Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. - George Orwell
President Obama has been agitating for the authority to criminalize political opponents since he took office. First there was the raft of DHS reports profiling conservatives as terrorists. Then came the push for a new fairness doctrine, subsequently refined to be achieved in diversity regulations to be imposed on local radio stations. Following these attacks on free speech was the much debated hate crimes legislation, considered by many to be a back-door path to silencing critics of the administration. But, while dangerous to free speech, none of these draconian policies could do as much damage as new regulatory czar Cass Sunstein's shocking proposal to ban "falsehoods" -- a term left up to the Obama administration to define. If Sunstein succeeds, free speech will be truly dead in America.
These revelations are found in Sunstein's new book, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, in which he attacks the plague of "rumors" besetting the Obama administration. Rumors must be regulated, according to Sunstein. Suspiciously, Sunstein's definition of "rumors" never seems to favor conservatives. To combat "rumors," Sunstein proposes fines, and even obligatory retractions, in the case of Internet publications.[1]
In his new book, harsh penalties would be meted out for those that "spread rumors about an appointee of a Democratic president," an occurrence likely to increase if Sunstein continues to assault the very foundations upon which America is built.[2] Sunstein will have to accuse millions of Americans of "spreading rumors." Perhaps Sunstein even dreams of an eventual final solution for rumor perpetrators.
The flaw in Sunstein's logic should be obvious to even the mildly literate: libel and slander laws already exist to address Sunstein's alleged concerns. What Sunstein is after is not merely a redress of disinformation, or even the ability to dismiss critics as liars, but rather the actual power to threaten critics with the penalty of law. No due process need be given to those Sunstein accuses of lying. All that will be required is a "notice to take down," in the case of the Internet. As Sunstein writes, "Those who run websites would be obliged to take down falsehoods upon notice." But who determines falsehoods? Not a court of law, if Sunstein's proposal is enacted.
Sunstein, arguably the most powerful bureaucrat in America at present, will decide who is lying and who is telling the truth. At present, if someone lies, there is a sure remedy already in existence: Sunstein, President Obama, or any other official about which a deceptive statement is made, can provide information to contradict the claims of the "liars." The only problem for Sunstein and Obama is the frequency with which accusers are telling the truth, and no contradictory information exists.
As it happens, the ability to contradict opponents is not a strong suit of the Obama administration. The President is consistently caught in a web of falsehoods on issues like healthcare, with no credible defense to offer. If only Sunstein could simply issue a "notice to take down" decree to all those pesky web journalists who don't get leg tingles when President Obama speaks, Obama's "truth" could proceed in a vacuum. But, for now at least, facts are still available for those who care to seek them.
In Sunstein's ideal new republic, though, any plan of the Obama administration would be unchallengeable. Inconvenient facts would be unreportable. Not even the infamous Sedition Acts approached the degree of disdain for the Constitution inherent in Sunstein's philosophy. Sunstein would scrap the First Amendment if it saved him political embarrassment. And Sunstein provides plenty to be embarrassed about, such as writing to endorse the use of cap and trade, to conceal redistributive justice, or saying that animals should have the same rights as human beings.
Bottom-line, freedom of the press is protected not only when it is helpful to the President. It is protected in all cases at all times. Apart from inciting violence or yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, no precedent exists for the regulation of free speech. Our revered charter of liberty does not say that government can regulate free speech when it is politically expedient or deemed necessary by an animal-worshipping socialist posing as an environmentalist. The First Amendment to the US Constitution says that, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." This staunch prohibition may be inconvenient in the extreme to the Obama administration, but anyone who plots to counteract this constitutional protection of liberty is, quite simply, a traitor and should be removed from public service.
The essence of America is freedom for all who seek it. This includes freedom of the press, freedom to speak the truth, freedom to criticize our leaders. If America becomes a land of "freedom for some," it will cease to be America. There is no possible justification for the desecration of liberty, and if an ideology requires the desecration of liberty to succeed, it has no place in America. Freedom of speech, that precious gift men have died to protect, is rubbish to Sunstein, who considers the Constitution to be nothing more than a set of outmoded guidelines:
A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government... Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom's name.
Sunstein adds that his proposal is "almost certainly unconstitutional." It is curious that an effort to restrict the freedom of individual Americans to express ideas is "democratic" in Sunstein's lexicon.
Ideas are not criminal offenses in America. Beliefs are not censorable. Sunstein seeks to create an America where deviation from an arbitrarily ordained political orthodoxy becomes a punishable act. And this is not something to which Americans should ever consent. Sunstein should be removed from his position at once.
[1] Cass Sunstein, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 78-79.
When the BBC finally ‘fessed up last week to the Global Warming Fraud -- without admitting how much they aided and abetted the scam over ten years or more -- a liberal gent I know was shocked. He had sort of gritted his teeth and tolerated my skepticism over the years, but he never wanted to judge the whole fraudulent business for himself, although he had plenty of qualifications to do so. But this fraud was obvious. You had to want to close your eyes not to see it. I say that with all appreciation to the scientists and bloggers like Anthony Watt, who doggedly did the hard work of double-checking the fraud.
The global warming fraud is a lesson in the self-censorship of liberals, their fear of finding out the truth. It's even worse when you see that same self-inflicted blindness over and over again. Millions of liberals didn't want to know about Obama before the election. They sleepwalked into that voting booth, like an old Disney cartoon with Donald Duck holding his arms out in front and with his eyes firmly shut. But they do that a lot, just shutting out sizable parts of the world and not exercising basic adult intelligence in the minefield of politics. They are sucker-bait, user-car-salesman-bait, and I assume that somewhere in Nigeria a whole sweatshop of con artists with PCs is sending out thousands of emails to American liberals, and just raking in the dough. I mean, liberalism is a guarantee of gullibility, and how else do con artists earn a living? You gotta go where the suckers are. Maybe they just go for Sierra Club members, on the theory that people who are willing to believe in cute little polar bears that are desperately stuck on a melting ice floe will fall for anything.
If the Left had the simple integrity to open their minds they would have found out exactly what you and I knew a long time ago about Mr. Obama -- and the country would have averted a real risk of a catastrophe. It wasn't hard to find out. Even Obama Himself said he wasn't ready to run for Prez a couple of years ago. A lot of smart people did real journalism on Obama's background -- but none of them work in the media, of course.
Obama Himself is not to blame for his gargantuan ego. Chances are that he's been flattered outrageously by all his mentors from toddlerhood onward, most of them being whacky white liberals. That might be why he surrounds himself with all those Leftocrats: They are the best sources of ego fodder. They share his fantasy life, where he's always the Hero. He doesn't need any achievements. Obama is Nobel Prize material just by being Himself. By accepting the Big Prize without a blush he made his endless self-love obvious to the whole world. All the political jackals are laughing up their sleeves, because now they know the key to this White House. Watch ‘em operate on this guy in years to come.
This is not new. Courtiers used to surround little child princes and princesses with years of flattery, resulting in Roman Emperors like Caligula and Nero, and French Queens like Marie Antoinette and Dominique de Villepin. Human beings drift out of touch with reality when they are constantly poodle-licked with flattery. They become easy to manipulate, which is why all the cynical courtiers constantly polish the egos of their little princes. They still do.
Those five Norwegians on the Nobel PC committee acted perfectly in character. They wanted to shower love and glory on Our Guy, and by gum, they sure did, and made themselves look like priceless fools in the process. With any luck they may have destroyed whatever credibility the PC Prize had left, after Planet Gore flamed out. Obama's preemptive Nobel Prize made even the New York Times a tad defensive -- I've never seen that happen in the whole Glorious Reign of Pinch.
It all goes back to psychological denial. In psychiatric lingo "denial" -- blocking out big chunks of reality -- is considered to be a "regressive" defense. People in denial are childlike, and have a hard time telling the difference between truth and lies, especially when the lies are delivered by a black man with an Obamanesque baritone. When adults in positions of power and responsibility regress so profoundly, this country is in real danger. And it all happened because millions of liberal voters were just not willing even to Google "Obama." They took him at face value, and swooned. Nine months later some of them woke up. It's those voters who deserve the blame, and all the teachers and professors who taught them to be as blind as they are.
Now the Nobel PC Committee finally jumped the shark, and a real sense of shock seems to ripple through the Left. Even the pundits were baffled, and for once in their lives they didn't all say exactly the same thing in perfect harmony. They were shocked by a momentary bump into that ole' brick wall of reality, but it will be a long time before they admit it. Remember how long it took for the Left to dump Bill Clinton? They needed a "transitional object," in psychiatric lingo, a new comfort blanket -- Obama -- before they could junk their previous one. Bill Clinton with his voice cracking with maudlin emotion and saying "I Caaayyyr For You" was good enough to keep them hooked for a couple of presidential terms. But then he got white hair (for real, not a tint job) and they had to find another blankey. Obama is It. He's the One.
That's what you get when race, gender and LGBT status become your sole standards for judging people. Simple honesty, competence and integrity are left behind. It happens wherever PC is spoken. Obama wasn't the only fraud running on the Democrat side. John Edwards and Hillary couldn't stand the light of day either. Dennis Kucinich was the only one with integrity, and he was disqualified for other reasons.
I'm sorry to say that millions of otherwise normal people, mostly on the Left, seem to be badly regressed. Don't ever let them cross the street without a trustworthy adult to hold their hand. Don't give ‘em a credit card, or too many lollypops, and for heaven's sake, don't ever let ‘em vote.
Who knows what might happen if they elect a nut job?
The thirteenth rule of radical tactics: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. - Saul Alinsky, the Father of Community Organizing Rules for Radicals; p. 128
There's a whole lot of polarizing going on in Obama's America. Unity is out, apparently. Polarization is still in. And Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are the new Bush.
One would need to be a complete ninny outfitted with blinders and earplugs not to know this by now.
One blaring truth rears its ugly head to any open-minded person who takes a hard look at Barack Obama's personal and political history. His history is shot clear through with polarizing effects, both intentional and unintentional.
One might almost say that Barack Obama was a born polarizer.
Obama's Polarization Roots
When Barack Obama burst upon the national political stage with his speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he was selling himself as an ideal-Republic American. Yes, as is typical of all of Obama's speeches, this one was heavy on the "I." Nevertheless, the speech heard ‘round the world at that convention was one just about any American anywhere could like.
The most memorable lines and the ones that drew the heaviest applause:
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.
Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.
There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.
Unfortunately for the Country, these were indeed just words.
As researchers came to learn during the campaign, Barack Obama was raised on the mother's milk of socialism, not the bedrock American values claimed by the Axelrod-spun, fairytale narrative.
Both Barack's mother and his father were fellow travelers of the Marxist band and made no bones about this during their lives. Stanley Ann Dunham was spouting the "gospel of envy" by the time she was in her mid-teens. Barack Obama Sr. saw his own political career in Kenya die out, not only due to his alcoholism, but also due to his hard-core communist fealties, which were too stringent for the softer-core socialists in command of the fledgling post-colonial country of his birth. Young Barack's grandfather, who was his primary caregiver from age 10, made sure the youngster spent vast amounts of his free time with stalwart avowed communist, Frank Marshall Davis.
At their very core, all Marxist theories rest upon polarization, which is the direct result of envy and greed for power. "They have what we want," is the rallying cry of all socialist/communist/fascist systems. All Marxist creeds are as naturally polarizing as a mob of looters.
