This is a h/t via a Big Government post:
Author: Papa Giorgio
Controlling Big Government AND Big Business – Rich Lowry (realclearpolitics.com)
Limiting Government–And Big Business
By Rich Lowry
The Brits are upset that Pres. Barack Obama has been referring to disgraced oil giant BP as “British Petroleum,” a name it shed long ago.
But what else should Obama call an enormous Britain-based petroleum company? To ask such an innocent question betrays ignorance of the ways of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. The marketing gurus at the firm – led by über Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg – helped conceive and execute one of the most perverse rebrandings of all time for BP.
British? So yesterday. Petroleum? Not very green. A logo of a shield emblazoned with “BP”? Disturbingly martial. In 2000, newly christened BP ditched all these negative associations by adopting the slogan “Beyond Petroleum” and emblazoning itself with a sunflower-like logo that could be mistaken for the symbol of the Green party of Canada.
It worked so brilliantly, a Joe McGinniss of marketing should write a blow-by-blow account – The Selling of BP. Greenberg Quinlan Rosner bragged that its work for BP “included extensive testing of advertising and evaluating the global response toward pioneering positions on the environment, climate change, and energy efficiency.” The case study outlining this extraordinary marketing success has since been removed from the firm’s website. (Greenberg et al. are image-conscious people, after all.)
BP knew how to play the game. It repeated all the environmentally correct platitudes that tickle the fancy of “NGO leaders, journalists, political elites,” in the words of the case study. It supported the fashionable reform of the day, cap-and-trade, knowing that the system would favor the big and connected, like itself. And it showered campaign contributions on the candidate of Hope and Change (its employees gave Obama about twice as much in donations as they did John McCain in 2008).
BP couldn’t have been notionally greener if Al Gore were its CEO. The group chief executive of BP, Lord John Browne, warned of the dangers of hydrocarbons, a little like the city fathers of Newcastle in the 19th century inveighing against coal. In a speech at Stanford in 2007, Browne advocated an “international climate agency” that would entail “a move beyond the limitations of national sovereignty.”
This green one-worldism was awfully rich coming from an executive of an oil company that couldn’t even drill responsibly. Despite all the hokum, BP spent vastly more resources on fossil fuels than green energy. In so doing, it compiled an atrocious safety record that made the poor decision-making that led to the blowout in the Gulf unsurprising to industry insiders.
And now tens of thousands of barrels of petroleum a day are fouling the Gulf, courtesy of the corporation that spent so much convincing people it was “beyond” it.
Rep. Joe Barton’s quickly retracted apology to BP for the administration’s strong-arm tactics was horribly misconceived. Fundamentally, we don’t want a free market and a system of laws to protect corporations, but to protect us from both government and corporations, especially when the two are in league with each other. Corporations like BP tend to be craven, unprincipled, and willing to use government for their own ends – all qualities evident in BP’s spectacular green-marketing campaign.
The bigger and more complex government is, the more incentive corporations have to politicize themselves and get in bed with Washington. If they have resources to do it (not everyone can afford Stan Greenberg), they’ll protect themselves from the worst while disadvantaging their competitors. This accounts for the corporatist paradox of the Obama administration. The president is so arbitrarily anti-business that The Economist dubs him “Vladimir Obama,” yet the same industries he demonizes support key elements of his “reform” agenda.
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel argues that Barton’s apology to BP is the sum total of Republican thought on the economy, and that the fall election is a choice between Obama-style hyperactive government or the depredations of the execrable BP. To which the only rational answer can be, “None of the above.”
Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.
Skimmer Watch (Obama’s Katrina)
Gateway Pundit… Crazy News:
…Last week Barack Obama told Politico that the BP oil spill was like 9-11–But, it’s been over 60 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and he’s only sent 20 of 2,000 US oil skimmer boats to the coast of Florida.
