Even a more than 230 year history of democracy in America and a Constitution that champions individual freedom and rights while proscribing those of a federal government won’t prevent the hijacking or transformation of our government into an oppressive one. Unfortunately, we are witnessing and experiencing this firsthand now.
Start with a corrupt and ideologically perverted cabal of well connected individuals, add an adulating and negligent far-left press, influential and implacable liberals and idealists, a benighted populating that is more concerned with hedonistic pursuits than education and politics and you have the perfect storm for such an occurrence. Of course, it helps when the offending politicians have full and functionally unopposable powers in the legislative branch.
Most recently, this has occurred in Russia and Cuba. Let’s forcefully thwart it here before it is too late!
Castro, Obama and the Rule of Law
Floyd and Mary Beth Brown 7/10/2010
This week we had the pleasure of sharing a summer barbecue with a refugee from Cuba. Our dinner conversation was starkly different than most.
This refugee came to the United States as a young boy in the early 1960s. His family was more fortunate than most as they were able to bring a suitcase and $100 when they fled Castro's newly formed revolutionary paradise.
Our dinner consisted of all-American fare: hamburgers, potato salad, watermelon and fresh ears of sweet corn. This is a menu shared with family and friends nationwide, while celebrating the birth of our beloved America on the Fourth of July.
We began with a simple discussion about our country and the direction it has taken since Barack Obama came to power. We shared the usual complaints about the sour economy and liberal social engineering emanating from the rulers in Washington.
But then he said it. The sentence came naturally. I assume it was unplanned. But it carried the weight of a freight train.
"You know when Castro took power, none of us knew he was a Communist."
We sat stunned. He continued, "Yes, we all thought he was a patriot, a nationalist. Before the revolution he didn't sound like a radical."
The comparison at this point was easy, and I interjected, "You mean just like Barack Obama?"
He responded, "Yes, just like Barack Obama."
He continued, "We were all shocked as the government just continued to grab more power. First they said the revolution is over, so please turn in your guns. We all complied."
"I remember my uncle saying after it started, 'Castro will only nationalize some of the big industries, he will never come and take our family hardware store.' But that is exactly what happened, Castro started with the sugar mills and the large industries, but they eventually came and knocked on the door of our family hardware store. My family had run this store for generations. They said we now own the hardware store, you work for us.
And that nice, large four-bedroom home you own, it is now our property also, and you can move yourself and five children into two rooms of the house because others are moving in with you."
The lesson learned from this discussion is a lesson most Americans refuse to hear. Political leaders can lie about their agenda and once in office they can take totally unexpected turns.
If you had asked us three years ago if we thought General Motors would be nationalized, we would have never believed it. We could never contemplate a country where the rule of law, the most fundamental building block of a justice society would be evaporating just like it did in Castro's Cuba in the early 1960s.
But the news of injustice keeps increasing. Black Panthers are not charged with wrongdoing by the U.S. Department of Justice because their crimes are against whites. The bondholders of GM are stripped of their assets without due process by the government.
Governmental leaders are bribed in full daylight only to have all investigation of the crimes stifled by the Attorney General. The U.S. borders are overrun with crime and illegal activity and the leaders in D.C. act as if it is important to protect the lawbreakers while the innocent are killed and overrun. When local communities attempt to enforce the law, they are ridiculed and threatened as racists and bigots. They are sued by the very administration entrusted with enforcing the law.
Without the rule of law the U.S. Constitution is a sham. Without the rule of law our beloved America is swiftly becoming a country where only the well connected and politically powerful will be safe. As Michelle Malkin has so eloquently explained in her recent book, a culture of corruption has replaced honest government.
The only way this problem will be fixed is by massive citizen action. All honest citizens that want to be treated equally must come together and demand that the favoritism, the bribes, the uneven enforcement of law end now. And yes, it can happen here.
The following editorial by Wayne Allyn Root concisely captures Obama’s stratagem to transform America from a capitalist and democratic country to a communistic/socialistic one with severe abrogation of our rights and freedoms. This is all unfolding rapidly before our eyes facilitated by ruthlessly corrupt and dissembling individuals such as Obama facilitated by a complicit media, unions, ACORN and radical democrats.
If you conclude that what you Obama’s words, actions and behaviors are not in accord with rational behavior expected of someone who has the Nation’s best interests at heart, you are entirely correct.
For a clearer understanding of the whole picture, that is Obama’s previously hidden and intentionally suppressed past, we strongly recommend that you read the “Manchurian President” by Aaron Klein.
Obama is indeed trying to destroy our country from within and must be stopped before it is too late!
Obama's agenda: Overwhelm the system
Wayne Allyn Root
Rahm Emanuel cynically said, "You never want a crisis to go to waste." It is now becoming clear that the crisis he was referring to is Barack Obama's presidency.
Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos -- thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.
Barack Obama is my college classmate (Columbia University, class of '83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University. They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below.
Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival ... and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.
-- Universal health care. The health care bill had very little to do with health care. It had everything to do with unionizing millions of hospital and health care workers, as well as adding 15,000 to 20,000 new IRS agents (who will join government employee unions). Obama doesn't care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?
-- Cap and trade. Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama's biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama "spread the wealth around."
-- Make Puerto Rico a state. Why? Who's asking for a 51st state? Who's asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers. But this has been Obama's plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressman and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.
-- Legalize 12 million illegal immigrants. Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free health care alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America. But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security.
-- Stimulus and bailouts. Where did all that money go? It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions -- including billions of dollars to save or create jobs of government employees across the country. It went to save GM and Chrysler so that their employees could keep paying union dues. It went to AIG so that Goldman Sachs could be bailed out (after giving Obama almost $1 million in contributions). A staggering $125 billion went to teachers (thereby protecting their union dues). All those public employees will vote loyally Democrat to protect their bloated salaries and pensions that are bankrupting America. The country goes broke, future generations face a bleak future, but Obama, the Democrat Party, government, and the unions grow more powerful. The ends justify the means.
-- Raise taxes on small business owners, high-income earners, and job creators. Put the entire burden on only the top 20 percent of taxpayers, redistribute the income, punish success, and reward those who did nothing to deserve it (except vote for Obama). Reagan wanted to dramatically cut taxes in order to starve the government. Obama wants to dramatically raise taxes to starve his political opposition.
With the acts outlined above, Obama and his regime have created a vast and rapidly expanding constituency of voters dependent on big government; a vast privileged class of public employees who work for big government; and a government dedicated to destroying capitalism and installing themselves as socialist rulers by overwhelming the system.
Add it up and you've got the perfect Marxist scheme -- all devised by my Columbia University college classmate Barack Obama.
Wayne Allyn Root was the 2008 Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee and serves on the Libertarian National Committee.
For those who emigrated from authoritarian regimes and came to America, what is transpiring here right now is frighteningly familiar. They have experienced and heard it before in their ex-homelands and don’t want to see the same pernicious transformation occur here.
The catch-phrases, racial propaganda issues and benign sounding social slogans that Obama and other “socialists” deviously insert in their rhetoric are Trojans that have all been insidiously used in the past as a part of a lethal package for revolutionary changes.
Like Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. The U.S.S.R. for decades. China. North Korea. And in those countries based on Marxism like Cuba.
This is not a path down which America must never travel. Millions are being duped including many of the intelligentsia.
Obama and his cronies must be stopped!
Perspectives Of A Russian Immigrant (No. 9)
By SVETLANA KUNIN 05/18/2010
In May 2008, Sen. Barack Obama delivered a commencement address at Connecticut's Wesleyan University that called for sacrificing in order to build a fair and socially just society.
"We may disagree on certain issues and positions," he said, "but I believe we can be unified in service to a greater good. I intend to make it a cause of my presidency.
Two years later, at this month's commencement at the University of Michigan, President Obama talked about the role of government as a solution to the problems facing America. He complained about a lack of civility in our public debate.
