A Strong Military in a Dangerous World
In a dangerous world, protecting America's national security requires a strong military. Today, America has the most capable, best-trained and best-led military force in the world. But much needs to be done to maintain our military leadership, retain our technological advantage, and ensure that America has a modern, agile military force able to meet the diverse security challenges of the 21st century.
John McCain is committed to ensuring that the men and women of our military remain the best, most capable fighting force on Earth - and that our nation honors its promises to them for their service.
The global war on terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, threats from rogue states like Iran and North Korea, and the rise of potential strategic competitors like China and Russia mean that America requires a larger and more capable military to protect our country's vital interests and deter challenges to our security. America confronts a range of serious security challenges: Protecting our homeland in an age of global terrorism and Islamist extremism; working with friends and partners overseas, from Africa to Southeast Asia, to help them combat terrorism and violent insurgencies in their own countries; defending against missile and nuclear attack; maintaining the credibility of our defense commitments to our allies; and waging difficult counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
John McCain understands national security and the threats facing our nation. He recognizes the dangers posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, violent Islamist extremists and their terrorist tactics, and the ever present threat of regional conflict that can spill into broader wars that endanger allies and destabilize areas of the world vital to American security. He knows that to protect our homeland, our interests, and our values - and to keep the peace - America must have the best-manned, best-equipped, and best-supported military in the world.
John McCain has been a tireless advocate of our military and ensuring that our forces are properly postured, funded, and ready to meet the nation's obligations both at home and abroad. He has fought to modernize our forces, to ensure that America maintains and expands its technological edge against any potential adversary, and to see that our forces are capable and ready to undertake the variety of missions necessary to meet national security objectives.
As President, John McCain will strengthen the military, shore up our alliances, and ensure that the nation is capable of protecting the homeland, deterring potential military challenges, responding to any crisis that endangers American security, and prevailing in any conflict we are forced to fight.
Fighting Against Violent Islamic Extremists and Terrorist Tactics
The attacks on September 11th represented more than a failure of intelligence. The tragedy highlighted a failure of national policy to respond to the development of a global terror network hostile to the American people and our values. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000 bombing of the USS COLE indicated a growing global terrorist threat before the attacks on New York and Washington. On the morning of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden's declaration of war against the United States hit home with unmistakable clarity.
America faces a dedicated, focused, and intelligent foe in the war on terrorism. This enemy will probe to find America's weaknesses and strike against them. The United States cannot afford to be complacent about the threat, naive about terrorist intentions, unrealistic about their capabilities, or ignorant to our national vulnerabilities.
In the aftermath of 9/11 John McCain fought for the creation of an independent 9/11 Commission to identify how to best address the terrorist threat and decrease our domestic vulnerability. He fought for the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and the creation of the U.S. Northern Command with the specific responsibility of protecting the U.S. homeland.
As President, John McCain will ensure that America has the quality intelligence necessary to uncover plots before they take root, the resources to protect critical infrastructure and our borders against attack, and the capability to respond and recover from a terrorist incident swiftly.
He will ensure that the war against terrorists is fought intelligently, with patience and resolve, using all instruments of national power. Moreover, he will lead this fight with the understanding that to impinge on the rights of our own citizens or restrict the freedoms for which our nation stands would be to give terrorists the victory they seek.
John McCain believes that just as America must be prepared to meet and prevail against any adversary on the field of battle, we must engage and prevail against them on the battleground of ideas. In so doing, we can and must deprive terrorists of the converts they seek and counter their teaching of the doctrine of hatred and despair.
As President, John McCain will take it as his most sacred responsibility to keep America free, safe, and strong - an abiding beacon of freedom and hope to the world.
Effective Missile Defense
John McCain strongly supports the development and deployment of theater and national missile defenses. Effective missile defenses are critical to protect America from rogue regimes like North Korea that possess the capability to target America with intercontinental ballistic missiles, from outlaw states like Iran that threaten American forces and American allies with ballistic missiles, and to hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China. Effective missile defenses are also necessary to allow American military forces to operate overseas without being deterred by the threat of missile attack from a regional adversary.
John McCain is committed to deploying effective missile defenses to reduce the possibility of strategic blackmail by rogue regimes and to secure our homeland from the very real prospect of missile attack by present or future adversaries. America should never again have to live in the shadow of missile and nuclear attack. As President, John McCain will not trust in the "balance of terror" to protect America, but will work to deploy effective missile defenses to safeguard our people and our homeland.
Increasing the Size of the American Military
The most important weapons in the U.S. arsenal are the men and women of American armed forces. John McCain believes we must enlarge the size of our armed forces to meet new challenges to our security. For too long, we have asked too much of too few - with the result that many service personnel are on their second, third and even fourth tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. There can be no higher defense priority than the proper compensation, training, and equipping of our troops.
Our existing force is overstretched by the combination of military operations in the broader Middle East and the need to maintain our security commitments in Europe and Asia. Recruitment and retention suffer from extended overseas deployments that keep service personnel away from their homes and families for long periods of time.
John McCain believes that the answer to these challenges is not to roll back our overseas commitments. The size and composition of our armed forces must be matched to our nation's defense requirements. As requirements expand in the global war on terrorism so must our Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard be reconfigured to meet these new challenges. John McCain thinks it is especially important to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to defend against the threats we face today.
John McCain knows that the most difficult and solemn decision a president must make is sending young Americans into harm's way. Having experienced firsthand the brutality of war, as president, John McCain would never make the decision to use force lightly, only when the cause is just, and our nation's values and interests absolutely demand it.
Modernizing the Armed Services
Modernizing American armed forces involves procuring advanced weapons systems that will help rapidly and decisively defeat any adversary and protect American lives. It also requires addressing force protection needs to make sure that America's combat personnel have the best safety and survivability equipment available.
Modernizing the armed forces also means adapting our doctrine, training, and tactics for the kind of conflicts we are most likely to face. Today, American forces are engaged in dangerous operations throughout the world. From Iraq and Afghanistan to Somalia and the Philippines, American forces are fighting the battles of the 21st century against terrorists and insurgents. These asymmetric conflicts require a very different force structure than the one we used to fight and win the Cold War.
The missions of the 21st century will not center on traditional territorial defense or mass armor engagements. Instead, the men and women of the U.S. armed forces will be engaged in, among other things, counter insurgency, counter terrorism, missile defense, counter proliferation and information warfare. This calls not just for a larger and more capable military, but for a new mix of military forces, including civil affairs, special operations, and highly mobile forces capable of fighting and prevailing in the conflicts America faces.
Smarter Defense Spending
John McCain has worked aggressively to reform the defense budgeting process to ensure that America enjoys the best military at the best cost. This includes reforming defense procurement to ensure the faithful and efficient expenditure of taxpayer dollars that are made available for defense acquisition. Too often, parochial interests - rather than the national interest - have guided our spending decisions. John McCain supports significant reform in our defense acquisition process to ensure that dollars spent actually contribute to U.S. security.
John McCain also feels strongly that our nation's military spending, except in time of genuine emergency, must be funded by the regular appropriations process, not by "emergency" supplementals that allow defense to be funded outside the normal budget cycle. This process gives Congressional committees less ability to closely scrutinize defense budget requests to ensure military funding is being budgeted wisely. It makes possible Congressional pork-barrel spending that diverts scarce defense resources to parochial home-state interests. And it allows the administration to add spending above that set by budget caps, bloating the federal deficit. Budgeting annually through emergency supplemental appropriation bills encourages pork barrel spending. The American taxpayer has a right to expect us to get the most out of each and every defense dollar, especially at a time when those dollars are so critical. Throughout his career, John McCain has fought pork-barrel defense spending that diverts scarce defense resources to parochial, home-state projects rather than addressing the needs of service personnel. He believes that unauthorized earmarks drain our precious defense resources and adversely affect our national security. John McCain will continue to fight pork-barrel spending to ensure that military funds are spent where they are needed most - in support of our military personnel and our national defense.
Taking Care of Our Military Personnel and their Families
Our military personnel and their families deserve the nation's unfailing gratitude, respect, and support. As a former naval officer with a distinguished record of military service, John McCain understands the profound sacrifices made by our men and women who serve in the uniform of our country and their families.
He believes one of America's most solemn obligations is to treat our military personnel with the same sense of devotion and duty as they demonstrate in rendering their service to the nation. John McCain has fought for improved military pay and benefits, and an improved quality of life for military families.
America's deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan rely heavily on Reserve and National Guard forces. John McCain has worked hard to ensure that benefits for deployed Reservists and National Guardsmen are brought in line with our active-duty military forces.
As president, he will make sure that just as we are always proud of our military personnel for what they do for the country, the country can be proud of what we do for them.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
American Repulsion With Socialism
I read a column in which the writer rejoiced because the word, "socialism," is no longer a scary bogeyman to Americans. When I Googled the writer and learned he was only 31 and graduated from Columbia, it wasn't hard to figure out how he got it all wrong.
Since he had clearly been taught our "revised" history -- the one that glosses over the 100,000,000-grave killing fields of the communists and makes high drama out of the "sufferings" of the Hollywood blacklisted and the McCarthy hearings -- he didn't have a clue about what actually happened. This Ivy-League indoctrinated writer had reached the false conclusion that Americans used to be scared down to their skives of the big bad commies, but weren't anymore.
Isn't it hard to believe that reasonably intelligent parents actually pay big bucks for those fancy degrees in ignorance.
Americans aren't scared of socialism. They find it viscerally disgusting.
One must never mistake disgusted for fear. The first is based upon reason, the latter upon emotion.
And the reasons for loathing socialism are as clear as the nose on anyone's face.
No fully-grown human being with a single ounce of self-respect ever wants to be taken care of by others. No person with dignity will tolerate being told what to do, what to think, how to work or how to be an "acceptable" person. No free man or woman will tolerate the loss of liberty in exchange for material comfort.
Many generations of Americans vehemently rejected these notions over and over again, not out of fear, but out of the kind of visceral loathing that makes a normal person wretch, gag and grab for his religion and his guns.
The Lure of the Nanny State
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- C. S. Lewis
A great many Americans -- perhaps even a majority -- seem poised to hand over vast amounts of their hard-earned money and their hard-won liberties to the promised "collective redemption" being offered by Barack Obama and his socialist band of "progressives" in Congress. With the votes of nanny-state supporters from all classes among us, their utopian dreams will be put to the test on our own ground and the reach of our federal government will be expanded drastically according to their plans.
But how does this really play out?
Always and everywhere it is tried.
The Socialist's Lure
One of the simplest realities of life is that the person who pays the bill is the one who makes the decisions. When that person is you, you decide. When the payer is a state collective, the collective decides. And you obey.
This ain't rocket science. The freedom to decide is the reason all children finally leave the security of the nest and jump to the ground. It's innate. This will to be free. To decide for oneself.
Consider only these 3 areas of Obama's collective plan for the redemption of American society:
Obama wants to use a lot of taxpayer money to offer education to children from birth through college. Free to mommies and daddies. On the taxpayer dollar, rather than on the parents'.
The socialist lure: Give the state your children and the state will relieve you of the burden of educating them and teaching them values and knowledge. Parents, you're off the hook.
The result: The state then makes all the decisions about what your children will be taught, how they will be brought up, what knowledge is important and what is not. Similar to what we witnessed last week when the lefts agenda overrode parental authority. One first grade class was taken to their lesbian teachers wedding, while another school celebrated "Gay Coming Out Day" for grades K-8. Without parental consent or counsel.
Obama wants to bring the federal government's involvement into healthcare to an unprecedented level. We remember the Clinton's attempt at this. Even with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, they failed. It did pave the way for the rise of the Republicans and the 'Contract with America'.
The socialist lure: Give the state your money and the power to enforce healthcare for all, and the collective state will relieve you of your responsibility to provide this service for yourselves and your children.
The result: The state makes healthcare decisions. Healthcare is then rationed according to need, as decided by the state. Elderly or infirmed need not apply.
Obama wants to enshrine positive rights to all citizens that include a guaranteed "living wage" to all regardless of individual work. He expects the productive members of society to take up the slack for the less productive.
The socialist lure: No citizen will be without the means to live a fairly equitable life regardless of individual delinquency or extra effort.
The result: The poor and unfortunate become wards of the state and vastly increase in number. Work incentives plummet, relative to the decrease in reward.