Fancy, high-flying words don't change a thing.
When Barack Obama made his way to Chicago, he was already a natural polarizer, seeing the world through us-vs.-them lenses. His associations with ACORN (Project Vote) and Jeremiah Wright fit perfectly with the worldview his parents, grandfather and mentor purposefully taught him.
His study of Alinsky power tactics during those years merely reinforced that polarizing worldview and gave it stronger legs.
The church chosen by Barack Obama in Chicago was run by Jeremiah Wright, another active and vociferous polarizer. Wright based his own theology on the writings of James H. Cone, a man who boastfully declares that blacks -- not Jews -- are the chosen people of God, that they're due special preference because of their history of oppression and that the only way a white person can join them is to shed their "white skins" and become black in their souls. Both Cone and Wright preach black supremacy and black separatism and have bought hook, line and sinker the socialist, "They have what we want," rallying cry. Barack Obama chose this theology of his own free will as a full-fledged, well-educated adult.
As a young politician in Chicago, Obama was known for sowing division and polarity among his own constituents, first with his underhanded treatment of Alice Palmer, then with his ill-fated challenge of Bobby Rush for the U.S. Congress.
Why would anyone believe that Barack Obama had a single unifying bone in his body? Such a belief defies common sense.
The Master Polarizer as President
President Barack Obama sailed into the presidency itself on the wings of eight years of solid, left-wing manipulated polarizing of all things Bush. So, why did Americans believe Obama would be anything but a polarizing president? David Mendell, writing in his book, From Promise to Power, puts his finger right on the pulse of Obama's ease with bamboozling all comers.
It's the smooth-flowing, used-car-salesman rhetoric, honey.
Writing of Obama's U.S. Senate campaign, Mendell noted (p. 248):
"As he had so often before, Obama sold his message to both liberals and centrists, as well as to some who tilted toward the right. His message, after all, was both liberal and conservative. His policy positions were decidedly to the left, but he offered them in such a passive, two-pronged way that it made him sound almost conservative."
After becoming president, Obama's first target of Alinsky polarization tactics was Rush Limbaugh. The targeting began very early with Obama's words to Republican lawmakers over the hastily passed, non-bipartisan Stimulus package. When Republican lawmakers attempted to take the new President at his conciliatory campaign rhetoric and provide actual input, the President's petulant reply: "I won." To which he added the polarizing bait: "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and expect to get anything done."
Obama, the general threw down the rhetorical gauntlet and ever since, his troops have followed suit, attempting to polarize Rush Limbaugh (and every one of Rush's listeners) in the same way Democrats effectively polarized President Bush.
President Obama followed up on his polarizing tactic against Rush Limbaugh at the White House Correspondents Dinner, laughing uproariously as Wanda Sykes plied her death-wish humor at Rush's kidneys and ludicrously suggested that Rush was the 20th hijacker on 9/11.
According to the Huffington Post, "The White House's communications staff announced this week (referring to Oct 5-9) that it was charting out a new, more aggressive strategy, defined largely by a pledge to push back hard against news stories that are either inaccurate or unflattering." Anita Dunn appeared the following Sunday on CNN to fire the first salvo of this stated policy.
Since then, our Alinskyite in Chief has taken the unprecedented extra step of using the people's government to perform a rhetorical hit job on an independent media outlet, Fox News. Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director, whose favorite philosopher is Mao, the Chinese-Communist butcher, audaciously targeted Fox News on national television. She slandered the channel's coverage of the presidential campaign, declared it a "wing of the Republican Party," and openly admitted the reason it was dissed by the President last month was its tenacious insistence on reporting stories unflattering to Obama.
This open polarizing of independent news and opinion broadcasters is not by accident, but by design and rests solidly at the feet of the President. Dunn made it big in the news again this week for her declarations that Obama had controlled the media during the campaign. But this control of the media thing only works if one controls all the media.
The Goals of Alinskyite Polarization: Killing the Opposition
Saul Alinsky declared that the only way to effect any substantial change in the prevailing order of power (Haves vs. Have-nots) was to first polarize the whole societal/political atmosphere.
Alinsky described his community organizer as someone who must become a "well-integrated political schizoid."
"The organizer must become schizoid, politically, in order to slip into becoming a true believer. Before men can act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil. He knows there can be no action until issues are polarized to this degree." (Rules for Radicals; p. 78)
When Senate candidate Obama gave that speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and declared, "even as we speak, there are those preparing to divide us," he was talking out both sides of his mouth.
Being a consummate divider is the community organizer's very job description. His task is to "rub raw the sores of discontent" until ordinary people become so agitated with the status quo that they are willing to do whatever is necessary to change it. When Alinsky was taunted with the accusation that organizers were nothing but "professional agitators," he gleefully agreed, declaring that the organizer's job was to "fan the flames of discontent." Only hopelessness and overwhelming fear of the future, he contended, that would pave the way for revolution:
Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. - Rules for Radicals, p. xix
That's precisely where we were in the lead-up to the presidential election. Americans were indeed "rubbed raw" from the left's ceaseless caterwauling against Bush, the "religious right," "ideological" policy making, "Bush's war," etc. And it has been clear from the beginning of the Obama presidency that he and his supporters believed enacting far-reaching leftist policies would be little more than child's-play. After all, the President also had overwhelming majorities in Congress to do his bidding.
But things have not gone as easily or as uncritically as hoped. Resistance has formed and it has been widespread and quite resilient against the President's charms. Rather than re-examine his policy proposals or question himself, President Obama simply goes to the fallback position of every true-blue Alinskyite. He "picks a target, freezes it, personalizes it and polarizes it."
In the President's mind, the only reason good Americans disagree with him and his far-reaching, anti-American policies are those media folks who report on his scheming, i.e., Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. The other news and opinion outlets have given the Alinskyite a complete pass.
Alinsky taught that the purpose of polarization was not only to "rub raw the sores of discontent," but also to force the target into committing the "crimes" of which he stood preemptively accused. Alinsky gave examples of how he had polarized and tormented an opponent so forcefully and tenaciously that the target eventually broke and succumbed to things like breaking into his offices to get information and hurling invective that made him look guilty to onlookers. The whole idea of polarization is to push the target into becoming the villain he was targeted to be.
Alinsky summed up his polarization tactic with these tidbits, which should act as warnings to targets of Alinskyite polarization:
The real action is in the enemy's reaction. The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.
To those who would decry his tactics as unwholesome and at bedrock, untruthful, Alinsky offered this rebuttal:
"Can you imagine in the arena of conflict charging that so-and-so is a racist bastard and then diluting the impact of the attack with qualifying remarks such as, ‘He is a good churchgoing man, generous to charity, and a good husband'? This becomes political idiocy." (Rules for Radicals; p. 134)
Even though Alinsky dedicated his book, Rules for Radicals, to the one he referred to as the "very first radical known to man," none other than Lucifer, Alinsky was also quite adroit at claiming he was following injunctions by Jesus Christ, too.
"The classic statement on polarization comes from Christ: ‘He that is not with me is against me.' (Luke 11:23) He allowed no middle ground to the moneychangers in the Temple. One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other." (Rules for Radicals; p. 134)
Putting himself on the same level as Christ was an Alinsky favorite and it certainly reminds me of our own Alinskyite in Chief.
President Obama has sown division among religious people too. Among Jews, he has polarized stalwart supporters of Israel and in his foreign policy moves against the tiny State, has relied on backing of anti-Israel Jewish groups, such as J-Street. President Obama has also attempted to polarize the Pope and stirred division among Catholics by speaking at Notre Dame. In religion, as well as politics, President Obama adopts the all-with-me or against-me rhetoric, but unlike God, is willing to use any dirty trick in the book to get his way.
Seems like the actions of a true radical in the Luciferian mold to me.
The bottom line on polarization is that it's an ugly, deceitful power tactic being used unabashedly by President Barack Obama to further his own designs for America. But targeting the most popular, successful radio and television personalities in America today would seem a bit beyond the pale, even for an Alinskyite in Chief.
President Obama should, perhaps, have heeded Alinsky's warnings on picking perfect targets:
"It should be borne in mind that the target is always trying to shift responsibility to get out of being the target. There is a constant squirming and moving and strategy...on the part of the designated target. The forces for change must keep this in mind and pin that target down securely. If an organization permits responsibility to be diffused and distributed in a number of areas, attack becomes impossible."
With 15-20 million listeners every week and plenty of financial power, Rush Limbaugh has proven that he is not a soft target. Remember the left's Congressional-letter fiasco. As the most highly viewed Cable news network, Fox would seem also un-amenable to easy polarizing. Eventually, other news individuals and organizations will most likely enter this president-picked fight on the side of their beleaguered Fox comrades, not to mention the millions of Fox's angered viewers.
Backlash is forming faster than a thunder cloud on a hot summer day. It's going to be a fine fight and I'm bidding for the popcorn concession.
Growing up, I was expected to be quiet. Silence is necessary to maintain secrets.
Parents drinking? Keep your mouth shut. White kids targeted at school?
Don't tell or you'll be sorry.
When you have no words to describe your world and no one wants to hear about it anyway, a part of you goes mute. But this doesn't mean you stop observing and sensing.
When my mother flew into rages, I knew something was wrong. When my parents were rarely home, I sensed that this wasn't normal.
Being robbed of language is a state of isolation, of suspended animation. It's like that bad dream where you try to scream but can't. It's the ultimate disempowerment.
Recently I wrote a couple of articles for American Thinker which included strong words like evil and trauma.
Another AT writer creamed me for using extreme language. I understand her concern about conservatives sounding irrational.
At the same time, someone needs to holler, "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" when they're in your line of vision.
Uttering words is risky. They can backfire, get you in trouble. They can make you look foolish.
But there is more of a risk, I think, in stifling yourself. Words have the power to wake people up. Silence can lull them to sleep.
Silence legitimizes abnormal behavior, makes it appear normal and acceptable. People become desensitized, numb.
First there's one advisor to Obama linked to Communism. The MSM doesn't say a word. Then there are three or five or ten or God knows how many.
If The New Black Panthers bring billy clubs to polling sites and get away with it, that's the new normal. The next thing we know, a union thug bites off a finger at a Town Hall.
If Hillary and Sarah are vilified and enough people don't speak out, then everyone, from Rush to us, becomes fair game.
One of the reasons I became a psychotherapist is because I know the damage done to a person when he's robbed of words.
And I know how people can reawaken when they discover their voices.
When a woman can finally speak of a rape, or a man of his grief, life unfreezes; it becomes fluid and alive. There's power in reciting our stories.
Another reason I was drawn to therapy: because I've lived my life as a Paul Revere type. I try to warn people, guard them, to do for others what wasn't done for me.
The problem is that people can kill the messenger. I've had to deal with a fair amount of judgment and scorn.
For instance, a friend called me "mean," when I said that her new brother-in-law was bad news. But that same friend came to me in tears when the man targeted her.
I am not always right; I'm not psychic. I just pay close attention, and report what I see.
And this is what I see: the Progressives Are Coming, the Progressives Are Coming.
You may be just learning about progressivism. Even the astute Glenn Beck admitted he knew nothing a year ago about the progressive left. What he's found out has chilled him to the bone.
Up until early last year, I was a progressive. There are no liberals in Berkeley.
