Secular left and Islamic/Islamist left, united. Marxism / Socialism and Islam, are ideological brothers, both are, utopian, anti-capitalism, big state, regulate society, anti-israel, antijudaism, antichristianity, anti-individual liberty, anti-American, trans-national, wants limits of thought and speech freedom, androgyny, against marriage protection, monopolism, etc. (See more from a chapter by Melanie Phillips, HERE)
Socialism
Hugh Hewitt | John Bolton
National Security Adviser, John Bolton, is interviewed by Hugh Hewitt. Topics visited are the Iranian Red Guard being designated a terror group, our possible responses to Venezuelan aggression to its own people, and the like. An important interview for the geo-political world we live in.
Someone I know on my Facebook posted a link to every “lie” Trump has told. This was my response:
All of Trump’s “lies,” combined, aren’t as bad as the press being led (willingly) by Ben Rhodes to publish lies about the Iran deal: “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. They literally know nothing” (BEN RHODES LIED).
BEN RHODES REVEALS HOW OBAMA DUPED AMERICA INTO THE DANGEROUS IRAN DEAL
…Rhodes and Obama knew that, for anyone but the hard-left to accept a deal with America’s bitter enemy in Tehran, a new narrative needed to emerge, even if it was relatively transparent nonsense. As Rhodes explained to his bemused interviewer, David Samuels, in a New York Times Magazine profile this weekend, it was first necessary to lie to a corrupted and inexperienced American media about all sorts of things, beginning with the nature and intentions of the enemy Iranian regime. Subsequent lies were caked on, as the White House took advantage of a dangerous mix of journalists’ ignorance, their ideological and partisan commitment to the administration, and, finally, their career aspirations.
Rhodes said, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns… They literally know nothing.” Thus they will believe what he tells them. He also tells friendly non-governmental organizations and think tanks what he is telling the journalists. Those outlets produce “experts” whose expert opinion is just what Rhodes wants it to be. These ignorant young journalists thus have quotes that look like independent confirmation of the White House’s lies. Here’s how Samuels describes the scene:
In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. ‘We created an echo chamber,’ [Rhodes] admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. ‘They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.’ (emphasis added)…
That one deal funded lots and lots of terrorism and death… Via the Obama (and “would-be” Hillary) admin.
Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran deal that funded an increased monetary support of terrorism via the Obama administration.
This ONE ACT by Trump (defunding and designating Iran as a terrorist group) — that one act is more noble than all Trump’s “lies” and ignorance.
And here are a plethora of fake news declarations about Trump that bombed with time (DAILY CALLER). Donald Trump, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Sara Carter, Chuck Ross, John Solomon, Mollie Hemingway, and others, have had two years of their writings confirmed. Whereas CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, NYT, WaPo, etc, we’re shown to be wrong.
GPA Redistribution – It’s Only Fair
Would college students support a policy that would force those with high GPAs to donate part of their own GPA to help those with lower grades? With the recent rise of politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, more people than ever support socialist policies. But would they support socialist policies when it came to their GPA? We went to Florida International University to find out.
Here is an old one not set-up as well: Every year college YAF chapters submit a GPA Redistribution video, and this year, Davidson won (h-t, ACE OF SPADES):
The “Alt-Right” Is Anything But “Right”
(D’Souza released a partial clip in August of 2018) D’Souza Gets White Supremacist Richard Spencer To Admit Being A Socialist…
What is the alt-right? What is its worldview? How big is it? Michael Knowles, bestselling author and host of The Michael Knowles Show, took a deep dive into alt-right culture. Here’s what he learned.
Capitalism vs. Socialism (Prager U)
Decades after capitalism seemed to have triumphed over socialism, politicians are once again arguing about the merits and drawbacks of these opposing economic systems. Why are we still having this debate? Andy Puzder, former CEO of the parent company of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., explains the misconceptions that keep the debate alive.
Scandinavian Socialism (Stossel Update)
WATCH the documentary on Amazon Prime: “Sweden: Lessons for America?” (1-hour)
(Jump to the challenges directed at me dealing with America protecting these smaller countries)
The Myth
Gay Patriot introduces us to the myth often put forward by the left. This post by Gay Patriot will add to the video by Bill Whittle that follows it:
One of the myths Progressive Leftists elevate to “fact” by constantly repeating it to each other is the idea that Scandinavian countries are the closest on Earth fulfillment to their socialist dream utopia. ~ Gay patriot
Kyle Smith, writing in the NY Post, digs a little deeper and discovers that, like almost everything Progressive leftists believe, the Myth of Scandinavian Utopia really is as much a myth as the college rape epidemic, the genius of Barack Obama, or the popularity of gun control.
Visitors say Danes are joyless to be around. Denmark suffers from high rates of alcoholism. In its use of antidepressants it ranks fourth in the world. (Its fellow Nordics the Icelanders are in front by a wide margin.) Some 5 percent of Danish men have had sex with an animal. Denmark’s productivity is in decline, its workers put in only 28 hours a week, and everybody you meet seems to have a government job. Oh, and as The Telegraph put it, it’s “the cancer capital of the world.”
So how happy can these drunk, depressed, lazy, tumor-ridden, pig-bonking bureaucrats really be?
I think my favorite paragraph is where he cites the Scandinavian Social Contract as the “Ten Commandments of Buzzkill.”
