has been unsuccessful so far in getting Congress to pass the jobs bill he proposed in early September.

Only one elected president since Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, had a lower 11th quarter average than Obama. Carter averaged 31% during his 11th quarter, which was marked by a poor economy and high energy prices. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were the only other post-World War II presidents whose job approval averages were below 50% in their 11th quarter in office.

So, why is this formerly worshiped false messiah being kicked to the curb by his former sycophants?

It’s the economy, stupid!

Per csm.com:

Many economists say applications need to fall consistently below 375,000 to signal sustainable job growth. They haven’t been below that level since February.

Economists have been closely watching unemployment benefit applications since fears of another recession intensified this summer. Layoffs and applications tend to rise at the beginning of recessions.

Employers have added an average of only 72,000 jobs per month in the past five months. That’s far below the 100,000 per month needed to keep up with population growth. And it’s down from an average of 180,000 in the first four months of this year.

In September, employers added only 103,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate remained 9.1 percent for a third straight month.

Employers pulled back on hiring this spring, after rising gas prices cut into consumer spending and Japan’s March 11 earthquake disrupted supply chains. That slowed U.S. auto production.

Auto output has rebounded in the past couple of months and gas prices have come down from their peak in early May. In September, consumers increased their spending on retail goods by the most in seven months.

Those trends likely boosted growth in the July-September quarter to about 2.5 percent, economists predict. That’s an improvement from the 0.9 percent annual rate in the first six months of this year. But it’s not enough to spur much job growth.

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits rose 25,000 to 3.7 million. But that doesn’t include several million additional laid-off workers receiving extended benefits under an emergency program paid for by the federal government and put in place during the recession.

All told, 6.7 million people received benefits in the week ended Oct. 1, the latest data available.

Gallup.com reported Wednesday that Americans are more than twice as likely to blame the federal government in Washington (64%) for the economic problems facing the United States as they are the financial institutions on Wall Street (30%).

On January 20, 2009, at his Inauguration, the 44th President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama said:

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.

And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.

But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart [Share the wealth!] — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

Grand plans, Mr. President.  Poor execution.

Your economy.  Your responsibility.  Your failure.

When President Ronald Reagan passed away in 2004, newsmax.com reported the following story:

Moammar Gadhafi expressed regret Sunday that President Ronald Reagan died before standing trial for 1986 American air strikes that killed the Libyan leader’s adopted daughter [some say his sister] and 36 other people.

Reagan ordered the April 15, 1986, air raid in response to a discotheque bombing in Berlin allegedly ordered by Gadhafi that killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman and injured 229 people.

“I express my deep regret because Reagan died before facing justice for his ugly crime that he committed in 1986 against the Libyan children,” Libya’s official JANA news agency quoted Gadhafi as saying.

JANA, in reporting Reagan’s death Saturday at age 93, described former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a partner in the strikes because some of the warplanes took off from the United Kingdom.

“Ronald Reagan, Thatcher’s partner in the failed American-Atlantic aggression against the house of the brother leader of the revolution, in Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986, died,” JANA reported.

The United States branded Libya a rogue state in the 1980s, alleging state-sponsored support of terrorism and imposing trade sanctions on the country in 1986.

Only in the last year have relations warmed substantially, with Libya meeting U.S. demands stemming from the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. A Libyan agent was convicted of involvement in the bombing and Libya agreed to pay compensation to the families of the 270 victims.

Gadhafi agreed in December to dismantle Libya’s biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs, and in February, Washington lifted a ban on use of American passports to travel to Libya. In April, President Bush took steps toward restoring trade and investment ties with Libya, allowing the resumption of oil imports and most commercial and financial activities.

But the United States continues to list Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism, which prohibits U.S. aid or arms sales to the country, and hundreds of millions of dollars of Libyan assets remain frozen in American banks. These restrictions are seen as an inducement for Libya to resolve its remaining differences with Washington.

On 3/7/11, msn.com reported:

A former top CIA official who helped oversee the agency’s investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, tells NBC News there is “no doubt” that Moammar Gadhafi personally approved the bombing.

“There are two things that you can take to the bank,” said Frank Anderson, who served as the agency’s Near East affairs chief between 1991 and his retirement in 1995. “The first one is, Pan Am 103 was perpetrated by agents of the Libyan government. And the second thing is, that could not have happened without Moammar Gadhafi’s knowledge and consent.

“There is no question in my mind that Moammar Gadhafi authorized the bombing of Pan Am 103.”