We might arrive here a liberal, but after steeping in leftism, we either leave or buy into the program.
Progressivism is not just a political persuasion. It is a cult, with deep roots in violent movements: Communism, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Weatherman.
These groups had an artillery of weapons. Their enemy, within: capitalism, white imperialism.
Take Van Jones, for instance. He was jailed for his participation in the Rodney King riots; believed 9/11 was an inside job; and wanted to use his Green Czar gig for revolution. Jones calls himself a Communist, and won't use the "American" in "African American."
Part of the extreme fringe of progressivism? Progressivism is an extreme fringe.
Liberals want a kinder, gentler version of the American Dream. Leftists want to slash and burn it.
Leftists are liberals on steroids.
This is why many progressives will sacrifice their children to unsafe schools even if their kid gets a black eye. And why they'll support policies to let their granny die.
This is why they allow the streets of Berkeley and San Francisco to become a filthy netherworld where law abiding citizens are preyed upon, including themselves.
Because comrades-in-arms must make sacrifices for the cause.
Most progressives are sheep-like, and just follow the leader. But many of the leaders are certifiable crazies. Mad Men.
Or sane, but noxious human beings. They shed tears about an endangered snail while treating people like crap.
Here are some recent sightings of Berkeley bumper stickers: "I'd Rather Be Smashing Imperialism," "U.S. Out of Israel," "Free Palestine." And this brand new chilling one: "Under New Management" (With a blood red image of the United States).
Just crazy, leftist Berkeley, right? Yes -- up until 8 months ago.
So, when are we allowed to speak out loud?
How many radicals must preach to Obama, write books for him, advise him; how many brother to brother handshakes and hugs and bows must we witness before we get to ask: Is Obama one of us or one of them?
How many thugs need to rule at Town Halls; how many churches torched and fingers maimed; how many Talk Radio hosts demonized; before we can state the obvious: these people are soulless.
Call me names: Hysterical. Paranoid. A Fear monger. Racist. It doesn't really matter.
Because truth is not our own. It doesn't belong to any of us. It doesn't change with the political wind.
Truth is not here one day and gone the next. It will survive when we are long gone.
We speak, not for ourselves, but to strengthen and carry each other.
We speak for the children, born or still a dream.
We speak in a roar or a whisper; to the world or just to ourselves.
Because we have to. Because what the Left fears the most is the truth. Like a vampire, their downfall is the Light of day.
In Obama's America, speaking the truth is a revolutionary act. It is our greatest weapon, more powerful than an arsenal.
Because truth is like a genie. Once released from the bottle, it takes on a life of its own. And it gathers force and strength and ferocity until it changes everything and everyone that it touches.
"If you asked me what I came in this world to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud."-Emile Zola
A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley.
I grew up in a small city in the New York suburbs. My parents scrimped and saved to give us a saner life than in the Bronx.
Unlike most other towns in the county, our area was diverse, with a wealthy population in opulent estates; a middle class group (mine); and a large, low income population, mostly comprised of black residents.
In the 60's, liberal policy makers conceived of forced busing so that deprived kids could enjoy tonier surroundings. The utopians envisioned the dazzling spectacle of ethnic bonding.
At my elementary school, the black kids arrived each day by bus while whites walked or rode bikes. When the kids exited the bus, they looked scared to death, dazed into silence. Walking into school together must have felt like a walk of shame.
Notwithstanding the Kumbaya vision of the races mixing and matching, we each stayed in our racial groups. The only girl I remember is Sheila Smith, the lone black girl in my class. She wore crisply ironed dresses, her wavy hair adorned with pretty bows and clips.
I was a sensitive and observant child. I recall gazing into Sheila's eyes and witnessing a fright I'd never witnessed before. Sitting in the back of the class, Sheila was mute the entire year.
Several elementary schools converged together in middle school. That's when all hell broke loose. Reunited, hordes of black kids charged defiantly down the hallways, mowing down anyone who got in their way.
They had suffered horribly through those lonely, humiliating, seven years. And now it was time for revenge.
Sheila Smith let her hair thicken into a wild afro and became one of the meanest girls. I averted my eyes when I saw her because her furious visage frightened me.
Middle school was like living in a war zone. The white kids were called every name in the book. There were few of us who weren't assaulted, knifed, robbed, molested on a regular basis. I developed physical problems for fear of using the bathroom, where many of the attacks happened.
In retrospect I wish I had told an adult -- my parents or someone at school. But when you're a small child in a Sarajevo-like environment, you keep your head down and your mouth shut.
It's unlikely, anyway, that the adults would have acted. My parents were preoccupied with their busy social life.
Plus, these were the days before private schools proliferated, and my Jewish parents weren't about to send me to the local Catholic school. I imagine my teachers were as petrified as we were, just trying to get through the day in one piece.
After middle school, all the teens in our city merged into the one, mammoth high school, which became a veritable madhouse. Luckily by then I was so zoned out on pot and pills that I was less aware of the anarchy.
I did know to never, ever go to school on the last day of classes since this was when the white kids were beaten up and thrown in the small ponds encircling school grounds.
In my six years of middle and high schools, I never once attended a club, a dance, a meeting, or any other after school activity. My best friend Jean and I would hightail it out of there as soon as the last bell rang.
You might think my school experience is unusual. Sadly, it's not. Innumerable people attended schools that were racial minefields.
It wasn't the black or the white kids' fault. High minded liberals were culpable for hatching up grand plans without an iota of thought about how it would play out in real time: that if you create a nightmare situation for black children by removing them from their neighborhood and their friends, you traumatize them. And if you then turn them loose and give them carte blanche, some will be out for blood.
Forced busing ended years ago in most places. But over the decades, liberals have concocted new plans, and subjected later generations to fresh trauma.
Meet Julie, age 24, a survivor of public schools in Boston. She now has such severe anxiety that she cuts her arms to relieve the tension.
What did she learn at school? Blame Whitey.
Every day she was shoved and cursed at and threatened. She knew that if she complained, she'd be labeled a racist. Then she'd be like raw meat to vultures.
The lack of any voice, any way of defending herself, damaged her as much as the punches. Now, she continually puts herself in harm's way by being unable to say no.
Or take Joe, a local boy, now 20 and struggling to get through college, given his psychological problems and learning gaps. He attended one of our many leftist indoctrination camps (i.e., Bay Area urban public schools).
Being one of the few white kids, Joe had two choices: keeping his nose to the grindstone and being jumped every other day; or joining a gang, which is what he did.
But being from a moral, caring family, Joe is now wracked with guilt about what he did -- burglaries, robberies, slashing tires, hurting innocent people. He also has post traumatic stress disorder after two of his friends were killed for wearing the wrong color.
I could go on and on. I could tell you about Rose, a 24 year old survivor of local public schools, who can read Ebonics but not Shakespeare. She told me about Slave Days, where the white kids played the slaves and the blacks the masters.
And it's not just the white kids who can be terrorized. Studious kids of color are often threatened and jumped if they won't join in on the barbarity.
Given the brainwashing of several generations, did millions of whites vote for Obama out of white guilt? Yes, but it runs deeper than this.
What's happening is not just white guilt, but white shame. Shame is a much more devastating emotion.
We feel guilty about an action, for instance, cheating on taxes or spouses. Shame makes us feel bad about who we are, as though something is wrong with us.
To understand how people can shame each other, I want to introduce you to a defense mechanism, called projective identification. PI is different than projection, and it tends to be utilized by the more troubled among us. When someone feels crappy about themselves, they transmit it to someone else.
PI is like a hot potato. The other person takes their bad feelings and dumps it directly on your lap. They walk away free and easy, while you feel crummy.
That is what happened with Julie, Joe, and Rose. They were dumped on so often by so many that they absorbed the shame and started detesting themselves.
Interestingly, Obama, in one of his autobiographies, reports being intrigued by Malcolm X's statement that, as a biracial man, he despised his whiteness; that he wished there was some way that he could excise his white blood.
Now we have millions of whites who are ashamed of their white blood. Coincidence?
Along with white guilt and shame, there's another reason why whites flocked to a leader with no experience in leading: white fear. While many liberals reside in safe towns, still there's always a threat.
Turn on the 6 o'clock news and hear about the latest cop murder or mob rampage. Rodney King riots in LA, the mayhem in Oakland, murdered police officers. Then listen to reportage that blames the victims.
Thuggery is celebrated. Bad guys are hecka cool; the innocents stupid and naive. Write a rap song about beating up a whore and killing a cop, and win a Grammy.
Think I'm exaggerating? If there isn't an atmosphere of racial fear, why did people threaten a race war if Obama lost? Why are dissenters tarred with the vile label of racist? (Translation: pure evil)
Many liberals voted for Obama in the hopes that all would be forgiven. That if whites handed over some power, finally we can move on and get along. We'll be safe.
Had someone like General Colin Powell or former Congressman Harold Ford Jr. been elected, we probably would not have a foreboding, fearful atmosphere. Though they lean left, both men are patriotic, experienced leaders who may have facilitated racial healing.
Ironically, White America envisioned forgiveness, a letting go of old wounds. Instead we have emboldened people obsessed with evil deeds carried out by citizens long dead. And not only whites are affected by the hostile environment. The vast majority of Blacks are law abiding citizens, and they are preyed upon in disproportionate numbers.
Philosopher Ayn Rand warned us decades ago of the dangers we were in for by playing racial politics. Her words from 40 years ago sound prophetic:
Whenever a country's criminal laws are more lenient than its civil laws, it means the country is accepting the basic principle of statism and is moving toward totalitarianism. . .What about the rights and liberties of the honest, the educated, the self-supporting, the majority? . . .
The altruists are now. . . struggling to induce racial guilt -- by proclaiming that people must suffer and pay for the (alleged) sins of their father.
There is no such thing as collective guilt. . This country has no guilt to atone for in regard to its black citizens. Slavery was an enormous evil. But a country that fought a civil war to abolish slavery has atoned for it.
How can an individual be held responsible for the views of others, whom he has no power to control? What can make him responsible for them? The answer we hear is: The fact that his skin is of the same color as theirs.
If this is not an obliteration of morality, of intellectual integrity, of individual rights, of the freedom of man's mind, of the First Amendment, you take it from here; I can't -- it turns my stomach."
Yes it's stomach turning to pit racial and ethnic groups against each other; to make children hate themselves; to disregard people's character and behavior.
Black is beautiful. But so is white, and brown, and yellow, and every color under the rainbow because we are all part of the Divine; we are vibrant threads in a larger tapestry.
I asked Rose what she would like people to know about her school experience. An exceptionally bright and kind young woman, she struggles to overcome the legacy of l3 years in urban public schools.
Her poignant words remind us that children should never be used as political footballs or for experiments in social engineering.
This is what she said:
"I learned early on that white people were bad. Since I'm white, I've always hated myself. I was told from grade school on how bad white people were; how we scalped Indians and whipped slaves. I always thought black people were better than me. It's no wonder -- I was told this in one form or another every day.
I was made fun of at school and threatened and pushed around, but I never spoke up. I thought it was my fault, my punishment for being white.