Obama wants our politics to be nice, not mean or divisive. He wants unity. He wants us all to get along.
Another socialist lure: Peace. Harmony. Goodwill to all. No good guys and bad guys. All will be nice and we will sing Kumbayah in perfect harmony all over the world. This goes to a globalist view. Coupled with a desire of one world government.
The result: Anyone who dissents, who finds error, who sees things differently will be silenced. This is the only way collectives ever enforce their ideas of "unity."
We received a prelude to this concept when "Joe the plumber" dared to ask Obama a question. The media minions set about ignoring Obama's response of a 'redistribution of wealth', and trying to destroy Joe. This man had exercised his first amendment rights and paid a hefty price. Socialism views the 'Bill Of Rights' to be overrated when applied to them.
Progress? In the memorable words of C. S. Lewis:
"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
Freedom and individual responsibility are inseparable.
The choice we are facing in this election is simple. We have freedom only when we accept personal responsibility for ourselves and our children. If we want to divest ourselves from the responsibility to provide for ourselves, then we also forfeit our freedom to make our own decisions.
Great leaders have appeared from time to time to warn free people of the innate deceptiveness of the socialists' lures. Ronald Reagan saw the evil as clear as day. Reagan's "ten scariest words in the English language":
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."
Winston Churchill expounded further on leftist ideology:
"Let them quit these gospels of envy, hate and malice. Let them eliminate them from their politics and programs. Let them abandon the utter fallacy, the grotesque, erroneous fatal blunder of believing that by limiting the enterprise of man, by riveting the shackles of a false equality...they will increase the well-being of the world."
John McCain is a leader in the same mold as Reagan and Churchill when it comes to seeing the innate evil within the Marxist lure and its deceptive threat to real peace and any prosperity worth having. But of these three -- Reagan, Churchill and McCain -- McCain is the only one who has seen firsthand, from the inside, how it is that collective regimes may appear fair and just and unified.
McCain learned the hard way that socialist fairness is a carefully choreographed illusion, that socialist justice is a capricious commodity doled out on a whim by dictators with hard-core boots and clubs. His time in the Hanoi Hilton left a crippling impression on McCain.
Unity? Unity is obtained through coercive means and by taking children very early into indoctrination as model, happy future workers for the collective "good."
So, Obama got his ideas by palling around with radical communist revolutionaries of the 60s. Obama chose these radicals as mentors and friends. Obama's own parents were from the same mold as well. Obama's communist mentor was Frank Davis. As a young boy and teenager, Obama spent a lot of his formative years under the tulledge of Davis. This was where Obama was introduced to marijuana and cocaine. Obama wrote of this in his autobiography.
John McCain spent a good deal of his adult life with radical socialists too. Five and a half years to be precise. Only McCain got his education on the merits of communism from inside one of their "utopian" cells under force.
Since he had clearly been taught our "revised" history -- the one that glosses over the 100,000,000-grave killing fields of the communists and makes high drama out of the "sufferings" of the Hollywood blacklisted and the McCarthy hearings -- he didn't have a clue about what actually happened. This Ivy-League indoctrinated writer had reached the false conclusion that Americans used to be scared down to their skives of the big bad commies, but weren't anymore.
Isn't it hard to believe that reasonably intelligent parents actually pay big bucks for those fancy degrees in ignorance.
Americans aren't scared of socialism. They find it viscerally disgusting.
One must never mistake disgusted for fear. The first is based upon reason, the latter upon emotion.
And the reasons for loathing socialism are as clear as the nose on anyone's face.
No fully-grown human being with a single ounce of self-respect ever wants to be taken care of by others. No person with dignity will tolerate being told what to do, what to think, how to work or how to be an "acceptable" person. No free man or woman will tolerate the loss of liberty in exchange for material comfort.
Many generations of Americans vehemently rejected these notions over and over again, not out of fear, but out of the kind of visceral loathing that makes a normal person wretch, gag and grab for his religion and his guns.
The Lure of the Nanny State
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- C. S. Lewis
A great many Americans -- perhaps even a majority -- seem poised to hand over vast amounts of their hard-earned money and their hard-won liberties to the promised "collective redemption" being offered by Barack Obama and his socialist band of "progressives" in Congress. With the votes of nanny-state supporters from all classes among us, their utopian dreams will be put to the test on our own ground and the reach of our federal government will be expanded drastically according to their plans.
But how does this really play out?
Always and everywhere it is tried.
The Socialist's Lure
One of the simplest realities of life is that the person who pays the bill is the one who makes the decisions. When that person is you, you decide. When the payer is a state collective, the collective decides. And you obey.
This ain't rocket science. The freedom to decide is the reason all children finally leave the security of the nest and jump to the ground. It's innate. This will to be free. To decide for oneself.
Consider only these 3 areas of Obama's collective plan for the redemption of American society:
Obama wants to use a lot of taxpayer money to offer education to children from birth through college. Free to mommies and daddies. On the taxpayer dollar, rather than on the parents'.
The socialist lure: Give the state your children and the state will relieve you of the burden of educating them and teaching them values and knowledge. Parents, you're off the hook.
The result: The state then makes all the decisions about what your children will be taught, how they will be brought up, what knowledge is important and what is not. Similar to what we witnessed last week when the lefts agenda overrode parental authority. One first grade class was taken to their lesbian teachers wedding, while another school celebrated "Gay Coming Out Day" for grades K-8. Without parental consent or counsel.
Obama wants to bring the federal government's involvement into healthcare to an unprecedented level. We remember the Clinton's attempt at this. Even with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, they failed. It did pave the way for the rise of the Republicans and the 'Contract with America'.
The socialist lure: Give the state your money and the power to enforce healthcare for all, and the collective state will relieve you of your responsibility to provide this service for yourselves and your children.
The result: The state makes healthcare decisions. Healthcare is then rationed according to need, as decided by the state. Elderly or infirmed need not apply.
Obama wants to enshrine positive rights to all citizens that include a guaranteed "living wage" to all regardless of individual work. He expects the productive members of society to take up the slack for the less productive.
The socialist lure: No citizen will be without the means to live a fairly equitable life regardless of individual delinquency or extra effort.
The result: The poor and unfortunate become wards of the state and vastly increase in number. Work incentives plummet, relative to the decrease in reward.
Obama wants our politics to be nice, not mean or divisive. He wants unity. He wants us all to get along.
Another socialist lure: Peace. Harmony. Goodwill to all. No good guys and bad guys. All will be nice and we will sing Kumbayah in perfect harmony all over the world. This goes to a globalist view. Coupled with a desire of one world government.
The result: Anyone who dissents, who finds error, who sees things differently will be silenced. This is the only way collectives ever enforce their ideas of "unity."
We received a prelude to this concept when "Joe the plumber" dared to ask Obama a question. The media minions set about ignoring Obama's response of a 'redistribution of wealth', and trying to destroy Joe. This man had exercised his first amendment rights and paid a hefty price. Socialism views the 'Bill Of Rights' to be overrated when applied to them.
Progress? In the memorable words of C. S. Lewis:
"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
Freedom and individual responsibility are inseparable.
The choice we are facing in this election is simple. We have freedom only when we accept personal responsibility for ourselves and our children. If we want to divest ourselves from the responsibility to provide for ourselves, then we also forfeit our freedom to make our own decisions.
Great leaders have appeared from time to time to warn free people of the innate deceptiveness of the socialists' lures. Ronald Reagan saw the evil as clear as day. Reagan's "ten scariest words in the English language":
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."
Winston Churchill expounded further on leftist ideology:
"Let them quit these gospels of envy, hate and malice. Let them eliminate them from their politics and programs. Let them abandon the utter fallacy, the grotesque, erroneous fatal blunder of believing that by limiting the enterprise of man, by riveting the shackles of a false equality...they will increase the well-being of the world."
John McCain is a leader in the same mold as Reagan and Churchill when it comes to seeing the innate evil within the Marxist lure and its deceptive threat to real peace and any prosperity worth having. But of these three -- Reagan, Churchill and McCain -- McCain is the only one who has seen firsthand, from the inside, how it is that collective regimes may appear fair and just and unified.
McCain learned the hard way that socialist fairness is a carefully choreographed illusion, that socialist justice is a capricious commodity doled out on a whim by dictators with hard-core boots and clubs. His time in the Hanoi Hilton left a crippling impression on McCain.
Unity? Unity is obtained through coercive means and by taking children very early into indoctrination as model, happy future workers for the collective "good."
So, Obama got his ideas by palling around with radical communist revolutionaries of the 60s. Obama chose these radicals as mentors and friends. Obama's own parents were from the same mold as well. Obama's communist mentor was Frank Davis. As a young boy and teenager, Obama spent a lot of his formative years under the tulledge of Davis. This was where Obama was introduced to marijuana and cocaine. Obama wrote of this in his autobiography.
John McCain spent a good deal of his adult life with radical socialists too. Five and a half years to be precise. Only McCain got his education on the merits of communism from inside one of their "utopian" cells under force.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Hillary Clintons Words Haunt Obama Campaign
I read this article revisiting the primary campaign battle between Hillary Clinton & Barack Obama. Hillary's words ring as true today as they did back then.
Like long-lost companions, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama kissed, embraced, and waved to an adoring throng of 40,000 supporters during their joint appearance Oct. 20 in Orlando.
Attacking al-Qaida in Pakistan
“And this campaign, just like every other thing that happens in the United States, is looked at and followed with very great interest. And, you know, Pakistan is on a knife's edge. It is easily, unfortunately, a target for the jihadists. And, therefore, you've got to be very careful about what it is you say with respect to Pakistan.” — Democratic Primary debate, Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 19, 2007.
“And on a number of other issues, I just believe that, you know, as Senator Obama said, yes, last summer he basically threatened to bomb Pakistan, which I don't think was a particularly wise position to take.” — Democratic Primary debate, Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 26, 2008.
Campaign Tactics
“Stagnant in the polls and struggling to revive his once-buoyant campaign, Senator Obama has abandoned the politics of hope and embarked on a journey in search of a campaign issue to use against Senator Clinton.” — Clinton campaign e-mail, Oct. 22, 2007.
“Shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That’s what I expect from you.” — Campaign rally, Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb. 23, 2008.
Driver’s Licenses for Illegals
“I do not think that it is either appropriate to give a driver's license to someone who's here undocumented, putting them frankly at risk, because that is clear evidence that they are not here legally.” — Democratic primary debate, Los Angeles, Calif., Jan. 31, 2008.
Flip-Flopping
“You know, Senator Obama, as The Associated Press described it, could have a pretty good debate with himself, because four years ago he was for single-payer healthcare. Then he moved toward a rejection of that, a more incremental approach. Then he was for universal healthcare; then he proposed a healthcare plan that doesn't cover everybody.” — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008
“Well, you've changed positions within three years on, you know, a range of issues that you put forth when you ran for the Senate and now you have changed. You know, you said you would vote against the Patriot Act; you came to the Senate, you voted for it. You said that you would vote against funding for the Iraq war; you came to the Senate and you voted for $300 billion of it. — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008.
Guns and Religion
“I don't believe that my grandfather or my father, or the many people whom I have had the privilege of knowing and meeting across Pennsylvania over many years, cling to religion when Washington is not listening to them. I think that is a fundamental, sort of, misunderstanding of the role of religion and faith in times that are good and times that are bad.” — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
“And I similarly don't think that people cling to their traditions, like hunting and guns, either when they are frustrated with the government. I just don't believe that's how people live their lives. Now, that doesn't mean that people are not frustrated with the government. We have every reason to be frustrated, particularly with this administration. But I can see why people would be taken aback and offended by the remarks. — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
Diplomacy Sans Preconditions
“I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are. I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don’t want to make a situation even worse.” — Democratic primary debate, Charleston S.C., July 23, 2007.
“I thought that was irresponsible and, frankly, naive.” — Quad City Times, Iowa, July 24, 2007.
“So I think that, when you've got that big an agenda facing you, you should not telegraph to our adversaries that you're willing to meet with them without preconditions during the first year in office.” — Democratic primary debate, Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 19, 2007.
“And I disagree with his continuing to say that he would meet with some of the worst dictators in the world without preconditions and without the real, you know, understanding of what we would get from it.” — Democratic Primary debate, Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 26, 2008.