"Throwing around phrases like 'socialist' and 'Soviet-style takeover' and 'fascist right-wing nut' may grab headlines," he said, "but it also has the effect of comparing our government, or our political opponents, to authoritarian and even murderous regimes."
The president's rhetoric mesmerized the students at Wesleyan and persuaded supporters to join his cause for change. But to me and other immigrants from socialist countries, this rhetoric sounded familiar.
American college students, in awe of their new leader and excited about ideals such as social justice, a fair society, equality and the transformation of greedy capitalist systems in which workers are exploited, do not realize these progressive ideas are identical to what students in socialist countries were taught 40 years ago in required classes such as "political economics" and "Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism."
The pleasant platitudes that make up leftist rhetoric are not new.
The policies and actions of this government are almost identical to what took place in countries moving toward socialism throughout the 20th century.
Government appropriation of banks, other financial institutions, medical care, education, natural resources and regulation of speech is what came of centralized power in young socialist societies, leading to totalitarian regimes such as those in the USSR, China, Cuba and North Korea.
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, other Democrats in Congress and the media portray critics of this government as racists, right-wing nuts, Nazis or terrorists, it is more than lack of civility; it is a deliberate, Soviet-style authoritarian tactic to impose conformity on people who happen to disagree with the government's definition of the greater good.
In the Soviet Union, those who dared to criticize the government were called vragy naroda, which translates as enemies of the people.
At his commencement address in Michigan, Obama said we have the option to get our information from any number of blogs, Web sites and cable news shows. This of course requires that we all agree on a certain set of facts to debate from, and that is why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads.
At his next commencement address at Hampton University in Virginia, Obama further aired his concerns about uncontrolled information, which: "becomes a distraction, a diversion. It's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy."
It was much easier to manipulate and direct public opinion in the Soviet Union, where the state apparatus had complete control of all sources of information. Centralized government propaganda and draconian suppression of free speech created an enforced conformity no one could escape.
That is why Obama wants to regulate the Internet and cable news shows so they are "neutral" as defined by the government.
The Soviets demonized the opposition as enemies of the people; American leftists simply define any opposition to them as racist or extremist.
"The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses," said Vladimir Lenin. "He who now talks about the freedom of the press goes backward and halts our headlong course toward socialism."
Young, educated graduates, born in the freest society, figure Obama is not a socialist; he is something new and somehow uniquely qualified to enact tired, old ideas that will result in a new, fair and equal society.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, in a recent sermon in Danbury, Conn., summed it up well: "Dr. King's dream was not to put one black president in the White House. The dream was to make everything equal in everybody's house. President Obama is in the White House to help us get there, but we're not there yet."
An old Soviet joke defines socialist equality as follows: If your neighbor has a cow and you do not, kill your neighbor's cow.
Pelosi to Aspiring Musicians: Quit Your Job, Taxpayers Will Cover Your Health Care
Sounds like socialism … er, communism as in communist Russia of the 1970’s.
We need to stop this transfer of wealth and killer of motivation and productivity which enslaves working individuals and forces them to pay for those who are not contributing.
Obama sees America not as it was intended and how it has been the paradigm of prosperity over its first 232 years. Instead, he envisions and wants to impose a Marxist philosophy that is the antithesis of our values and work ethic. Terry Paulson assessed his mindset as "America must go beyond equal rights and responsibilities to guarantee equal outcomes and entitlement programs to ensure that".
He sums up this approach of Obama’s by noting that:
"As a result, if you work hard, save, postpone gratification, and take care of yourself and your family, you lose. Not only must you support your family; you’re “forced” to support many others."
This is, in essence, legislated servitude or legalized theft. It’s a government shakedown – and consummately repulsive.
“Give Me Individual Liberty Not Government Dependence”
Terry Paulson April 12, 2010
Dennis Prager has recently added a pearl of wisdom to his repertoire of truths—“The larger the government, the smaller the individual.” The biggest danger from President Obama’s march to bigger government rests in what this means to the grounding principles that have made America great. Will America renew its commitment to individual liberty and personal responsibility or give in to government dependence and control?
As current Tea Party demonstrators would agree, Benjamin Franklin criticized King George’s high taxes to pay for the welfare entitlements of his time, “I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act (taxes for welfare), you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on someone else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty.”
Franklin preferred “responsible” caring, "I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it…. Repeal that law (taxes), and you will soon see a change in their manners. Labor…will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them."
Thomas Jefferson concurred, "A wise and frugal government...shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." Abraham Lincoln stressed common sense, “The worst thing you can do for those you love is the thing they could and should do for themselves.”
Our free-enterprise economy has served for over 200 years as the greatest anti-poverty program in human history because it encouraged work, and discouraged idleness, more than any other. Citizens have been free to pursue their American Dream based on the principle that men are created equal in their rights and their responsibilities.
President Obama finds such values outdated. America must go beyond equal rights and responsibilities to guarantee equal outcomes and entitlement programs to ensure that. As a result, if you work hard, save, postpone gratification, and take care of yourself and your family, you lose. Not only must you support your family; you’re “forced” to support many others. Americans have no trouble providing temporary help, but they expect most to bounce back and lift their own weight.
When caring for your neighbor becomes a compulsory obligation imposed by government instead of voluntary, charity turns to confiscation and freedom to achieve to involuntary servitude. To liberals, compassion seems to be defined by how many people are dependent on the government; to conservatives, it’s defined by how many people no longer need help. One promotes dependence, the other freedom, responsibility and achievement.
There is no moral or Constitutional justification for taking money honorably earned from a neighbor to pay for what some citizens can’t afford. With one half of American voters no longer paying income taxes, wealth redistribution has turned envy into legitimized confiscation.
America has always been known for its national optimism--that sense of unlimited possibility. Only a society that allows individuals to secure the rewards from applying their unique talents will ever reap the benefits of human greatness. It’s a tragedy that so many Americans today no longer believe they can realistically achieve their dreams without electing politicians who will take from other citizens to pay for what they can’t provide for themselves.
Incentives matter. You’ll never strengthen the weak by weakening and taking from the strong. Our messy but free republic works because people are free to create value instead of becoming perpetual burdens.
In the midst of a recession, Ronald Reagan said to Americans, “I’m not taking your time this evening to ask you to trust me. Instead, I ask you to trust yourself. That is what America is all about… It’s the power of millions of people like you who will determine what will make America great again.”
Our commitment to individual freedom and responsibility is one of the anchors that has held our country together through our history’s worst economic storms. President Obama would be wise to reaffirm that anchor if he wants our economy to turn around with the resilience that only freedom can produce.
The following hilarious, creative and hard edge and incisive video is a must see if you are disgusted with what Obama and Congressional Democrats have done to healthcare specifically and to our country in general. It is wholely therapeutic – and is performed to classic Stones.
America under Obama is devolving into the Russia of the early 1980’s as most recently evidenced by the audacious and manifestly corrupt passage of the Obamacare legislation which also excludes Obama, members of Congress and their staffs from having to use it. They will continue to have available to them a gold-plated plan with freedom of choice.
The rest of America won’t – we will either have to wait for it or die waiting.
And Obama doesn’t intend to end his pursuit of increasing control and domination by the Federal Government over the lives of us Americans.
America's New Nomenklatura
Investors Business Daily 03/29/2010
Government: With the passage of health care reform and the ongoing boom in federal hiring, it's becoming increasingly clear that America is now run by a new, privileged class of bureaucrats.
For those who remember the old Soviet Union, it was a grim place — at least for average citizens. But not so for those in government. Contrary to the official ideals of equality and a classless society that the ruling communist regime espoused, the USSR created a privileged class of party members inside government — the nomenklatura.
This semipermanent bureaucracy earned higher incomes, got better health care, ate better food and had greater job security than average Russians, the much-despised proletarians. Today, our bloated federal government seems, in significant ways, to be creating this same dynamic.