Raising kids this way is wrong. It's wrong to teach white children to hate themselves. It's wrong to teach any child to hate herself. No one should have to put up with abuse because of the color of his or her skin.
how about you examine WHY YOUR NEO-CONNED programs FAILED and do it with out trying to blame the other guys just stick to why VOODOO FAILED or why dereg failed or why national debts went up or why we got in two wars at once but no war against the country that did attack us [saudi] or how the GOP failed to reduce oil imports or do any real alt energy programs WITHOUT TRYING TO BLAME OBOMBA just stick to how YOUR GUYS FAILED
------------------ Question wonder and be wierd are you kind?
how about you examine WHY YOUR NEO-CONNED programs FAILED and do it with out trying to blame the other guys just stick to why VOODOO FAILED or why dereg failed or why national debts went up or why we got in two wars at once but no war against the country that did attack us [saudi] or how the GOP failed to reduce oil imports or do any real alt energy programs WITHOUT TRYING TO BLAME OBOMBA just stick to how YOUR GUYS FAILED
Sounds like advice liberals should take also. Especially since they had a hand in it all.
Tax the rich, Feed the poor, ‘Til there are no Rich no more.
- "I'd Love to Change the World" Ten Years After (1971)
Over the Columbus Day weekend, my wife and I traveled to Brooklyn, N.Y. to visit our daughter and her boyfriend. I was strictly admonished by my wife not to talk politics during the visit, since my daughter's boyfriend is a radical leftist. He, being a well-educated social science buff, and I, being who I am (a well-educated "right-wing nut job"), we had created many spectacular fireworks during past political debate sessions.
Things went well up until Sunday afternoon, when we were both seated on the couch benignly watching a football game on his 60" television screen. During a commercial break, there was a news announcement concerning another New York City tax increase. Before I could catch myself, I blurted out the Ten Years After lyric at the top of this article.
It was as though I had hit his "ON" button. He immediately jumped off the couch and started screaming, "That's RIGHT! That's EXACTLY RIGHT!"
I replied, "But shouldn't the lyric be "Til there are no poor no more'? Isn't that true social justice?"
He stated with utmost certainty (from his standpoint, no rational debate was possible) that the wealthy in this country are wholly responsible for the world's misery and must be utterly destroyed by the most horrible means possible.
"Then you want everyone to live in poverty?" I queried.
"Absolutely," he replied.
Sometimes I think I have heard it all, but this left me stunned. Before we could go on, my wife and daughter swooped in and broke up the mêlée.
But the incident left me with the thought that perhaps his viewpoint is not unique. Is a blind hatred of the "rich" driving much of the left's apparently self-destructive behavior? In a previous AT article, I concluded that the goals of the left are "abortion and eugenic elimination of the ‘undesirables', the euthanasia of the old and infirm, and the genocide of those who disagree." But what was missing from this evaluation is the ultimate motivation for these travesties. Is it all driven by obsessive rage and hate?
I don't think it is quite that simple. There appears to be an abundance of negative emotion in the leftist mind, but that is only part of the equation. Almost everyone, including the leftist, believes that they are basically good and decent human beings. This is true among the religious and atheists, and even thieves and murderers. I believe that in order to emotionally reconcile inherently "evil" feelings of hatred toward others, the leftist embraces "social justice" as a pious compensation.
The original concept of social justice was envisioned as a virtuous governmental function, protecting the downtrodden and disadvantaged from a heartless society. As a form of coerced charity through taxation, the government decides what is just and provides for the "common welfare."
In Friedrich August Hayek's book, Law, Legislation, and Liberty: The Mirage of Social Justice, he states:
It is one of the axioms of the tradition of freedom that coercion of individuals is permissible only where it is necessary in the service of the general welfare or the public good. Yet...the vagueness of the different terms which have been employed has made it possible to declare almost any interest a general interest and to make large numbers serve purposes in which they are not in the least interested. The common welfare or the public good has to the present time remained a concept most recalcitrant to any precise definition and therefore capable of being given almost any content suggested by interests of the ruling group.
As a result of this vagueness of definition, the foundation of hatred within the leftist mind has perverted the original intent of social justice. Babies must be aborted, grandma must be killed, and the infirm must be euthanized, all for the "common welfare." How does this reconcile with the concept of using the wealth of society to champion the poor and helpless? "Justice" is no longer part of the equation. It has devolved into social engineering and tinkering without a heart and soul. Through the twisted filter of hatred, social justice has become a force for evil.
So why do the wealthy and powerful on the left (the "poweratti") embrace this philosophy? Because they believe they will not be touched by it personally, and they can use it to garner additional political and/or social power. Taking the health care issue as an example, those currently in Congress have chosen to follow the refrain, "Government-run health care for thee, but not for me". Other wealthy and politically-connected poweratti obviously believe they will be able to obtain quality health care from other sources, either overseas or in a domestic black market of private physicians and hospitals exclusively for the wealthy.
By enflaming hatred of the wealthy (and by extension, capitalism), the poweratti can brandish social justice as a weapon to seize complete control of government and essentially enslave the populace. How ironic that this hatred should result in extending their power and privilege!
In the leftist utopia of social justice, wealth is no longer created. The capitalist goose that laid the golden eggs is spread like pâté. Income and property are confiscated, housing and employment are assigned, as in Cuba and Venezuela. Scientific advancement and medical breakthroughs are ground to a halt, as in the old Soviet Union where technology was frozen in the 1950s. Entrepreneurship, personal advancement, and wealth creation are violently quashed, as in the Chinese Cultural Revolution under Mao Tse Tung. Hunger, disease, and death become familiar houseguests, as in all repressive regimes.
The end game of the leftist poweratti is to rule the nation and eventually the world by bringing us down to the lowest social common denominator through the manipulation of those who obsessively despise wealth.
Let me be precise here: Fox News peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. Some of it borders on sedition. Much of it is flat out untrue.
Although Klein’s vitriol is off the charts it pales in comparison to what can only be described as his unseemly boot licking. Here’s an example:
If the problem is that stories bloated far beyond their actual importance -- ACORN's corruption, Van Jones's radical past -- are in danger of leaching out of the Fox hothouse into the general media, then perhaps the Administration should be a bit more diligent about whom it hires and whom it funds.
When a writer worries about stories “in danger of leaching out” he or she can best be described as a storm trooper, not a journalist. Just what is Klein trying to say here? Is he saying that snakes that are more capable of shrouding their identity from Fox News are a better bet for the Administration?
The philosopher Eric Hoffer once said the “missionary zeal seems rather an expression of some deep misgiving, some pressing feeling of insufficiency at the center.”
In other words, watch for these juvenile, Klein-like tantrums to only get worse on the left.
California residents are widely regarded as some of the most eco-friendly citizens in the nation. Now state lawmakers aim to make local consumer electronics extra green as well. A rule before the California Energy Commission would impose the nation’s first energy-efficiency requirements for flat-screen TVs, a mandatory standard that is expected to be copied by other states.
“The goal here is a simple one,” Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told commissioners at a hearing Tuesday. “We want to ensure that every TV sold in California is an efficient one.”
While there has been tremendous effort among consumer electronics and PC manufacturers to eliminate hazardous toxics and to reduce the overall power consumption of our gadgets and devices, progress comes in dribs and drabs without official oversight, some argue.
To that end, a vote on the standard could come as early as next month.
Some manufacturers argue a mandatory power standard would hamper innovation, limit consumer choice and hurt California electronics retailers. For example, the LA Times spoke with Doug Johnson, the Consumer Electronics Association’s senior director for technology policy. He argued that “voluntary efforts are succeeding without regulations,” warning that too much government interference could hamstring industry innovation and prove expensive to manufacturers and consumers.
At January’s consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, I noticed that pretty much every manufacturer of televisions was already touting innovations to reduce power consumption. But did that message get through to consumers? When you bought your new high-definition flat screen TV, did energy consumption factor into the decision?
For as long as they've existed, politicians have bent language to avoid saying things that sound unpleasant. Once upon a time, the players in the major league of Washington, D.C. politics at least told their versions of truth with eloquence and style. My, how things have changed!
With countless examples of the media ignoring news that might damage Democrats, it seems this practice has bred a sense of security among the party's leaders. They even appear emboldened by their media allies as they get closer than ever to something they've craved for decades: complete control of the health care industry. To wit, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her band of Pelosheviks are compelled to tell us that things are not what we know they are. Last week, Pelosi said with a straight face (I've been waiting to use that line) that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts next year will not be a tax increase, but rather the "eliminating a tax decrease that was there." This would be funny stuff if she were not in charge of our nation's fiscal health. Don't hold your breath waiting for that kind of health reform.
Galling disrespect for the electorate is the only explanation for the absurd twists of facts and phrases coming from the Democrats. While that does not surprise those of us who have watched them closely for years, others can now see their antics in the raw. For example, we are treated to a budget-busting "stimulus" that the White House admitted has stimulated just about all it can. Likewise, we get a defense funding bill that includes anti-gay hate crimes legislation buried deep within it. With Republicans in Washington now irrelevant even to their constituents (Senator Lindsay Graham [R-S.C.] doesn't even know where the health care bills are being written), cries of GOP obstructionism sound cynical even to the politically clueless. Lacking a credible bogeyman to blame for the ugly legislative process and its unpopular consequences, however, the Democrats do not even pretend to talk frankly about their plans to control one sixth of the economy.
With unquenchable avarice for control over every health care decision in America, Democrats have ramped up their assault on transparency by writing the health care bill in total secrecy. They have used accounting ploys to camouflage Medicare payments to doctors in return for support of health care reform. As if nobody knew the history of fraud and waste in other entitlement programs, they insist that healthcare reform will not cost $2 trillion, but only $847 billion. Instead of acknowledging obvious funding problems in existing federal healthcare programs, we get the likes of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) telling Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett that Medicare is not headed toward insolvency, at least not before she turns eighty. I wonder what Ms. Wasserman Schultz would say about my own state of Tennessee's near-bankruptcy from its attempt at universal healthcare coverage known as TennCare. And of course, we recently saw the stammering, stuttering Nancy Pelosi suddenly changing the name of a public option to a "consumer option" or "competitive option" or whatever they may call it tomorrow.
Not to be upstaged in the realm of the absurd, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) this week broke from his own party, at least publicly, with a proposal allowing states to "opt into" a public option, but that was before he floated the trial balloon that the bill would allow states to "opt out" of the plan. Of course, no state would be allowed to "opt out" of the taxes, excuse me, fees imposed on everyone to pay for their healthcare reform. Is there something about the letters O, P, and T that brings smiles to the faces of Democrat focus groups? By now everyone knows of the rumored procedural vote that will allow certain "blue dog" Democrat senators to vote for healthcare reform before they vote against it. No doubt that would make John Kerry proud.
So is this the change you voted for America, a party of amateur David Copperfields with complete disregard for their audience? Yes, we are watching one of the worst shows of hocus-pocus this side of a travelling carnival, courtesy of the Democrats. We can even see the trapdoor in the back of the disappearing booth, but we cannot get to an exit.
Clumsy and shameless Democrat legerdemain is the political equivalent of someone saying, "Hey, look over there!" before swiping the sandwich away from his friend. Their trickery is immediately obvious, but they do not care how it looks. With help from their lackeys in the media, Democrats believe they can repair their image before the next midterm elections, at least enough to avoid a Republican rout. That explains their rush to pass the healthcare bill as soon as possible. They may even hope to benefit from the confusing messages and rumors aided by conferencing in locked rooms. As long as polls tell them that Americans prefer Democrats to Republicans, they may be right: "Hey, we're all rascals, but there are bad ones (Republicans) and less bad ones (Democrats). At least we're compassionate." Moreover, the confusion helps take the public's attention away from the serious rifts in their own party over the public option talisman.