“You shall not believe that you are someone,” goes one. “You shall not believe that you are as good as we are,” is another. Others included “You shall not believe that you are going to amount to anything,” “You shall not believe that you are more important than we are” and “You shall not laugh at us.”
They read like the 10 Commandments of Progressive Leftism…
Economics 101
In an excellent Bloomberg article entitled, “Booming Sweden’s Free-Market Solution,” the myth is dismantled in toto by Anders Aslund. Here is a snippet:
…From 1970 until 1989, taxes rose exorbitantly, killing private initiative, while entitlements became excessive. Laws were often altered and became unpredictable. As a consequence, Sweden endured two decades of low growth. In 1991-93, the country suffered a severe crash in real estate and banking that reduced GDP by 6 percent. Public spending had surged to 71.7 percent of GDP in 1993, and the budget deficit reached 11 percent of GDP.
TURNING POINT
The combination of the crisis and the non-socialist government under Carl Bildt from 1991 to 1994 broke the trend and turned the country around. In 1994, the Social Democrats returned to power and stayed until 2006. Instead of revoking the changes, they completed the fiscal tightening. In 2006, a non-socialist government returned, and Finance Minister Anders Borg, with his trademark ponytail and earring, has led further reforms. Sweden successfully weathered the global financial crisis that started in 2008, and the Financial Times named Borg Europe’s best finance minister last year.
Before 2009, Sweden had a budget surplus, and it has one again. For the past two years, economic growth has been 4 percent on average, and the current-account surplus was 6.7 percent in 2011. The only concerns are the depressed demand for exports caused by the current euro crisis and an unemployment rate that is about 7.5 percent.
Sweden’s traditional scourge is taxes, which used to be the highest in the world. The current government has cut them every year and abolished wealth taxes. Inheritance and gift taxes are also gone. Until 1990, the maximum marginal income tax rate was 90 percent. Today, it is 56.5 percent. That is still one of the world’s highest, after Belgium’s 59.4 and there is strong public support for a cut to 50 percent.
The 26 percent tax on corporate profits may seem reasonable from an American perspective, but Swedish business leaders want to reduce it to 20 percent. Tax competition is fierce in some parts of Europe. Most East European countries, for example, have slashed corporate taxes to 15-19 percent….
Reason.org Weighs in on the “Swedish” experiment, how it got its wealth, noting how it squandered it, and how it is returning to the pre-70’s ideology:
- Sweden is a powerful example of the importance of public policy. The Nordic nation became rich between 1870 and 1970 when government was very small, but then began to stagnate as welfare state policies were implemented in the 1970s and 1980s. The CF&P Foundation video explains that Sweden is now shifting back to economic freedom in hopes of undoing the damage caused by an excessive welfare state.
And do not think for a moment that the free-market has not allowed Sweden or other Nordic nations to get back on their feet. This is is pointed out in the following “101” presentation on economics:
The Above Video Description via Reason.org:
For those of us who place more trust in free markets than state-directed economies, we must inevitably (and repeatedly) confront the skeptical interlocutor who details the “successes” of Swedish social democracy. “If state intervention into the economy is so bad, high taxes so destructive, then why is Sweden such a success?” It’s an irritatingly simple question with a incredibly complicated answer, though I do recommend pointing out, when the conversation turns to health care and secondary education, that nothing, in a state the confiscates a massive portion of your income, is “free.” But as many have pointed out, during its boom years, Sweden was a pretty free market place; from the 1970s through the 1990s—when taxes and regulation dramatically increased—the economy slowed until it spun out in the early 1990s…
[….]
…So here is my bottom line: When some American pundit, with expertise is everything, explains why some European welfare state “works,” or how everything you know is wrong about taxing income at 75 percent, do a little digging, make use of Google Translate, and don’t trust that, because Swedes and Danes tell researchers that they are happy, the United States should introduce “daddy leave” and provide subsidies to syndicalist newspapers.
The best English-language explication of the Swedish model comes from my pal Johan Norberg, who wrote this brilliant piece for The National Interest a few years back. And watch my interview with Norberg on Swedish welfare politics here and on Naomi Klein here.
The following interview is Johan Norberg, author of In Defense of Global Capitalism, sits down with reason.tv’s Michael C. Moynihan to sort out the myths of the Sweden’s welfare state, health services, tax rates, and its status as the “most successful society the world has ever known.”
- See also the Mises article about the health care system entitled: “The Market is Taking Over Sweden’s Health Care.” See also “How Laissez-Faire Made Sweden Rich.”
National Review seems like a good place to continue the theme of showing how the Nordic countries have used the free-market system to recoup what it has lost with previous regulations that crippled free-enterprise. Here is a comparison between Sweden and Venzuala that was helpful in explaining how Sweden has less regulations that us in many places (a recent phenomenon BTW):
Talk to a Bernie Sanders voter about “socialism” — and they can be very insistent about using the word — and you’ll get paeans to Sweden, which is not a socialist country but a country with large, expensive welfare state. The distinction is not trivial: There is relatively little in the way of state-run enterprise in Sweden; the Swedish government is in fact only a 60 percent partner in the postal service. The Swedish government is, alas, in the casino business, albeit in a more transparent way than American government is. On the Heritage economic-freedom rankings, Sweden isn’t that far behind the United States. It has very high taxes, but taxes are not the only burden that governments put on the economy, not necessarily even the most important, and Sweden outscores the United States on a number of important metrics: free trade, property rights, freedom from corruption, investment freedom, monetary policy, etc. The United States’ small edge in the rankings comes mainly from relatively low taxes and a much less regulated labor market.