Take the just-passed health care bill that carefully excluded the White House, congressional leaders and their staffs from having to live under the reforms' restrictions.
"President Obama will not have to live under the Obama health care reforms, and neither will the congressional staff who helped to write the overhaul," said Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. "The message to the people at the grass roots is that it's good enough for you, but not for us."
The hypocrisy of these officials and the contempt they show for average Americans is bad enough. But Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public can also go to jail or be fined up to $250,000 for not buying insurance. And the government is spending $10 billion to hire 16,500 new IRS agents to make sure they don't escape the new system.
Under current budget plans, this won't end soon. With $45 trillion in new government spending planned over the next decade, this new privileged governing class can only grow.
Today, as we witness a massive shift of resources from the private to the public sector, the only place adding jobs is government. Since the start of last year, the federal government has added 81,000 jobs. By contrast, private-sector payrolls have shed 4.71 million.
Big government is the place to be these days. Federal workers are some of the country's best-paid, earning far in excess of their counterparts in the private sector. A recent report in Politico.com, for example, noted that 2,000 congressional staffers now have incomes in excess of $100,000, and that 43 make the $172,500 maximum.
But the bureaucrats — that silent, permanent government that now exceeds 2.8 million in number — make out just as well.
USA Today recently looked at federal pay vs. private pay in 2008 for specific occupations ranging from airline pilot and cook to computer manager and registered nurse. What they found was more than a little disquieting for those in the private sector.
The average federal worker that year took home on average $67,691 in salary, compared with $60,046 in the private sector — a difference of $7,645. Not that much, you say? Well, that was before benefits are factored.
The average government worker gets a whopping $40,785 a year in health care, pension and other benefits compared to $9,882 for a private worker. The difference in total compensation widens to $38,548 a year — for the same job with the same duties.
Anyone who has visited the slow-moving Post Office, talked to the surly and often hostile IRS agent or even gone to the local DMV to spend time in waiting-room hell can tell you that pay gap doesn't represent productivity, training or ability.
What it does represent is the new Nomenklatura — the privileged apparatchiks who now run our government and with it, sadly, much of our lives. This is very much a result of years of "progressive" thinking that has pushed the Democratic Party sharply leftward across the political spectrum.
Since the Civil War, the so-called Progressive Movement's dream has been to exalt bureaucratic expertise and control over free-market efficiency. With the new administration, their dream has become our nightmare.
Americans are under relentless assault by more liberal and far left members of the Federal government as well as the news media. Their purpose? To trivialize opposing points of view and actions in order to facilitate implementation of their radical agenda. That is a major reason for their denigrating the Tea Party Movement as being racist, composed of fringe elements, and not representing average Americans. The same can be said for their attacks on corporations (insurance companies, banks, pharmaceuticals), healthcare providers (including physicians and hospitals) and those in the vanguard exposing the realities of what really is transpiring (Fox News, conservative commentators, Sarah Palin). Diaphanous allegations and ad hominem attacks are their modus operandi.
We must counter their verbal attacks, false allegations and fabrications - persistently and loudly. If we don't and keep acquiescing to the Federal government's increasing restriction of our rights, freedoms and choices as well as their unrestrained confiscation of our hard earned money through taxes and fees, we will have little left. We will end up in a situation not dissimilar to that of communist Russia in the 1970's and early 80's with a privileged, powerful, and corrupt government ruling and repressing the rest of the people, the proletariat, and where there is controlled but not free speech and the government determines most aspects of our daily lives.
Speak loudly and often in defense of your rights so that we can continue to SPEAK FREE!
Speak Free
Media contributed by Tami Peterson Lewiski www.digitaldecorating.com
Obama and many Congressional Democrats aim to pass government run healthcare no matter what the cost, financially or politically. They are arrogantly and relentlessly pursuing this despite the vehement opposition of a large majority of Americans. In fact, both they and the fifth column news media have added the contemptuous tactics of calling Americans who oppose it dumb, ignorant, and too stupid to understand the complexities of the bill. Of course, they have made many other derogatory claims.
As we have mentioned numerous times, THIS IS NOT TRULY ABOUT HEALTHCARE. Obamacare is a crucial piece in the puzzle that will further co-opt the individual’s rights and transfer it to an all powerful and controlling central government. It is a confiscation by legislation of an additional 16% of our economy which would mean that nearly 50% of it is directly owned and controlled by the government.
Have you noticed how many czars and other officials selected by Obama ardently support communism? This is not by accident. It is part of the overall plan.
The rhetoric of Obama and select Democrats regarding healthcare reform are complete lies. There is no cost savings with this plan. In fact, their claimed costs probably underestimate the total 10 year costs by well in excess of three to four trillion dollars. Look at estimates of other federal programs and check out how they turned out. Most were off by a factor of three to ten times.
Unbelievable!
The following expose by Thomas Sowell eloquently and cogently examines the relevant issues and information regarding government controlled healthcare, truths, facts and political motivations.
Other Nations' Health Systems Are Overlooked
By Thomas Sowell 03/03/2010
What is most like Alice in Wonderland in medical care reform is the fact that it is being discussed in the abstract, as if there are not already government-run medical care systems in this country and elsewhere.
Yet there seems to be remarkably little interest in examining how government-run medical care actually turns out — medically and financially — whether in Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration hospitals in this country, or in government-run medical systems in other countries.
We are repeatedly being told that we need to have a government-controlled medical care system because other countries have it — as if our policies on something as serious as medical care should be based on the principle of monkey see, monkey do.
By all means look at other countries, but not just to see what to imitate. See how it actually turns out. Yet there seems to be an amazing lack of interest in examining what government-controlled medical care produces.
While our so-called health care "summit" last week was going on, British newspapers were carrying exposes of terrible, and often deadly, conditions in British hospitals under that country's National Health Service. But this has not become part of our debate on what to expect from government-controlled medical care.
Such scandals are an old story under the National Health Service in Britain, one repeatedly producing fresh scandals that their newspapers carry but ours ignore.
In addition to a whole series of National Health Service scandals in Britain over the years, the government-run medical system in Britain has far less high-tech medical equipment than there is in the United States. Neither in Britain and Canada nor in other countries with government-run medical care systems can people get to see doctors, especially surgeons, in as short a time as in the United States.
It is not uncommon for patients in those countries to have to wait for months before getting operations that Americans get within weeks, or even days, after being diagnosed with a condition that requires surgery. You can always "bring down the cost of medical care" by having a lower level of quality or availability.
But again, you may never learn any of this by following most of the American mainstream media. It is not that they don't make comparisons between medical care in different countries. But they tend to feature news that will promote government-controlled care.
One of the statistics they spin endlessly is that life expectancy in some countries with government-controlled medical care is higher than in the United States. What they don't tell you is that, in some of these countries, all the infants that die are not included in infant mortality statistics, as they are in the United States.
More important, both political and media supporters of government-controlled medical care consistently confuse medical care with health care.
Much, if not most, of health care depends on what individuals do in the way they live their own lives — including eating habits, alcohol intake, exercise, narcotics and homicide. A study some years ago found that Mormons live a decade longer than other Americans. But nobody believes that Mormons' doctors are that much better than other doctors. When you don't do a lot of things that shorten your life, you live longer. That is not rocket science.
Americans tend to have higher rates of obesity, narcotics use and homicide than people in some other countries. And there is not much that doctors can do about that.
If those who make international comparisons were serious, instead of clever, they would compare the things that medical science can have a great effect on — cancer survival rates, for example. Americans have some of the highest cancer survival rates in the world, and for some particular cancers, the very highest.
When you can get to see a doctor faster, and get treatments under way without waiting for months while the cancer grows and spreads, you have a better chance of surviving. That, too, is not rocket science.
