It is one of the ironies of our present warped climate that Petraeus will face far less criticism from the media and politicians than during 2007–8 (there will be no more “General Betray Us” ads or “suspension of disbelief” ridicule), because his success this time will reflect well on Obama rather than George Bush. It is a further irony that Obama is surging with Petraeus despite not long ago declaring that such a strategy and such a commander were failures in Iraq. And it is an even further irony that he is now rightly calling for “common purpose” when — again not long ago, at a critical juncture in Iraq — Obama himself, for partisan purposes on the campaign trail, had no interest in the common purpose of military success in Iraq.
All three network news shows on Tuesday skipped a report that eight of 15 experts consulted by the Obama administration opposed the government’s plan to halt deepwater oil drilling for six months. Only Special Report With Bret Baier covered the story….
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?
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.
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!
NEWSBUSTERS has an excellent article on what the press ignored and what economists and other pundits and personalities said would happen. Businesses will drop their health coverage automatically or by coercion. (See the PDF at CATO INSTITUTE)
Earlier this year, in his “Can we lose health coverage? Yes we can” column, syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock made a point asserted in dozens if not hundreds of columns and reports during the hide-and-seek legistlative process that ultimately led to the passage of what is commonly known as ObamaCare: The President’s core promise relating to the statist health care legislation that ultimately became law in March — namely that “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what” — could not and would not be kept.In that column, Murdock quoted Cato Institute analyst Michael Cannon as follows:
“Obama’s definition of ‘meaningful’ coverage could eliminate the health plans that now cover as many as half of the 159 million Americans with employer-sponsored insurance, plus more than half of the roughly 18 million Americans in the individual market. … This could compel close to 90 million Americans to switch to more comprehensive health plans with higher premiums, whether they value the added coverage or not.”
In a late Friday afternoon blog post followed by a fuller early evening report, David Hogberg and Sean Higgins at Investors Business Daily confirmed that Obama’s never-credible core promise is on the brink of being shattered, and that the employer-related calculations by Cato’s Cannon were essentially correct (see graphic illustration by IBD above ):
Internal administration documents reveal that up to 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage because of ObamaCare.
Small firms will be even likelier to lose existing plans.
The “midrange estimate is that 66% of small employer plans and 45% of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfathered status by the end of 2013,” according to the document.
In the worst-case scenario, 69% of employers — 80% of smaller firms — would lose that status, exposing them to far more provisions under the new health law.
…. The 83-page document, a joint project of the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the IRS, examines the effects that ObamaCare’s regulations would have on existing, or “grandfathered,” employer-based health care plans.
Draft copies of the document were reportedly leaked to House Republicans during the week and began circulating Friday morning. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., posted it on his Web site Friday afternoon.
… In a statement, Posey said the document showed that the arguments in favor of ObamaCare were a “bait and switch.”
… (A White House) source conceded: “It is difficult to predict how plans and employers will behave in the coming years, but if plans make changes that negatively impact consumers, then they will lose their grandfather status.”
… In total, 66% of small businesses and 47% of large businesses made a change in their health care plans last year that would have forfeited their grandfathered status.
….The Associated Press has noticed the story too, but with the weakest of headlines: “Health overhaul to force changes in employer plans.” The content isn’t much better. Earth to AP reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar: ObamaCare, as predicted by so many during the previous year by experts most of the establishment press willfully ignored, will cause many employers to drop their insurance entirely.
This video is recently uploaded to my RUMBLE to save it from disappearing,
as, the original was uploaded in 2008
Some say we throw terms around too much, like: socialistic, Marxist, fascist, and the like. I tend to agree with some commentators that we need to find one term and stick with it. Like statist. the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics defines statism as:
STATISM
In development studies, statism means the direction and control of economic and social affairs by the state. The practices included: investment in public enterprises; centralized economic planning; the regulation of employment; and other price-distorting interventions in the market.
The American Heritage Dictionary simply states it as:
The practice or doctrine of giving a centralized government control over economic planning and policy.
So you could call Obama a statist to sum up all the differing factors of his statements, his acquaintances, and his goals via political-philosophy in growing government. The case against Obama and that he is at the minimum a statist is air tight. So the idea of people who get upset with us conservatives about using terms like socialist, Marxist, and the like, should know the facts before making such (in their mind’s eye) counter attacks. I will only deal with a few of the facts that today’s Left is more radical than anything one could find on the mainstream political opposite. For instance, is there an equivalent to the Socialist Democrats of America organization (The Progressive Caucus):
As of June 2006, the following Members of Congress belonged to the Progressive Caucus: Neil Abercrombie; Tammy Baldwin; Xavier Becerra; Madeleine Z. Bordallo; Corrine Brown; Sherrod Brown; Michael Capuano; Julia Carson; Donna Christensen; William “Lacy” Clay; Emanuel Cleaver; John Conyers; Elijah Cummings; Danny Davis; Peter DeFazio; Rosa DeLauro; Lane Evans; Sam Farr; Chaka Fattah; Bob Filner; Barney Frank; Raul Grijalva; Luis Gutierrez; Maurice Hinchey; Jesse Jackson, Jr.; Sheila Jackson-Lee; Stephanie Tubbs Jones; Marcy Kaptur; Carolyn Kilpatrick; Dennis Kucinich; Tom Lantos; Barbara Lee; John Lewis; Ed Markey; Jim McDermott; James P. McGovern; Cynthia McKinney; George Miller; Gwen Moore; Jerrold Nadler; Eleanor Holmes Norton; John Olver; Major Owens; Ed Pastor; Donald Payne; Nancy Pelosi; Charles Rangel; Bobby Rush; Bernie Sanders; Jan Schakowsky; Jose Serrano; Louise Slaughter; Hilda Solis; Pete Stark; Bennie Thompson; John Tierney; Tom Udall; Nydia Velazquez; Maxine Waters; Diane Watson; Mel Watt; Henry Waxman; and Lynn Woolsey.