Reason.org again weighs in on whether Sweden is the right model for the U.S. to emulate:
The Above Video Description:
To the American mind there may be nothing more quintessentially Swedish than the leggy, blond supermodel.
But there’s another Swedish model that inspires almost as much admiration—the Swedish economic model. With a generous welfare state and high living standards, Sweden seems to prove that socialism works. Much of the hope that swept Barack Obama into the White House rests on the belief that America could reach new heights under a regime of enlightened progressivism, that we could be more like the Swedes.
Not so fast, warns Stockholm University sociologist Charlotta Stern: “If an American told me that the US should be more like Sweden I would say I don’t think it’s possible.” The United States can centralize its health care system and pass other laws that mimic Sweden’s welfare state polices, says Stern, but it’s impossible to replicate a culture that allows those policies to operate about as smoothly as possible. Swedish bureaucracies inspire trust, but their American counterparts (DMV, TSA, IRS) inspire punch lines, if not outrage.
But America could emulate some of the Swedish policies that don’t require extensive bureaucracies. Take school vouchers. Teachers unions in America regard the idea as free-market radicalism, but families in Sweden enjoy universal school choice. Sweden adopted its famously progressive policies during the 1970s, but after years of sluggish economic growth the land of ABBA altered its course in the 1990s, adopting a host of free-market reforms, from deregulation to tax cuts.
Although much of the disco-era welfare state remains, economist Andreas Bergh credits the free market reforms with reviving his nation’s economy. “Sweden is moving in the market economic direction,” says Bergh, “but that does not mean America should be moving in the socialist direction.”
What if the two nations continue on in different directions? Maybe some day when America is looking for a way to rejuvenate its economy, pundits will point to a different kind of Swedish model. One that increases individual choice and competition.
“Sweden—A Supermodel for America?” is produced by Daniel B. Klein, and written and produced by Ted Balaker, who also hosts. Shot by Jonathan Liberman and Henrik Devell, with additional production support by Zach Weissmueller and Sam Corcos and post production by Hawk Jensen and Austin Bragg. Special thanks to Niclas Berggren, Martin Borgs, Nils Karlson, and the Ratio Institute.
A Challenge Directed At Me
In conversation about an audio upload to my YouTube Channel of Dennis Prager discussing Bernie Sanders, I was challenged with this:
- Sweden is not a Nato member so how does the US pay for Sweden defense? Pointing at Whittle and saying “because he say they do” won’t cut it.
To which I responded with a quote from an International Business Times article:
Finland is joining military exercises with other Scandinavian countries, as well as several members of NATO, in late May, Finnish media report. The maneuvers called Arctic Challenge will span 12 days, starting May 25, and include nine countries and close to 100 planes. The drills, over Sweden and northern Norway, come amid increased tensions between Russia and its Baltic and Nordic neighbors.
Sweden and Switzerland, which like Finland are not members of NATO, are expected to join the exercise, along with NATO members Norway, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany and the United States. Finland plans to send 16 F-18 Hornet fighter jets, while the other countries will supply Gripen “multirole” fighters, F-16s, Eurofighters and Jet Falcons, as well as transports and tankers, Russian news agency Sputnik reported. The Norwegian armed forces said the purpose of the Arctic Challenge exercise is to “learn to coordinate efforts in complicated flight operations conducted in cooperation with NATO.”
Russia has ramped up military activity along its borders with northern Europe, causing consternation in several Baltic and Nordic countries and pre-emptive actions to head off — or prepare for — a possible military crisis. Latvia, which reported a Russian submarine near its coast in mid-March, is beefing up security on its eastern border, while Finland recently began a letter campaign notifying some 900,000 reservists of their duties in a potential crisis. Sweden also intercepted four Russian planes flying over the Baltic Sea in March with their radios off. Russian jets have been intercepted in other instances while flying in European international airspace….
I also pointed out that this promise went back to the Cold War, and was not known about till a Swedish defense think-tank/security firm uncovered the agreements in 1994. The original story’s link has been lost, but it is here on FOI’s site. FOI’s “about us” page has this:
- FOI is one of Europe’s leading research institutes in the areas of defence and security. We have 1,000 highly skilled employees with various backgrounds. At FOI, you will find everything from physicists, chemists, engineers, social scientists, mathematicians and philosophers to lawyers, economists and IT technicians…. The Armed Forces and the Swedish Defence Material Administration are our main customers. However, we also accept assignments from civil authorities and industry. Our clients from the defence sector place very high demands on advanced research, which also benefits other customers.
Here is the info from the old article via WIKI:
Initially after the end of World War II, Sweden quietly pursued an aggressive independent nuclear weapons program involving plutonium production and nuclear secrets acquisition from all nuclear powers, until the 1960s, when it was abandoned as cost-prohibitive. During the Cold War Sweden appeared to maintain a dual approach to thermonuclear weapons. Publicly, the strict neutrality policy was forcefully maintained, but unofficially strong ties were purportedly kept with the U.S. It was hoped that the U.S. would use conventional and nuclear weapons to strike at Soviet staging areas in the occupied Baltic states in case of a Soviet attack on Sweden. Over time and due to the official neutrality policy, fewer and fewer Swedish military officials were aware of the military cooperation with the west, making such cooperation in the event of war increasingly difficult. At the same time Swedish defensive planning was completely based on help from abroad in the event of war. Later research has shown that every publicly available war-game training, included the scenario that Sweden was under attack from the Soviets, and would rely on NATO forces for defence. The fact that it was not permissible to mention this aloud eventually led to the Swedish armed forces becoming highly misbalanced. For example, a strong ability to defend against an amphibious invasion was maintained, while an ability to strike at inland staging areas was almost completely absent.