“I certainly would not meet with Ahmadinejad, because even again today he made light of 9/11 and said he's not even sure it happened and that people actually died. He's not someone who would have an opportunity to meet with me in the White House.” — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
Louis Farrakhan
“It is clear that, as leaders, we have a choice who we associate with and who we apparently give some kind of seal of approval to. And I think that it wasn't only the specific remarks, but some of the relationships with Reverend Farrakhan, with giving the church bulletin over to the leader of Hamas to put a message in. You know, these are problems, and they raise questions in people's minds.” — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
National Security
“It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?” Clinton “red phone” ad, February 2008.
Obama’s Nuclear Stance
“Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrents to keep the peace, and I don’t believe any president should make blanket statements with the regard to use or nonuse.” — Washington Post, Aug. 3, 2007.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright
“He would not have been my pastor. You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.” — Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, March 25, 2008.
“But I have to say that, you know, for Pastor Wright to have given his first sermon after 9/11 and to have blamed the United States for the attack, which happened in my city of New York, would have been intolerable for me. And therefore I would have not been able to stay in the church, and maybe it's, you know, just, again, a personal reflection that regardless of whatever good is going on — and I have no reason to doubt that a lot of good things were happening in that church — you get to choose your pastor. You don't choose your family, but you get to choose your pastor. And when asked a direct question, I said I would not have stayed in the church.” — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
Obama’s Rhetoric
“Words are not action and as beautifully presented and as passionately felt as they are, they are not action. What we’ve got to do is translate talk into action, and feeling into reality. I have a long record of doing that.” — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008.
“So, I think it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change. And we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered.” — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008.
“Now, I could stand up here and say, ‘Let’s just get everybody together. Let’s get unified. The sky will open. The light will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.” — Campaign rally, Providence, R.I., Feb. 25, 2008.
Obama and Special Interests
“When it comes to lobbyists, you know, Senator Obama's chair in New Hampshire is a lobbyist. He lobbies for the drug companies. So I think it's important that all of us be held to the same standards, that we're all held accountable.” — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008.
“You know, the energy bill that passed in 2005 was larded with all kinds of special interest breaks, giveaways to the oil companies. Senator Obama voted for it. I did not because I knew that it was going to be an absolute nightmare.” — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008.
Obama and William Ayers
“I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position. And if I'm not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died.” — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
Like long-lost companions, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama kissed, embraced, and waved to an adoring throng of 40,000 supporters during their joint appearance Oct. 20 in Orlando.
Attacking al-Qaida in Pakistan
“And this campaign, just like every other thing that happens in the United States, is looked at and followed with very great interest. And, you know, Pakistan is on a knife's edge. It is easily, unfortunately, a target for the jihadists. And, therefore, you've got to be very careful about what it is you say with respect to Pakistan.” — Democratic Primary debate, Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 19, 2007.
“And on a number of other issues, I just believe that, you know, as Senator Obama said, yes, last summer he basically threatened to bomb Pakistan, which I don't think was a particularly wise position to take.” — Democratic Primary debate, Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 26, 2008.
Campaign Tactics
“Stagnant in the polls and struggling to revive his once-buoyant campaign, Senator Obama has abandoned the politics of hope and embarked on a journey in search of a campaign issue to use against Senator Clinton.” — Clinton campaign e-mail, Oct. 22, 2007.
“Shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That’s what I expect from you.” — Campaign rally, Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb. 23, 2008.
Driver’s Licenses for Illegals
“I do not think that it is either appropriate to give a driver's license to someone who's here undocumented, putting them frankly at risk, because that is clear evidence that they are not here legally.” — Democratic primary debate, Los Angeles, Calif., Jan. 31, 2008.
Flip-Flopping
“You know, Senator Obama, as The Associated Press described it, could have a pretty good debate with himself, because four years ago he was for single-payer healthcare. Then he moved toward a rejection of that, a more incremental approach. Then he was for universal healthcare; then he proposed a healthcare plan that doesn't cover everybody.” — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008
“Well, you've changed positions within three years on, you know, a range of issues that you put forth when you ran for the Senate and now you have changed. You know, you said you would vote against the Patriot Act; you came to the Senate, you voted for it. You said that you would vote against funding for the Iraq war; you came to the Senate and you voted for $300 billion of it. — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008.
Guns and Religion
“I don't believe that my grandfather or my father, or the many people whom I have had the privilege of knowing and meeting across Pennsylvania over many years, cling to religion when Washington is not listening to them. I think that is a fundamental, sort of, misunderstanding of the role of religion and faith in times that are good and times that are bad.” — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
“And I similarly don't think that people cling to their traditions, like hunting and guns, either when they are frustrated with the government. I just don't believe that's how people live their lives. Now, that doesn't mean that people are not frustrated with the government. We have every reason to be frustrated, particularly with this administration. But I can see why people would be taken aback and offended by the remarks. — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
Diplomacy Sans Preconditions
“I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are. I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don’t want to make a situation even worse.” — Democratic primary debate, Charleston S.C., July 23, 2007.
“I thought that was irresponsible and, frankly, naive.” — Quad City Times, Iowa, July 24, 2007.
“So I think that, when you've got that big an agenda facing you, you should not telegraph to our adversaries that you're willing to meet with them without preconditions during the first year in office.” — Democratic primary debate, Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 19, 2007.
“And I disagree with his continuing to say that he would meet with some of the worst dictators in the world without preconditions and without the real, you know, understanding of what we would get from it.” — Democratic Primary debate, Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 26, 2008.
“I certainly would not meet with Ahmadinejad, because even again today he made light of 9/11 and said he's not even sure it happened and that people actually died. He's not someone who would have an opportunity to meet with me in the White House.” — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
Louis Farrakhan
“It is clear that, as leaders, we have a choice who we associate with and who we apparently give some kind of seal of approval to. And I think that it wasn't only the specific remarks, but some of the relationships with Reverend Farrakhan, with giving the church bulletin over to the leader of Hamas to put a message in. You know, these are problems, and they raise questions in people's minds.” — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
National Security
“It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?” Clinton “red phone” ad, February 2008.
Obama’s Nuclear Stance
“Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrents to keep the peace, and I don’t believe any president should make blanket statements with the regard to use or nonuse.” — Washington Post, Aug. 3, 2007.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright
“He would not have been my pastor. You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.” — Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, March 25, 2008.
“But I have to say that, you know, for Pastor Wright to have given his first sermon after 9/11 and to have blamed the United States for the attack, which happened in my city of New York, would have been intolerable for me. And therefore I would have not been able to stay in the church, and maybe it's, you know, just, again, a personal reflection that regardless of whatever good is going on — and I have no reason to doubt that a lot of good things were happening in that church — you get to choose your pastor. You don't choose your family, but you get to choose your pastor. And when asked a direct question, I said I would not have stayed in the church.” — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
Obama’s Rhetoric
“Words are not action and as beautifully presented and as passionately felt as they are, they are not action. What we’ve got to do is translate talk into action, and feeling into reality. I have a long record of doing that.” — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008.
“So, I think it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change. And we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered.” — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008.
“Now, I could stand up here and say, ‘Let’s just get everybody together. Let’s get unified. The sky will open. The light will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.” — Campaign rally, Providence, R.I., Feb. 25, 2008.
Obama and Special Interests
“When it comes to lobbyists, you know, Senator Obama's chair in New Hampshire is a lobbyist. He lobbies for the drug companies. So I think it's important that all of us be held to the same standards, that we're all held accountable.” — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008.
“You know, the energy bill that passed in 2005 was larded with all kinds of special interest breaks, giveaways to the oil companies. Senator Obama voted for it. I did not because I knew that it was going to be an absolute nightmare.” — Democratic primary debate, Manchester, N.H., Jan. 5, 2008.
Obama and William Ayers
“I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position. And if I'm not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died.” — Democratic primary debate, Philadelphia, Pa., April 16, 2008.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Obama & The Democrats Plan To Slash Our Military And Raise Taxes
Rep. Barney Frank D-MA, has unwittingly given America a preview of what Washington will set out to do if the Democrats gain unfettered control of Congress, the White House and eventually the Supreme Court.
There is an intention to decimate our military with a 25% budget cut. This, while we are fighting in two wars and the world grows more dangerous by the day. The Democrats want to return our military to its' Carter era capabilities. We all remember when the military did not have the ability to fly 16 helicopters into Iran and rescue our hostages.
Obama speaking before the Iowa caucus to a left-wing pacifist group that seeks to reallocate defense dollars to welfare programs. The lobbying group, Caucus for Priorities, was so impressed by Obama's anti-military offering that it steered its 10,000 devotees his way.
In a 132-word videotaped pledge (still viewable on YouTube), Obama agreed to hollow out the U.S. military by slashing both conventional and nuclear weapons.
The scope of his planned defense cuts, combined with his angry tone, is breathtaking. He sounds as if the military is the enemy, not the bad guys it's fighting.
"Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems.
"I will institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the Quadrennial Review is not used to justify unnecessary defense spending.
"Third, I will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal."
His plan, needless to say, is frighteningly irresponsible given the world threats.
Caucus for Priorities aims to redirect 15% of the Pentagon's discretionary budget away from "obsolete Cold War weapons towards education, health care, job training, alternative energy development, world hunger and deficit-reduction."
On the chopping block: the F-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey, the Virginia-class sub, the DDG-1,000 destroyer and the Army's Future Combat System.
Cutting allegedly "unproven" missile defense systems is music to Kim Jong Il's and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ears, let alone all the PLA generals wishing our destruction.
Yet Obama wants to kill a program that's yielding success after success, with both sea- and land-based systems. The military just this week intercepted a ballistic missile near Hawaii in a sea-based missile defense test.
Proposing "deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal" amounts to unilateral disarmament, and it's suicidal given China's and now Russia's aggressive military buildup.
Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea threaten nuclear madness, and Osama bin Laden dreams of unleashing a nuclear 9/11 on America.
In contrast, John McCain has vowed: "We must continue to deploy a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent, robust missile defenses and superior conventional forces that are capable of defending the United States and our allies."
We've been down this road before. President Clinton pursued a denuclearization program, including his 1995 pledge to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and it led to him kicking open our nuclear labs to the Chinese, who proceeded to steal our warhead secrets and strengthen their own arsenal.
Like the Ben & Jerry's crowd that supports him, Obama believes "real" national security is "humanitarian foreign aid" — essentially using our troops as international meals-on-wheels in Africa.
We've been down that road before, too, in Somalia and elsewhere. Thanks, but we don't need a third Clinton, or a second Carter, term.
Obama clearly stated:
I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.
I will not weaponize space
I will slow development of future combat systems
I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons and to seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons
Things that need to be looked at closely are:
-Slowing the development of future combat systems would weaken America's
conventional military preparedness.
-Not developing new nuclear weapons and placing deep cuts in America's nuclear
arsenal would leave America left with an increasingly obsolete nuclear capability
and will have little to no nuclear option in case of a threat to our survival.
-If America's ICBMs are off "hair trigger alert," then any response to a nuclear
attack may come too late to do any good at all. This at a time when nations such as
-Iran and/or North Korea have been working to arm themselves with nuclear weapons.
-The cancellation of America's missile defense program or not weaponizing space
would lead to across-the-board unilateral disarmament. This makes about as much
sense as taking all weapons away from your local police department and expecting
the bad guys to no longer do bad things.
I believe that Obama and the Democrats are either dangerously naive or are relying
on the 'good will' of those who have the stated purpose to annihilate the US and our allies. Whether it is blind naivety or inexperience that leads to their poor judgement. They pose a danger to our survival.
The democrats overt desire to expand socialism in the US. is another example of questionable judgement.
We have all learned of their plan to provide 95% of Americans an additional tax refund. They are careful in their parsing of words. This is not a reduction in our income tax rate. It is an additional refund that can be taken away at any time. Another folly in this logic is that approximately 40% of Americans do not pay income tax. We are indeed going to redistribute the wealth by writing this 40% of non taxpayers a check. It amounts to another form of welfare. Or vote buying, depending on how you choose to view it.
An additional 'slight of hand' on the democrats part is the planned increase of our corporate tax rate. Already second highest in the world. The democrats will raise it ten percent. The problem is that corporations do not pay income tax. When their rate goes up, they pass that additional cost onto consumers.