But it is also something that you are not likely to see featured in most of the media, where people are promoting their own pet notions and agendas, instead of giving you the facts on which you can make up your own mind.
Some very interesting information is available about Obama’s past both before and during his Presidency. For understandable reasons, the liberal “mainstream” media has conveniently elected not to publicize this information lest they cast an unfavorable light on their Messiah. Of course, anyone else who is sentient could have rather easily surmised this just from his behavior and policies.
If you have some time, check the video and audio clips out. He is far more radical than most people are willing to concede which translates into greater threats to our rights and freedoms as we have already seen this first year. He disguises his nefarious intentions with lies and duplicitous rhetoric.
The upshot of this all is manifest: Obama can’t be trusted!
We all must be vigilant and vocal and relentlessly fight threats to our rights.
Some of Michelle Obama's books on socialism that are sitting on the bookshelves in the White House Library:
Michelle Obama stocked the White House Library with books on socialism.
The big, centralized government rhetoric of the Democratic Party is eerily reminiscent of that of the old Soviet Union which doesn’t bode well for the country or economy. Adding to the problem is the sinister brainwashing of our children to believe in the virtues of a large, powerful centralized government and denigrate capitalism and free choice.
Inexplicably, those who have the most to lose such as American Jews, are actually the most ardent supporters of these far left ideologies.
Perspectives Of A Soviet Immigrant (No. 6)
By Svetlana Kunin
There was an old Soviet saying: If you need to find food to fill your refrigerator, plug it into the microphone of a party leader giving a speech.
Today in America, if we plug a refrigerator into our leader's teleprompter, I suspect the refrigerator will stop working.
Democratic party leaders speak incessantly of limiting profits and regulating salaries.
It brings back to memory another Soviet line: You pretend you are paying us salaries, and we pretend we are working. If bureaucrats predetermine the value of your work, there is no incentive to be productive. This is the quickest way to kill a dynamic economy.
I never expected to hear this kind of rhetoric in the USA. Today, the American educational machine teaches exactly the same points the Soviets taught.
It idealizes Socialist societies and denigrates America, especially its economic system.
American students are brainwashed to despise economic freedom and to yearn for a big government state.
Freed from their parents' control, but intimidated by the relentlessly negative portrayal of America, young Americans look for politicians to show them the way.
As someone who experienced real government-approved anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, I am amazed by the obliviousness of American Jews, the most fervent supporters of left-wing politics.
They support a party that is obsessed with pitting one group against another, and that incessantly plays on envy and hatred for bankers, rich people, big business and doctors.
They fail to notice that the success of Jews, as well as other minorities, in the sciences, business and arts is directly correlated to their freedom from oppressive, centralized control. American Jews who support big government do not understand what their ancestors escaped from.
Persecutions of Jews throughout history all have one thing in common: a centralized power that manipulates and directs people's anger away from themselves onto an easy target.
No matter how much Jews align themselves with the power structure and work for noble causes, they will remain an easy target.
As they said in the Soviet Union pertaining to Soviet Jews: They don't beat your record; they beat your face — meaning that no matter how much you try to assimilate, no matter how many good deeds you do, the centralized power can direct populist anger toward you and crush you when it suits them.
When the Bolsheviks took power after the 1917 proletarian revolution, their first steps were to take control of the banks and the media.
Of course, it is not fair to compare our current American democratic leaders with the Bolsheviks.
Yes, they both use the same slogans in their speeches.
Yes, they both stir up envy and class warfare to distract from their failures.
Yes, both political movements sought control of the banks as the foundation for their new egalitarian vision.
And yes, they are both opposed to free speech, as was made clear by the reaction of American leftists to the recent
Supreme Court decision.
But you would never find a Czar anywhere in the Soviet government.
• Kunin lived in the Soviet Union until 1980, working as a civil engineer. She is now a retired software developer living in Connecticut.
Too many Americans either do not have the perspective to appreciate the freedoms that we have or adhere to a perverted sense of a world utopia (ie. Hollywood liberals) - often after they have benefitted from these very freedoms. Fortunately, as evidenced by the Tea Party movement and the national groundswell of support for recently elected U.S. Senator, Scott Brown, millions of Americans are cognizant of how precious freedom, rights and individuality really are and how ephemeral they can be as evidenced by the proposed and effected changes under the imperious government of the Obama Administration and far left Congressional Democrats.
The following editorial is another prescient editorial written by Svetlana Kunin, a Russian immigrant who persevered under Russian rule and now lives in America.
Perspectives Of A Russian Immigrant (No. 5)
By Svetlana Kunin 01/21/2010
Visitors to national parks are warned not to feed the wildlife because this interferes with the natural survival ability of the animals. Progressives do not make the same connection with human nature.
The image of a country where government takes care of its citizens attracts the liberal mind. This image has two dimensions: fairness and equality.
Many American intellectuals admired the Olympic opening ceremony last summer in Beijing: Hundreds of expressionless men moved and beat their drums in perfect unison, an impressive and symbolic image as, in real life, each man has an allocated and regulated place and function.
Serving Ideology
Hollywood liberals are impressed with Venezuela, where the evil capitalists are kicked out of the country and the government controls the media.
Democratic congressmen admire the idea of the Cuban system. They ignore the fact that the government prohibits its citizens from leaving the country, and foreigners are allowed to see only what the government wants them to see.
Released Soviet archives show how a society can project an image of glory and prosperity, as long as the intended audience is shown only two dimensions. But they also reveal the third dimension: the dimension of cruelty.
In such societies, individuals, science, education, art and sport are subservient to ideology. There are numerous examples.
A whole branch of science — genetics — was eliminated for 20 years when party leaders declared it to be a bourgeois pseudoscience and a "whore of capitalism" because it contradicted the theory of Marxism-Leninism.
Scientists were sent to labor camps or killed. Leading Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov died in prison.
The control of mediocrity over talent is the defining structure of these societies. There are political rules. If you conform, then you are living among equals. If you break the rules, then you suffer. If you are part of the ideological machine, you are a beneficiary of the system. That is why there are former citizens who have fond memories of the USSR.
American Zoo
Such ideological oppression is insidious, and we increasingly find it in America. Already, American parents are forced to send their children to failing schools. Americans will soon find the same to be true of their medical care. Political correctness limits their speech and corrupts their actions, as was on display in the Fort Hood attack.
How can correctness be political? If it is political, then it is an agenda.
In contrast to the progressive vision, the strength of America is built on ideals such as individual liberty and the law of the land. These two dimensions gave life to the third dimension: opportunities.
Americans have the opportunity to make choices free from any centralized control. Free individuals have the opportunity to escape a bad situation, and explore their talents and aptitude. The American Constitution protects individuals from oppressive government.
How do our current political leaders propose to transform America? They ignore the Constitution. They will collect the income of citizens living today and those not yet born. They envision a zoolike country where the citizens are assigned a place to live, to work, the medical care they can get and the food they eat.
Our leaders will be our zookeepers, fairly distributing services and goods. People will rely on zookeepers and forget how to plan their own lives and take care of themselves.
The image of a fair and equal society will be projected, but the third dimension — a bureaucratic cruelty over defenseless individuals — will result. This is not a progressive society; it's an oppressive one. There is no escape from oppressive centralized state control.
Those who support this transformation cannot see beyond the flat two-dimensional image of utopia.
The following investigative article is severely concerning on many different levels including revealing the entrenchment of noxious intolerance of liberals ensconced in powerful and influential places. According to information obtained by Aaron Klein from former radical Harvard race instructor Cornel West, Larry Summers who had been the president of Harvard University and is now the White House economic czar, sought to defame and undermine the credibility of a conservative Harvard professor simply because of his ideology.
There following are several key points and thoughts on the information revealed:
1.) This scheming, intolerant, morally depraved individual Larry Summers was the President of Harvard University which should be a bastion for intellectual discourse and tolerance. Wrong! Furthermore, he was scheming to destroy the reputation of a respected professor simply on ideology alone.