Has America grown tired of the Democrats' utter disrespect for the electorate? Whatever the outcomes of gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey next week, we will know the answer with certainty in about a year. Democrats in Congress might think they will not suffer dire consequences for their recent shenanigans. Or maybe they know they will, and that is the cause of their desperate rush to pass healthcare reform regardless of how bad it makes them look.
The United States of America rests at a crossroads today that is every bit as dire as what Americans faced during the Second World War. In fact, it may be even more so.
Liberal Progressives have fashioned so strong a hold on the American political landscape that to escape their clutches may no longer be possible for most citizens. What I call the 'Pillars of Liberal Progressivism' have infected America with a virus so deadly that fighting it has become extremely difficult.
What are these pillars that progressives have worked so hard to erect in order to infiltrate and control?
1) University Academia: No institution was more instrumental than the university in shaping the minds and behavior of the young. Students schooled in the writings of radical revolutionaries such as Mao, Lenin, Trotsky -- and lesser-known malcontents like Alinsky, Zinn, and Chomsky -- spread their noxious fumes throughout the halls of academia. The 'true believer' filled his pliant mind with the writings of these disaffected statists. The earlier attempts of scholars in the twenties and thirties to poison the minds of the young were but a pretext for this new assault. The Port Huron Statement in 1962 and the founding of SDS formed the initial assault on the staid halls of higher learning. Academia, unable to contain or even properly challenge this misguided agenda, floundered in its response. Aiding and abetting the radicals was the US Government's entry to an ill-advised conflict in Southeast Asia. Combine the two and University administrations in several key bastions of higher learning fell to the radical elements. The virus had taken a tenuous hold. It would grow and infect future leaders to prey upon unsuspecting minds, inculcating them with a sense of guilt, radical redress and egalitarian fervor.
2) Law Schools: Those infected with this radical new virus could now expand their activities to include law schools. What better way to attain a redress of grievances against a racist, sexist, homophobic nation than to change the Constitution? New radical lawyers imbued with this bubonic sickness attacked our nation's laws at the principal level. Judicial activists unleashed a torrent of bad constitutional law that would make any radical proud. The links that bound us to our founding were now severely strained.
3)Primary and Secondary Education: The lessons learned in academia could now be spread to the more basic levels of education. Rather than parents teaching their children tolerance and good moral underpinnings, the Hard Left would give no quarter in acceptance of gay lifestyles and gay marriage, wealth redistribution, equality of outcome, and disparagement of conservatism. These became staples in the indoctrination of the very young. The occasional parent outburst has not deterred the righteous from their mission.
4)Entertainment: The Hard Left could now attack the entertainment industry. The poor, limp, listless minds of this industry were ripe for the picking. What could be more important than compassion for the poor, not getting involved in military conflict, and equality for all who had suffered under the dreaded capitalist state? The film industry offered itself in humble prostration to these noble ideas. Films depicting the evils of capitalism and the inadequacy of the free market spawned a whole new generation of useful idiots to spread the biblical word.
5)News Media: This last pillar would prove to be one of the most important. With the help of academia and entertainment, however, it was possible to invade the newsroom without much difficulty. Vietnam, once again, provided a ready means to achieve control of what was once considered an inviolable institution and move it inexorably to the Left. One can remember the hallowed omtonations of Walter Cronkite on the uselessness of continued combat in Southeast Asia. What Cronkite deemed lost must surely have been. So ingrained in the American psyche was his preeminence for reporting the facts that those facts must certainly have been correct.
The infection of the newsroom continues unabated today with such lackluster cronies as Brian Williams, Charles Gibson, and Katie Couric reporting a brand of news so skewed to the Left that "embarrassing" would be its most flattering description. Think of President Obama's reference to sleeping with Brian Williams and words lose meaning to convey a sense of outrage. Beneath the veneer of an Obama attempt at humor was a major news outlet willing to do the administration's bidding.
These are the pillars Liberal Progressives have safely ensconced in their method of attack on America. The restoration of our country to a more reasonable state may lie beyond hope. Those of us who can must make our voices heard to all of the above institutions. We have to come in from the wilderness of being afraid to confront Liberals on their ground. We must fight the bankrupt ideas of socialism in academia through the media. The internet has given us an outlet that must not be squandered; it may well provide the ground for a last stand.
We must find strength in ourselves to define our character so that future generations will know what life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness really are. We must articulate what we mean by real freedom, a freedom and equality that will inspire our children and grandchildren to uphold these precious ideals. There is no time to lose. It's been repeated on many occasions, but should be said again -- If we don't do it, who will? If not now, when?
Moveon.org has reportedly raised $3,578,117 in contributions to fund primary challenges against 'any Democratic senator who blocks an up-or-down vote on health care reform with a public option,' according to an e-mail sent to group members on Thursday.
A civil war is threatening to erupt within the Democratic Party as liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org looks to punish moderate Democrats opposed to the sweeping health care overhaul proposed by party leaders.
MoveOn has reportedly raised more than $3.5 million in contributions to fund primary challenges against "any Democratic senator who blocks an up-or-down vote on health care reform with a public option," according to an e-mail sent to group members on Thursday.
The e-mail warned that any Democratic House member who joins Republicans to filibuster the health care reform measure will "face an enormous backlash from the grassroots."
The group also highlights a letter from Democracy for America, the nation's largest progressive political action founded by former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, which urges Senate Democrats to strip committee chairmanship from "any Democrat who filibusters health care."
MoveOn.org, which has 5 million members, has become increasingly vocal in its threats against conservative and moderate Democrats who remain opposed to the health care bills laid out by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Several Democrats, including Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama, have expressed resistance to Pelosi's $1.055 trillion measure in recent days -- underscoring the intra-party rift over President Obama's top domestic priority.
Obama had planned a rare visit to the House Friday morning to persuade wavering Democrats, but was forced to reschedule it until Saturday as delays push back a vote on the measure.
Among the most heated disagreements among rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers are issues related to abortion and illegal immigrants.
Democratic opponents of abortion -- under pressure from Catholic bishops -- want stronger provisions written in the bill that no federal funds would be used to finance abortion in coverage bought in the government-run exchange.
Fierobear, Thanks for this thread. I'm behind but will eventually read through all of your posts. I especially appreciate the posts with Robin's recent self discovery and survival. We are in hard times politically and economically. I've heard that an old Chinese curse is "May you live in interesting times". The times we live in now were only described in fictional novels 50 years ago.
From a guy who blames everything bad that has ever happened in this world on neocons, how the hell could you even consider making a statement like this. Talk about the hypocrisy of liberalism.
Fierobear, Thanks for this thread. I'm behind but will eventually read through all of your posts. I especially appreciate the posts with Robin's recent self discovery and survival. We are in hard times politically and economically. I've heard that an old Chinese curse is "May you live in interesting times". The times we live in now were only described in fictional novels 50 years ago.
Stay your course!
Thanks, man. It's great to hear that someone is getting something out of this thread.
The Republican landslide in Virginia and stunning upset in New Jersey were not the only bad news for the left in the last few months. The Social Democrats in the September German elections for the Bundestag did worse than in any election since the Second World War. Merkel's Christian Democrats lost some support as well, but the market oriented Free Democrats made major gains and a center-right coalition now governs Germany with a majority of seats in the Bundestag. Polling data one month after the German general election indicates that Germans continue to oppose a left of center government.
The Labour Party in Britain has suffered two seasons of dramatic thumping in local council and municipal elections. In May, the Labour Party not only came in twenty points behind the Conservative Party, but Labour ran third in popular vote - an emphatic repudiation of the ruling Labour Party and its leader, Gordon Brown.
Polling data for over two years has shown that in the next general election, which must be held within the next seven months, David Cameron and the Conservative Party will win a huge landslide victory, ending almost two decades of leftist rule in Britain. When that happens, each of the four major nations in Western Europe will have governments of the right, not of the left.
On November 9th, the Conservative Party in Canada won three of four special elections to Parliament which added two more seats to the Conservative Party caucus and made it much less likely that the Liberal Party, the largest opposition party in Canada, would be able to convince the other two oppositional parties to force a general election.
These victories for the Conservative Party were unexpected, but the victories were in line with public opinion polling over the last few months which showed the Conservative Party winning the next general election. Some polls showed the Conservative Party winning an absolute majority in Parliament while others simply showed Conservatives holding a very strong plurality in the Parliament. The most recent polls show the Conservative Party with a fourteen-point lead over the Liberal Party.
The pattern over the last several years has been clear in the old major democracies of Europe and North America: the left simply ceases to appeal to voters anymore. The right - whatever that is supposed to be these days? - resembles the Republican Party in America. It has yet to clearly carve out what it is for, and it instead represents an anti-left vote.
So while Americans overwhelmingly reject the label of "liberal" or "progressive" in public opinion polls, and while Ronald Reagan remains the only genuinely popular American political figure, more than two decades after he left office, what "conservative" is supposed to reflect is only slowly forming in the Republican Party, after twelve years of Republican dominance from 1994 to 2006.
There is in America and in much of the West a profound sense of unhappiness with the way things are now and a robust "No!" vote whenever voters have a chance to vote on the status quo or for the policies of those in power. The breathtaking scope of the defeat of establishment backed state questions in California last May is just another indication of how completely out of synch most voters feel with their elected representatives. The anger that conservatives felt in New York 23 -- anger enough to lose a House seat, if a RINO was to fill that seat -- is another test of just how out of touch party leaders are with those they represent.
The collapse of the left does not mean the rise of the right. The end of Gordon Brown does not mean the triumph of David Cameron. The unpopularity of the Liberal Party in Canada does not necessarily mean the victory of the Conservative Party policies up north. The same is true in America. The repudiation of Jon Corzine in New Jersey will mean something only if Governor Christie means lower taxes, less regulation and clean government. Halting Obamacare in the Senate will mean something only if Republicans come back with a clear, united plan for improving through market options the delivery of health care in America. The declining popularity of Obama will translate into change we can believe in only when Republican leaders begin, again, to believe in the touchstone principles of limited government, Judeo-Christian moral principles, and market economies. It is time to stand for something.
In 1970 America, two infamous organizations were gearing up for big things. Wade Rathke founded ACORN in Arkansas and soon after moved its headquarters to New Orleans. Jim Jones was building the Peoples Temple and set up operations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Rathke and Jones were gifted community organizers utilizing Democrat politicians, a compliant media, and vulnerable citizens to further their quest for power and money. Their identical pretense was helping the poor and downtrodden.
Jim Jones could round up crowds of protesters and door to door campaign workers on demand. Admired and enabled by San Francisco Democrats and media moguls, Jones gathered emotionally and economically needy people around him, pretending to be a minister to their needs. He forced them to drain their bank accounts, sign over their homes and their welfare and social security checks.