In the early 1960s U.S. nuclear submarines armed with mid-range nuclear missiles of type Polaris A-1 were deployed outside the Swedish west coast. Range and safety considerations made this a good area from which to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike on Moscow. The submarines had to be very close to the Swedish coast to hit their intended targets though. As a consequence of this, in 1960, the same year that the submarines were first deployed, the U.S. provided Sweden with a military security guarantee. The U.S. promised to provide military force in aid of Sweden in case of Soviet aggression. This guarantee was kept from the Swedish public until 1994, when a Swedish research commission found evidence for it. As part of the military cooperation the U.S. provided much help in the development of the Saab 37 Viggen, as a strong Swedish air force was seen as necessary to keep Soviet anti-submarine aircraft from operating in the missile launch area. In return Swedish scientists at the Royal Institute of Technology made considerable contributions to enhancing the targeting performance of the Polaris missiles.
Some More Discussion
In this first back-and-forth, I noted some of the above and got this response:
- Seems Sweden is searching for the viable balance of Capitalism and Socialism. Good for them. Bernie Sanders seeks the same.
To which I respond:
They want [and have] a lower tax rate than Sanders wants. They dumped their “wealth tax” and “death tax.” They lowered their corporate tax-rate and want it at 20% and below. Lessened regulations on businesses… on-and-on.
Bernie wants the 70’s through 90’s Sweden… I am down with the 2006 and beyond Sweden.
Someone else joined the discussion, and mentioned the following:
- My family is Swedish and I can tell you with 100% accuracy they are way better off than we are…. Across the board pretty much.
Again, I respond:
There is a Swedish economist in the post that from first hand experience (and expertise in his field) telling you they are where they are because of the free market and a reduction [greatly] of the welfare state/socialism enterprise. [And, BTW, they use the many life saving drugs produced by the profit motivated “Big Pharma” spending on R&D to extend the lives of their fellow Swedes.]
When you get all these health care services for “free” then people start taking them for granted, calling ambulances without second thoughts, and going to the doctor for simple things that you don’t really need to see a doctor for… False alarms for ambulances and fire trucks end up costing the government and indirectly tax payers huge amounts of money every year. Which is why Sweden has as of late started to reform its health care system by privatizing parts of it. Mind you, these are somewhat limited in scope, but people are able to pay now for private care (1-in-10 now have private insurance/health-care).
…The paradox is that America has been doubling down on government authority over healthcare with the Affordable Care Act, just as more and more European governments, including Denmark, England, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, have been forced by public outcry to address the unconscionable waits for care by introducing new laws. But it is even more essential for American voters to realize, and for our government leaders to acknowledge, what other countries are beginning to recognize all over the world. These governments have started to understand that the cure for their failed nationalized health systems is a shift to privatization. And citizens under government-dominated health systems are increasingly circumventing their own systems, pursuing private healthcare to solve the uniformly poor access to care and limited choices.
Let’s consider Sweden, often heralded as the paradigm of a successful welfare state. The facts tell a very different story. Having failed its citizens in healthcare access, the Swedish government has aggressively introduced private market forces into healthcare to improve access, quality, and choices. Although once entirely public, over a quarter of Swedish primary care clinics are now run by the private sector. Sweden’s municipality governments have increased spending on private care contracts by 50% in the past decade. Private nursing facilities now receive substantial public funding to care for patients. Widespread private sector competition has also been introduced into pharmacies to tear down the pre-2009 monopoly over all prescription and non-prescription drugs. Since the Swedish government sold over half of its pharmacies to private firms in 2009, 20 private firms entered the market and over 300 new pharmacies opened, not only improving accessibility but providing the first pharmacies ever to many small towns.
Moreover, despite the fact that an average Swedish family already pays nearly $20,000 annually in taxes toward healthcare according to Swedish economist Per Bylund, about 12% of working adults bought private insurance in 2013, a number that has increased by 67% over the last five years. Half a million Swedes now use private insurance, up from 100,000 a decade ago, even though they are already “guaranteed” public healthcare….
(Hoover Insitute, “Defining Ideas: The Surprising International Consensus on Healthcare“)
Gay Patriot ends the beginning of this post well:
…In the pre-Reagan Era, the media was just as left-leaning and reluctant to discuss the poverty and oppression that permeated the Soviet Union. But there were enough people willing to talk about it outside the media for the truth to get out. The pervasiveness of social media should make it easier, not harder, for conservatives to get a message out around the media gatekeepers. Millennials should be told what happened in Venezuela after his ideological brother Hugo Chavez took over; they should be told how toilet paper became a black market commodity and supermarket shelves became bare. And they should be made aware that Sweden is not quite the utopia they’ve been taught it is, either.
Venezuelans Send Message To Americans
Attendees seemed to overwhelmingly agree on one thing: Don’t do it. But the Dems with the NEW GREEN DEAL are trying (via: CAMPUS REFORM):
See my SOCIALISM SECTION of my Econ 101 Page.