2.) Larry Summers is now the economic czar for the White House. Another arrogant, intolerant individual courted by and surrounding Obama.
3.) On another front, it was this same Larry Summers who opposed strong recommendations for conservative investments of Harvard's endowment funds while he was president and instead invested aggressively. The result: he lost $1.8 billion from the endowment. We guessed that Obama was impressed with this massive loss because he subsequently selected Summers as his economic advisor.
4.) This information was revealed by another professor whose philosophies are on the same side of the aisle though more radical – Cornel West. Even he was offended by such base tactics by Harvard’s president.
5.) Do we really need radical race relations professors like Cornel West who was first at Harvard and is now at Princeton? These individuals, like Obama’s other buddy Henry Jackson of that White House racial beer fest fame, foment more racial hatred and divisiveness than they solve and it is overwhelmingly black on white versus the converse.
6.) Add another radical black nationalist, anti-American to Obama’s circle of close friends. Obama referred to Cornel West as “"not only a genius, a public intellectual, a preacher, an oracle ... he's also a loving person." West is also a personnel friend of Nation of Islam hate monger Louis Farrakhan, an admirer of the Black Panther Party and an adherent of radical black liberation theology – the same destructive ideology that Rev. Wright preaches.
7.) Obama’s associations once again confirm what the preponderance of ever increasing evidence has shown us: he is a vehement racist, radical, anti-American who is consumed by power, narcissism and hateful, destructive ideologies and is intolerant of opposing points of views.
Now for that article...
White House economist: 'F--- up' conservative prof
'I was astounded that the president of Harvard would stoop to such tactics'
By Aaron Klein WorldNetDaily December 06, 2009
According to a university colleague, former president of Harvard and current White House economist Larry Summers once asked for help to "f--- up" one of the school's conservative professors.
Summers' colleague, Cornel West, is a radical race relations instructor who is now a professor at Princeton after departing Harvard in the wake of a dispute with Summers. Obama named West, whom he has called a personal friend, to the Black Advisory Council of his presidential campaign. West was a key point man between Obama's campaign and the black community.
In his recently released memoirs, "Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud," West claims that Summers invited West into his office and asked him to help undermine Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield, who had professed conservative views.
"Help me f--- him up," Summers reportedly said to West without explaining further.
West writes, "For my part, I was astounded that the President of Harvard would stoop to such tactics."
West further related the details of the alleged encounter in a recent interview with Amy Goodman, host of the far-left Democracy Now Internet television network.
Said West: "And as soon as I walked into the office, [Summers] starts using profanity about Harvey Mansfield. I said, 'No, Harvey Mansfield is conservative, sometimes reactionary, but he's my dear brother.' We had just had debates at Harvard. Twelve hundred people showed up. He was against affirmative action; I was for it. That was fine. Harvey Mansfield and I go off and have a drink after, because we have a respect, but deep, deep philosophical and ideological disagreement. He was using profanity, so I had to defend Harvey Mansfield."
"Wait, so you're saying Lawrence Summers was using profanity?" Goodman asked.
Continued West: "Larry Summers using profanity about, you know, 'help me 'F' so and so up.' No, I don't function like that. Maybe he thought that just as a black man, I like to use profanity. I'm not a puritan. I don't use it myself. I have partners who do."
In response to West's claimed meeting with Summers, Mansfield told WND, "Larry Summers was not out to get me."
"I was not present at the famous interview between him and Cornel West, but in my opinion (Summers) merely used my name in a clumsy attempt to cajole Cornel West into behaving more like a professor, less like a celebrity," said Mansfield.
"Larry Summers was doing many good things at Harvard before his enemies there succeeded in ousting him," Mansfield added.
Neither Summers nor West immediately returned WND e-mail and phone requests for comment.
Mansfield is well-known for his opposition to grade inflation at Harvard, which he has publicly blamed in part on affirmative action. His views led to student protests and a well-attended debate with West.
Mansfield also defended President Bush's use of executive powers and has been criticized by some leading feminists for his views on gender roles. He has made statements that men and women have some different societal roles and wrote a book, "Manliness," in which he bemoaned the loss of the virtue of "manliness" in a "gender neutral" society.
Summers, meanwhile, continues to teach at Harvard but lost his position as president in part after a public feud in which West accused him of racism. Summers serves as director of the White House's National Economic Council.
West served as an adviser on Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March and is a personal friend of Farrakhan. He authored two books on race with Henry Louis Gates Jr., who last summer was at the center of controversy after Obama remarked on the Harvard professor's arrest.
Obama's extremist pal slams racist 'American empire'
It was West who introduced Obama at a 2007 Harlem fundraiser, an event featuring about 1,500 people, which served as Obama's first foray into Harlem since he announced his Democratic presidential candidacy.
WND reported that West introduced Obama on stage at the fundraiser after first railing against the "racist" criminal justice system of the "American empire."
A scan of YouTube clips found West introducing Obama at the fundraiser while stating the "American empire is in such a deep crisis" and slamming the "racist criminal justice system" and "disgraceful schools in our city."
"He is my brother and my companion and comrade," said West of Obama.
WND found a video (link:) that shows Obama taking the stage just after West's introduction, expressing his gratitude to West, calling him "not only a genius, a public intellectual, a preacher, an oracle ... he's also a loving person."
Obama asked the audience for a round of applause for West.
From a young age, West proclaimed he admired "the sincere black militancy of Malcolm X, the defiant rage of the Black Panther Party … and the livid black [liberation] theology of James Cone."
Cone's theology spawned Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's controversial pastor for 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ. West was a strong defender of Wright when the pastor's extreme remarks became national news during last year's campaign season.
In 1995, West signed a letter published as an ad in the New York Times that voiced support for cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther.
In 2002, West further signed a "Statement of Conscience" crafted by Not In Our Name, a project of C. Clark Kissinger's Revolutionary Communist Party. He then endorsed the World Can't Wait campaign, a Revolutionary Communist Party project seeking to organize "people living in the United States to take responsibility to stop the whole disastrous course led by the Bush administration."
After branding the U.S. a "racist patriarchal" nation in his book "Race Matters," West wrote, "White America has been historically weak-willed in ensuring racial justice and has continued to resist fully accepting the humanity of blacks."
Also in that book, West claimed the 9/11 attacks gave white Americans a glimpse of what it means to be a black person in the U.S. – feeling "unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence and hatred" for who they are.
"Since 9/11," West wrote, "the whole nation has the blues, when before it was just black people."
The following is the third editorial posted here that was written by Svetlana Kunin, a Russian immigrant who lived in the communist Soviet Union. It offers her unique insights into the parallels of life and rhetoric in Russia and what is occurring here in the United States under Obama, Pelosi and Co. We must be vigilant, aggressive, proactive and vocal and do whatever is necessary to thwart these changes or this will be another example of history repeating itself to our severe detriment.
Perspective Of A Russian Immigrant (No. 3)
By Svetlana Kunin
Whenever I speak about my experiences living in the USSR, my American friends respond that such things can never happen in a democracy like the United States.
They don't understand why I am repulsed when I hear the president talk about "sacrificing for the collective good," which sounds so compassionate, as opposed to greedy capitalism.
"Sacrifice for the collective good" is one of the founding principles of socialism, where the collective, not the individual, is the basis of society.
Revolutionaries in Russia did not go around boasting about destruction; they made inspiring speeches about fairness, equality, justice and the greater good. After securing power and their own access to material goods, government officials decided what to give and take from the masses, according to their definition of what is good.
When party leaders talk about the "collective good," what they are really talking about is their right to determine what is good for the collective. Government bureaucrats decide what level of sacrifice is needed and who needs to sacrifice. They replace voluntary charity with the forceful redistribution of other people's private property.