Jones gave their money generously to the Democrat liberal elite and stashed millions in illegal overseas accounts. When Democrats needed a crowd of thousands, Jones provided his willing flock. He ran faith healing and miracle scams. He loved and admired communism, Mao, Lenin, Marx, and Angela Davis. He railed against capitalism, but was ready to pocket all that his followers signed over to him. He was a sought after Democrat community organizer masquerading as a man of faith:
We are not really a church, but a socialist organization. We must pretend to be a church so we're not taxed by the government... Those who remained drugged with the opiate of religion had to be brought into enlightenment - socialism. [Seductive Poison by Deborah Layton.]
While Jones peddled the drug of religion and talked socialism, he imposed communism. Once his followers were hooked, he trapped them in his demoralizing dictatorship, all under the guise of fighting poverty and prejudice. The hierarchy of the Peoples Temple was largely white and the congregation mostly black, yet Jones engineered fake letter writing campaigns to call attention to himself as an embattled racism warrior:
We produced hundreds of letters that were driven out of state and mailed from different locations to members of congress and local government figures... The letters looked as if they came from racists, angry at Jim's attempts to help the poor and people of color. The correspondence exhibited unharnessed racism, using the term "****** -lover" to describe him and his good deeds. [Seductive Poison by Deborah Layton]
Jones cried racism in the face of an unflattering story set to run in New West Magazine. In an effort to kill the story, he asked the editor:
Tell me, Rosalie, do you believe that this article will solve the problems Marshall Kilduff [New West writer] seems to have with people of color? [Ibid.]
Like recent Acorn whistle blowers, Peoples Temple whistleblowers feared for their lives and reputations. Jones had volumes of blackmail-ready tape recordings of his Planning Committee members "proving their loyalty to socialism by revealing their worst secrets." [Ibid.]
A true believer who had joined the Peoples Temple as a lost 18 year old, Deborah Layton became a whistleblower and proved to be Jones' downfall. But not soon enough to save over 900 lives, including 276 children. Those with political power just looked away.
Jones understood the necessity of friends in high places.
Tim Stoen [church attorney] was being hired as chief prosecutor in an investigation into allegations that large numbers of non-residents had voted illegally in the 1975 election. Stoen would end up using volunteer clerical workers from the Temple in this sensitive investigation. Later, similar voter fraud allegations would be leveled against the Temple itself, though not proved.
...Jones often-denied ambitions for political recognition and power. It was not even enough that Gov. Brown appointed church attorney Tim Stoen in April 1976 to serve on the California Advisory Council to the Legal Services Corporation... he [Jones] wanted more than to host the Jan. 15, 1977 city wide celebration in honor of MLK, Jr.... more than to share the podium that day with Gov. Jerry Brown and the head of President Carter's transition team. [Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones by Tim Reiterman]
The big Democrat names and newspaper editors in 1970 San Francisco sat in Jones' pews and either bought his act or just liked his payoffs and power. But in 1977, things began to spin out of Jones' tight control and a few frank stories of his oppressive Peoples Temple saw the light of day.
Jones fled to socialist Guyana where the constraints of polite society would not hinder him. He paid off government officials and isolated his flock as he set up his dream dictatorship. When the move spiraled out of control, a congressman investigating the group, an NBC news crew, and some disenchanted Jones followers were all gunned down as they tried to board planes to depart and tell their story.
Later on that day in November of 1978, nearly one thousand forsaken men, women and children, virtual prisoners of Jim Jones, were forced to drink cyanide laced Kool-Aid. They died hideous deaths in the communist paradise of Jonestown, Guyana, a perfect snapshot of a communist dictator's respect for humanity. The media preferred the story line that Jones was a crazed religious zealot and cult leader. The story of Jones' help from friendly big name Democrats was also swept away.
More businesslike, stable and enduring than Jim Jones, Wade Rathke built a nationwide taxpayer funded partisan criminal enterprise. He was also enabled by like-minded Democrats and the media. Partisan protection of ACORN continues today, even from career politicians like Jerry Brown. Remember that Brown assisted Jones by placing the Temple attorney in a position of political power. Brown is either a naïve man or he lusts for the political power both Jones and ACORN wielded. He is not alone.
Now ACORN's tentacles reach many organizations, including the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), which wrote glowingly about highly partisan campaign work in 2004:
The chair of ACORN and Working Families Party called upon us as family to make our contribution known. Did we respond? YES, we responded!
In 2008, the CPUSA website gushed:
The grand coalition of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win along with National Council of La Raza, Women's Vote, ACORN, MoveOn and Rock the Vote has launched the biggest ever-independent voter mobilization, which is at the heart of winning a massive turnout on Election Day and after.
Numerous voter fraud and corruption investigations, ACORN's links to the CPUSA, labor unions and other questionable and partisan groups did not interest the traditional media. Most often it praised and protected this massive community organization. In the face of a couple of young adults' recent undercover ACORN sting, the traditional media was first shamed into coverage, but now has no interest in getting to the bottom of any of it.
Wade Rathke's replacement, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis, responded to the video evidence of nationwide corruption in her organization with the false cry of racism. This is a familiar tactic used by determined community organizers emboldened by political friends and a sympathetic media. ACORN's ties to big name Democrats resemble Jim Jones' San Francisco political alliances on four decades of steroids. A glance into Bertha Lewis's Rolodex reveals the private contact information on Patrick Gaspard, former SEIU VP, and the current ‘Karl Rove' of the Obama administration. Friends in high places prove lucrative.
Like a good communist leader, Jones squirreled away millions in off shore accounts. The recent raid on ACORN offices in New Orleans seeks to find evidence of Dale Rathke's embezzlement and a cover-up by Wade Rathke. ACORN national board members with sincere motives and questions about this financial wrongdoing were fired. Like many in the Peoples Temple, these members believed that their mission was altruistic, that community organizing was to benefit the needy.
The reality is that both Jones and the leaders of ACORN used the weak and good hearted to line their own pockets and further their own power. Similar themes of exploitation, communism, race baiting, intimidation, and dishonesty run through their stories. Their stroke of genius was to support Democrats and in so doing, buy off the media. Despite lessons learned from the largest mass murder-suicide in history, this formula for unfettered corruption continues unabated.
President Obama's complete lack of concern for the fraudulent science associated with global warming is contrasted by the common sense of Sarah Palin. The gutsy Alaskan suggested that Obama ought to hold his horses on the whole climate change thing until the real verdict is in. Of course, the smartest man in the world will have none of that.
With the outrageous news of deceit, fraud, and suppression of opposing evidence by top climate change "scientists," many conservatives had expected to see the story unfold a little differently (with actual reporting and investigating). Global warming, aka climate change, has been heralded as the preeminent story of our time. As such, the exposing of scientific fraud in the ultimate "science" movement would have made screaming headline news in a sane world.
Unfortunately, however, we've seen a virtual blackballing of the story that otherwise would have had a chilling effect on man-caused climate change (MCCC) theory. At best for the hoax-deniers, MCCC has been brought into serious question (which would imply the suspension of policy and taxpayer funds). At worst, MCCC has been exposed as the fraud that it always has been. Amazingly, and almost inexplicably, since the East Anglia CRU e-mails story broke, we've witnessed a barrage of stories promoting global warming as if nothing unusual had occurred.
Here are some recent headlines during the time that scientific fraud should have been the real story: "Climate experts warn: Time to change, or else -- Shift in development and farming advised"; "Global warming may require higher dams, stilts"; "India gives in to US pressure on climate change"; "Dalai Lama says climate change needs global action"; "Toronto is acting on climate change"; "US proposes climate fund for poor nations"; "UN official calls for funds for climate change"; "Climate pledge made by key countries."
Anticipating a "meaningful" agreement on climate change policy, President Obama recently changed his Copenhagen schedule in order to fully participate with other world leaders. Bloomberg quotes White House press secretary Robert Gibbs stating:
'There is progress toward a meaningful Copenhagen accord,' with an 'emerging consensus' that wealthy nations should provide $10 billion a year by 2012 to help developing nations deal with climate change.
Oh, by the way, the Obama-bankrupt United States is numbered among the "wealthy" nations that will be spreading the taxpayer wealth around the world. With billions en route to their coffers, the dictators of poor countries everywhere have suddenly seen the global warming light. Additionally, at the Copenhagen climate summit, Obama will unconstitutionally pledge to cut U.S. emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
In order to understand how the scientific scandal of the century could be ignored and swept under the rug by the ruling elitists in media and government, one must first understand the fundamentals of liberalism.
Liberalism, progressivism, post-modernism, or whatever you want to call the pathology originated out of and is built upon fantasy far removed from reality. The counterculture revolution which produced the current phenomenon known as liberalism was based entirely upon make-believe. Specifically, the youth of the 1960s fancied themselves somehow smarter, wiser, and morally superior to their elders and all the tradition that preceded them.
A baffling audacity of baseless arrogance is the progenitor and foundational principle by which contemporary liberalism is undergirded to this day.
If you've ever wondered why liberals are "elitists," that's why. Incidentally, conservatives need to stop referring to liberals as "elites." There is a world of difference between elites and elitists. True elites are the best at what they do. Often, liberals are not the best; they just think they are. They really think they're smarter than everyone else. In fact, they are so smart that once a groupthink consensus is reached among liberals, there is no changing the narrative. Come hell or high water, global cooling, or facts that refute the narrative, they're not budging.
No matter how ridiculous, fanciful, foolish, damaging, asinine, or untenable the idea, once a consensus is reached among liberals, they will not back down. There is a lot of pride associated with being the smartest people on the face of the earth.
The election of Barack Obama is a prime example. Because Candidate Obama was not vetted by the liberal media, the campaign was able to present Obama as the most transparent and post-partisan candidate in history. Of course, the media were not just negligent in investigating the real Obama, but they actively promoted the narrative. It turns out, of course, that the narrative was a complete fraud.
Regardless of the evidence pouring in that shows Obama as both secretive and off-the-charts divisive, the narrative remains firmly intact.
Whether we're talking about science fiction or some other subject, we must not forget that no matter how absurd the idea, once it becomes the "consensus," liberals will never admit they are wrong.
As soon as the term "global warming" was changed to "climate change" we had proof that something unscrupulous was going on. Without a doubt, whether the earth's temperature is rising or falling, the narrative will remain the same: Man is causing the climate change, therefore government must tax and regulate emissions in order to save the planet.
Rick Moran sums it up well: It's not the science; "It's the ideology, stupid."
For those who dare to challenge the settled narratives of their make-believe world, liberals will quickly turn to name-calling and labeling. Those who question the Obama narrative are called "racists." And for those who question the man-caused warming narrative, the hoax-deniers utilize the "climate deniers" label.
The underlying assumption is that liberals are so smart that disagreement can be attributed only to irrational thought. After all, the "science" is settled and the argument is over.
When I was twenty, I fell hard and fast for a dreamy guy named Will. Handsome and hilarious, Will was the perfect boyfriend...that is, until the day he hit me.
We weren't arguing; we were just goofing around on the couch. Out of nowhere, he slapped me across the face. Though I was shocked, I somehow found the wherewithal to say, "Don't do that again."
When I got my bearings back, I demanded to know why Will hit me. He said he thought I'd like it. I discovered that the man was into some unspeakable behavior, stuff I'd never heard of before. And he had had no problems finding willing others.
During our time together, Will put his perverse proclivities on ice. But I could see the roots of his depravity -- his contempt for people, his stinginess, and his narcissism.
Eventually, Will dumped me for another girl. Though I cried inconsolably for weeks, in retrospect, his rejection was the best (and only) gift he ever gave me.