Ocasio-Cortez’s 70% Tax Hike Fact Checked
HAT-TIP to TWITCHY:
The Democrats Lurch More Antisemitic
UPDATE, two explicitly anti-Semitic women voted in by Democrats. GATESTONE has more:
Ilhan Abdullahi Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Harbi Tlaib of Michigan will be the first two Muslim women ever to serve in the US Congress. Most of the media coverage since their election on November 6 has been effusive in praise of their Muslim identity and personal history.
Less known is that both women deceived voters about their positions on Israel. Both women, at some point during their rise in electoral politics, led voters — especially Jewish voters — to believe that they held moderate views on Israel. After being elected, both women reversed their positions and now say they are committed to sanctioning the Jewish state.
America’s first two Muslim congresswomen are now both on record as appearing to oppose Israel’s right to exist. They both support the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Both are also explicitly or implicitly opposed to continuing military aid to Israel, as well as to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — an outcome that would establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Instead, they favor a one-state solution — an outcome that many analysts believe would, due to demographics over time, replace the Jewish state with a unitary Palestinian state.
Ilhan Omar, who will replace outgoing Rep. Keith Ellison (the first Muslim elected to Congress) in Minnesota’s 5th congressional district, came to the United States as a 12-year-old refugee from Somalia and settled in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, in the late 1990s.
In her acceptance speech, delivered without an American flag, Congresswoman-elect Omar opened her speech in Arabic with the greeting, “As-Salam Alaikum, (peace be upon you), alhamdulillah (praise be to Allah), alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah.” She continued:
“I stand here before you tonight as your congresswoman-elect with many firsts behind my name. The first woman of color to represent our state in Congress. The first woman to wear a hijab. The first refugee ever elected to Congress. And one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress.”
Omar faced some controversy during the campaign, including a disturbing report that she had married her own brother in 2009 for fraudulent purposes, as well as a tweet from May 2018 in which she refers to Israel as an “apartheid regime,” and another tweet from November 2012, in which she stated: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
[….]
After her primary win on August 7, however, Tlaib radically shifted her positions on Israel, so much so that Haaretz suggested that she pulled a “bait-and-switch.”
In an August 14 interview with In These Times magazine, Tlaib was asked whether she supported a one-state or two-state solution. She replied:
“One state. It has to be one state. Separate but equal does not work…. This whole idea of a two-state solution, it doesn’t work.”
Tlaib also declared her opposition to US aid for Israel, as well as her support for the BDS movement.
When asked why she accepted money from J Street, Tlaib said that the organization endorsed her because of her “personal story,” not her policy “stances.”
In an August 13 interview with Britain’s Channel 4, Tlaib revealed that she subscribes to the specious concept of intersectionality, which posits that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is fundamentally a dispute between “white supremacists” and “people of color.”
When Tlaib was asked about her position on Israel, she replied, “I grew up in Detroit where every single corner of the district is a reminder of the civil rights movement.”
When Tlaib was asked whether, once in Congress, she would vote to cut aid to Israel, she replied: “Absolutely. For me, US aid should be leverage.”….
JIHAD WATCH also chimes in with the Left’s love for diversity at the expense of hatred:
…The hijabed (and therefore pro-Sharia) Ilhan Omar, meanwhile, is even more hateful than Tlaib. According to the Daily Wire, in 2012 Omar tweeted: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel.” Challenged about this tweet much more recently, she doubled down and attacked the man who called attention to the tweet: “Drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime is far from hating Jews. You are a hateful sad man, I pray to Allah you get the help you need and find happiness.”
There is much, much worse about Omar. David Steinberg of PJ Media has done extraordinary work in shedding light on aspects of Omar’s record that the establishment media has steadfastly ignored. Steinberg reports that Omar has “faced allegations — soon backed by a remarkable amount of evidence — that she had married her own brother in 2009, and was still legally his wife. They officially divorced in December 2017. The motivation for the marriage remains unclear. However, the totality of the evidence points to possible immigration fraud and student loan fraud.” What’s more, she swore to apparent falsehoods in court.
But Leftists rarely have to answer for their corruption, and in a Democrat House, Omar will much more likely be celebrated than investigated. She and Tlaib will enjoy establishment media accolades as they pursue their hard-Left, anti-American, anti-Israel agenda. Their presence in the House of Representatives may be evidence of “diversity,” but it is also a disquieting sign of the continued dominance of identity politics, and the increasing balkanization of the American body politic. Forthrightly pro-America, pro-Israel candidates would stand little to no chance in either of their districts. And that is indicative of a much larger problem.
More HERE as well
Continuing with the Older Post…
EDITOR’S COMMENTS
Democrats lurch not just Leftward, but incestuously as well. Ilhan Omar won the Democratic primary for Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District late Tuesday evening, beating her [Democrat] opponent, Margaret Anderson Kelliher, who outspent her (DAILY CALLER). Remember, she is the woman busted by POWERLINE and JIHAD WATCH for marrying her brother. She is anti-Israel, as well as being most likely against homosexuals and Jews… although she won’t speak about it.