Why do people born into a free society accept a failed 100-year-old ideology? It seems Americans are simply unaware of modern history. They don't know the theory behind slogans such as "fairness and equality" and "sacrifice for the collective good," much less how it works when implemented. They buy into old utopian slogans masquerading as new progressive ideals for "Hope and Change."
In the USA, people move up and down the economic ladder all the time. In Western Europe, a milder form of a socialist-democratic political system resulted in higher unemployment, less innovation and less social mobility compared with the U.S. European youth face a continuing decline in their standard of living, as they are burdened with an unsustainable welfare state.
In the USSR, China, North Korea and Cuba, a much harsher form of socialism led to mass murder and mass misery under the banner of "sacrificing for the collective good," "fairness and equality" and service to the state.
The USSR provides numerous examples of what an oppressive centralized government can lead to:
Millions of talented artists, writers and scientists were sent to prison because they did not conform to government standards. Government control of agriculture led to constant shortages of food in one of the largest and most resource-rich lands in the world.
Americans think they are protected. The Constitution is a uniquely American document that specifically limits the power of the government and protects individual liberties. But if all branches of government will ignore this unique document, and people will allow them to do so, there will be nothing different about America.
Americans are not different from people in Russia, Germany, China, Korea or anywhere else. It is human nature to seek power and control, just as it is human nature to seek profit. Deny profit and you destroy any incentive for people to produce and innovate. Give up enough of your liberty to any centralized power and the result is entirely predictable.
Compare North Korea to South Korea, East Germany to West Germany before the fall of the wall — these are examples of the same people living under two different systems: socialism vs. capitalism.
Laws are necessary in a civil society, and this includes laws that regulate the free market. But a government takeover of the economy will result in the transformation of the land of opportunity into a land of apathy and stagnation, a land in which individuals become cogs moving and turning according to government regulations.
In the USSR, they taught us in school that socialism is good and capitalism is bad. That they now teach the same in American schools I find strange.
Aside from Rev. Wright and William Ayers, most Americans are unaware of the radicals who have surrounded Obama by mutual choice, many of whom have been appointed to positions of power in “our” government. Their presence, extreme ideologies, scope of power and influence including specifically on our rights and freedoms is nothing short of astounding and dangerous.
We must scrutinize these appointments and fight to expose those individuals who adhere to noxious, anti-individualist ideologies (and frequently concomitant anti-American sentiment) and have them ousted from positions of power. In the expose below, Phyllis Schlafly identifies just a few of these radicals as well as some of their extreme philosophies.
When Weirdos Are Welcome In Washington
By Phyllis Schlafly
Another kooky Barack Obama appointee became publicly known this month and quickly was thrown or voluntarily threw herself under the bus.
Anita Dunn, the White House communications director (who led Obama's war on Fox News), said that Mao Zedong was one of her two favorite "political philosophers" whom "I turn to most" for answers to important questions.
History identifies Mao as a ruthless savage, not as a philosopher. He probably holds the record for ordering the mass murder of more people (50 million to 100 million) than anyone else in history.
Dunn tried to claim that her statement was a joke, but anyone can look at her actual statement on Youtube and see that she spoke in deadly earnest. Dunn was part of Obama's inner circle and a senior media adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Dunn's husband, Bob Bauer, an expert on campaign financing, fundraising and voter mobilization, is Obama's personal lawyer. He has just been appointed White House counsel, where he will be in charge of vetting Obama's appointees.
Obama's green jobs czar, Van Jones, had to exit in disgrace after he admitted that "I was a Communist." We can thank Glenn Beck for exposing him.
Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, wrote a book in 2008 in which he declared that the government "owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone's permission."
So, after the death consultants authorized in Nancy Pelosi's health care bill convince you to reject life-saving procedures, the organ-transplant team can remove your body's organs immediately.
Czar Sunstein also argues that animals are entitled to have lawyers to sue humans in court. Bow, wow — more business for trial lawyers. His wife, Samantha Power, is now on Obama's National Security Council. She is famous for writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about genocide, which she defined so narrowly that it excluded Joseph Stalin and Mao.
Obama's nominee for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Chai R. Feldblum, signed a 2006 manifesto endorsing polygamous households. This lengthy document, called "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage," argues that traditional marriage should not be "privileged above all others."
Obama's education appointments, who came out of the Chicago political machine right along with Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, will have nearly $100 billion in new money to indoctrinate America's youth. Obama Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is notorious for trying to start a gay high school in Chicago.
Obama's safe schools czar, Kevin Jennings, founded the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a homosexual activist group that now has thousands of chapters at high schools across the nation.
GLSEN chapters and materials have promoted sex between young teens and adults and sponsored "field trips" to gay pride parades. Jennings was the keynote speaker at a notorious GLSEN conference at Tufts University in 2000 at which HIV-AIDS coordinators discussed in detail, before an audience including area high school students, how to perform various homosexual acts.
Obama's science czar wrote in a college textbook that compulsory "green abortions" are an acceptable way to control population growth. We assume that what makes an abortion green is when the motive for the killing is population control to serve environmentalist dogma.
Affirmative action is in vogue in Obama's administration: His diversity czar has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to "step down" in favor of minorities. Obama's first appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court is a woman who said repeatedly that a "Latina woman" would make better judicial decisions than "a white male."
Obama's top lawyer at the State Department, Harold Hongju Koh, calls himself a transnationalist. That means wanting U.S. courts to "domesticate" foreign and international law — i.e., integrate it into U.S. domestic law binding on U.S. citizens.
Koh is eager to put us under a global legal system that would diminish our "distinctive rights culture" such as due process, trial by jury and our First Amendment "protections for speech and religion" that give "far greater emphasis and judicial protection in America than in Europe or Asia." Under global governance, the United States will be forbidden to allow more freedom and constitutional rights than other countries.
When Obama appointee for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, David Hamilton, was a district court judge, he prohibited Indiana's legislature from giving an invocation that mentioned Jesus, while naming Allah was allowed. Hamilton worked for Acorn and the ACLU, and even the liberal American Bar Association rated him "not qualified."
And we thought the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was an embarrassment to Barack Obama when he was running for president! We never dreamed Obama would actually appoint such a collection of weirdos.
The following is among the most thorough but concise, cogent and eloquent articles detailing Obama’s hatred of America. It leaves no doubt as to his attitude and ideology – as if we really needed any convincing.
Of course, this all begs the question: What are we to do with a President who hates America and is dismantling it to fit the socialist/communist country that he envisions?
Impeachment?
The Man Who Despises America
By Mark Hyman
The very next paragraph is going to make the nut jobs on the far left excitable beyond belief. I am not referring to all Democrats or even a majority of liberals. I am singling out the "they've-lost-all-touch-with-reality" crowd. This includes Media Matters for America led by the admitted hit-and-run, drunk-driving serial liar. The group includes the unshaven, bathrobe-clad unemployed who live in their mother's basement and are devout followers of MoveOn.Org. It is also the bitter, aging spinster working at the New York Times, the morbidly obese documentary film maker, and cable TV news' resident drama queen who hosts MSNBC's Countdown. They are about to simultaneously suffer from brain aneurisms. So without further delay, I'll say it.
Barack Obama despises America.
When people who voted for Obama in 2008 -- including registered Democrats -- start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it "in for America," then it's clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion.
The central conviction of Obama's ideology is that America is guilty of limitless moral failures and is the chief architect of the world's ills. Obama has boundless enmity for America, its key institutions, and its longtime allies. Consider these facts.
The 30-years of Obama's post-adolescent life are radical by any measure. First, he grew up listening to the ramblings of committed Communist Frank Marshall Davis. It had such a profound effect on him that he wrote fondly of Davis in his first book. In fact, that book is replete with statement after statement about how the U.S. is deeply flawed. Most Americans believe in American exceptionalism. Not so with Obama.