Looking back, I wonder why I didn't follow Will down this treacherous path. I was needy and adrift, having had no strong parental arms to guide me.
Raised by permissive parents with Playboys on the coffee table, I was brainwashed into an anything-goes attitude about sex. Desperate for a boyfriend, I viewed free love as the road to true love.
However, those 1970s-era Playboys were relatively mild by today's standards. Will's predilections were shocking, unheard-of, totally out of bounds for the times. Even though I was young and impressionable, a voice inside me hollered, "No!"
But if I were twenty years old today, with the constant blare of extreme sex, I wonder whether I would have made the same decision. Barriers erected around sexuality have continued to topple like so many dominoes all in a row.
Conservatives have been warning for years that society is sexualizing children. They even proclaimed that militant gays were initiating public school youth into their ranks.
I thought that conservatives were being paranoid and homophobic. What they asserted was ridiculous in the extreme.
And I must now admit that yet again, I was wrong.
True, the average, hardworking gay or lesbian is repulsed by the idea of degrading children. They, like straights, want children protected and safe. And like everyone else, they are preoccuppied with the mundane details of everyday life -- jobs, aging parents, and home repair.
The problem is that these are not normal times. There are extreme, militant gays who have in mind big changes for everyone else. With a key appointment, President Obama has emboldened a cabal of fanatics obsessed with the "fundamental transformation" of sexuality in America.
Through Obama's election, some of the most ferocious and unhinged inmates of the nation's radical sexual fringe have been released upon the citizenry.
This fringe doesn't want to be left alone. In fact, it will not leave you and your children alone. We're talking about a lethal combination of traits: for many, manic-depression, severe character disorders, and addictions, sexual and otherwise.
The fusion of the three produces the most toxic of people, what I call "poisonous personalities." Empowered, they are now wrecking havoc in every place imaginable.
Corrupting the public has been on the Left's agenda for decades. Beginning in the l930s, the Frankfurt School plotted the installation of Marxism in the West. They knew that a debauched citizenry is easier to manipulate.
The school found willing henchmen in the amoral Left, which worships at the altar of pleasure: If it feels good, do it. Their hedonism has been legitimized by a host of mad scientists, such as Drs. Wilhelm Reich and Alfred Kinsey.
A principal architect of the sexual revolution, Kinsey purportedly falsified evidence to support his subversive theories that everyone, babies included, is hyper-sexual and bisexual.
Growing up, Obama himself was surrounded by people with no boundaries to speak of. Grandpa Stanley told lewd stories about women in front of young Barry. Stanley anointed alleged pedophile Frank Marshall Davis to be the child's mentor and tutor.
Frankly, given Obama's early exposure, I wonder if he's desensitized to abuse. Can he see it if it's front of his eyes?
This possible blindness may partly explain Obama's selection of Kevin Jennings as the Safe Schools Czar. Jennings, a militant gay man, has been "queering" students in Massachusetts for years.
Jennings and his crew taught the kids about brutal sexual practices like fisting and water sports. They pressured the kids to try out sexual practices that disgusted them.
Not only were these degenerates teaching kinky sex to the young and vulnerable, but they also put the kids further into harm's way by detailing the best places to hook up.
Sexualizing and "queering" kids is a worldwide trend. The U.N. has issued a proclamation asserting that starting in grade school, children have a right to masturbate and to have orgasms.
I've lately been hearing stories from public schools across the land about kids being subjected to deviance. A friend's fifteen-year-old was disciplined after walking out in disgust when a transsexual guest speaker provided graphic details about his/her surgery. The youth -- and their parents -- have no say in the curriculum.
Many liberal teachers have no qualms about exposing their charges to decadence because they themselves are steeped in moral relativism. It's judgmental, they believe, to distinguish between wholesome and degrading sex. In their view, being polyamorous is as legitimate a lifestyle choice as uttering "I do."
But there are also some militant gays out there who are going way beyond neutrality. They are trying to bring lost and aimless students into the gay fold.
School staff may zoom in on a particularly vulnerable youth. A teacher might imply to a molested boy that maybe he's gay. Or a counselor may suggest lesbianism to a girl being hit by her boyfriend.
It's one thing to support a teen who believes he or she is gay. But recruiting kids not only into homosexuality, but towards dangerous and degrading behavior? Divorcing any connection between sex and love and marriage?
There are many reasons why people like Jennings are sexualizing kids. I'm guessing that for some, it's a turn-on. Describing kinky sex in front of a bunch of minors must be a sex-addict's dream.
But there's a deeper reason: People regarded by others as deviants are trying to legitimize their behavior, to make the abnormal normal. Even though they celebrate their lifestyle, I think that deep inside they hurt. No matter how much they blame society's oppression for their self-loathing, at some level they know they're warped and broken, that the hurt comes from within, not from without.
In an age that eschews religion, they have no way to alleviate the shame, no avenue out of the sewer.
In the not-so-distant past, this nation was organized around Judeo-Christian values. Sexual deviance from the norm, especially towards children, was roundly condemned as an abomination.
And there were paths to redemption. The sinner could cleanse his or her soul by praying for forgiveness from a merciful God.
But with religion maligned, there is no balm for brokenness. Consequently, these deviants turn to Plan B: corrupt everyone around them. Flaunt depravity and sully others, especially unspoiled children. Increase the number of degenerates by bringing impressionable youths down into their netherworld.
Today's children are more vulnerable than ever before. With the absence of moral guideposts and strong families, children are creating virtual realities destructive to body and soul.
They exhibit themselves on Facebook and YouTube, text constantly, and remain glued to sexually charged websites, even **** . By being compulsively wired, youth are kept in a perpetual state of addiction and stimulation.
They become easy targets for predators -- and not just the derelicts hiding in dark alleys.
The predators are those like Kevin Jennings who are corrupting children en masse. The predators are every single counselor or teacher who steers a fragile youth into a high-risk lifestyle.
These predators are being enabled by a president who is willing to put children at risk to promote his radical agenda. And why wouldn't he? Didn't the adults in his life treat him with the same utter disregard?
It boils down to this: If consenting adults choose to engage in high-risk sexual practices in the privacy of their own homes, then so be it.
But we need to send a loud and clear message to the Powers that Be: our children are not available for exploitation. In other words, keep your hands off them.
[This message has been edited by fierobear (edited 12-16-2009).]
Facing another huge deficit, the governor wants $8 billion or threatens massive cuts in social services. He also plans to renew push for offshore oil drilling
Reporting from Sacramento - Facing a budget deficit of more than $20 billion, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to call for deep reductions in already suffering local mass transit programs, renew his push to expand oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast and appeal to Washington for billions of dollars in federal help, according to state officials and lobbyists familiar with the plan.
If Washington does not provide roughly $8 billion in new aid for the state, the governor threatens to severely cut back -- if not eliminate -- CalWORKS, the state's main welfare program; the In-Home Health Care Services program for the disabled and elderly poor, and two tax breaks for large corporations recently approved by the Legislature, the officials said.
Schwarzenegger also will propose extending a cut in the state payroll that is scheduled to expire this summer. That cut has translated into 200,000 state workers being furloughed three days a month, the equivalent of a 14% pay cut. Lawmakers would have the option of extending the furloughs, imposing layoffs or some combination of the two.
The governor is scheduled to unveil his plan publicly early next month. Administration spokesman Matt David declined to comment on the details.
The governor and lawmakers have already had to close shortfalls this year totaling $60 billion, as tax revenues plummeted at rates not seen in California since the Great Depression. Amid the continuing budget crisis, the state ran short of cash needed to cover its bills and was forced to issue IOUs over the summer.
Activists were particularly alarmed by the potential cuts to social service programs, which have taken big hits recently.
"Families are struggling, we have an incredibly high unemployment rate, and we can't afford to cut these programs any more," said Nancy Berlin, director of California Partnership, a statewide coalition of advocates for the poor based in Los Angeles. "Sacramento has got to pull it together and find another way out of this. They can't take more from low-income families. If they do, we will find more people on the streets."
Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, a think tank focused on how budget policies affect low-income Californians, was similarly critical of the proposals for CalWORKS and in-home healthcare. But she said the administration was justified in pushing for more federal dollars.
"There is a strong case not only here in California but across the country for continued federal aid to the states," she said. "Absent additional assistance we could see state governments prolonging the national economic downturn by continuing to cut their budgets."
Schwarzenegger's pitch for federal assistance will hit on familiar themes: Californians pay substantially more in federal taxes than make it back to the state, the crushing burden of unfunded federal mandates, the way funding formulas have made it impossible for the state to trim certain programs.
The governor sent a letter to the state's congressional delegation Tuesday night in which he demanded more money for federal healthcare programs for which the state is paying part of the tab. He warned that the historic healthcare reforms poised for passage in Congress may add to the burden, costing the state as much as $4 billion annually.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), in an interview last week, said: "I'm planning to spend a lot of time in Washington. I have to. . . . The national economic recovery is tied to California's economic recovery."
California's budget deficit has grown so large -- roughly 20% of the general fund -- that some measure of cuts to social service programs may be inevitable regardless of how Washington responds.
Big business may also take a hit. The governor is prepared to support rolling back two large corporate tax breaks that GOP lawmakers inserted into recent state spending plans.
The $1 billion in mass transit and other transportation money the governor will propose raiding is supposed to be off limits to the state for plugging budget gaps. Court rulings have declared previous attempts to get at it illegal.
The administration will seek to get around those rulings through a complex gas tax swap. As part of the scheme, an existing sales tax on gasoline would be eliminated and, at the same time, a new per-gallon excise tax would be imposed. The price at the pump would drop about 5 cents per gallon
The shift would gut a voter-approved measure, Proposition 42, that protects how current gas taxes are spent. Public transit -- buses, rail and other forms of mass transportation -- now receives 20% of all gas sales tax. After the tax swap, that requirement would disappear. The tax swap could also cost schools -- as it would result in the share of tax revenues they are entitled to under state law dropping by more than $800 million.
Jim Earp, executive director of California Alliance for Jobs, a group that advocates for public works spending -- including on transportation -- derided the plan as a scheme "to rob Peter to pay Paul."
"We're not solving any problems. We're just moving money around from one cup to another," Earp said.
One new source of revenue in the budget: Schwarzenegger will revive a plan to allow offshore oil drilling from an existing platform off the Santa Barbara coast. The proposal was so controversial during last summer's budget debate that after the Assembly voted down the plan, members expunged the vote, erasing it from the public record.
Bill Magavern, a Sierra Club lobbyist, said the drilling proposal has already been rejected by the State Lands Commission, which typically has jurisdiction over such matters.
"This would be the first new offshore oil drilling in state waters in decades," he said. "It is something that should be considered on the substance at the State Lands Commission. It should not be decided as part of budget politics."
Schwarzenegger would count $200 million in revenues from the new oil drilling for the budget.
Most of the governor's plans probably will confront stiff legislative opposition. That includes his proposal to continue the furloughs of state workers, which he implemented through executive order this year.
"We need to find an alternative for one or two days," Steinberg, the Senate leader, said last week. "Beyond one day is just unfair and fiscally it doesn't make sense."
