Enemy No. 1: Anwar The American

9 Feb. 2010 | IBD

Awlaki in 2008: Why isn’t he in the cross hairs of our drones? AP View Enlarged Image

War On Terror: Upstaging Osama Bin Laden as the most dangerous man in the world may be an American recruiter for al-Qaida: Anwar Awlaki. So why’s he talking to Al-Jazeera instead of interrogators?

The radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar Awlaki told the Arab TV network that he supported the failed Christmas Day airliner attack because “the American people have participated in all the crimes of their government.” The turncoat added: “Some 300 Americans are nothing compared to the thousands of Muslims they have killed.”

Awlaki also advised the Fort Hood terrorist, whom he called “a hero.” The two exchanged some 20 e-mails. But he is best known for privately meeting with some of the 9/11 hijackers.

The Christmas crotch-bomber told federal authorities that Awlaki directed him to carry out his airliner attack, which means he has gone operational.

Both U.S. and Yemeni intelligence believe Awlaki met with suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in Yemen late last year, and may have even helped outfit the bomber. There are also reports that Awlaki, born 38 years ago in New Mexico, has given his blessing to roomsful of blue-eyed, blonde-haired Americans preparing for suicide missions against their own country.

If true, this is chilling stuff. Yet the administration seems hesitant to go after Awlaki, who is holed up in a tribal region of Yemen. Some say that because he’s a U.S. citizen, the CIA cannot target him with a drone-fired missile.

Not so. After 9/11, President Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the U.S.

In fact, U.S. citizen Kamal Derwish was killed by a CIA missile strike in November 2002. U.S. spooks knew he was in a car with six other al-Qaida operatives driving through the Yemen desert. And they sent a Hellfire missile after them.

The CIA should put Awlaki in the cross hairs of a drone as a wartime imperative. His family is in touch with him and knows his whereabouts. Will Yemeni authorities help us triangulate on his location?

Political pressure is key. His father, a former Yemeni minister and current adviser to the Yemeni president, is well-connected, and recently made an impassioned plea to the U.S. to spare his son’s life. It’s a little too late for that.

White House national security adviser John Brennan recently testified that “we’re very concerned about Mr. Awlaki.”

Really? Then why hasn’t he even been added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, alongside another U.S. citizen — Adam Gadahn, the “American al-Qaida”?

Gadahn’s crime is issuing al-Qaida propaganda from a safe house somewhere inside Pakistan. There is no evidence he is directly involved in terrorist operations.

Yet he was indicted for treason and material support to al-Qaida, and now has a $1 million bounty on his head.

At the very least, the feds could add Awlaki to the Most Wanted list. He should be made Public Enemy No. 1.

Awlaki is the Pied Piper of jihadists, turning up in case after case. Court records cite Awlaki and his jihadi Web site as the source of inspiration for much of the homegrown terror plaguing the country. Awlaki also inspired the Fort Dix Six, who plotted to kill U.S. troops by posing as pizza delivery drivers; and the 20 Minneapolis students who joined al-Qaida’s jihad in Somalia, including the first known American suicide bomber.

Of all the terrorists arrested since 9/11, none poses a greater threat than this bloodthirsty American preacher, who gets hundreds, if not thousands, of young Muslim men jacked up for jihad, making him a lethal force multiplier for the enemy.

Tom Sowell: Deepest Bow Is Reserved For World Opinion

Deepest Bow Is Reserved For World Opinion

By THOMAS SOWELL IBD: 17 Nov. 2009

In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.

Terrorists are not even entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions, much less the Constitution of the United States. Terrorists have never observed, nor even claimed to have observed, the Geneva Conventions, nor are they among those covered by it.

But over and above the utter inconsistency of what is being done is the utter recklessness it represents.

The last time an attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a matter of domestic criminal justice was after a bomb was exploded there in 1993. Under the rules of American criminal law, the prosecution had to turn over all sorts of information to the defense — information that told the al-Qaida international terrorist network what we knew about them and how we knew it.