The Libyan Madman’s life ended yesterday, as myway.com reports:

Moammar Gadhafi, Libya’s dictator for 42 years until he was ousted in an uprising-turned-civil war, was killed Thursday as revolutionary fighters overwhelmed his hometown of Sirte and captured the last major bastion of resistance two months after his regime fell.

The 69-year-old Gadhafi is the first leader to be killed in the Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings that swept the Middle East, demanding the end of autocratic rulers and the establishment of greater democracy.

“We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed,” Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told a news conference in the capital of Tripoli.

There were conflicting accounts about Gadhafi’s final hours, with the interim government saying he was captured unharmed and later mortally wounded in the crossfire from both sides. A second account described how he was already wounded in the chest when he was seized and later sustained the other wounds.

Of course, President Barack Hussein Obama came on television yesterday morning, to verbally complete a victory lap:

President Barack Obama hailed the lifting of the “dark tyranny” over Libya after the new government confirmed Muammar Gaddafi had been killed, issuing a warning to other dictators in the Middle East – and particularly Syria – that they could be next.

Although Obama did not name Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, it was he Obama had in mind when he said the rule of the iron fist in the Middle East is inevitably coming to an end. Those leaders that try to deny the push for democracy will not succeed, he predicted.

Obama was speaking in the White House Rose Garden after footage was shown worldwide of what appeared to be Gaddafi’s bloody corpse. “One of the world’s longest-serving dictators is no more,” the president said.

The Libyans had won their revolution and “the dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted,” Obama said.

Given the number of false claims in recent weeks that Gaddafi had been killed or captured, Obama was careful not to say categorically that he was dead.

Instead, he confined himself to a carefully chosen formula: “We can definitively say the Gaddafi regime has come to an end.”

He promised US help for Libya in establishing an interim government and in the holding of fair and free elections, but anticipated “difficult days ahead”.

Bin Laden, Awlaki, and now Gadhafi.  For a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Obama sure has been involved in a bunch of killings, hasn’t he?

Not that those guys did not deserve it…

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chimed in later on Thursday:

“We came, we saw, he died,” she joked when told of news reports of Qaddafi’s death by an aide in between formal interviews.

Clinton was in Tripoli earlier this week for talks with leaders of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC).

The reporter asked if Qaddafi’s death had anything to do with her surprise visit to show support for the Libyan people.

“No,” she replied, before rolling her eyes and saying “I’m sure it did” with a chuckle.

She wishes. 

There was a reason President Reagan didn’t finish off the late, unlamented Colonel Gadhafi.  He didn’t need to.  Gadhafi was crazy, not stupid.  He kept his mouth shut and behaved for 20 years after his house was bombed.

So, what happens in Libya now that the Rebels are in charge?

On March 25th of this year, cnn.com posted the following article by Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister:

Dr. Abdulmonem Hresha knows first hand how Moammar Gadhafi’s regime works. He says the seeds of his opposition were sown when he was age 10.

He and classmates were taken to witness the public execution of a political opponent of Gadhafi.

“They hung him up in front of thousands of small kids,” Hresha said. “He did that to scare people.”

Hresha, who taught physics at Tripoli University, later fled to Canada.

The prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood now lives in London, and anticipates the group could become an important player in a post-Gadhafi environment.

As in Egypt and Tunisia, the Brotherhood in Libya has been energized by the sudden upheaval sweeping the Arab world.

It says it has no organizational links with the Brotherhood elsewhere, but shares the philosophy of the pan-Arab Islamist movement founded in Egypt in the 1920s.

Largely drawn from the devout educated middle classes and university campuses in Tripoli and Benghazi, the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood was founded in the mid-1950s.

Islamist opposition to the Libyan regime gathered force in the late 1980s, as part of a wider Islamic awakening or “Sahwa” in the region and in reaction to what many saw as an attempt by Gadhafi to hijack and interpret Islam for his own purposes.

While jihadists launched a brief but unsuccessful campaign to overthrow Gadhafi in the 1990s, the Brotherhood focused much of its efforts on clandestine preaching and social welfare efforts in Libya.

In 1998, Gadhafi’s security services launched a crackdown against the group that saw more than 200 members imprisoned and hundreds more forced into exile, including Hresha.

Despite years of repression, Hresha claims the Brotherhood still has thousands of members scattered across Libya, with chapters in almost every single town, including Sirte, Gadhafi’s birthplace on the coast west of Tripoli.

In 2006, its leaders were released after reconciling with the Libyan regime. But now the Brotherhood is siding with the rebellion…

We all know how well the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood is working out for the Egyptians, especially the Coptic Christians , don’t we?

…and “Arab Spring” continues…