There isn't a single compelling reason to provide the girly-man of American gubernatorial fiscal responsibility, Arnold Schwarzenegger, with a nickel from our federal coffers. His failing California remains the poster-child for liberal fiscal insanity and it's time for the free-range chickens to come home to roost. Investor's Business Daily reports that:
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has an idea: He wants President Obama to give him $8 billion - or else, he says, he'll kill or slash most of the state's welfare programs, cut pay for 200,000 state workers and end two tax breaks for big corporations."
It's clearly time to start killing and slashing. For decades California has enabled its spendthrift legislators, feather-bedding public-sector employee unions and welfare recipients (comprised of both native-born and illegal immigrants) to the tune of a $21 billion annual deficit with no sign of sufficient tax revenue in sight. Meanwhile the confiscatory tax policies and unfriendly business environment of the Granola State continue to hemorrhage both businesses and jobs to more enlightened states. According to the IBD, California is home to more than 1/3 of the nation's welfare recipients. Their abysmally underperforming schools are home to the 2nd highest paid teachers in America. Despite their utter ineptitude, the state legislators are:
"the country's highest-paid state legislators, pulling down nearly $100,000, with $30,000 in tax-free money for their "expenses" and a state-provided car for their use."
In addition, California is rated 48th out of the 50 states in terms of tax-competitiveness with over $493 billion worth of new tax regulations for businesses since the year 2000. Where is the light at the end of this tunnel? Why should taxpayers from states like my home state of Indiana chip in to support Californians in the manner to which they have become accustomed? Governor Mitch Daniels has striven to create a climate of encouragement for both new and established businesses here while consistently exercising fiscal restraint. Why should we contribute to ensure expensive gold-plated retirement packages for the "the public employee unions that have systematically looted the public" coffers of California and now come looking for more sensible Americans to fund their fiscal insanity Let ‘em hit the wall and file bankruptcy. It's time for the insolvent public sector in California to start turning away welfare recipients, closing government offices, and defaulting on public employee union benefits including pensions until they can be renegotiated in the light of fiscal responsibility to all Californians, not just the special pleaders.
Want to understand the left? Want to know what we're up against? Want to know what this *country* is up against? Read this article and watch the linked videos. Together, they run about 50 minutes. If you care about this country, please watch and listen.
By Alan Fraser "What are we up Against?" That is the title to this two man roundtable that took place in November at Restoration Weekend. Two very bright guys, Democrat Pollster Pat Caddell and writer David Horowitz talk about the Democrat Party and the condition of our nation. Caddell worked for Democratic presidential candidates George McGovern 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, Gary Hart in 1984, Joe Biden in 1988, and Jerry Brown in 1992. Most AT readers know Horowitz well.
The two spend some time going into "the shadow party Democrats." And Horowitz even thinks there is some good news in that we may be at the beginning of a kind of "Great Awakening."
It's a brilliant discussion in two parts. Each of the two are about 28 minutes long. Think you're well informed? Well, carve out 56 minutes one day soon and watch both of these videos to see for yourself. You won't regret it.
U.S. growth prospects deemed bleak in new decade Pedro Nicolaci da Costa ATLANTA Sun Jan 3, 2010 6:55pm ESTATLANTA (Reuters) - A dismal job market, a crippled real estate sector and hobbled banks will keep a lid on U.S. economic growth over the coming decade, some of the nation's leading economists said on Sunday.
U.S.
Speaking at American Economic Association's mammoth yearly gathering, experts from a range of political leanings were in surprising agreement when it came to the chances for a robust and sustained expansion:
They are slim.
Many predicted U.S. gross domestic product would expand less than 2 percent per year over the next 10 years. That stands in sharp contrast to the immediate aftermath of other steep economic downturns, which have usually elicited a growth surge in their wake.
"It will be difficult to have a robust recovery while housing and commercial real estate are depressed," said Martin Feldstein, a Harvard University professor and former head of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Housing was at the heart of the nation's worst recession since the 1930s, with median home values falling over 30 percent from their 2005 peaks, and even more sharply in heavily affected states like California and Nevada.
The decline has sapped a principal source of wealth for U.S. consumers, whose spending is the key driver of the country's growth pattern. The steep drop in home prices has also boosted their propensity to save.
"It's very hard to see what will replace it," said Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and professor of economics at Columbia University. "It's going to take a number of years."
One reason is that U.S. consumers remain heavily indebted. Consumer credit outstanding has fallen from its mid-2008 records, but still stands at some $2.5 trillion, or nearly one-fifth of total yearly spending in the U.S. economy.
Another is that many of the country's largest banks are still largely dependent on funding from the U.S. Federal Reserve and the implicit backing of the Treasury Department.
Kenneth Rogoff, also of Harvard, argued that if the U.S. government ever "credibly" pulled away from its backing of the financial system, then a renewed collapse would likely ensue.
He cited government programs giving large financial institutions access to zero-cost borrowing as artificially padding their bottom lines.
"There's something of an illusion of profitability," he said.
Poor Bill O'Reilly and Brit Hume. There they were on the O'Reilly show a few weeks ago, puzzling over why Barack Obama and the Democrats are doing so many things that are damaging to our country. Bill and Brit agreed that they couldn't possibly be harming the nation intentionally, because negative voter reaction would redound to them politically and electorally. Can't the Democrats see this? Did they suddenly get stupid politically? This is so unlike them. How to explain this anomaly?
Poor Bill and Brit, and many others, indeed. It is time to think the unthinkable and speak the ineffable. Apart from the troubling question of intent, or whether Obama-Pelosi-Reid just have a novel view of the public interest, the national Democrats are unnaturally and mysteriously sanguine despite growing backlash by the American people. Why? One reason: The Dems don't believe they will ever have to face a real election again. Is their plan not becoming obvious? It is very straightforward:
(1) Grant amnesty to the illegal aliens (the correct term for lawbreaking invaders, regardless of their natural and rational motives) which will create up to 30 million reliably Democrat voters -- especially after being registered at least once each by ACORN. That is cushion enough to carry any national election. Why else could Dems be so fixated on this agenda item?
(2) Speaking of which, between ACORN and the SEIU, the Democrats will be stealing all the elections they really need anyway, starting next November. (The New Jersey and Virginia governorships aren't quite as big a prize as control of the U.S. Congress, are they? And one wonders what the real margin of Republican victory in New Jersey was, absent ACORN's intervention.)
Many laymen still don't understand how the ACORN scam works. To them, ACORN's excuse that they are merely committing voter registration fraud, not vote fraud, seems plausible. Here's the deal: Register 100,000 phony voters such as Mickey Mouse and the Seven Dwarves, thus expanding the nominal voter rolls, and the Democrat vote counters then have the latitude to create 100,000 extra votes out of thin air on election night. This is what "community organizer" really means, and Barack Obama is forever stained by his ACORN background. Not that it matters to him.
America should brace for the biggest vote fraud and election theft caper of all time on election night 2010 -- and in the months following. We now know as well that the Dems are guaranteed to win any statewide recount where there is a Democrat Secretary of State. And who, we must ask, is there to enforce the election laws now?
What of Florida 2000? It is easy to correct the prevailing misconception. One can usually tell what offenses against the commonweal the liberal Democrats are committing by what accusations they make against others (into which they project their own tendencies). In November 2000, Democrats did everything they could to try to steal a national election for the second time in forty years, right before a nation's very eyes, with local partisan functionaries inventing Gore votes out of those dimpled chads. Still, the Democrats have claimed since Y2000 that George W. Bush stole that year's election, even though every Florida recount, including those sponsored by the media, demonstrated that Bush 43 really won under the law. Republicans have been so ineffective in publicizing these true results in answer to the Democrat mantra that the propaganda has largely taken hold in the public consciousness.
(3) As if they need it, the Dems will be secretly encouraging (maybe even hiring) third-party candidates wherever they need them, because they know that is the way to split the opposition vote. It almost always happens that way to the Democrats' benefit. If people such as Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck don't realize this soon, instead of talking up the third-party route, they will only help to ensure a permanent Democrat stranglehold on Congress and the presidency -- although any one of this litany of methods would probably be sufficient for that. So the Dems are actually conservative in the sense of wanting some built-in redundancy!
(4) What do we suppose the extra trillion dollars of "stimulus" money to be spent from 2010 to 2012 is really for? Just a coincidence, or a ready-made election slush fund? How much has already been committed to ACORN and SEIU?
(5) Then there is the "universal voter registration" plan that the Wall Street Journal's John Fund has spotlighted, granting automatic voting privilege to anyone who has ever registered for practically anything, anywhere, anytime. The Democrats and their henchmen could work with that, couldn't they? Or why are they so eager to enact it? Their entire history has been to oppose laws that prevent vote fraud, after all. (What could be their motive for that particular laxity?)
These five strategies should be enough to ensure permanent Democrat control of our federal government -- a virtual dictatorship. For them, it is a royal flush. But another part of the scheme may be the most pernicious of all. The worst is yet to come.
(6) When you become dependent on the decision of a Democrat bureaucrat for crucial medical treatment -- after the health care takeover -- how much power does that give the Democrats over you? Elderly voters tend to vote more conservative than younger voters, so letting the elderly dies because care is "too expensive" can reshape the political profile of the electorate. But can we reasonably foresee that party registration or political contributions might enter the bureaucrat's calculus? Might it occur to the intense partisans of the Obama administration to grant lifesaving treatment to those they regard as "their people," but not to others? What a neat way to eliminate the opposition! Party registration is already public information. And if they can overturn the secret ballot for union elections via "card check," how long before they try to impose the same more generally, so they will always know how you have voted? Do not trust the judiciary to save us, either, after President Obama packs the courts with more ultra-leftists.
Chilling, isn't it? But not extreme: Obama himself has notoriously displayed his disregard for human life by the stated willingness to sacrifice "grandma" to a pain pill and his coarse support for unrestricted abortion -- even opposition to the Infant Born Alive Act, which he has tried to subvert.
When the Democrats achieve literal death-grip power over the lives of all our citizens, that's when they also achieve their long-cherished dream of absolute power in a virtual one-party state. Now is it becoming transparent (so to speak) what the real scheme behind their mania for "health-care reform" is? Now does it all make sense? This is not your father's Democrat party.
This issue is not about health care, ultimately. It is about raw political power and the long-promised radical takeover of the United States. For anyone who hasn't thought of all this before, I guarantee that Obama and his party's other leaders have.
Dictatorship in a one-party state indeed seems to loom for us. As one prominent commentator has pointed out, the normal order of the human condition is tyranny, subjugation, and dictatorship, with only a couple of respite periods throughout history, including our time in the West over the past two centuries or so. It just took that long for the totalitarian types to gain near-total power in our country, which they are now consolidating over the coming year. What are the betting odds that they will ever let it go voluntarily?
No wonder the national Democrats aren't concerned about having to face the electorate again. Pity the naïve, hapless Republicans who actually imagine they have a fair chance later this year and in '12!
The long-time president of my university, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, used to say, "At our school, we ask all the questions, even the tough ones." How'd I do, Father?
The most troubling aspect of my analysis is that it represents the logical extension of irrefutable, objective facts. At least five of the six premises are no more and no less than observable Democrat behavior, and the other is a mild extrapolation at most. This is not good.
It's over, America. We are now living under a proto-dictatorship in the United States. In less than a year, the full reification of it will be apparent to all. Have a nice day. R.I.P., U.S.A.