Senator George LeMieux of Florida told the Shark Tank that there are only 20 skimmer boats off the coast of Florida out of 2,000 available skimmer boats in the United States. Lemieux says that Obama is afraid to move them to Florida because there won’t be any in place in case there is an oil leak somewhere else….
…(read more)…
Walking on Water
“BP is Going to Help Us Save the World” ~ Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu
Pretty soon we will all be dressing like the Buck Rogers TV show:
Oh my! These guys are killing me… with laughter! This is a rockin’ article by BIG GOVERNMENT – Thanks:
While the White House really, really wants you believe that they have their boot on the neck of BP, it turns out that a key Administration official had his head inserted somewhere else just three short years ago. Do you think NOBEL LAUREATE (and Secretary of Energy) Steven Chu still thinks BP is going to help save the world?
This is one of the ironies of the disaster in the Gulf. From all available evidence, BP is as committed as anyone to the “comprehensive energy reform” agenda of the White House. No doubt this reflects both political realism and market opportunism on their part, but BP’s 2009 “Road Map for America’s Energy Future” could have been written by John Kerry. Higher energy prices, cap and trade? Bring it on, says BP.
And this isn’t a recent shift on BP’s part. Here’s embattled BP Chairman Tony Hayward back in June 2007:
From BP’s perspective, the evidence that climate change is happening, and that it is manmade, is mounting all the time. As the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found, the evidence is almost overwhelming. We could wait until the science is 100% certain, but BP believes that, as an energy company, it has a duty to act pre-emptively. When you balance the likely impacts of not taking action against the real opportunities that exist to take action, it is difficult to believe that humanity will not move towards a solution to climate change…
We need to ensure that the costs of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are included in the price we pay for everything – whether it be a television, a train journey, or switching on a light – all should reflect the cost of emissions in their price.
This can be achieved through a Cap and Trade system, taxation, or regulation.
So it makes perfect sense that back in 2007 Steven Chu and UC Berkeley would be more than happy to accept a $500 million investment from BP to form the Energy BioSciences Institute. The relationship between Chu and BP was so cozy in fact that Chu subsequently brought on BP’s Chief Scientist Steve Koonin as an undersecretary at the Department of Energy.
My guess is that this history – and these relationships – played a part in the Administration’s initial confusion over whether BP was a “partner” in the effort to resolve the Gulf spill. Because for many within the Administration BP had been one of the good guys.
This also explains why BP has been so willing to prostrate themselves in front of their Democratic overlords in Congress and the White House. Here they thought they were trusted partners in saving the world from impending climate disaster. It turns out that their allies in the Obama Administration might soon be the only thing saving BP from the anger of a raging public…and insolvency.
Steven Chu! Saving the Cosmos One Planet At a Time…
“It’s A Tough Job, But Someone Has To Do It”
Behar ~ “When prayer takes the place of logical thinking, then I think it’s dangerous”
NewsBusters h/t:
Dinesh D’Souza Debates John Loftus (Apologetics 315)
Of course I would be remiss not to mention gratitude of the almost encyclopedic cataloging of debates over at Apologetics 315.
This debate is a great example of diarrhea (D’Souza’s words) from the skeptic, i.e., typical rejections of Christianity. But in all Loftus’s points (basically Christianity commits acts of evil or “evil” is commanded by God), he is missing the grand-point of how you say one act is immoral and the other is evil. This point is made by Ravi Zacharias during a Q&A by a student at Harvard, how do you decide what is evil and what is not?