Patriotic Americans would not have listened to the bigoted, anti-Semitic, hate-America rants of a fringe religious leader for 20 seconds let alone for 20 years. Yet, Obama who admitted he attended services at Trinity United Church at least twice a month for two decades called Jeremiah Wright his mentor and his moral sounding board.
Nor would most Americans cultivate a close friendship with an admitted domestic terrorist and his wife whose most notable life's accomplishments were to set off bombs that killed and maimed innocent people.
Joining Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright in organizing attendance at Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's 1995 march on Washington is beyond imaginable. Especially after Farrakhan demonstrated public support for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi during the Libyan Leader's most bellicose years against the U.S., which included Libyan complicity in numerous terrorist attacks.
Obama's view of America in national security and foreign affairs is profoundly disappointing to say the least.
Americans overwhelmingly view the men and women who saved Europe and the Far East during World War II as comprising the Greatest Generation. By his comments and actions, President Obama obviously thinks otherwise.
Obama did not honor American greatness on the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift while on his first European trip. Instead, he accused "America [of having] shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward its European allies.
He also denigrated the accomplishments of the American G.I. during World War II in the Pacific theater when he offered a thinly veiled apology for the U.S. having dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those acts brought the war to a swift conclusion, perhaps saving hundreds of thousands of lives when it appeared Japan was prepared to wage an island-by-island battle to the last man.
Obama ordered the release of the so-called CIA "torture memos," seriously damaging delicate intelligence relations with allied nations and placing at grave risk the safety of U.S. intelligence officers working overseas. The impact of his action handcuffs the ability of U.S. intelligence officials to protect the U.S. and American interests from acts of terrorism.
In a matter of weeks last spring, Obama gave deference to a variety of belligerent leaders while stiff-arming longtime American allies. First, he called for closer relations with Cuba while ignoring that nation's long list of continuing human rights abuses. Then he warmly welcomed Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at an Organization of American States summit.
Next, he failed to respond and set the record straight after Nicaragua's Communist leader Daniel Ortega listed alleged U.S. crimes and atrocities during a nearly one-hour rant at the OAS meeting. It is unsettling that in his own remarks Obama incorrectly claimed the OAS has 36 members rather than the actual 34. Ortega and the hemisphere's other Socialist leaders claim the OAS would include 36 members if Cuba and an independent Puerto Rico were allowed to join. Mere coincidence or Freudian slip?
Immediately following the OAS embarrassments, Obama ignored a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet. Obama would repeat this snub six months later before agreeing at the last moment to meet Netanyahu after the Israeli leader was en route the U.S.
In his speech before the Muslim world, Obama made the patently absurd claim of equivalency between the status of displaced Palestinians and the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. His claim that 7 million Muslims live in the U.S. is a figure inflated by as much as 700%.
In an earlier speech, Obama claimed that the U.S. is not a Christian nation, which is at odds with the fact that 79% of Americans self-identify as Christians and the nation's founders were devout Christians.
In less than six months in office, Obama apologized for Guantanamo Bay; for alleged mistakes committed by the CIA; for U.S. policy in the Americas; for America's history of slavery; for "sacrificing [American] values;" for "hasty decisions" in the war on terror; for "America's standing in the world;" for American errors in foreign policy; and for U.S. relations with the Muslim world.
He pronounced Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology acceptable and he warned Netanyahu against targeting Iran's nuclear facilities. Obama's approach to Iran is eerily similar to that of Jimmy Carter, whose actions contributed to the fall of that nation into the control of Islamic radicals.
This summer, the door to greater individual freedoms in Iran was firmly closed shut when Obama announced the U.S would not meddle in Iran's election and he offered no encouragement to democracy activists who protested the obviously stolen elections. His silence was deafening when regime security agents savagely attacked and killed countless Iranians who took to the streets.
In contrast to his deference to anti-American leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Daniel Ortega, Obama strong-armed Netanyahu on key Israeli matters. In addition to snubbing the Israeli Prime Minister's requests to meet, Obama demanded an end to Israeli settlements and insisted on the creation of a two-state Palestine solution.
Obama abandoned NATO members Poland and the Czech Republic by canceling the central Europe missile defense plan just as rogue nations North Korea and Iran make advances in nuclear and ballistic missile production. The cancellation was demanded by Moscow authorities who have adopted a more confrontational posture toward the west.
Solidarity with freedom-loving East Germans has been a staple of the American presidency for nearly 50 years. John Kennedy pronounced himself a Berliner. Ronald Reagan demanded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev "Tear down this wall!" Yet, this bricks and mortar icon of first, Soviet totalitarianism, and then, second, the end of Soviet domination did not make the cut as Obama chose not to attend the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. In the summer of 2008, Obama altogether skipped mentioning the role of the U.S. -- or even the West, for that matter -- in bringing down the wall, instead crediting "a world that stands as one."
Obama's disagreement with American values and institutions is evident in domestic issues. He has stocked his administration with wild-eyed radicals who believe foreign law trumps the U.S. Constitution (Harold Koh); include an avowed Marxist and "truther" who believes George Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attack and is also an ardent supporter of cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal (Van Jones); and include a devoted admirer of Mao Tse-tung who slaughtered as many as 75 million people (Anita Dunn). (In contrast, George W. Bush's Attorney-General nominee John Ashcroft was savaged by the news media for being an Evangelical Christian.)
Three weeks after America's first black president was sworn in, the nation's first black Attorney-General who was hand-picked by Obama, called America "a nation of cowards" for some perceived race relations shortfall. The understood meaning of Eric Holder's comments is that white people are still racists. However, the reality is the people most preoccupied with fomenting the racial divide are those who populate the ranks of the Obama Administration.
Obama's Homeland Secretary designated military veterans as terrorists-in-waiting to be equally as dangerous as other domestic terrorists including pro-lifers and citizens opposed to the flood of illegal aliens.
One of Obama's very few suggestions to cut into his $1.4 trillion budget deficit was to have servicemen and women pay for their own war injuries. He's all for providing free health care to illegal aliens but believes wounded warriors should foot their own hospital bills. In fact, the Defense Department is about the only sector of government in which Obama has proposed slashing spending.
Hours after a belligerent "African-American Studies" Harvard professor engaged in behavior unbefitting anyone let alone a professional man, Obama accused the exceedingly tolerant Cambridge police officers as having "acted stupidly" and then digressed into how people of color have been unfairly treated by white America.
Bush was prolific in quietly and privately visiting the military wounded and family of the fallen. In contrast, Obama attempted to make political capital of his one visit to Dover Air Force Base. Obama's motives were so transparent that families of 17 of the 18 fallen denied permission for Obama to engage in a photo-op alongside the returning caskets.
In May, Obama immediately issued a statement that he was "shocked and outraged by the murder" of a Kansas doctor specializing in partial-birth abortions. He called it a "heinous act of violence." Attorney-General Holder mobilized U.S. Marshals nationwide to provide protection to abortion clinics.
But Obama remained silent the very next day when two U.S. soldiers were gunned down by a Muslim extremist outside a Little Rock recruiting station. After repeated prodding for a presidential comment, the White House faxed an after-hours statement to select media outlets two days later offering a tepid remark that Obama was "saddened" without even mentioning the soldiers were murdered.
Five months later, another Muslim fanatic gunned down nearly four dozen Americans, killing 13, at the Ft. Hood army base. It was an act that demanded the most serious demeanor of the military's Commander-in-Chief. Yet, Obama referenced the massacre in the most insincere fashion just seconds after a jocular shout-out to an audience member during a public speaking engagement. It was the equivalent of attending a funeral in swimwear while en route to the beach.
The odd inadvertent comment or occasional verbal faux pas can be explained away as just that. However, Obama has a lifetime of comments and actions including 10 months as president that belie his real attitude toward the U.S. The difference between Obama and his immediate predecessors such as Ronald Reagan, the George Bushes and Bill Clinton who actually revere and honor the greatness of America and its citizens and institutions cannot be overstated.