Keith Ellison won his bid for Minnesota Attorney General. This is a man I have posted about often, as well as others regarding Keith’s racist ties (GOP, TABLET MAG, WASHINGTON FREE BEACON, WEEKLY STANDARD, NATIONAL REVIEW, and others like JIHAD WATCH). His anti-Semitism is legend (really, the anti-Semitic/anti-Israel Democrat voters in that district), as well as the newest charge of treating women like Muhammad. Alan Dershowitz even said he would leave the Democrat Party if Ellison was elected DNC Chair. I guess the number two spot doesn’t count?
- Side-Note: The Anti-Semitism is getting SOO bad, that many have left the ranks of the Women’s March and started a pro-Jewish WMFA (Women’s March for All).
NOT to mention a man (“Christine” Hallquist) masquerading as a woman who won HIS primary as well. That doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the self-described PROGRESSIVE platform he ran on. He beats around the bush (pun intended) when asked about his obvious socialism.
Add the socialist cherry on top and you have quite a mix!
- Are Democratic-Socialists the New Tea Party?
- Democrats Favor Socialism Over Capitalism… Sorta
- Hiding in Plain Sight – DSA
- DNC Chair Says Socialism Future of Democrat Party
- Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The Democratic Party’s Obituary
- The Democratic Establishment Takes a Beating
- Is Democracy A Means Or An End To Democratic Socialists Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
Etc., etc.
(ACE OF SPADES has a good wrap up of the latest election nonsense.)
Another Post Combined
- Eight House Democrats have met with notorious racist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan during their time in Congress
- Four of those House Democrats now refuse to denounce Farrakhan (and two others have misled the public about their prior relationships with him)
- Farrakahn’s close ties to the Democratic Party have re-emerged as a political issue after he was revealed to have been closer with several House Democrats than they let on. (DAILY CALLER)
There also seems to be ties with the up-n-comer Ayanna Pressley to the Nation of Islam.
THE MOST RECENT EXAMPLES come from Aretha Franklin’s funeral. THE DAILY CALLER fills us in on this apparent “doubling down” on “black Hitler”:
The legendary singer’s funeral prominently featured Farrakhan alongside former President Bill Clinton and MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton.
Holder now leads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) and is reportedly weighing running for president in 2020.
“When asked, Mr. Holder participated in a photo taken with the people on stage at the Aretha Franklin services. It was in no way an endorsement or expression of support for anyone,” NDRC spokesman Patrick Rodenbush told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an email.
Rodenbush did not answer whether Holder is willing to condemn Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism.
Farrakhan’s ties to the Democratic Party have become a source of controversy after a photo emerged showing then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama standing with Farrakhan in 2008.
[….]
Following the publication of the Obama-Farrakhan photo, other prominent Democrats including Reps. James Clyburn of South Carolina and Maxine Waters of California were revealed to have attended events with Farrakhan and have since declined to denounce him.
Clyburn has said he is willing to consider running for Speaker of the House if Democrats retake the lower chamber in November’s midterm elections.
Illinois Rep. Danny Davis described Farrakhan in February as an “outstanding human being” and admitted the two had a personal relationship.
After Davis’s office falsely told the Anti-Defamation League that the congressman had been misquoted, he doubled down on his relationship with Farrakhan in a March interview with this reporter.
Davis easily won his primary in March despite the Farrakhan controversy.
Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison repeatedly attended meetings with Farrakhan during his time in Congress, despite claiming that he had cut ties with the anti-Semite decades earlier.
Despite misleading the public about his Farrakhan ties, Ellison has remained the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and last month won the Democratic nomination for Minnesota attorney general.
The leaders of Women’s March, a popular progressive activist group, similarly sparked controversy by declaring their support for Farrakhan.
The group’s cofounder, Tamika Mallory, attended a Nation of Islam convention where Farrakhan espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Mallory later defended Farrakhan and repeatedly refused to condemn him.
(Updated Info from My HAWAII VACATION CONVERSATION WITH A DEMOCRAT)
Give it a second to load… this is rendering from Facebook…
About Time. We know from a long-time aid to the racist UFO black nationalist anti-Semitic cop killing cult leader that Obama and Farrakhan were close. And we have photos of Michelle Obama with this racist UFO black nationalist cop killing cult leader’s wife.
And we know this racist UFO black nationalist cop killing cult leader was brought into Obama’s church for an award one Sunday, and we also know that this racist UFO black nationalist cop killing cult leader’s personage was placed on Obama’s church’s magazine cover not once, but three times. We also know that some of this racist UFO black nationalist cop killing cult leader’s sermons/speeches were sold in Obama’s church’s book store during his tenure, as well as these outright racist books:
- A Black Theology of Liberation;
- Black Theology & Black Power
(I purchased these and other books myself from Trinity United Church of Christ’s book store online, which was called – Akiba Bookstore)
Here is a small sample to make the point about these books:
“The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
“The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” — James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.62
“White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality” — James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.64
…BUT…
…we haven’t had a clear picture of Barry Soetoro with this racist UFO black nationalist cop killing cult leader… until now:
(Photo credited to Askia Muhammad via TPM)
NATIONAL REVIEW has a lot on this just released photo, but here is the main issue:
A journalist announced last week that he will publish a photograph of then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D) and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan that he took in 2005 at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting, but did not make public because he believed it would have “made a difference” to Obama’s political future.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER, ASKIA MUHAMMAD, TOLD THE TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE THAT HE “GAVE THE PICTURE UP AT THE TIME AND BASICALLY SWORE SECRECY.”