This was nothing more and nothing less than giving away military secrets to an enemy in wartime — something for which people have been executed, as they should have been.

Secrecy in warfare is a matter of life and death. Lives were risked and lost during World War II to prevent Nazi Germany from discovering that Britain had broken its supposedly unbreakable Enigma code and could read their military plans that were being radioed in that code.

“Loose lips sink ships” was the World War II motto in the United States. But loose lips are mandated under the rules of criminal prosecutions.

Chevron’s Shakedown

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 1 September 2009

The Law: If there’s any doubt Ecuador’s $26 billion lawsuit against Chevron is nothing but a scam to shake down Big Oil, check out a new video of Ecuadorean operatives who prove how justice works in that country.

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Chevron, which has been battling the most expensive lawsuit in history from Ecuadorean environmental radicals, released a video Monday showing the “political coordinator” from Ecuador’s ruling party telling a couple of contractors that he’d be glad to get them contracts to remediate rain forest pollution — for a $3 million fee.

See, the fix was already in that an Ecuadorean judge would rule against Chevron on a $26 billion lawsuit. After that, the “remediation” gravy would flow. Nevermind that Ecuador’s state oil company created the pollution. It was already in the bag that the judge would make Chevron pay.

The $3 million the “political coordinator” of Ecuador’s ruling party tried to extort would be divided three ways: $1 million for the judge, $1 million for “the presidency” and $1 million for the plaintiffs — a radical group known as the Amazon Defense Coalition.

But little did the Ecuadoreans know, their mafioso way of getting paid so repelled the two contractors, Wayne Hansen and Diego Borja, that they recorded it.

We understand why — their 22-minute video showing the shakedown plays like a sleazy knockoff of “The Godfather.” One of the contractors, who had done work for Chevron in the past, gave it to the company. The film can now be seen by anyone who cares about the facts of the case (or who just likes mafia movies) at chevron.com/ecuador. “If this was in the Onion, it would be funny,” Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson told IBD.

But the tapes confirm three serious things: the Ecuadorean judge has already decided to rule against Chevron later this year, even before he’s heard the evidence; that he can no longer preside over this case; that the government, though not a party to the lawsuit, will benefit from the $26 billion jackpot; and that the judge can no longer credibly preside over the case; and that any appeal of the court’s decision would be, in the judge’s words on the video, “a formality.”

Whatever this is, it’s not justice.

The merits of Chevron’s case are irrelevant to Ecuador, whose judge is internationally recognized as the arbiter of the case. And the U.S. government’s passivity in this case is foolish. Chevron’s fate should be a lesson: Ecuador’s crooks will shake down American corporations for everything they have — and then some.

Cartoon: Economy on FIRE!

IBD: 3 Sept. 09 – M. Ramirez

link: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IMAGES/cartoons/toon090309.gif

IBD’S 10 Secrets to Success – July 09

Investor’s Business Daily has spent years anayzing leaders and successful people in all walks of life.  Most have 10 traits that, when combinded, can turn dreams into reality.  Each day, we highlight one.

1.  HOW YOU THINK IS EVERYTHING: Always be positive.  Think success, not failure.  Beware of a negative environment.

2. DECIDE UPON YOUR TRUE DREAMS AND GOALS: Write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them.

3. TAKE ACTION: Goals are nothing without action.  Don’t be afraid to get started.  Just do it.

4.  NEVER STOP LEARNING: Go back to school or read books.  Get training and acquire skills

5.  BE PERSISTENT AND WORK HARD: Success is a marathon, not a sprint.  Never give up.

6.  LEARN TO ANALYZE DETAILS: Get all the facts, all the input.  Learn from your mistakes

7.  FOCUS YOUR TIME AND MONEY: Don’t let other people or things distract you.

8.  DON’T BE AFRAID TO INNOVATE; BE DIFFERENT: Follow the herd is a sure way to mediocrity.

9.  DEAL AND COMMUNICATE WITH PEOPLE EFFECTIVELY: No person is an island.  Learn to understand and motivate others.

10. BE HONEST AND DEPENDABLE; TAKE RESPONSIBILITY: Otherwise, Nos.1-9 won’t matter.

Photo Clipping: Sonia Sotomayor

IBD: 15 July 2009

Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor smiles during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing on Monday.  “The task of a judge is not to make the law, it is to apply the law,” she said.