Atheism cannot answer this, theism (especially the Judeo-Christian ethic) can. So Loftus is borrowing from the Christian worldview to disprove it. In other words, how does the atheist respond to rape in historical evolutionary thought? It is currently taboo, but what about our evolutionary history? What about our evolutionary future? In theism, rape is always morally wrong, at all times in history and at all places in the cosmos. Do you get it? John Loftus is calling God immoral or Christians immoral… is he saying there is a “Divine Law” that supersedes human thought so when he states such a position we intuitively know and are supposed to understand what he just said? IF this is the case, then he is proving the Judeo-Christian God, not disproving “Ego Eimi.“
Here is the debate between Dinesh D’Souza and John Loftus on the topic: Does the Christian God Exist? Debate video can be found here. D’Souza offers his follow-up thoughts on the Sound Rezn radio show here (mp3). Check out Dinesh’s newest book here. (original debate source here)
Full MP3 Audio here. (2 hours)
Enjoy this debate, it snuck in under my radar.
“Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?” Thomas Sowell
Degeneration of Democracy
(REAL CLEAR POLITICS & WASHINGTON EXAMINER)
When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics. Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler’s rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.
“Useful idiots” was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.
Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive. In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.
The president’s poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.
Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.
And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP’s oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated. But our government is supposed to be “a government of laws and not of men.” If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion– or $50 billion or $100 billion– then so be it.
But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without “due process of law.” Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.
With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.
If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don’t believe in Constitutional government. And, without Constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will always be a “crisis”– which, as the president’s chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to “go to waste” as an opportunity to expand the government’s power.
That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt arbitrarily took the United States off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the First World War to prevent trading with the country’s wartime enemies. But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard’s restrictions on the printing of money.
At about the same time, during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law “for the relief of the German people.” That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people– indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.
If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.
The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP’s money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed “czars” controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are.
Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power– versus the rule of law and the preservation of freedom– are the “useful idiots” of our time. But useful to whom?
Reagan Forum with Cartoonist and Editorialist, Michael Ramirez
Cult Watch: Agape Ministries Another Waco Waiting In The Wings?
This comes from Religion News Blog:
The assets are frozen, arrests have been made, a huge cache of weapons and ammunition seized and the main man, convicted thief turned charismatic cult leader Rocco Leo, is in hiding.
But a month after South Australian police raided more than a dozen properties associated with the bizarre Adelaide-based Agape Ministries doomsday cult, several questions remain unanswered.
Most concern Leo, the 52-year-old former coffee shop proprietor also known as Brother Roc who is presumed to be somewhere in the Pacific, most likely Fiji or Vanuatu, and who may still be looking to buy the island paradise he has promised a core group of 60 to 70 followers.
Here, according to the comical story Leo concocted in Adelaide, the Agape faithful will be able to escape an evil force that is micro-chipping the world’s population in the lead-up to 2012, when all humanity will be programmed for extinction.
But nobody has seen Leo for a month and the SA police haven’t issued a warrant for his arrest. So it raises the question: is Leo really a dangerous fugitive?
It certainly seemed that way after 90 police last month raided the Agape Ministries’ fortress-like compound in the Adelaide Hills, its $5 million headquarters and several other cult-connected properties in and around the city.
The police seized about 20 illegal guns, assault batons, detonators, fuses for explosives and more than 35,000 rounds of ammunition.
Follow-up raids during the next two days uncovered more weapons and a further 30,000 rounds of ammunition, though not a number of high-powered automatic and semi-automatic firearms police know exist and are anxious to locate.
According to one former cult member, the purpose of stockpiling all this firepower was to protect the cult from its enemies, who could, Leo had explained to his followers, include the police.
Not surprisingly, this has seen Leo and the Agape Ministries portrayed as a Waco-in-waiting, a reference to the infamous 1993 Texas shootout that killed four FBI agents and 75 Branch Davidian followers of David Koresh, 21 of them children.
The Waco siege lasted 51 days and the Davidian arsenal included a 50-calibre cannon, machineguns and more than a million rounds of ammunition, but Detective Superintendent Jim Jeffery, head of the SA police commercial and electronic crime branch who is in charge of the Agape Ministries investigation, doesn’t dismiss the comparison….