(emphasis added)
BREITBART also joins in to explain the cover-up:
“I gave the picture up at the time and basically swore secrecy,” Muhammad said in an exclusive interview with the Trice Edney News Wire this week. “BUT AFTER THE NOMINATION WAS SECURED AND ALL THE WAY UP UNTIL THE INAUGURATION; THEN FOR EIGHT YEARS AFTER HE WAS PRESIDENT, IT WAS KEPT UNDER COVER.”
As for any debate that the photo could have made a difference in the outcome of the Obama presidential election, Muhammad is emphatic: “I INSIST. IT ABSOLUTELY WOULD HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE.”
(emphasis added)
Our country would have been better off if it had been released, and the press were doing it’s job rather than worshiping Obama as a Messianic figure.
ANALOGY
Gotta keep black racism on the DL in order to get into the Presidency. Mmmm, this is as good a time as ever to update my analogy replacing Bush here to reflect Trump vs. Obama:
…I will use Trump in my analogy. Let us say for twenty years Trump attended a church that twice prominently displayed David Dukes likeness on the cover of their church’s magazine which reaches 20,000 homes, and a third time alongside Barry Mills (the co-founder of the Aryan Brotherhood). Even inviting David Duke to the pulpit to receive a “lifetime achievement award.” Even selling sermons by David Duke in the church’s book store. Authors of sermons sold in Trump’s church’s bookstore teach in accordance with Christian Identity’s view that Jews and blacks are offspring of Satan and Eve via a sexual encounter in the Garden of Eden. In the church’s bookstore, the entire time Trump attended, books like Mein Kampf (Hitler) and My Awakening (David Duke), and other blatantly racist books were sold. Even members of the Aryan Brotherhood felt comfortable enough to sit in the pews at times… being that the pastor of Trump’s church was once a reverend for the group.
…if Trump had gone to a church like that I would walk arm-n-arm with my Democratic comrades in making sure he would never be President. Wouldn’t this be expected of me?
Here is the “not”-analogy of Obama:
Obama’s pastor not only was a minister in The Nation of Islam, an anti-Semitic/racist group, but the church’s book store sells sermons by Louise Farrakhan, who teaches that the white man was created on the Island of Cyprus by a mad scientist, Yakub. (Mr. Farrakhan also believes he was taken up on a UFO to meet God, and was told he was a little messiah, take note also that he was directly involved in the deaths of police officers as well.) Louise Farrakhan was featured twice on the church’s magazine which reach 20,000[plus] homes in the Chicago area. Even placing on the cover with Louise Farrakhan a third time the founder of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad. Elijah Muhammad likewise taught that the white man was created by Yakub 6,600 years ago. Walter, Louise Farrakhan teaches that the Jews in Israel do not belong there, and that the true Jews are the black people. Louise Farrakhan was invited into Obama’s church, to the pulpit and given a “lifetime achievement award.” In fact, the New Black Panthers and members of the Nation of Islam often times sat in the pews for sermons by Rev. Wright, whom Obama called a mentor. Not to mention Obama’s wife pictured with racist, anti-Semetic, UFO cult members.
So I expect you, [insert Leftist name], to join arm-and-arm with me on finding out why the media, and Democrats who are so concerned about racism let such a man into office, when, if the tables were turned, I wouldn’t want in office.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ is correct when he says “that any Democrat who meets with the ‘bigot’ Louis Farrakhan should resign from office, and said there should be no tolerance for any association with the Nation of Islam leader.” Continuing he notes,
“Farrakhan is a bigot,” Dershowitz said on Fox News. “He is far worse than David Duke. Why? Because Farrakhan has a large following, David Duke is a joke.”
“He ought to be treated the way we treat David Duke,” he said. “If any Republican dared to meet with David Duke, that would be the end of their career.”
“It should be the end of the career of any Democrat who has any association with this bigot Farrakhan,” Dershowitz added.
Keith Ellison, the No. 2 Democrat at the Democratic National Committee, had said he stopped meeting with Farrakhan before 2006, but it was later confirmed he was at a private meeting with Farrakhan in 2015.
Washington Post gave Ellison four Pinnochios for lying when he said his relationship with Farrakhan ended more than a decade ago.
“This is the leadership of the Democratic Party,” Dershowitz said…….
See much more here:
Here is my video a few months before the 2008 election:
The Bible Assumes Private Property and Business Ownership
(Originally posted February 2011)
Here is a great quote from Dr. Grudem:
A. PRIVATE PROPERTY
According to the teachings of the Bible, government should both document and protect the ownership of private property in a nation.
The Bible regularly assumes and reinforces a system in which property belongs to individuals, not to the government or to society as a whole.
We see this implied in the Ten Commandments, for example, because the eighth commandment, “You shall not steal” (Exod. 20:15), assumes that human beings will own property that belongs to them individually and not to other people. I should not steal my neighbor’s ox or donkey because it belongs to my neighbor, not to me and not to anyone else.
The tenth commandment makes this more explicit when it prohibits not just stealing but also desiring to steal what belongs to my neighbor:
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exod. 20:17).
The reason I should not “covet” my neighbor’s house or anything else is that these things belong to my neighbor, not to me and not to the community or the nation.
This assumption of private ownership of property, found in this fundamental moral code of the Bible, puts the Bible in direct opposition to the communist system advocated by Karl Marx. Marx said:
The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property.