FROM THE LEFT: Obama Is Right Not To Shoot From the Hip

Obama Is Right Not To Shoot From The Hip

By RICHARD COHEN | IBD 23 June 2009 |  my notes is blue

The foreign policy sins of the United States fall into two categories: commission and omission.

The commission ones include the wars in Vietnam (but there we were trapped – as party to SEATO: SOUTH EAST ASIA TREATY ORGANIZATION) and Iraq… and we learn over again that treaties supercede our Constitution.

When will we learn?
Our first President told us quite clearly to avoid entangling alliances.

The sins of omission are less well-known. They include the failure to redeem the hollow promises to various subjugated peoples — the Hungarians of 1956, the Shiites of 1991 — that America would come to their aid.

In Iran, the Obama administration is intent on not adding to this list.

The current policy, much criticized by prominent Republicans, vindicated VINDICATED!? Barack Obama’s boast in his Cairo speech that he is a “student of history.”     We all know that he is NOT a student of history. The student in him knows that the worst thing the United States could do at the moment is provide the supreme leader and the less supreme leaders with the words to paint the opposition as American. Still, if McCain, Graham and others have a valid complaint, it is not with Obama’s words but with his music. The President of Cool seems emotionally disconnected from events in Tehran — not unconcerned but not particularly upset, either.

[vindicated: vin·di·cate 1. to clear somebody or something of blame, guilt, suspicion, or doubt 2.    to show that somebody or something is justified or correct.

“…vindicated”? it did nothing of the kind! It proved, once again, that Obama knows nothing of history.  Few lawyers do – and it’s quite debatable whether we could call Obama a lawyer.

Cohen: This is a quality that will cost Obama plenty in coming years. He can acknowledge your pain, but he cannot feel it.

[This “quality” will cost Obama – but the real cost will be charged against America.]

Cohen: Iran, the first foreign policy “crisis,” alerts us to what to expect in the future: a tightly controlled message from the White House (anyone heard from Hillary Clinton lately?), a deliberate consideration of the options and no shoot-from-the-hip remarks.

[Many Americans are finally awakening to the question – who is Obama? Is he a Muslim or an American?]

Cohen: This is how Obama ran his campaign. This is how he’ll run his foreign policy. As McCain should know, it works.

Prosecuting Heroes

IBD: 23 April 2009

National Security: The Justice Department may launch a witch hunt against those who organized the enhanced interrogation of terrorists. That’s no way to treat people who saved so many lives.

The American public has just seen how policy based on campaign rhetoric can come crashing into the reality of a successful past policy.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, as a retired admiral who commanded the Navy in the Pacific and served on the White House’s National Security Council, must be smarter than his recent statements make him out to be.

In a private memo to spy agency employees last week, made public by Blair this week, he conceded that “high value information” was obtained by the enhanced interrogation techniques the Bush administration authorized the CIA to use on terrorist detainees.

They gave “a deeper understanding of the al-Qaida network,” according to President Obama’s choice to oversee America’s network of 16 intelligence agencies.

In a subsequent statement, however, Blair added that “there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means.”

In the original memo, he remarks that “(I) like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.”

It looks like a troubling case of angst has taken hold of those charged with keeping our country safe.

But you simply cannot have it both ways. When Blair agonizes about hoping he “would not have approved those methods,” does he not realize that not approving those methods would have meant hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans killed?

“Read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, (those interrogations) appear graphic and disturbing,” Blair said. Yet those methods foiled terrorist plots, in particular Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s graphic and disturbing plan to fly a passenger jet into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the West Coast’s tallest skyscraper.

How can Blair really believe, as he claimed this week, that “the bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security”?