…(read more)…
1956 Israel Cartoon Could Have Been Drawn Today
Solomonia Posted This:
- This cartoon, from a 1956 Swiss magazine, has been floating around for awhile. Thought it was worth posting again. Not much has changed:
Chris Matthews Confirms Professor Obama Taught Saul Alinsky
The alternative title for this flashback upload was “Chris Matthews Out Socializes Bernie Sanders”. The original file is worth heading to as the comments are pretty funny/insightful.
In Chris Matthews special, The Rise of the Right, he shows a photo of Obama drawing on a chalk board while mentioning he was a Constitutional professor. Touting Marxist ideals like Chris Matthews does, is, what is at issue here. Here’s a picture of Barack Obama in Chicago teaching the principles of SAUL ALINSKY (GATEWAY PUNDIT).
- The heading at the top reads “POWER ANALYSIS”. The sub-heading reads “RELATIONSHIPS BUILT ON SELF INTEREST”. The symbol on the arrow between “CORP” and “MAYOR” is the “$” sign.
- The flow chart indicating the flow of money and power out of productive businesses (“CORP”) and into the political class (“MAYOR”)
- Saul Alinsky came up with the idea of power analysis, which looks at relationships built on self-interest between corporations, banks and utilities. Barack Obama taught students in Chicago the Alinsky Principles.
Actually the photo used by MSNBC shows Obama teaching Alinsky principles not the US Constitution. PrestoPundit discussed this photo of Barack Obama in Chicago teaching the principles of Saul Alinsky back in February 2008. Notice the flow chart indicating the flow of money and power out of productive businesses (“CORP”) and into the political class (“MAYOR”)…
The heading at the top reads “POWER ANALYSIS”. The sub-heading reads “RELATIONSHIPS BUILD ON SELF INTEREST”. The symbol on the arrow between “CORP” and “MAYOR” is the “$” sign. Saul Alinsky came up with the idea of power analysis, which looks at relationships built on self-interest between corporations, banks and utilities. Barack Obama was teaching students in Chicago the Alinsky Principles.
- Obama first learned Alinsky’s rules in the 1980s, when Alinskyite radicals with the Chicago-based Alinsky group Gamaliel Foundation recruited, hired, trained and paid him as a community organizer in South Side Chicago. (Gamaliel’s website expressly states it grew out of the Alinsky movement.)
- In 1988, Obama even wrote a chapter for the book “After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois,” in which he lamented organizers’ “lack of power” in implementing change.
- Gamaliel board member John McKnight, a hard-core student of Alinsky, penned a letter for Obama to help him get into Harvard Law School.
- Obama took a break from his Harvard studies to travel to Los Angeles for eight days of intense training at Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation, a station of the cross for acolytes.
- In turn, he trained other community organizers in Alinsky agitation tactics.
- Obama also taught Alinsky’s “Power Analysis” methods at the University of Chicago.
- During the presidential campaign, Obama hired one of his Gamaliel mentors, Mike Kruglik, to train young campaign workers in Alinsky tactics at “Camp Obama,” a school set up at Obama headquarters in Chicago. The tactics helped Obama capture the youth vote like no other president before him.
- Power would no longer be an issue, as Obama infiltrated the highest echelon of the political establishment — the White House — fulfilling Alinsky’s vision of a new “vanguard” of coat-and-tie radicals who “work inside the system” to change the system.
- After the election, his other Gamaliel mentor, Jerry Kellman (who hired him and whose identity Obama disguised in his memoir), helped the Obama administration establish Organizing for America, which mobilizes young supporters to agitate for Obama’s legislative agenda using “Rules for Radicals.”
- Obama’s favorite rule is No. 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.” You see that in his attacks on “fat cat bankers,” “greedy health insurers” and “millionaires and billionaires.” He also readily applies Alinsky’s fifth rule of “ridiculing” the opposition.
(IBD)
Mark Levin: Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals
Parts 1 n 2
Mark Levin compares and contrast the principle teachings of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and the Mantra and strategy of Obama’s campaign and LIFE!