Obama and the democrats are aware of this, but are counting on the media to provide cover until after the election. They know they can not fund their socialist programs with the current tax rates. If they put a tax increase on the lower and middle class in their tax plans, they will lose the election. They will still collect from the lower and middle class but they will do it through the corporate tax rate increase. Letting consumers pick up the tab indirectly.
As we remember from the Carter years, this has an upward spiral affect. As the resulting unemployment and consumer prices increase, so does the corresponding inflation rate. As the resulting inflation rate goes up, the Federal Reserve steps in and raises interest rates in an attempt to slow the inflation. Before long we will find ourselves in the second term of Jimmy Carter.
I have spoken to taxes and our military. I want to touch on the social agenda being pushed by Obama and the democrats.
Obama voted against any restrictions on abortion up through late term procedures. As he appoints Supreme Court Justices and rams them through a 'rubber stamp' congress, his abortion stance will be reflected in constitutional interpretation for decades to come. He also voted to not require medical attention for any child that survives a late term abortion.
Last week a class of 1st graders were taken to their lesbian teachers wedding during school hours. Defenders of this, argued that it would teach tolerance. I do not think children are able to process such information at the age of six and seven. Last Thursday, another elementary school treated their students to Gay "National Coming Out Day". This was done with grades K-8. Without parental notification, and was not included in the school's published calender. This was done to teach children the importance of building 'alliances'. Never mind parental authority. The leftists know what is best for our children.
Additional funding will be flowing to ACORN. The democrats know this is a winner for their reelection efforts. Voter registration fraud on a nationwide scale. This will continue to be funded through the federal 'Housing Trust Fund'.
While hunting guns will be protected, handguns are a target. American Hunters Shooters Assoc, has endorsed Obama. This organization is a front group for anti- handgun backers. The NRA endorsed McCain for a reason.
Obama's 'Global Poverty Act' funding. Currently the GAO and CBO omits funding language in the cost estimates. Filibuster proof majorities will remove the need to hide the actual costs. Actual estimates are $850 billion US taxpayer dollars to fight poverty in Africa. None of this money is targeting poverty in the US. This money will be paid to the United Nations and is over and above current foreign aid.
The 'Global Poverty Act' is part of a greater United Nations program, know as the "Millennium Project". It commits the US to the World Courts criminal division and will usurp the authority of the US. Supreme Court. Google the Millennium Project to learn other included tenants. The ultimate goal here is one world government. A redistribution of wealth globally between nations.
There is an intention to decimate our military with a 25% budget cut. This, while we are fighting in two wars and the world grows more dangerous by the day. The Democrats want to return our military to its' Carter era capabilities. We all remember when the military did not have the ability to fly 16 helicopters into Iran and rescue our hostages.
Obama speaking before the Iowa caucus to a left-wing pacifist group that seeks to reallocate defense dollars to welfare programs. The lobbying group, Caucus for Priorities, was so impressed by Obama's anti-military offering that it steered its 10,000 devotees his way.
In a 132-word videotaped pledge (still viewable on YouTube), Obama agreed to hollow out the U.S. military by slashing both conventional and nuclear weapons.
The scope of his planned defense cuts, combined with his angry tone, is breathtaking. He sounds as if the military is the enemy, not the bad guys it's fighting.
"Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems.
"I will institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the Quadrennial Review is not used to justify unnecessary defense spending.
"Third, I will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal."
His plan, needless to say, is frighteningly irresponsible given the world threats.
Caucus for Priorities aims to redirect 15% of the Pentagon's discretionary budget away from "obsolete Cold War weapons towards education, health care, job training, alternative energy development, world hunger and deficit-reduction."
On the chopping block: the F-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey, the Virginia-class sub, the DDG-1,000 destroyer and the Army's Future Combat System.
Cutting allegedly "unproven" missile defense systems is music to Kim Jong Il's and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ears, let alone all the PLA generals wishing our destruction.
Yet Obama wants to kill a program that's yielding success after success, with both sea- and land-based systems. The military just this week intercepted a ballistic missile near Hawaii in a sea-based missile defense test.
Proposing "deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal" amounts to unilateral disarmament, and it's suicidal given China's and now Russia's aggressive military buildup.
Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea threaten nuclear madness, and Osama bin Laden dreams of unleashing a nuclear 9/11 on America.
In contrast, John McCain has vowed: "We must continue to deploy a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent, robust missile defenses and superior conventional forces that are capable of defending the United States and our allies."
We've been down this road before. President Clinton pursued a denuclearization program, including his 1995 pledge to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and it led to him kicking open our nuclear labs to the Chinese, who proceeded to steal our warhead secrets and strengthen their own arsenal.
Like the Ben & Jerry's crowd that supports him, Obama believes "real" national security is "humanitarian foreign aid" — essentially using our troops as international meals-on-wheels in Africa.
We've been down that road before, too, in Somalia and elsewhere. Thanks, but we don't need a third Clinton, or a second Carter, term.
Obama clearly stated:
I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.
I will not weaponize space
I will slow development of future combat systems
I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons and to seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons
Things that need to be looked at closely are:
-Slowing the development of future combat systems would weaken America's
conventional military preparedness.
-Not developing new nuclear weapons and placing deep cuts in America's nuclear
arsenal would leave America left with an increasingly obsolete nuclear capability
and will have little to no nuclear option in case of a threat to our survival.
-If America's ICBMs are off "hair trigger alert," then any response to a nuclear
attack may come too late to do any good at all. This at a time when nations such as
-Iran and/or North Korea have been working to arm themselves with nuclear weapons.
-The cancellation of America's missile defense program or not weaponizing space
would lead to across-the-board unilateral disarmament. This makes about as much
sense as taking all weapons away from your local police department and expecting
the bad guys to no longer do bad things.
I believe that Obama and the Democrats are either dangerously naive or are relying
on the 'good will' of those who have the stated purpose to annihilate the US and our allies. Whether it is blind naivety or inexperience that leads to their poor judgement. They pose a danger to our survival.
The democrats overt desire to expand socialism in the US. is another example of questionable judgement.
We have all learned of their plan to provide 95% of Americans an additional tax refund. They are careful in their parsing of words. This is not a reduction in our income tax rate. It is an additional refund that can be taken away at any time. Another folly in this logic is that approximately 40% of Americans do not pay income tax. We are indeed going to redistribute the wealth by writing this 40% of non taxpayers a check. It amounts to another form of welfare. Or vote buying, depending on how you choose to view it.
An additional 'slight of hand' on the democrats part is the planned increase of our corporate tax rate. Already second highest in the world. The democrats will raise it ten percent. The problem is that corporations do not pay income tax. When their rate goes up, they pass that additional cost onto consumers.
Obama and the democrats are aware of this, but are counting on the media to provide cover until after the election. They know they can not fund their socialist programs with the current tax rates. If they put a tax increase on the lower and middle class in their tax plans, they will lose the election. They will still collect from the lower and middle class but they will do it through the corporate tax rate increase. Letting consumers pick up the tab indirectly.
As we remember from the Carter years, this has an upward spiral affect. As the resulting unemployment and consumer prices increase, so does the corresponding inflation rate. As the resulting inflation rate goes up, the Federal Reserve steps in and raises interest rates in an attempt to slow the inflation. Before long we will find ourselves in the second term of Jimmy Carter.
I have spoken to taxes and our military. I want to touch on the social agenda being pushed by Obama and the democrats.
Obama voted against any restrictions on abortion up through late term procedures. As he appoints Supreme Court Justices and rams them through a 'rubber stamp' congress, his abortion stance will be reflected in constitutional interpretation for decades to come. He also voted to not require medical attention for any child that survives a late term abortion.
Last week a class of 1st graders were taken to their lesbian teachers wedding during school hours. Defenders of this, argued that it would teach tolerance. I do not think children are able to process such information at the age of six and seven. Last Thursday, another elementary school treated their students to Gay "National Coming Out Day". This was done with grades K-8. Without parental notification, and was not included in the school's published calender. This was done to teach children the importance of building 'alliances'. Never mind parental authority. The leftists know what is best for our children.
Additional funding will be flowing to ACORN. The democrats know this is a winner for their reelection efforts. Voter registration fraud on a nationwide scale. This will continue to be funded through the federal 'Housing Trust Fund'.
While hunting guns will be protected, handguns are a target. American Hunters Shooters Assoc, has endorsed Obama. This organization is a front group for anti- handgun backers. The NRA endorsed McCain for a reason.
Obama's 'Global Poverty Act' funding. Currently the GAO and CBO omits funding language in the cost estimates. Filibuster proof majorities will remove the need to hide the actual costs. Actual estimates are $850 billion US taxpayer dollars to fight poverty in Africa. None of this money is targeting poverty in the US. This money will be paid to the United Nations and is over and above current foreign aid.
The 'Global Poverty Act' is part of a greater United Nations program, know as the "Millennium Project". It commits the US to the World Courts criminal division and will usurp the authority of the US. Supreme Court. Google the Millennium Project to learn other included tenants. The ultimate goal here is one world government. A redistribution of wealth globally between nations.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The Lefts Strategy: "Win At Any Cost"
This election season has seen the political left's veiled push for remaking America into their own image. They are on a stealth quest, hidden behind vague, but sweet sounding rhetoric. This is not just about Obama. He is joined in this endeavor by a very biased media and DNC. The thuggish response they have weiled upon any dissent has been brutal, and overtly ignored by the press.
For their part, the media is well choreographed in playing up anything positive about Obama. Anything negative about Obama is downplayed or completely ignored by the press. If any negativity does slip out, the 'goon squad' is called out and everyone circles the wagons, setting out to destroy whoever exposes their illusion of perfection.
The media has a well established set of double standards. One for Obama/Biden and one for McCain/Palin. Report and exaggerate anything negative about McCain/Palin and ignore or downplay anything about Obama/Biden. Had Sarah Palin told a group of supporters that McCain would be tested by foreign forces in the first six moinths of his administration, it would have been the lead story for a week. Biden did say that and it was played down.
The GOP spent $150,000 on clothing for Palin. She is not a millionaire and her wardrobe is naturally more geared towards Alaska's weather, not Florida. That said, the media reported and made a huge issue of it.
Joe Biden directed $ 2,000,000 to his family for "working" on the campaign and the media is silent. Rather disingenious at best.
Barack Obama's plan got caught this week with the consequences of his own words to a working class guy from Toledo, the nation got a peek into his soul. It was not pretty and it should serve as a preview of what we can expect from Barack Obama towards those who disagree with him. It has been unattractive, unbecoming of someone running for President, and certainly riddled with hypocrisy and double standard.
Think about it. Just two days before Barack Obama eagerly walks up to a working "Joe," fields a question about his policies, and gives his answer.
Only two days later Obama, Biden, the DNC, and many in the mainstream leftist establishment (you call them the media) go wall to wall on the attack against... the man who asked the question, not the one who gave the answer.
Of course it was one of the worst answers ever given by any presidential candidate in history. I mean people in free countries generally decided a generation ago that when Government has sole discretion over the supply of money, where it goes, and who gets it (especially when disconnected from effort, work, or accomplishment) that the only ones who end up doing better are those running for office. If you get enough people so brain washed and brain dead that they "think" that they can live off the great government udder, then those who give access to such will enlarge their power, capital, and position. These people are Marxists. Conversely if you empower people to provide, care, and steward themselves and their families - the need for government begins to fade. These two principles and world views will always be at war with each other on the fundamental basis: Marx says let the state provide for you, the Bible says if a man does not work--he should not eat.
The Left, and especially Obama, are completely ignorant of the fact that the majority of Americans think Marxism is not just less attractive but immoral. It offends the decency and sensibilities of many a man and woman who work upwards of ten, twelve, sixteen, hours a day and find themselves punished for such hard work. (Also based in the Biblical truth found in the "Parable of the Talents.")
So when a working man, who does work twelve to sixteen hours a day, asks Senator Obama about the dream of his future, his hopes to someday, if he works hard enough, to be able to actually buy the company he works for, Senator Obama rhetorically pats him on the head and tells him to take his marxist plan and be thankful for it, the working Joe (gasp) disagrees.
