CNSNews is reporting that a top Muslim Brotherhood official has warned that any cuts in U.S. aid to Egypt could affect Cairo’s peace treaty with Israel.

The report, by Patrick Goodenough,
outlines that this direct threat is only the latest sign that Egypt’s
emerging political forces intend to call Washington’s bluff over the
diplomatic dispute triggered by a crackdown on non-governmental
organizations.

Egyptian judges have referred 16 Americans and 27 others linked to NGOs for trial, accusing them of using foreign funds to encourage disruptive protests. Among the targeted NGOs whose assets and funds have been seized are the U.S. government-funded International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute.
 
On Capitol Hill, the chorus of senior lawmakers calling for aid to Egypt to be suspended over the affair is growing, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that the funds could be in jeopardy.
 
So far, the defiant response from Cairo has been attributed mostly to government figures with links to the deposed Mubarak regime, including the anti-Western minister for international cooperation, Fayza Abul-Naga. The military-appointed Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri – who also served during the Mubarak era – told reporters last Wednesday that the authorities “won’t change course because of some aid.”
 
But now the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which won almost 50 percent of the seats in recent legislative elections and dominates parliamentary committees, is making its position clear, too.

Any U.S. aid cut to Egypt, top MB lawmaker Essam el-Erian told the pan-Arabic al-Hayat newspaper, would violate the U.S.-brokered 1979 peace agreement with Israel.
 
The Jerusalem Post quoted Erian as saying that if the U.S. cuts aid to Egypt, the MB would consider changing the terms of the peace treaty. He is warning that the U.S. should understand that “what was acceptable before the revolution is no longer.”
 
Erian chairs the parliamentary foreign affairs committee and is deputy leader of the MB’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).
 
The FJP was an early critic of the crackdown on the NGOs (although it also said Egyptian NGOs should get their funding from Egyptians). But threats to cut U.S. aid appear to have rallied various factions behind the government, feeding into long-held suspicion of and hostility towards the West.
 
“This is only the beginning of the anti-American populism/nationalism/Islamism we are going to be seeing in Egypt from now on,” Mideast expert Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Israel, wrote in a column Sunday.
 
“What’s amazing is that nobody is pointing out that if an Egyptian government is willing to risk U.S. aid and have a confrontation on this small issue, what are they going to do regarding big issues?’ Rubin said. “What happens when the Egyptian government moves toward Islamism or helps Hamas fight Israel on some level? We have been told that fear of losing U.S. aid will constrain Egypt. But we are now seeing that this simply isn’t true.”

Click here to read the full report on CNSNews by Patrick Goodenough.

Fiscal conservatives blasted President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget presented today as an election year political deceit that will saddle Americans for generations with increasing debt.  U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) and Rep. Allen West (R-FL) all released statements critical of the budget.

“In an effort to win re-election, President Obama’s budget uses Washington gimmicks and accounting tricks to simultaneously spend more money on items important to his base while falsely claiming to reduce spending,” said Sen. Inhofe.  “He is trying to fund yet another failed stimulus, and it is simply irresponsible. 

"Under this President, we have now had four budgets with yearly deficits
over $1 trillion each.  This budget continues Washington’s disastrous
trend of spending money we don’t have.  He claims this budget has $4
trillion in deficit reductions.  In reality, he is proposing $8 trillion
in more deficits and $11 trillion more added to the debt.  He increases
spending on his liberal leaning agenda items on the backs of dangerous
defense cuts.

“Once again, because of his failure to provide leadership, the President is turning a blind eye to fiscal crisis that is facing this nation.  To further help pay for his big-government spending, the President is proposing $1.9 trillion in new taxes on families, small businesses and job creators – including those in the energy industry.   These industry specific tax increases will simply be passed on to families in the form of higher costs.  The best thing the President could do to help our economy, spur job creation, and assist those struggling to make ends meet would be to provide certainty by cutting government spending, reducing the tax burden, and ending over-regulation.  Instead, President Obama offers more of the same:  too much spending, too much borrowing, and too much taxation,”Sen. Inhofe added.

Rep. Lankford criticized President Obama’s budget proposal as dead on arrival.

"The President’s budget is loaded with budget gimmicks and free campaign benefits in a time when fiscal leadership is desperately required," said Rep. Lankford. "Despite taking an extra week to craft his proposal, President Obama basically follows the same template of his divide-the-nation and stimulus spending ideas that have fallen flat for the past three years. Once again, his budget never balances and offers no hope of ever paying off our $15.3 trillion debt. Three years ago next week, President Obama said, ‘Today I am pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office.’ Now the final budget proposal of his term contains a fourth-straight year of trillion dollar deficits – more than twice as high as any year during the Bush Administration.”