How can “image” trump the saving of lives in national security policy?

On Tuesday, the president called it “a decision for the attorney general” whether those in the Bush administration who provided legal backing for the enhanced interrogations would be prosecuted — this after claiming he wasn’t interested in any such witch hunts.

Meanwhile, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., has released a report claiming that CIA and Pentagon officials prepared groundwork for the enhanced techniques before receiving a legal OK — as if being prepared to help protect the nation constitutes a smoking gun.

Levin contends they “bear significant responsibility for creating the legal and operational framework for the abuses.”

Far from abuse, they were serving the nation more than the average senator. All those involved in this program are owed a debt of gratitude from all of us.

They certainly don’t deserve to be hounded by the Justice Department or Congress.

Courting Disaster

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, April 13, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Jurisprudence: For Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. law is not enough. She believes American judges should apply foreign law to domestic cases. How can such a person serve on our highest court?

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Speaking last week at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law at a symposium in observance of her 15 years on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg said she didn’t “understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law.”

“Why shouldn’t we look to the wisdom of a judge from abroad with at least as much ease as we would read a law-review article written by a professor?” said the Clinton appointee, who once was a lawyer for the ACLU.

If only Ginsburg were alone in taking that position.

Justice Stephen Breyer, also a Clinton appointee, and retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor have both supported the practice of drawing on foreign law in American courts.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who like O’Connor has been something of a disappointment as a Reagan appointee, also has a record of looking abroad for judicial inspiration.

Writing for the majority in the 2005 Roper case that overturned a death sentence for a 17-year-old convicted of murder, Kennedy cited an “overwhelming weight of international opinion,” including opposition among “leading members of the Western European community” to the execution of juveniles, as a factor in the ruling.

Either the U.S. Constitution is the foundation of our law, or it isn’t.

If so, then to go outside of our borders seeking judicial wisdom is both unlawful and destructive to our system. If it isn’t the supreme law of the land, then the law becomes whatever the most politically powerful or violent elements of society say it is.

That’s a step backward, not forward, a devolution into a modern mobocracy that would be difficult to reverse.

No matter what its intentions, no matter how insightful its judgment might be, a foreign court cannot tell Americans what their Constitution means. They were neither elected by U.S. voters nor appointed by an authority who was. They have no accountability to American citizens or our system of laws. Their views are irrelevant.

The only relevance is what the framers of the Constitution intended when they wrote it. Courts have no right to twist or ignore the meanings of their words, or to apply present-day drifts of public opinion. The Constitution is not a malleable document or list of suggestions. If that is all it is, then it is nothing.

The U.S. Constitution isn’t perfect, but it is the best that humanity has ever devised. No nation in history has expanded liberty and has been as just as the U.S.

No nation has contributed to the evolution of equitable law more than America has in its relatively short 232-year history. None has better shielded its people from the power of government. Nowhere else has speech been freer, the right of assembly more strongly guaranteed, the rights of the accused more protected and minorities more zealously safeguarded than they have been here in the U.S.

We owe the English a debt for their contribution to our system. It is their system of common law that America has built upon. That debt does not mean, however, that we have to look to British law to inform rulings made on our own soil concerning our own people.

More than two decades before the Founders wrote and ratified the Constitution, the colonists declared their independence from Britain. While the nation has since made many alliances in commerce and in war, it has been judicially independent and it must remain so.

Other nations should be borrowing ideas from us. Any justice worthy of the Supreme Court should recognize this.

While it’s too late to do anything about those on the court who don’t, it’s not too late to ensure that no future justice will be swayed by foreign law. Those who would need to be weeded out by the confirmation process.

Al-Qaida’s Threat Is Still With Us

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 21 January 2009

War On Terror: President Obama steps into office with awesome responsibilities, not least of which is protecting the U.S. from its enemies, foreign and domestic. From Algeria, we get a reminder of how tough that job is.

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For those who think the global war on terror is just a bad memory from the Bush administration, you might be surprised to discover it isn’t. The threat is real — even more so, given that so many people are convinced it no longer exists.