Had the issue ended with that interchange on YouTube Barack Obama would've forgotten all about this working class guy and his dreams. But it didn't because to Barack Obama's great surprise his answer that government knew better how to "spread the wealth around," and the implication for working class people, that they would now be crushed under the economic plan Obama has put forward caused a lot of people to take pause.
McCain seized on Obama's gaffe and the working Joe became the star of the debate.
Yet here is the most troubling aspect of all. The Obama camp unleashed the hounds, not against his opponent's plans, records, or words from the debate. No. They rolled bulldozers into the life and background of a man who has worked in a blue collar job for most of his adult life, and began to look for any and every piece of suspect baggage that they could throw up to the media.
The next morning Biden openly sneers at working class people on the morning talk shows. In the debate Obama pretended as though Joe might not have even existed when he prefaced a response to McCain with, "Joe, if you're even out there..." And Obama stayed on target at his next two rallies publicly and openly mocking a plumber's ability to ever make more than $250,000.
But wait Sen. Big Government...
Isn't the American dream summed up in the idea that if you work as hard as possible that you can break through to new earnings? Isn't it the American ideal to base your economic rise or fall on the shoulders of your own efforts? Shouldn't the desire for social justice inform you that it is immoral to take what one has earned and give it to one who did not? (And please don't start with compassion... Genuine compassion is when someone who has earned it voluntarily gives it because he is so moved to help his brother in need. Mandating such, violates the heart and the conscience.)
Team Obama's entire media operation became a heat seeking missile aimed at one target--destroy the working class person who dares to think, work, plan, and save for the benefit of their family, community, and nation. And do so especially if in the asking of honest questions you expose the leftist candidate in a presidential race to be the secret godless-worldview-marxist Barack Obama is.
The Obama campaign, the leftist media, and the Democratic party began "dumpster diving" to investigate any dirt they could find on 'Joe the plumber'. They set about to destroy the man who dared ask a reasoned question. If the left wins unchecked power in Washington, we can expect this behavior on a grand scale. They have already announced they intend to implement the 'fairness doctrine', which is an contradiction of terms. It is an attempt to stifle public discourse of their leftist policies.
One lesson learned from this week: when the left feel weakened they will level you with brute force, if necessary, to keep their stranglehold on the lifeline to our pocketbooks.
For their part, the media is well choreographed in playing up anything positive about Obama. Anything negative about Obama is downplayed or completely ignored by the press. If any negativity does slip out, the 'goon squad' is called out and everyone circles the wagons, setting out to destroy whoever exposes their illusion of perfection.
The media has a well established set of double standards. One for Obama/Biden and one for McCain/Palin. Report and exaggerate anything negative about McCain/Palin and ignore or downplay anything about Obama/Biden. Had Sarah Palin told a group of supporters that McCain would be tested by foreign forces in the first six moinths of his administration, it would have been the lead story for a week. Biden did say that and it was played down.
The GOP spent $150,000 on clothing for Palin. She is not a millionaire and her wardrobe is naturally more geared towards Alaska's weather, not Florida. That said, the media reported and made a huge issue of it.
Joe Biden directed $ 2,000,000 to his family for "working" on the campaign and the media is silent. Rather disingenious at best.
Barack Obama's plan got caught this week with the consequences of his own words to a working class guy from Toledo, the nation got a peek into his soul. It was not pretty and it should serve as a preview of what we can expect from Barack Obama towards those who disagree with him. It has been unattractive, unbecoming of someone running for President, and certainly riddled with hypocrisy and double standard.
Think about it. Just two days before Barack Obama eagerly walks up to a working "Joe," fields a question about his policies, and gives his answer.
Only two days later Obama, Biden, the DNC, and many in the mainstream leftist establishment (you call them the media) go wall to wall on the attack against... the man who asked the question, not the one who gave the answer.
Of course it was one of the worst answers ever given by any presidential candidate in history. I mean people in free countries generally decided a generation ago that when Government has sole discretion over the supply of money, where it goes, and who gets it (especially when disconnected from effort, work, or accomplishment) that the only ones who end up doing better are those running for office. If you get enough people so brain washed and brain dead that they "think" that they can live off the great government udder, then those who give access to such will enlarge their power, capital, and position. These people are Marxists. Conversely if you empower people to provide, care, and steward themselves and their families - the need for government begins to fade. These two principles and world views will always be at war with each other on the fundamental basis: Marx says let the state provide for you, the Bible says if a man does not work--he should not eat.
The Left, and especially Obama, are completely ignorant of the fact that the majority of Americans think Marxism is not just less attractive but immoral. It offends the decency and sensibilities of many a man and woman who work upwards of ten, twelve, sixteen, hours a day and find themselves punished for such hard work. (Also based in the Biblical truth found in the "Parable of the Talents.")
So when a working man, who does work twelve to sixteen hours a day, asks Senator Obama about the dream of his future, his hopes to someday, if he works hard enough, to be able to actually buy the company he works for, Senator Obama rhetorically pats him on the head and tells him to take his marxist plan and be thankful for it, the working Joe (gasp) disagrees.
Had the issue ended with that interchange on YouTube Barack Obama would've forgotten all about this working class guy and his dreams. But it didn't because to Barack Obama's great surprise his answer that government knew better how to "spread the wealth around," and the implication for working class people, that they would now be crushed under the economic plan Obama has put forward caused a lot of people to take pause.
McCain seized on Obama's gaffe and the working Joe became the star of the debate.
Yet here is the most troubling aspect of all. The Obama camp unleashed the hounds, not against his opponent's plans, records, or words from the debate. No. They rolled bulldozers into the life and background of a man who has worked in a blue collar job for most of his adult life, and began to look for any and every piece of suspect baggage that they could throw up to the media.
The next morning Biden openly sneers at working class people on the morning talk shows. In the debate Obama pretended as though Joe might not have even existed when he prefaced a response to McCain with, "Joe, if you're even out there..." And Obama stayed on target at his next two rallies publicly and openly mocking a plumber's ability to ever make more than $250,000.
But wait Sen. Big Government...
Isn't the American dream summed up in the idea that if you work as hard as possible that you can break through to new earnings? Isn't it the American ideal to base your economic rise or fall on the shoulders of your own efforts? Shouldn't the desire for social justice inform you that it is immoral to take what one has earned and give it to one who did not? (And please don't start with compassion... Genuine compassion is when someone who has earned it voluntarily gives it because he is so moved to help his brother in need. Mandating such, violates the heart and the conscience.)
Team Obama's entire media operation became a heat seeking missile aimed at one target--destroy the working class person who dares to think, work, plan, and save for the benefit of their family, community, and nation. And do so especially if in the asking of honest questions you expose the leftist candidate in a presidential race to be the secret godless-worldview-marxist Barack Obama is.
The Obama campaign, the leftist media, and the Democratic party began "dumpster diving" to investigate any dirt they could find on 'Joe the plumber'. They set about to destroy the man who dared ask a reasoned question. If the left wins unchecked power in Washington, we can expect this behavior on a grand scale. They have already announced they intend to implement the 'fairness doctrine', which is an contradiction of terms. It is an attempt to stifle public discourse of their leftist policies.
One lesson learned from this week: when the left feel weakened they will level you with brute force, if necessary, to keep their stranglehold on the lifeline to our pocketbooks.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Obama's Socialistic Expansion Of Johnson's Failed Policies
Senator Obama has promised 'change'. However, it is not anything new, not real change. We have tried these same policies before. Under Lyndon Johnson. These policies failed to deliver there touted intentions, but Obama insists on returning the US. to an expanded version of these disasterous programs.
"Indeed, Senator Obama’s economic ideas and outlook — large expansions of federal entitlements and explicit efforts to redistribute income — look little different from the failed liberal policies of the 1960s." - James Capretta
In the aftermath of President Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964, Congress embarked on a period of unprecedented governmental activism. A flurry of new laws expanded welfare benefits, created two health-care entitlement programs, thrust the federal government into education financing and policy — and much, much more. To pay for these initiatives, Congress increased federal taxes substantially, including payroll taxes. Between 1965 and 1969, federal taxes increased from 17.0 to 19.7 percent of GDP.
Senator Obama’s economic plan is remarkably similar to those Johnson-era efforts in terms of its goals, even if the legislative tactics are somewhat different. Senator Obama promises to expand welfare benefits to many more households, although he would do so mainly with a series of expensive, refundable tax credits. He has proposed an unprecedented increase in federal spending on K-12 education programs. And his health-care plan would offer publicly funded insurance to nearly 50 million more people — at a time when the federal budget is already groaning under the weight of existing health-care entitlements.
Senator Obama would pay for this expansion of government with a massive tax increase. He is promising to raise the top marginal income-tax rate to nearly 40 percent. He wants to increase payroll taxes on high-income earners as well to pay for an unreformed Social Security program that will have fewer workers paying the benefits of growing numbers of baby-boomer retirees. And, according to an analysis from the independent Tax Policy Center, his plan depends on somehow finding nearly $1 trillion in revenue over ten years from as-yet-unspecified sources.
Americans are not averse to paying for government programs that genuinely help people. Indeed, many Americans would have concluded that 60s government activism was worth the cost — if it had actually worked to bring about prosperity and equality. But no reasonable observer could conclude that it did — and frequently enough, it made matters worse.
Instead of ending poverty, the Great Society ushered in an era of deepening welfare dependency and inner-city cultural decline. Well-intentioned support for single mothers and their children enabled an epidemic of fatherless families, with disastrous results. Family breakdown accelerated, and out-of-wedlock births soared. Moreover — with taxes and spending rising, the national economy fell into a decade-long period of sluggish economic growth, with high inflation and high unemployment. American businesses became less competitive. Confidence in our future fell.
Were Senator Obama’s program to be adopted, expect unintended consequences. Alex Brill and Alan Viand of the American Enterprise Institute have shown that his lavish new refundable tax credits would have the perverse effect of increasing the tax rate faced by many low-wage workers looking for better-paying jobs. The more these households earn, the less they would get from Senator Obama’s program of government-engineered financial assistance.
Similarly, Senator Obama’s plan for improving education would backfire. Increasing federal spending for K-12 education would simply allow state and local governments to cut back on their own funding commitments. The net financial gain to schools would be minimal at best. Moreover, with more federal funds comes muddled political accountability: No matter how much money is provided, it won’t stop local school administrators from claiming that their problems are due to insufficient federal support.
In addition, Senator Obama’s health-care plan would stifle job creation. Employers would be required to “pay or play,” meaning they would either have to offer government-approved insurance, or pay a new payroll tax. Such a mandate would make it more expensive for firms to hire low-wage workers. Unemployment would rise.
Moreover, many businesses that sponsor insurance for their workers today would stop doing so when faced with Obama’s expensive insurance mandates. Millions of workers and their dependents currently in private insurance would therefore end up in a government-run plan, with price controls and other regulatory red-tape. In time, increased government dominance in the health sector would undermine quality and stifle investments in those new drugs and devices which might provide breakthrough improvements in patients’ health.
And of course, Senator Obama’s marginal income-tax rate increases would reduce incentives for work and entrepreneurial activity at a time when our global competitors are moving in the opposite direction.
It took the presidency of Ronald Reagan to get things back on track after the decade-long malaise of the 1970s. Reagan understood that broad-based prosperity comes not from the government trying to engineer economic results but from the accumulated efforts of millions of individuals striving to improve their standards of living with hard work. Given the right incentives — and it’s the government’s job to get the incentives right in tax and spending policy — businesses and households will find ways to improve productivity and bring valuable innovations to the marketplace.
Even President Reagan came up short when it came to reforming the welfare state. That did not occur until Republicans took over Congress. Voters going to the polls in November would do well to recall the debate over the 1996 welfare-reform law. At the time, proponents argued that ending the entitlement to cash welfare benefits was crucial to breaking the culture of dependency so prevalent in urban America. They pushed successfully to replace the entitlement structure with a fixed block grant that states could use to provide temporary cash assistance and support services for those families trying to stay in the workforce.
Opponents of the law argued strenuously that it would produce a calamity, with millions of households getting pushed into poverty — with children starving in the streets, according to the most hyperbolic Democratic rhetoric.
What happened? Welfare caseloads fell by more than half almost overnight, from 4.6 million in 1996 to just over 2 million in 2002. And the Congressional Budget Office found that the lowest-income households experienced a 35-percent jump in their real incomes between 1991 and 2005, as rising wage income more than offset the reduction in cash welfare benefits. The 1996 welfare reform law is almost surely the most successful social-policy change in a generation.