President Obama’s FY13 budget proposal calls for $3.8 trillion in total spending. The projected deficit for FY13 would be $1.33 trillion. By contrast, the highest deficit prior to 2009 was $459 billion (FY 2008).

“The President still denies that higher spending causes more long-term fiscal pain, and he has again doubled down on the stimulus and bailout strategy that more revenue will fix our problems,” continued Rep. Lankford. “The absurd proposal to tax the ‘rich’ an additional $1.5 trillion over 10 years to solve a projected budget deficit of over $10 trillion may fire up his base for the campaign, but it leaves the American people holding the bag for trillions in new debt. It is time for the President to actually take the lead in cutting spending and reforming our tax code to spur economic growth. We need bold leadership to solve our budget problems – not a campaign document to buy votes on the backs of future generations.”

The White House budget again took a pass on entitlement reform. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are facing insolvency and allowing another year to go by only punts the problem to the next administration.

"The President’s willingness to take a pass on fundamental reform of our entitlement programs emphasizes his inability to offer serious reforms. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are on a path to consume more than 50 percent of GDP by the middle of the century. Our overall deficit spending is already at 100 percent of GDP. It is remarkable that as Greece explodes in riots over its government debt, our President ignores the most predictable emergency in history – the looming American debt crisis. His fear to address entitlement programs does not avoid the ominous problem of bankruptcy in these programs, which will surely lead to an indiscriminate decline in care and benefits,” concluded Rep. Lankford.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) suggested President Obama cannot learn.

“President Barack Obama’s budget is an unserious approach to a very serious situation. Filled with exaggerations, gimmicks, and historic tax increases, the budget released today is bad for jobs, bad for seniors and bad for the economy," said Rep. West.  "For seniors, the budget does nothing to address Medicare, a program sinking and heading towards bankruptcy, and instead increases the power of the Independent Advisory Board, a panel of unaccounted for bureaucrats making decisions for our nation’s elderly. For hard working Americans, the budget increases taxes by an astounding 1.9 trillion dollars, taking money out of people’s pockets during an already turbulent economic period. For small business owners, this budget leaves them with even more uncertainty, as the United States debt increases and regulations remain. With $3.8 trillion projected spending in 2013, increasing every year for the next decade, this President still believes he can spend his way out of this economic crisis. It seems he will never learn the lessons of the past.

"The President will have accumulated $6.4 trillion in new debt in just one, four-year term. According to his own evaluative criteria, doing so is unpatriotic. In ten years, America will have a gross debt of $25.9 trillion dollars.  This is unsustainable and immoral to our children and grandchildren.

Rep. West added, "House Republicans have a Plan for America’s Job Creators and it is time for the President and Democrats in the Senate to stop blocking our jobs bills. We’ve passed a jobs budget with fundamental pro-growth tax reform, the elimination of corporate loopholes and subsidies to help create more jobs. The President is wrong again and completely out of touch and inexperienced with how to create jobs and turn this economy around.” 

Annual Deficit Under Obama

• FY09: $1.413 trillion (the highest in U.S. history)
• FY10: $1.294 trillion
• FY11: $1.299 trillion
• FY12: $1.33 trillion

Obama’s FY2013 Tax Increases

• Total tax increase of $1.9 trillion.
• The largest tax increase in U.S. history, raising taxes by at least $1.5 trillion on families making more than $250,000 per year.
• Imposes news taxes under the so-called Buffett Rule.
• Increases taxes on the fossil fuel energy industry by roughly $41 billion over the next 10 years.
• Increases taxes on the financial industry by $61 billion over the next 10 years.

Election-Driven Spending

• $487 billion cut in defense spending over the next 10 years, and the first cut in military spending since the 1990s.
• $8 billion in a new community college initiative.
• $30 billion in new school construction spending.
• A 55 percent increase in Obama’s Race to the Top education initiative.
• $30 billion in new spending for teachers and first responders.
• $1.4 billion in new energy spending, more than a third ($522 million) of which will be spent on increase in renewable energy programs.
• $45 billion to extend unemployment insurance
• $35 billion to establish a “universal dislocated workers” program.
• $14 billion in additional Pell Grant funding.
• $13 billion for a “Pathways Back to Work” fund.

The Armed Forces Journal has published a damning analysis of how President Barack Obama with his military leaders have let the nation and our soldiers in the field down.  We have been betrayed – again.

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops
and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping
Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the
enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and
talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni,
Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces. 

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.

I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can’t talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.

To read more, click here from the Armed Forces Journal.

In an exclusive report, World Net Daily, has documented that Ayatolla Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has directed his nation to kill all Jews and annihilate Israel in a Sharia Law based legal opinion promoting a genocidal attack against what he called a "cancerous tumor."