Remember, the Socialist Democrats have a history of totalitarianism. That is not the point however, does the “right” have something as radical as that where mainstream politicians are active parts or members of? Obama, for instance, ran under the New Party, which can roughly be said to be a Communist political party (CONSERVAPEDIA):
In 1995 Obama accepted the nomination, signed a contract,[285] and ran as a candidate of the openly Marxist New Party.[286][287] The New Party was an electoral alliance that worked alongside ACORN, formed by members of the Democratic Socialists for America (SPUSA and DSAUSA) and leaders of an offshoot of the Community Party USA (CPUSA).[288] The New Party was funded by literally hundreds of leftist front-groups operating as special interest 527 organizations.[289]
HOTAIRpointed to the many radical positions within this New Party a while ago as well:
In any case, the New Party was clearly far to the left of mainstream Democrats, and according to Sifry, the party explicitly thought of itself as made up of committed “progressives,” rather than conventional “liberals.” That is entirely consistent with a famous 1995 profile of Obama by Hank De Zutter, which portrays him as closely tied to ACORN, and holding a world-view well “beyond” his mother’s conventional liberalism.
To get a sense of where the New Party stood politically, consider some of its early supporters: Barbara Dudley of Greenpeace, Steve Cobble political director of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coaltion, and prominent academics like Frances Fox Piven coauthor of the “Cloward-Piven strategy” and a leader of the drive for the “motor-voter” legislation Obama later defended in court on behalf of ACORN, economist Juliet Schor, black historian, Manning Marable, historian Howard Zinn, linguist Noam Chomsky, Todd Gitlin, and writers like Gloria Steinem, and Barbara Ehrenreich…. In any case, the New Party clearly stands substantially to the left of the mainstream Democratic party.
Obama has even mentioned he has read and been influenced by Marxists. For example, in this Accuracy in Media article, this fact is pointed out:
In his books, Obama admits attending “socialist conferences” and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a “hard-core academic Marxist,” which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.
However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his “poetry” and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just “Frank.”
The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What’s more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.
BERTHA LEWISis a name in infamy, thanks to a “pimp and ho” undercover job. But her and Obama’s ties are well-known as illustrated in the above video. However, many do not search out the ties some of these people have. Not only that, but often times one need only go to the “horses mouth” to find this radicalism:
This is one reason that Arizona has canceled radical ethnic classes that go under the guise as multiculturalism but in fact want to create racist separatism in its place. One candidate for office rightly calls some of these people terrorists. Navy veteran, patriot and fierce Obama critic, Les Philip, is running for Republican candidate for Congress, Alabama. He makes the point that the person whom Obama started his political career in the home of is really a terrorist:
As one can see from the following video, Obama was closer to Ayers that at first imagined, not to mention that this was a great political ad that failed to reach the hearts of enough people:
ZOMBLOG got his hands on a photo of Barack Obama reviewing a Bill Ayers book:
From this we can surmise that Obama was aware of Ayers. Further more, Ayers mentions Obama on page 82 of that book reviewed by Obama (FLOPPING ACES):
Ayers omits any discussion of his famous 1970 statement, “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.” He also omits any discussion of his wife Bernardine Dohrn’s famous reaction to the Manson killings, as conveyed by journalist Peter Collier: “Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!” (In a 1993 Chicago Magazine profile, Dohrn claimed, implausibly, that she’d been trying to convey that “Americans love to read about violence.”)(REASON)
So we know that some of Obama’s closest political ties are radical socialist, communists, or Marxists. But let’s not try to differentiate between all the minutia between them, let’s just call them statists. Statists want a government similar to the below:
Obama, then, and the left, would speak in terms similar — or at least more at home in — a camp of statist terms and understanding. Let’s see how these few examples fair after this quote:
“From Each According To His Ability, To Each According To His Need (Or Needs)”
Karl Marx, In His 1875 Critique Of The Gotha Program
Attorney General Eric Holder maligned Arizona law enforcement, said publicly that the state’s new immigration law is prone to racial profiling, and he hadn’t even read the law.
More than a year and half after Barack Obama was elected commander in chief, the governor of Hawaii is now publicly voicing the alleged exact location of Obama’s birth, saying “the president was, in fact, born at Kapi’olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii.”
The disclosure is believed to be the first time a state government official has declared the precise place where Obama was born, despite numerous other published claims, including some for a different hospital in Honolulu.
“It’s been an odd situation,” Lingle said, referring to the continuing controversy over the disputed natural-born citizenship of Obama. “This issue kept coming up so much in the campaign, and again I think it’s one of those issues that is simply a distraction from the more critical issues that are facing the country.
“So I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health, and we issued a news release at that time saying that the president was, in fact, born at Kapi’olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that’s just a fact and yet people continue to call up and e-mail and want to make it an issue and I think it’s again a horrible distraction for the country by those people who continue this.”