It is instructive that Barack Obama, then a state senator in Illinois, strongly opposed welfare reform — and criticized President Bill Clinton for signing it — before claiming to have changed his mind about it during the presidential campaign.
The present moment cries out for an aggressive economic-reform agenda. Federal tax law has become a jumbled mess of excessive social engineering. Entitlement spending is set to rise dramatically over the next two decades as baby boomers head into retirement. Government agencies operate today much like they did in 1980, even though businesses have been transformed by the information-technology revolution.
I want to thank James Capretta for contributing to this post.
"Indeed, Senator Obama’s economic ideas and outlook — large expansions of federal entitlements and explicit efforts to redistribute income — look little different from the failed liberal policies of the 1960s." - James Capretta
In the aftermath of President Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964, Congress embarked on a period of unprecedented governmental activism. A flurry of new laws expanded welfare benefits, created two health-care entitlement programs, thrust the federal government into education financing and policy — and much, much more. To pay for these initiatives, Congress increased federal taxes substantially, including payroll taxes. Between 1965 and 1969, federal taxes increased from 17.0 to 19.7 percent of GDP.
Senator Obama’s economic plan is remarkably similar to those Johnson-era efforts in terms of its goals, even if the legislative tactics are somewhat different. Senator Obama promises to expand welfare benefits to many more households, although he would do so mainly with a series of expensive, refundable tax credits. He has proposed an unprecedented increase in federal spending on K-12 education programs. And his health-care plan would offer publicly funded insurance to nearly 50 million more people — at a time when the federal budget is already groaning under the weight of existing health-care entitlements.
Senator Obama would pay for this expansion of government with a massive tax increase. He is promising to raise the top marginal income-tax rate to nearly 40 percent. He wants to increase payroll taxes on high-income earners as well to pay for an unreformed Social Security program that will have fewer workers paying the benefits of growing numbers of baby-boomer retirees. And, according to an analysis from the independent Tax Policy Center, his plan depends on somehow finding nearly $1 trillion in revenue over ten years from as-yet-unspecified sources.
Americans are not averse to paying for government programs that genuinely help people. Indeed, many Americans would have concluded that 60s government activism was worth the cost — if it had actually worked to bring about prosperity and equality. But no reasonable observer could conclude that it did — and frequently enough, it made matters worse.
Instead of ending poverty, the Great Society ushered in an era of deepening welfare dependency and inner-city cultural decline. Well-intentioned support for single mothers and their children enabled an epidemic of fatherless families, with disastrous results. Family breakdown accelerated, and out-of-wedlock births soared. Moreover — with taxes and spending rising, the national economy fell into a decade-long period of sluggish economic growth, with high inflation and high unemployment. American businesses became less competitive. Confidence in our future fell.
Were Senator Obama’s program to be adopted, expect unintended consequences. Alex Brill and Alan Viand of the American Enterprise Institute have shown that his lavish new refundable tax credits would have the perverse effect of increasing the tax rate faced by many low-wage workers looking for better-paying jobs. The more these households earn, the less they would get from Senator Obama’s program of government-engineered financial assistance.
Similarly, Senator Obama’s plan for improving education would backfire. Increasing federal spending for K-12 education would simply allow state and local governments to cut back on their own funding commitments. The net financial gain to schools would be minimal at best. Moreover, with more federal funds comes muddled political accountability: No matter how much money is provided, it won’t stop local school administrators from claiming that their problems are due to insufficient federal support.
In addition, Senator Obama’s health-care plan would stifle job creation. Employers would be required to “pay or play,” meaning they would either have to offer government-approved insurance, or pay a new payroll tax. Such a mandate would make it more expensive for firms to hire low-wage workers. Unemployment would rise.
Moreover, many businesses that sponsor insurance for their workers today would stop doing so when faced with Obama’s expensive insurance mandates. Millions of workers and their dependents currently in private insurance would therefore end up in a government-run plan, with price controls and other regulatory red-tape. In time, increased government dominance in the health sector would undermine quality and stifle investments in those new drugs and devices which might provide breakthrough improvements in patients’ health.
And of course, Senator Obama’s marginal income-tax rate increases would reduce incentives for work and entrepreneurial activity at a time when our global competitors are moving in the opposite direction.
It took the presidency of Ronald Reagan to get things back on track after the decade-long malaise of the 1970s. Reagan understood that broad-based prosperity comes not from the government trying to engineer economic results but from the accumulated efforts of millions of individuals striving to improve their standards of living with hard work. Given the right incentives — and it’s the government’s job to get the incentives right in tax and spending policy — businesses and households will find ways to improve productivity and bring valuable innovations to the marketplace.
Even President Reagan came up short when it came to reforming the welfare state. That did not occur until Republicans took over Congress. Voters going to the polls in November would do well to recall the debate over the 1996 welfare-reform law. At the time, proponents argued that ending the entitlement to cash welfare benefits was crucial to breaking the culture of dependency so prevalent in urban America. They pushed successfully to replace the entitlement structure with a fixed block grant that states could use to provide temporary cash assistance and support services for those families trying to stay in the workforce.
Opponents of the law argued strenuously that it would produce a calamity, with millions of households getting pushed into poverty — with children starving in the streets, according to the most hyperbolic Democratic rhetoric.
What happened? Welfare caseloads fell by more than half almost overnight, from 4.6 million in 1996 to just over 2 million in 2002. And the Congressional Budget Office found that the lowest-income households experienced a 35-percent jump in their real incomes between 1991 and 2005, as rising wage income more than offset the reduction in cash welfare benefits. The 1996 welfare reform law is almost surely the most successful social-policy change in a generation.
It is instructive that Barack Obama, then a state senator in Illinois, strongly opposed welfare reform — and criticized President Bill Clinton for signing it — before claiming to have changed his mind about it during the presidential campaign.
The present moment cries out for an aggressive economic-reform agenda. Federal tax law has become a jumbled mess of excessive social engineering. Entitlement spending is set to rise dramatically over the next two decades as baby boomers head into retirement. Government agencies operate today much like they did in 1980, even though businesses have been transformed by the information-technology revolution.
I want to thank James Capretta for contributing to this post.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Obama And The Democrats Overplay The 'Race Card'
America has been in the throes of an very competitive campaign for almost two years. For the first time in history an African American is leading a major party. Throughout the campaign Obama's supporters have tried to quash any legitimate questioning of their candidate. Anyone who raises real concerns about Obama's positions is pounced on with charges of racism. The offender is called a racist and their character called into question, while Obama's defenders gloss over the issue.
Obama has led this sham. Perhaps he is paranoid. He started off saying that Republicans would say he was 'different', and did not look like the other presidents on the dollars bills. He did this in an well choreographed way. Obama raised the race card, much the way people spray on "Off" prior to going outside in the summer.
The left has played the race card like a teenager plays a new CD. 'Joe the plumber' asks a question. The Democrats and the media set out to destroy him and call him a racist. Palin points out Obama's association with "white" domestic terrorist Ayers. She is an racist. I question his racist church and its racist theology, pointing out that he attended there twenty years, and I get called a racist.
America is used to Jack Murtha's moronic manner. Last week in an interview with the Post-Gazette's editorial board, "There's no question that Western Pennsylvania is a racist area." Barack Obama would win, he predicted, but not in a "runaway," due to racism.
After Mr. Murtha's brash set-up, Mr. Patrick's appeal to vote-as-racial-atonement was delivered Friday via the unnamed overseas visitors he meets regularly. They range from foreign businessmen and heads of state, and they are "very, very interested in Barack Obama's candidacy," he said in a Post-Gazette story. "Once, I asked one why, and his response was so beautiful. He said, 'We are watching to see if America is who she says she is.' " - Ruth Ann Dailey
The American ideal is to vote for racial identity rather than political ideas? And that's beautiful? That sounds like typical left-wing .
Which foreign nations are these, anxious to judge the American voters? The ones in Europe that keep their, Muslim minorities as second-class citizens in out of sight suburban ghettos? The ones whose leaders openly make outrageous anti-Semitic remarks? The ones who themselves have even fewer minorities in positions of power?The countries whose economies have been mired for years in the stagnation of cradle-to-grave socialism?
Other countries views of Americas political process is a moot point. The fact that we have an African American nominated in itself puts us ahead of them.
The best thing that could happen on Nov. 4 is for like-minded people to give him their votes, regardless of their race or his, and for people who embrace free-market, limited-government principles to vote for his opponent, regardless of their race or his.
That said, to some unknowable extent, Mr. Murtha's accusation is both true and lamentable. There are still racists living in the United States, and some of them even live in Western Pennsylvania, which happens to be a Democratic stronghold.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter, made the same claim about the entire state back in February. Also while chatting with the Post-Gazette editorial board, he said, "You've got conservative whites here ... who are not ready to vote for an African-American candidate." (Note the tiresome Democratic smear of equating racism with conservatism.)
Mr. Rendell's comments came two months before the primary, but Mr. Obama's remarks about bitter small-town voters clinging to their guns and religion exploded into public debate 10 days before the primary. Mrs. Clinton won Pennsylvania by a margin of 10 percent.
Were the Democrats who voted for her motivated by racism, or were they turned off by Mr. Obama's disdain for their lives and values? "Were they clinging to their guns and religion"? Or did they just prefer her prescription for the country's future?
The same questions will still apply on Election Day. Republicans have won nine of the 15 presidential races since the end of World War II. Candidates of either party usually win by very slim margins. That's a strong enough pattern to assert that Americans are pretty evenly divided ideologically, are in general a little more conservative than the Democratic Party and like to invigorate the body politic regularly with a tonic of something completely different.-Ruth Ann Dailey
The Democrats have hidden behind the race card so many times throughout the campaign, that they have devalued and exploited the term. It has been rendered as nothing more than background noise.
Obama has led this sham. Perhaps he is paranoid. He started off saying that Republicans would say he was 'different', and did not look like the other presidents on the dollars bills. He did this in an well choreographed way. Obama raised the race card, much the way people spray on "Off" prior to going outside in the summer.
The left has played the race card like a teenager plays a new CD. 'Joe the plumber' asks a question. The Democrats and the media set out to destroy him and call him a racist. Palin points out Obama's association with "white" domestic terrorist Ayers. She is an racist. I question his racist church and its racist theology, pointing out that he attended there twenty years, and I get called a racist.
America is used to Jack Murtha's moronic manner. Last week in an interview with the Post-Gazette's editorial board, "There's no question that Western Pennsylvania is a racist area." Barack Obama would win, he predicted, but not in a "runaway," due to racism.
After Mr. Murtha's brash set-up, Mr. Patrick's appeal to vote-as-racial-atonement was delivered Friday via the unnamed overseas visitors he meets regularly. They range from foreign businessmen and heads of state, and they are "very, very interested in Barack Obama's candidacy," he said in a Post-Gazette story. "Once, I asked one why, and his response was so beautiful. He said, 'We are watching to see if America is who she says she is.' " - Ruth Ann Dailey
The American ideal is to vote for racial identity rather than political ideas? And that's beautiful? That sounds like typical left-wing .
Which foreign nations are these, anxious to judge the American voters? The ones in Europe that keep their, Muslim minorities as second-class citizens in out of sight suburban ghettos? The ones whose leaders openly make outrageous anti-Semitic remarks? The ones who themselves have even fewer minorities in positions of power?The countries whose economies have been mired for years in the stagnation of cradle-to-grave socialism?
Other countries views of Americas political process is a moot point. The fact that we have an African American nominated in itself puts us ahead of them.
The best thing that could happen on Nov. 4 is for like-minded people to give him their votes, regardless of their race or his, and for people who embrace free-market, limited-government principles to vote for his opponent, regardless of their race or his.
That said, to some unknowable extent, Mr. Murtha's accusation is both true and lamentable. There are still racists living in the United States, and some of them even live in Western Pennsylvania, which happens to be a Democratic stronghold.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter, made the same claim about the entire state back in February. Also while chatting with the Post-Gazette editorial board, he said, "You've got conservative whites here ... who are not ready to vote for an African-American candidate." (Note the tiresome Democratic smear of equating racism with conservatism.)