According to sources, Obama’s most frequent visitor to the White House is none other than Andy Stern who is the president of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union). This should surprise few people given the quasi(?) corrupt, mutually beneficial role each has had for the other particularly regarding power, influence and money. Like a vast majority of Obama’s personally selected radical, America hating czars and his long history of associations with far-left radicals and terrorists, Stern is ideologically compatible.
Unfortunately, this is another piece of the puzzle for this far left cabal that can further facilitate its goals of transforming America into essentially a socialist/communist “USSA”.
It goes without saying that the goals and ideology of these all of these individuals are extremely bad for America. We must stop them and reverse course before it is too late or there will ultimately be a very high price to pay.
History repeats itself. Those who don’t learn from it are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. In our present situation in America, all the warning signs have been there and couldn’t be any clearer yet many either refuse to believe them or are just plain apathetic, lazy or corrupt.
USSR, 1959: I am a "young pioneer" in school. History classes remind us that there is a higher authority than their parents and teachers: the leaders of the Communist Party.
The story of young pioneer Pavlik Morozov is required reading. Pavlik reported his father to the secret police for disobeying government regulations. His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to serve their government.
From the first year in school, all of us are made aware of our ethnicity (ethnic Russian, Jewish, Asian, etc.) and class (proletariat, intelligentsia), around which society is structured. This inherent divisiveness makes it easy for the government to stir ethnic and class tension and in this way distract from economic failure.
Newspapers and TV transmit government-approved news. Any critical voice is immediately suppressed and publicly denounced.
My parents, as all citizens of the USSR, work for state-run companies. All workers are unionized — another way the state controls the citizens. There is no private enterprise in USSR.
Whatever small private farms or shops that existed before 1930 have been taken over by the state. All medical care and schools are state entities. The government regulates what kind of technology, service and compensation are allowed.
From school age through adulthood, citizens are called to public service four to five times a year. Activities such as farming, cleaning places of work, and paper/metal scrap collections are mandatory.
Religious symbols are forbidden in schools or on state property. Most old religious buildings are transformed for secular use.
The Soviet government imposes the Iron Curtain. The state has strict control over our ability to travel abroad. This prevents us from realizing the discrepancy between the media's image of the great socialist country and the reality of our low standard of living.
USA, 2009: "Progressives" control the government. Children in some public schools sing songs about the president and study his directives.
Progressives view people not as unique individuals, but as groups. They play on class envy, or divide people by ethnicity (African-American, white, Hispanic, etc.). From early childhood they remind children of their ethnic identity. The idea of a color-blind society united under the American flag is not politically correct.
The mainstream media are aligned with the government. Those media outlets critical of government policy are publicly criticized by government officials and are in danger of suffering repercussions.
Government seizes a majority stake in two major auto companies and, through TARP money, has control over major banks.
Congress discusses capping salaries in private businesses and is in the process of increasing its control over the health care industry.
Big labor union leadership is fully aligned with the progressives in government. There is strong pressure to eliminate the secret ballot in order to increase union membership.
Cap-and-trade, if passed, will drive a lot of small businesses into bankruptcy and create a fruitful soil for favoritism and government control over private entities.
Sept. 11 is declared a day of national service by the administration. It is no longer a day of remembrance for the horrific attack perpetrated by terrorists.
The American Constitution protects the separation between church and state. Atheist zealots pervert this ideal in order to force out religious symbols and traditions from public space. It is fashionable in progressive circles to ridicule religion and religious people. "Tolerance" is applied only to anti-religious values.
As a former citizen of the USSR, I heard and experienced all of this before. I listen to the speeches by the president asking people to sacrifice and serve. So what are we to sacrifice? For what? And to whom? I think I get it now.
Citizens of America, sacrifice your elders and forget your selfish aspirations of prosperity for yourself and your family! Sign onto Service.gov and serve your government!
• Kunin lived in the Soviet Union until 1980 and now lives in Connecticut.
The following editorial, written by Thomas Sowell, should serve as a clarion call to all Americans that our country, rights, freedoms and way of life are on the precipice of annihilation due to the inimical ideologies combined with contemptuous, nefarious, imperious politicians who desire unfettered power. In a very comprehensive yet succinct and persuasive manner, he states his case … which we must act on immediately and decisively before the situation becomes even more dire.
Dismantling America — Piece By Piece
By THOMAS SOWELL
Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the president, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50% or 90%?
Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — to create a situation where some papers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get lifesaving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life-and-death decisions about your loved ones?
Does any of this sound like America?
How about a federal agency giving schoolchildren material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.
How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.
We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies.
What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brownshirts of dictators than like anything American. How far the president will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.
Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America"; the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.
Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.
Among those appointed as czars by Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.
Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?
Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government — people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.
Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.
Nothing so epitomizes Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed.
That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question — and the biggest question for this generation.
Internationally, Obama has made every mistake that was made by the Western democracies in the 1930s, mistakes that put Hitler in a position to start World War II — and come dangerously close to winning it.
At the heart of those mistakes was trying to mollify your enemies by throwing your friends to the wolves. The administration has already done that by reneging on this country's commitment to put a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe and its lackadaisical foot-dragging on doing anything serious to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. That means, for all practical purposes, throwing Israel to the wolves as well.
Countries around the world that have to look out for their own national survival, above all, are not going to ignore how much Obama has downgraded the reliability of America's commitments.
Iraq, for example, knows that Iran is going to be next door forever, while Americans may be gone in a few years. South Korea likewise knows that North Korea is permanently next door, but who knows when the Obama administration will get a bright idea to pull out?
Countries in South America know that Hugo Chavez is allying Venezuela with Iran. Dare they ally themselves with an unreliable U.S.A.? Or should they join our enemies to work against us? This issue is too serious for squeamish silence.
There is no doubt that the Obama Administration has essentially declared war on Fox News and is expending considerable time and resources on this endeavor. Many influential members of the Democrat Party have voiced their opposition to his actions. He appears more focused on silencing his critics than addressing other more pressing issues like the economy, joblessness and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As manifest evidence of his ideological perversion, he shows much greater animus toward Sean Hannity of Fox News than he does to the ruthless dictators Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro or even Kim Jong-il. Meanwhile, there are some communist countries celebrating Obama as a Marxist.
In his editorial regarding Fox News and dissent to Obama’s plans, Charles Krauthammer stated:
“The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news."
He further notes that Obama “wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they're engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”
The eminent climate change skeptic, Lord Christopher Monckton, gave a presentation in St. Paul, Minnesota on October 14th. In this 4-minute excerpt from his speech, he issues a dire warning to Americans regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty which is scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009 by Obama. There has been considerable debate raging about Monckton’s premise that the Copenhagen Treaty would cede US sovereignty.
The office of Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director
"So who is Anita Dunn?" you may ask. She is Obama’s White House Communications Director but does have a long history as a Democratic political operative. Dunn was involved in Obama’s Presidential campaign and was the director of communications, policy and research operations for Obama for America. Not only is she a top advisor to Obama but she is also married to his personal lawyer.
She is one of the Obama Administration officials who attacked Fox News by charging that "it's opinion journalism masquerading as news" and that “The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party."
Her notoriety has skyrocketed with the outrageous, indefensible and radical comments that she delivered in a speech before high school students in Maryland. In the speech (as seen in the video below) she stated that:
“The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Zedong and Mother Theresa -- not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is: you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal: These are your choices, they are no one else's. In 1947, when Mao Zedong was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over. Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, "How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this, against all of the odds against you?" And Mao Zedong said, you know, "You fight your war, and I'll fight mine.”
The video below is a scathing and insightful assessment and commentary of this entire Anita Dunn situation by Glen Beck. It is well worth watching.
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