An overlooked news item out of Algeria puts to rest that notion. The report says that an al-Qaida affiliate there abruptly closed a mountain training base after an experiment with biological weapons went wrong.

A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition he not be named, confirmed the accident that led to a shutdown of the training facility in Tizi Ouzou, a province in eastern Algeria.

He said the U.S. intercepted desperate communications between the group and al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan’s tribal region earlier this month suggesting that the camp had been quickly abandoned.

A report by the Sun, a British tabloid, said at least 40 operatives belonging to al-Qaida in the Land of the Maghreb (AQLIM), an al-Qaida affiliate in North Africa, were killed in a training accident.

From the sound of it, they were likely killed by a strain of the bubonic plague — the deadly rat-borne bacterial disease that ravaged much of the world in the 13th and 14th century, wiping out fully a third of Europe’s population. An airborne version, pneumonic plague, is equally deadly.

The details are horrific. The Algerian victims were said to be afflicted with horrible boils in different parts of their bodies, dying in excruciating pain after just a few hours. It’s an awful way to die.

Since AQLIM boasts of 1,000 members in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Nigeria, the loss of 40 terrorists will barely scratch the surface of their membership.

What worries us is that if the “accident” was part of a wider program to create a deadly bioweapon to be used against civilians — possibly in the U.S. or Europe — then we are in serious danger.

For seven years now, Americans have been safe. After 9/11, former President Bush rocked the terrorists on their heels by pursuing them wherever they were.

Osama bin Laden has been reduced to wheezing out badly recorded threats to the U.S. from his hideout in Pakistan’s badlands, possibly a cave. Other al-Qaida terrorist affiliates have scattered across the region, living in fear of being given up for a reward.

The U.S. military, at Bush’s behest, has put relentless and merciless pressure on the terrorists. U.S. killer drones prowl the skies over terrorist safe havens, looking for targets and, with Hellfire missiles, often finding them.

At least six senior al-Qaida leaders have been killed in just the last six months. As the indispensable Web site Stratfor has noted, Pakistan has become “the al-Qaida version of hell.”

This explains in large part why we haven’t suffered a second hor-rific terrorist strike since 9/11. But the accident in Algeria likewise suggests that we can never let down our guard.

A bioweapon loosed on a major population center is a terrifying prospect. The last plague outbreak in London in 1665 killed more than 30,000 people in a city much smaller than the one today.

Al-Qaida doesn’t lack the will to do this, just the means.

Developing a biological or chemical weapon is “something that al-Qaida still aspires to do,” a former National Security Council counterterrorism expert, Roger Cressey, told the Washington Times.

President Obama, to his credit, has vowed to support sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to help win the war against the Taliban on the ground and continue to defeat al-Qaida. But will he continue to fight the broader war against terrorism?~~~

We hope so. If his inaugural address is any indication, he just might. Obama pointedly noted that “our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred” — a clear reference to al-Qaida and the threat it still poses.

While campaigning, Obama called for all troops to be pulled from Iraq by the end of 2008, and for Guantanamo to be shut immediately. Since winning the presidency, he’s backtracked on both pledges.

That shows flexibility and wisdom. He’ll need both, since the U.S. faces a terrorist threat that will take advantage of our inattention or our weakness to kill as many of us as possible, without remorse.

War Without End

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 8 January 2009

Mideast: Proponents of a French-Egyptian plan for a cease-fire in Gaza say it might stop the fighting. But for any chance at peace, Hamas must be defeated decisively.

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The idea behind French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s plan was to call an immediate cease-fire to permit humanitarian aid into Gaza — which Israel did — then to hold urgent talks to stop the violence. Israel, with reservations, agreed; Hamas, however, rejected the idea.

Don’t worry. Israel will get blamed.

Watching the world’s reaction as a small nation surrounded by enemies defends itself from attack is a sickening thing. Along with celebrity Israel-haters such as singer Annie Lennox and former model and rock-star wife Bianca Jagger, the far left in the U.S., a large swath of European intelligentsia and the United Nations have cast Israel as villain and Hamas as victim.