Mr. Rendell's comments came two months before the primary, but Mr. Obama's remarks about bitter small-town voters clinging to their guns and religion exploded into public debate 10 days before the primary. Mrs. Clinton won Pennsylvania by a margin of 10 percent.
Were the Democrats who voted for her motivated by racism, or were they turned off by Mr. Obama's disdain for their lives and values? "Were they clinging to their guns and religion"? Or did they just prefer her prescription for the country's future?
The same questions will still apply on Election Day. Republicans have won nine of the 15 presidential races since the end of World War II. Candidates of either party usually win by very slim margins. That's a strong enough pattern to assert that Americans are pretty evenly divided ideologically, are in general a little more conservative than the Democratic Party and like to invigorate the body politic regularly with a tonic of something completely different.-Ruth Ann Dailey
The Democrats have hidden behind the race card so many times throughout the campaign, that they have devalued and exploited the term. It has been rendered as nothing more than background noise.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Obama Favors Drivers Licenses For Illegals
As America approaches the crossroads of an election, we are reminded once again of the stark contrast of our candidates.
Senator Obama believes we should award illegal aliens with the coveted American Drivers License. If people come here illegally, why would Obama reward this illegal behavior? Obama knows these people would have an opportunity to register to vote. As we have seen with the debacle of ACORN's voter registration scam, this offers yet another means for the Democrats to expand their voter base. The Wall Street Journal reported that eight of the 9/11 terrorists were registered to vote. Senator McCain's experience affords him the judgement to oppose such an misguided proposal.
An ad is now airing, that goes after Obama on this exercise in poor judgement. It correctly points out that of the nineteen terrorists on Sept. 11th, “thirteen get driver’s licenses. The 9/11 plot depended on easy-to-get licenses,” a women narrator reveals as images of a burning World Trade Center are juxtaposed with a mock up of Mohammed Atta’s Florida driver’s license. Atta was fingered as the ringleader of the 9/11 terror attacks.
“Obama is the most radical liberal ever to be nominated by the Democratic Party,” Scott Wheeler, executive director of the NRTrust, told Newsmax. “The driver’s license is just one of many issues that proves it.”
His Web site [www.nationalrepublicantrust.com] cites a 2007 Rasmussen poll showing that 77 percent of voters oppose granting illegal immigrants driver’s licenses.
A recent Zogby poll on the question found that 46 percent of voters said they would be less likely to vote for Obama if he backed the idea of driver’s licenses for illegals. (Thirty-eight percent of voters said they were “much less” likely to vote for him under those circumstances.)
The Zogby data suggests the issue could hurt Obama across party lines. Almost 20 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents said they would be less likely to vote for him if he backed such a license plan.
Though white voters strongly opposed Obama’s plan (50 percent), core Democratic groups also were negative on the issue, with 29 percent of Hispanics and 42 percent of blacks saying they would be less likely to vote for him with such a plan.
Wheeler’s group quotes political strategist Dick Morris as praising NRTrust as “a very effective organization” and saying the driver’s license issue could “make a huge difference on Election Day."
Wheeler says his group has raised $500,000 and has close to 10,000 donors. His organization said it is rolling its first ad in key swing states this weekend.
Obama is willing to cast our country's safety aside for electoral gain. He believes additional voters are worth the risk of American lives. Obama's lack of experience is the only plausible reason that could lead to such fallible judgement.
“I think that it is the right idea,” Obama declared, adding that licensing and insuring illegals is “a public safety concern.”
“We can make sure that drivers who are illegal come out of the shadows, that they can be tracked, that they are properly trained, and that will make our roads safer,” he said. “That doesn’t negate the need for us to reform illegal immigration.”
In the days that followed the Drexel debate, critics blasted Spitzer’s proposal. Polls showed that the issue was sinking Spitzer’s approval ratings even in heavily Democratic New York.
Critics warned that giving illegal immigrants licenses would be a security nightmare, allowing terrorists to travel on planes, rent trucks and vans, and move about the country with ease, and without detection or scrutiny.
In October 2007, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called former New York Governor Spitzer to voice concerns that New York’s initiative could undermine federal plans to enhance security and improve documentation.
In the aftermath of 9/11, authorities reported that the 19 terrorists involved in the attacks had obtained 13 driver’s licenses, plus 21 federal or state-issued ID cards.
During the November Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, moderator Wolf Blitzer raised the issue again, asking Obama whether he supported driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.
Obama began by recounting that he had vigorously promoted the concept in the Illinois State Senate, where he said he voted to train, license, and insure illegals to operate motor vehicles, to “protect public safety.”
Wheeler argues that Obama’s position in support of licenses to help public safety is ludicrous.
“Imagine if a potential terrorist enters the U.S. but has no history of previous terror activity or has changed their identity,” Wheeler says, adding, “How does Obama weed such dangerous people out before giving them a driver’s license? You can’t.”
Sen. John McCain has stated he opposes driver’s licenses for illegals. He also has stated his opposition to any benefits for those who “have come here illegally and broke our law.”
In a February 2007 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, McCain said, “It would be among my highest priorities to secure our borders first, and only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration.”
http://washingtonroundup.blogspot.com/
Senator Obama believes we should award illegal aliens with the coveted American Drivers License. If people come here illegally, why would Obama reward this illegal behavior? Obama knows these people would have an opportunity to register to vote. As we have seen with the debacle of ACORN's voter registration scam, this offers yet another means for the Democrats to expand their voter base. The Wall Street Journal reported that eight of the 9/11 terrorists were registered to vote. Senator McCain's experience affords him the judgement to oppose such an misguided proposal.
An ad is now airing, that goes after Obama on this exercise in poor judgement. It correctly points out that of the nineteen terrorists on Sept. 11th, “thirteen get driver’s licenses. The 9/11 plot depended on easy-to-get licenses,” a women narrator reveals as images of a burning World Trade Center are juxtaposed with a mock up of Mohammed Atta’s Florida driver’s license. Atta was fingered as the ringleader of the 9/11 terror attacks.
“Obama is the most radical liberal ever to be nominated by the Democratic Party,” Scott Wheeler, executive director of the NRTrust, told Newsmax. “The driver’s license is just one of many issues that proves it.”
His Web site [www.nationalrepublicantrust.com] cites a 2007 Rasmussen poll showing that 77 percent of voters oppose granting illegal immigrants driver’s licenses.
A recent Zogby poll on the question found that 46 percent of voters said they would be less likely to vote for Obama if he backed the idea of driver’s licenses for illegals. (Thirty-eight percent of voters said they were “much less” likely to vote for him under those circumstances.)
The Zogby data suggests the issue could hurt Obama across party lines. Almost 20 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents said they would be less likely to vote for him if he backed such a license plan.
Though white voters strongly opposed Obama’s plan (50 percent), core Democratic groups also were negative on the issue, with 29 percent of Hispanics and 42 percent of blacks saying they would be less likely to vote for him with such a plan.
Wheeler’s group quotes political strategist Dick Morris as praising NRTrust as “a very effective organization” and saying the driver’s license issue could “make a huge difference on Election Day."
Wheeler says his group has raised $500,000 and has close to 10,000 donors. His organization said it is rolling its first ad in key swing states this weekend.
Obama is willing to cast our country's safety aside for electoral gain. He believes additional voters are worth the risk of American lives. Obama's lack of experience is the only plausible reason that could lead to such fallible judgement.
“I think that it is the right idea,” Obama declared, adding that licensing and insuring illegals is “a public safety concern.”
“We can make sure that drivers who are illegal come out of the shadows, that they can be tracked, that they are properly trained, and that will make our roads safer,” he said. “That doesn’t negate the need for us to reform illegal immigration.”
In the days that followed the Drexel debate, critics blasted Spitzer’s proposal. Polls showed that the issue was sinking Spitzer’s approval ratings even in heavily Democratic New York.
Critics warned that giving illegal immigrants licenses would be a security nightmare, allowing terrorists to travel on planes, rent trucks and vans, and move about the country with ease, and without detection or scrutiny.
In October 2007, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called former New York Governor Spitzer to voice concerns that New York’s initiative could undermine federal plans to enhance security and improve documentation.
In the aftermath of 9/11, authorities reported that the 19 terrorists involved in the attacks had obtained 13 driver’s licenses, plus 21 federal or state-issued ID cards.
During the November Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, moderator Wolf Blitzer raised the issue again, asking Obama whether he supported driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.
Obama began by recounting that he had vigorously promoted the concept in the Illinois State Senate, where he said he voted to train, license, and insure illegals to operate motor vehicles, to “protect public safety.”
Wheeler argues that Obama’s position in support of licenses to help public safety is ludicrous.
“Imagine if a potential terrorist enters the U.S. but has no history of previous terror activity or has changed their identity,” Wheeler says, adding, “How does Obama weed such dangerous people out before giving them a driver’s license? You can’t.”
Sen. John McCain has stated he opposes driver’s licenses for illegals. He also has stated his opposition to any benefits for those who “have come here illegally and broke our law.”
In a February 2007 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, McCain said, “It would be among my highest priorities to secure our borders first, and only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration.”
http://washingtonroundup.blogspot.com/
Obama's Taxes Hit Sophie And Jeff
Senator Obama plans to raise the corporate tax rate. I am frustrated by our economy as much as the next guy. I would not mind watching corporations take one on the chin. I believe many voters share my feelings.
However, upon closer examination of the actual impact, this proves to be an economic folly. Reflective of Senator Obama's poor judgement and inexperience.
The US. currently has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, and is full of loopholes. Obama's proposal to raise the rate even further, will drive more companies overseas. They will take their jobs with them. Compared to much of the world, out labor costs are already cost prohibitive. Increasing the tax rate makes locating or continuing operations in the US even less attractive.
One of my best friends lives in Titusville, Fla. Sophie Clark, aka, Titusville Mary, claims to be undecided in this election. Sophie cleans houses for a living. Her boyfriend, Jeff is retired military, and works one full time job, while maintaining a second part time job. Jeff is behind Obama.
Like so many voters they like the eloquent speeches Obama gives; failing to recognize the vagueness of his words. They do not foresee the implications of Obama's proposal. They do not realize that a ten percent increase in the corporate tax rate will affect them directly.
Sophie and Jeff have not thought through the issues, such as this. Raising the rate is going to drive away companies and jobs. Remaining companies are not going to absorb the tax increase. The voters are. Companies are going to offset the increase by laying off workers, cutting investment, and increasing their prices. This will drive up unemployment, prices and inflation. At a time America can ill afford it.
Imagine a ten percent increase hitting your monthly expenses. Your household's monthly operating expenses (minus mortgage), will be going up at a rate reflective to this tax increase. If you currently have an $1,000 overhead, add 10%.
The gallon of gas and milk that already seem expensive will be even more under Obama's plan. Sophies boyfriend is remodeling his home. This plan will add to the materials cost of this seemingly endless endeavor. Sophie has her home in state of perpetual renovation. This will be taking the wind out of her sail.
McCain wants to take out the loopholes and lower the rate. By lowering the rate, he will appeal to companies to remain in the US. Saving Americas jobs. By closing the loopholes, McCain will actually increase the revenue.
Obama's tax break to working families will not offset this corporate rate increase and the affects on consumers wallets. It will hit American consumers the same as if Obama raised the taxes of all Americans, because all Americans will be paying for it. Someone once said you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. America get ready to squeal!
As for Obama's tax break to 95% of Americans, it is another expansion of an increasingly socialist program. A twist on redistribution of wealth. Currently, approximately 35% of Americans do not pay any taxes. Under this plan they will get this "tax break" at the expense of legitimate taxpayers. Spreading the wealth does not help in the long run. It merely serves to decrease incentive for workers to strive to get ahead.
Add to this, Obama's plans for bringing back the 'Death Tax', adding to the already overtaxed small businesses tax liability, and we have a prescription for economic disaster. Small business is where jobs are created and Obama wants to stifle this growth.
The Senator from ACORN lacks the experience and judgement to recognize what is best for America. Rhetoric is not a viable plan and is not a substitute for experience.
I do hope Sophie and Jeff think things through between now and the election.
However, upon closer examination of the actual impact, this proves to be an economic folly. Reflective of Senator Obama's poor judgement and inexperience.
The US. currently has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, and is full of loopholes. Obama's proposal to raise the rate even further, will drive more companies overseas. They will take their jobs with them. Compared to much of the world, out labor costs are already cost prohibitive. Increasing the tax rate makes locating or continuing operations in the US even less attractive.