One reason why communism is so incredibly dehumanizing is that when private property is abolished, government controls all economic activity. And when government controls all economic activity, it controls what you can buy, where you will live, and what job you will have (and therefore what job you are allowed to train for, and where you go to school), and how much you will earn. It essentially controls all of life, and human liberty is destroyed. Communism enslaves people and destroys human freedom of choice. The entire nation becomes one huge prison. For this reason, it seems to me that communism is the most dehumanizing economic system ever invented by man.
Other passages of Scripture also support the idea that property should belong to individuals, not to “society” or to the government (except for certain property required for proper government purposes, such as government offices, military bases, and streets and highways). The Bible contains many laws concerning punishments for stealing and appropriate restitution for damage of another person’s farm animals or agricultural fields (for example, see Exod. 21:28-36; 22:1-15; Deut. 22:1-4; 23:24-25). Another commandment guaranteed that property boundaries would be protected: “You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess” (Deut. 19:14). To move the landmark was to move the boundaries of the land and thus to steal land that belonged to one’s neighbor (compare Prov. 22:28; 23:10).
Another guarantee of the ownership of private property was the fact that, even if property was sold to someone else, in the Year of Jubilee it had to return to the family that originally owned it:
It shall be a Jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan (Lev. 25:10).
This is why the land could not be sold forever: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lev. 25:23).
This last verse emphasizes the fact that private property is never viewed in the Bible as an absolute right, because all that people have is ultimately given to them by God, and people are viewed as God’s “stewards” to manage what he has entrusted to their care.
The earth is the LORD’S and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein (Ps. 24:1; compare Ps. 50:10-12; Hag. 2:8).
Yet the fact remains that, under the overall sovereign lordship of God himself, property is regularly said to belong to individuals, not to the government and not to “society” or the nation as a whole.
When Samuel warned the people about the evils that would be imposed upon them by a king, he emphasized the fact that the monarch, with so much government power, would “take” and “take” and “take” from the people and confiscate things for his own use:
So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day” (1 Sam. 8:10-18).
This prediction was tragically fulfilled in the story of the theft of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite by Ahab the wicked king and Jezebel, his even more wicked queen (see 1 Kings 21:1-29). The regular tendency of human governments is to seek to take control of more and more of the property of a nation that God intends to be owned and controlled by private individuals.
- Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010], 261-263.
SOCIALISM likewise is the taking over of private property, industry, and the capital of a man’s labor. Here is a good working definition of socialism followed by Professor Richards describing it as well:
In order to have a “favorable” view of socialism one must have either forgotten what the entire world learned about socialism from the late nineteenth century on, or have never learned anything about it in the first place. The latter is obviously true of much of the younger generation.
Socialism started out being defined as “government ownership of the means of production,” which is why the government of the Soviet Union confiscated all businesses, factories, and farms, murdering millions of dissenters and resisters in the process. It is also why socialist political parties in Europe, once in power, nationalized as many of the major industries (steel, automobiles, coal mines, electricity, telephone services) as they could. The Labour Party in post-World War II Great Britain would be an example of this. All of this was done, ostensibly, in the name of pursuing material “equality.”
In the foreword to the 1976 edition of his famous book, The Road to Serfdom, Nobel laureate economist Friedrich Hayek wrote that the definition of “socialism” evolved in the twentieth century to mean income redistribution in pursuit of “equality,” not through government ownership of the means of production but through the institutions of the welfare state and the “progressive” income tax. The means may have changed, but the ostensible end—equality—remained the same.
Hayek’s mentor, fellow Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, explained in his classic treatise Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, that the welfare state, the “progressive” income tax, and especially pervasive government regulation of business were all tools of “destructionism” in the eyes of the socialists of his day. That is, he observed that the proponents of socialism always employed a two-pronged approach: (1) the government takeover of as many industries and as much land as possible, and (2) attempts to destroy existing capitalist societies with onerous taxes, regulations, the welfare state, inflation, or whatever they thought could get the job done.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Problem with Socialism (New Jersey, NJ: Regnery, 2016), 4-5.
Democrats Favor Socialism Over Capitalism… Sorta
Here Dennis Prager discusses a recent poll showing that Democrat are in LOVE with socialism. USA TODAY notes the following about the poll:
…According to a Gallup poll published Monday, a majority of Democrats no longer hold a positive view of capitalism, while nearly 60 percent of them feel good about socialism. More than 70 percent of Republicans, on the other hand, see capitalism positively, while only 16 percent of them have a positive view of socialism.
The positive view of socialism among Democrats, and those who lean Democrat, actually dropped a point from 58 percent in 2016. But in those same two years, positive feelings about capitalism plummetted from 56 to 47 percent…
At one point Prager notes that socialism hasn’t made one dime in money… which made me think of this quote from an excellent book:
- A 2009 study by the Swedish Economic Association discovered that the Swedish economy had failed to create any new jobs on net from 1950 to 2005. Thanks to conservative reforms, however, progress was finally being made, and Sweden’s national debt went from 80 percent of GDP in 1992 to 40 percent by 2008.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Problem with Socialism (New Jersey, NJ: Regnery, 2016), 79.
Hiding in Plain Sight – DSA
(DSA = Democratic Socialists of America) Dennis Prager reads from the 2017 “DSA Constitution & Bylaws,” and points out that this is really Communism in socialist drag. Michael Medved recently dealt with the same topic. But, this isn’t socialism. The graphic I use near the end can be found here.