But they’ve got it backwards. Israel has taken extraordinary care to avoid civilian casualties, going so far as to warn those in buildings it is preparing to strike. Hamas has no such compunction. It uses civilians as human shields, hoping to raise the death toll so the so-called “international community” will blame Israel even more.

In talks, Israel has shown repeatedly through concessions as well as words that it wants a deal and will accept a Palestinian state.

But each time Israel has made concessions, it’s been met with the implacable fury of its foe. The world Islamist movement, as embodied by Hamas, seeks Israel’s annihilation and nothing else.

It happened after talks at Camp David in July 2000 with President Clinton, when Israel offered PLO chief Yasser Arafat literally 98% of the land he requested, and the possibility of getting most of the remaining 2% down the road. The response? Arafat stormed out, and the violent Second Intifada began.

In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, an act of good will and a major strategic concession to its enemies. But there was no reciprocity. Islamist terrorists attacked Israel, and in 2006 the Palestinians themselves voted Hamas into power — knowing full well that Hamas’ explicit goal is the destruction of the Jewish state.

More recently, Hamas spent a six-month cease-fire with Israel rearming and restocking its weapons. When that cease-fire ended on Dec. 19, 2008, Hamas began lobbing deadly Iranian-built Qassam and Russian-designed Grad rockets at Israeli civilian populations.

Fortunately for Israel, a network of bomb shelters built over 60 years of unyielding conflict has kept casualties to a minimum.

Sadly, the same can’t be said in Gaza. Hamas has used children’s schools, hospitals and mosques as staging grounds for attacks and to store munitions. When civilian human shields are inevitably harmed — and injuries to children and innocents are always regrettable — Hamas doesn’t get blamed. Israel does.

Those who think Israel should stop fighting miss the point: Hamas’ 1988 charter explicitly calls for the murder of Jews in the name of Islam and the destruction of Israel. It must be repudiated.

The Gaza war could end tomorrow, and the promise of a Palestinian state redeemed, if Hamas and its terrorist allies in the Mideast, including Iran, ended their war of extermination against Israel.

Sadly, this won’t happen. No country can negotiate away its very existence. If Israel doesn’t destroy Hamas, it will never have peace.

Israel Gets Rid Of Iran’s Nuclear Threat

Investors Business Daily’s List of Nine Possibilities Heading into 2009.

#9. Israel Gets Rid Of Iran’s Nuclear Threat

Will Israel use its altercation with the Iranian-backed Hamas as a stepping stone toward a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities? The signs are that an Obama Administration, committed to “tough diplomacy,” will be less likely to let Israel take matters into its own hands and strike Tehran as it did Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

Lack of U.S. support would make such airstrikes more difficult, and leave Israel even more vulnerable politically on the world stage. With the Jewish state just this week sending warplanes to annihilate Hamas terrorists, defying heavy international pressure for a cease-fire, it seems clear Israel won’t hesitate to defend itself.

Should Bibi Netanyahu and the Likud Party return to power in coming elections, Hamas — and its patron, Iran — might be in bigger trouble. Israel might be tempted to go for broke, taking out Iran’s burgeoning nuclear threat rather than letting Tel Aviv go up in a mushroom cloud.

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Israel must “go for broke, taking out Iran’s – nuclear threat”

Auto Industry Cartoons

Financial Stress Index

IBD/TIPP Poll: Financial Stress Index

Posted: Friday, December 12, 2008 4:30 PM PT

NOTE: DEMOCRATS HAVE A HIGHER STRESS LEVEL

The proprietary gauge of stress for U.S. consumers from the IBD/TIPP Poll rose to 71.0 in December from 69.9 in November. The index goes from 0 to 100, with the latter indicating the highest level of stress. December’s level was the fourth highest since the gauge began 13 months ago. In general, women were more financially stressed than men, investors more stressed than non-investors, and Democrats and independents far more financially stressed than Republicans, the data showed.