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with
ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, first said the
opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material." 
It is a ‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and
annihilate Israel, and in that, "the Islamic government of Iran must
take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, a conservative analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned conservative sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.   Because Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is justified in launching a pre-emptive, cataclysmic attack against the Jewish state, the doctrine argues.
 
On Friday, in a major speech at prayers, Khamenei announced that Iran will support any nation or group that attacks the “cancerous tumor” of Israel. Though his statement was seen by some in the West as fluff, there is substance behind it.
 
Iran’s Defense Ministry announced this weekend that it test-fired an advanced two-stage, solid-fuel ballistic missile and boasted about successfully putting a new satellite into orbit, reminding the West that its engineers have mastered the technology for intercontinental ballistic missiles even as the Islamic state pushes its nuclear weapons program.
 
The commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Seyyed Mehdi Farahi, stated in August that the Safir missile, which is capable of transporting a satellite into space, can easily be launched parallel to the earth’s orbit, which will transform it into an intercontinental ballistic missile. Western analysts didn’t believe this would happen until 2015. Historically, orbiting a satellite is the criterion for crediting a nation with ICBM capability.
 
Forghani details the Islamic duty of jihad as laid out in the Quran for the sake of Allah and states that “primary jihad,” according to some Shiite jurists, can only occur when the Hidden Imam, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, returns. Shiites believe Mahdi’’s return will usher in Armageddon.
 
In the absence of the hidden Imam, Forghani says, “defensive jihad” could certainly take place when Islam is threatened, and Muslims must defend Islam and kill their enemies. To justify such action, Alef quotes the Shiites’ first imam, Ali, who stated “Waging war against the enemies with whom war is inevitable and there is a strong possibility that in near future they will attack Muslims is a must and the duty of Muslims.”
 
The article then quotes the Quran (Albaghara 2:191-193): “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers] … and fight them until persecution is no more, and [all] religion is for Allah.”
 
It is the duty for all Muslims to participate in this defensive jihad, Forghani says. A fatwa by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made it clear that any political domination by infidels over Muslims authorizes Muslims to defend Islam by all means. Iran now has the ICBM means to deliver destruction on Israel and soon will have nuclear warheads for those missiles.
 
Click here for the WND report and an Iranian documentary video “The Coming Is Upon Us” which clearly indicates that these radicals believe the destruction of Israel will trigger the coming of the last Islamic Messiah and that even Jesus Christ, who will convert to Islam, will act as Mahdi’s deputy, praying to Allah as he stands behind the 12th Imam.

Today, Senate physicians and House GOP Doctors Caucus members released an open letter to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), urging them to join the Caucus’ efforts to salvage Medicare. Unless significant changes are made to the program, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the Medicare trust fund will be bankrupt by 2020, a crisis that is both unacceptable but preventable. Congressional health care providers hope that the AARP, the leading special interest group representing seniors and Americans over 50, will work with them to provide concrete, specific policy proposals to save the program.

“The Medicare program will go broke in a few short years,” said Rep. Phil Gingrey, M.D., (GA-11), co-chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus. “Opponents of saving the program from bankruptcy cannot be allowed to hamper our efforts to protect the promise of Medicare for today’s seniors and future generations. As medical providers, we are hoping AARP will join with us as we encourage Congress, the president, and outside groups to stand with us – for the benefit of our patients – and publicly pledge to save Medicare now. America’s patients can’t wait.”

Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK), said, “For too long politicians and special interest groups have used the politics of fear to paralyze the debate and continue the status quo. They have promised seniors and supporters that there will be no changes to Medicare. Unfortunately, as long as politicians obscure the prognosis of the Medicare program for political benefit and stakeholders like AARP fail to publicly challenge these political calculations, a national conversation about how to best save the Medicare program will not move forward.”

Co-signees of the letter include:

Sen. John Barrasso, M.D. (R-WY)
Sen. Jon Boozman, O.D. (R-AR)
Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK)
Rep. Phil Gingrey, M.D. (GA-11)
Rep. Dan Benishek, M.D. (MI-01)
Rep. Diane Black, R.N. (TN-06)
Rep. Charles Boustany, M.D. (LA-07)
Rep. Paul Broun, M.D. (GA-10)
Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, R.N. (NY-25)
Rep. Michael Burgess, M.D. (TX-26)
Rep. Larry Buschon, M.D. (IN-08)
Rep. Bill Cassidy, M.D. (LA-06)
Rep. Scott DesJarlais, M.D. (TN-04)
Rep. John Fleming, M.D. (LA-04)
Rep. Paul Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-01)
Rep. Andy Harris, M.D. (MD-01)
Rep. Phil Roe, M.D. (TN-01)
Rep. Mike Simpson, D.D.S. (ID-02)

Click here to read the letter.