One of my best friends lives in Titusville, Fla. Sophie Clark, aka, Titusville Mary, claims to be undecided in this election. Sophie cleans houses for a living. Her boyfriend, Jeff is retired military, and works one full time job, while maintaining a second part time job. Jeff is behind Obama.
Like so many voters they like the eloquent speeches Obama gives; failing to recognize the vagueness of his words. They do not foresee the implications of Obama's proposal. They do not realize that a ten percent increase in the corporate tax rate will affect them directly.
Sophie and Jeff have not thought through the issues, such as this. Raising the rate is going to drive away companies and jobs. Remaining companies are not going to absorb the tax increase. The voters are. Companies are going to offset the increase by laying off workers, cutting investment, and increasing their prices. This will drive up unemployment, prices and inflation. At a time America can ill afford it.
Imagine a ten percent increase hitting your monthly expenses. Your household's monthly operating expenses (minus mortgage), will be going up at a rate reflective to this tax increase. If you currently have an $1,000 overhead, add 10%.
The gallon of gas and milk that already seem expensive will be even more under Obama's plan. Sophies boyfriend is remodeling his home. This plan will add to the materials cost of this seemingly endless endeavor. Sophie has her home in state of perpetual renovation. This will be taking the wind out of her sail.
McCain wants to take out the loopholes and lower the rate. By lowering the rate, he will appeal to companies to remain in the US. Saving Americas jobs. By closing the loopholes, McCain will actually increase the revenue.
Obama's tax break to working families will not offset this corporate rate increase and the affects on consumers wallets. It will hit American consumers the same as if Obama raised the taxes of all Americans, because all Americans will be paying for it. Someone once said you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. America get ready to squeal!
As for Obama's tax break to 95% of Americans, it is another expansion of an increasingly socialist program. A twist on redistribution of wealth. Currently, approximately 35% of Americans do not pay any taxes. Under this plan they will get this "tax break" at the expense of legitimate taxpayers. Spreading the wealth does not help in the long run. It merely serves to decrease incentive for workers to strive to get ahead.
Add to this, Obama's plans for bringing back the 'Death Tax', adding to the already overtaxed small businesses tax liability, and we have a prescription for economic disaster. Small business is where jobs are created and Obama wants to stifle this growth.
The Senator from ACORN lacks the experience and judgement to recognize what is best for America. Rhetoric is not a viable plan and is not a substitute for experience.
I do hope Sophie and Jeff think things through between now and the election.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Obama, Wright And 'Black Liberation Theology'
To help everyone better understand Black Liberation Theology as taught at Trinity Church of Christ, where Obama attended for 20 years. Here is an outline with a link to the full article.
Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, contrary to invidious rumors. But he belongs to a Christian church whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people". At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy.
During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the "black liberation" school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains:
Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.
Biblical theology teaches that even the most terrible events to befall Israel, such as the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, embody the workings of divine justice, even if humankind cannot see God's purpose. James Cone sees the matter very differently. Either God must do what we want him to do, or we must reject him, Cone maintains:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love. [1]
In the black liberation theology taught by Wright, Cone and Hopkins, Jesus Christ is not for all men, but only for the oppressed:
In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors ... Either God is for black people in their fight for liberation and against the white oppressors, or he is not [Cone].
In this respect black liberation theology is identical in content to all the ethnocentric heresies that preceded it. Christianity has no use for the nations, a "drop of the bucket" and "dust on the scales", in the words of Isaiah. It requires that individuals turn their back on their ethnicity to be reborn into Israel in the spirit. That is much easier for Americans than for the citizens of other nations, for Americans have no ethnicity. But the tribes of the world do not want to abandon their Gentile nature and as individuals join the New Israel. Instead they demand eternal life in their own Gentile flesh, that is, to be the "Chosen People".
Obama chose to sit in this church for 20 years. The glaing racism found in the subscribed theology is troubling and widely ignored in the media. They will not risk the election of their candidate by exposing him to the American voters.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JC18Aa01.html
Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, contrary to invidious rumors. But he belongs to a Christian church whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people". At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy.
During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the "black liberation" school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains:
Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.
Biblical theology teaches that even the most terrible events to befall Israel, such as the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, embody the workings of divine justice, even if humankind cannot see God's purpose. James Cone sees the matter very differently. Either God must do what we want him to do, or we must reject him, Cone maintains:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love. [1]
In the black liberation theology taught by Wright, Cone and Hopkins, Jesus Christ is not for all men, but only for the oppressed:
In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors ... Either God is for black people in their fight for liberation and against the white oppressors, or he is not [Cone].
In this respect black liberation theology is identical in content to all the ethnocentric heresies that preceded it. Christianity has no use for the nations, a "drop of the bucket" and "dust on the scales", in the words of Isaiah. It requires that individuals turn their back on their ethnicity to be reborn into Israel in the spirit. That is much easier for Americans than for the citizens of other nations, for Americans have no ethnicity. But the tribes of the world do not want to abandon their Gentile nature and as individuals join the New Israel. Instead they demand eternal life in their own Gentile flesh, that is, to be the "Chosen People".
Obama chose to sit in this church for 20 years. The glaing racism found in the subscribed theology is troubling and widely ignored in the media. They will not risk the election of their candidate by exposing him to the American voters.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JC18Aa01.html
Unions, Democrats And The Secret Ballot
America goes to the polls on November 4th. We vote using a secret ballot. That is a way to allow us to exercise our right to enfranchisement as citizens. We are able to vote according to our own conscience, without sharing our choice, if we so choose.
The Unions and Democrats are pushing to remove the secret ballot as an means for those deciding whether to form a union. They have come up with the 'Employee Free Choice Act'. It is a misleading name at best. At worst it is downright cynical.
Currently, once 30% of a company's workers sign union authorization cards, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administers a confidential vote, typically 39 days after it receives the cards. The union and employer campaign for votes.
Under the 'Employee Free Choice Act' being promoted by unions, when more than 50% of employees sign authorization cards, the NLRB would have to recognize the new union. No campaign. No secret ballot.
The measure passed the US House in 2007 after the Democrats took control. The Democrats still need more votes to pass it in the Senate. They also need a President who will sign it. This coming election may provide them the Senate votes and that President. Obama supports it, McCain does not. Even former Democratic nominee George McGovern has come out against it.
The proposed change would give unions and pro-union employees more incentive to use peer pressure, or worse, to persuade reluctant workers to sign their cards. And without elections, workers who weren't contacted by union organizers would have no say in the final outcome. Who wants a union organizer standing at their work space with a card and pen in hand, asking them to sign; while their coworkers all stare?
Labor leaders, such as AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, argue's that the proposed law wouldn't prohibit private balloting. This is accurate but misleading. Union organizers would have no reason to seek an election if they had union cards signed by more than 50% of workers. And if they had less than a majority, they'd be unlikely to call for a vote they'd probably lose.
The legislation has other questionable provisions as well. For example, once a union is formed, if labor and management can't agree on a contract, a federal arbitration board would be called on to go beyond the normal role of facilitating talks and actually dictate terms.
Labor has seen its role decline since the 1950s, when about a third of all private sector employees belonged to unions, compared with about 7.5% today. So it's understandably eager to find ways to expand membership, particularly at a time when workers are feeling economically vulnerable. More members, more members dues.
The Democrats have a vested interest in ensuring passage. The unions have long been big donors to Democratic candidates. If the unions have declining membership and related dues, then there is less to give to the Democrats. If the Democrats get thispassed and signed into law, the union officials and Democrats win. Unfortunately, the workers lose. This undermining of Democratic ideals is a poor deal for America's workers.
The Unions and Democrats are pushing to remove the secret ballot as an means for those deciding whether to form a union. They have come up with the 'Employee Free Choice Act'. It is a misleading name at best. At worst it is downright cynical.
Currently, once 30% of a company's workers sign union authorization cards, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administers a confidential vote, typically 39 days after it receives the cards. The union and employer campaign for votes.
Under the 'Employee Free Choice Act' being promoted by unions, when more than 50% of employees sign authorization cards, the NLRB would have to recognize the new union. No campaign. No secret ballot.
The measure passed the US House in 2007 after the Democrats took control. The Democrats still need more votes to pass it in the Senate. They also need a President who will sign it. This coming election may provide them the Senate votes and that President. Obama supports it, McCain does not. Even former Democratic nominee George McGovern has come out against it.
The proposed change would give unions and pro-union employees more incentive to use peer pressure, or worse, to persuade reluctant workers to sign their cards. And without elections, workers who weren't contacted by union organizers would have no say in the final outcome. Who wants a union organizer standing at their work space with a card and pen in hand, asking them to sign; while their coworkers all stare?
Labor leaders, such as AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, argue's that the proposed law wouldn't prohibit private balloting. This is accurate but misleading. Union organizers would have no reason to seek an election if they had union cards signed by more than 50% of workers. And if they had less than a majority, they'd be unlikely to call for a vote they'd probably lose.
The legislation has other questionable provisions as well. For example, once a union is formed, if labor and management can't agree on a contract, a federal arbitration board would be called on to go beyond the normal role of facilitating talks and actually dictate terms.
Labor has seen its role decline since the 1950s, when about a third of all private sector employees belonged to unions, compared with about 7.5% today. So it's understandably eager to find ways to expand membership, particularly at a time when workers are feeling economically vulnerable. More members, more members dues.
The Democrats have a vested interest in ensuring passage. The unions have long been big donors to Democratic candidates. If the unions have declining membership and related dues, then there is less to give to the Democrats. If the Democrats get thispassed and signed into law, the union officials and Democrats win. Unfortunately, the workers lose. This undermining of Democratic ideals is a poor deal for America's workers.
Acorn Has Received $31 Million From Our Taxes
We all know how the political gamesmanship works in Washington, DC. If you want someone to support your legislation, you have to give them something in return. Irregardless of whether it is an Emergency Funding bill or roads projects.
The Democrats play the game quite well. They have managed to insert funding into various bills over the past ten years, giving ACORN $31 million of our tax dollars. It is not lost on Democratic strategist, that ACORN targets low income people to register to vote. Therefore, the Democrats directly benefit from ACORN's efforts.
We all know by now that ACORN has been involved in forcing banks to give otherwise unqualified low income people, home loans. Adding to the crisis in our finacial markets. ACORN has been in the news during this election cycle for their voter registration fraud.
They have problems with their registration activities every election cycle. Every election cycle, they apologise and claim they will improve the "next time". This time they have pulled out all the stops in an attempt to help one of their own.
ACORN claims they have registered 1.3 million new voters this cycle. In Ohio, there are 600,000 new registrations. Of this, Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner has refused to make the known 200,000 questionable registrations available to county election officials. Federal law requires new registrations to be cross checked against Drivers License and Social Security numbers. Ohio's Secretary of State is making a naked attempt to steal Ohio's electoral vote and deliver them to Obama. Perhaps she is making a high profile bid for a position in an Obama administration.
ACORN is being investigated by the FBI, to see if they have an goal of disrupting the electoral process through nefarious means.
In Seattle, ACORN turned in one batch of registrations. Of the 1,800 registrations, investigators discovered only "6" were legitimate. During questioning, ACORN's employee's admitted they had gone to the public library downtown and made them up.
Obama worked for the Chicago chapter after completing law school. He was brought in to train their executive team on 'tactics'. As an adolescent, he was 'mentored' by Frank Davis, a self described communist. Obama wrote about him in his autobiography. Obama had also learned tactics from domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers.
Many people on the left ask us to ignore the 500# gorilla in the room (ACORN). They implore Americans to not believe their 'lying eyes'. Well folks, if it walks and quacks like a Duck. It is a Duck!
America is laying witness to the usurping of our electoral process.
The Democrats play the game quite well. They have managed to insert funding into various bills over the past ten years, giving ACORN $31 million of our tax dollars. It is not lost on Democratic strategist, that ACORN targets low income people to register to vote. Therefore, the Democrats directly benefit from ACORN's efforts.
We all know by now that ACORN has been involved in forcing banks to give otherwise unqualified low income people, home loans. Adding to the crisis in our finacial markets. ACORN has been in the news during this election cycle for their voter registration fraud.
They have problems with their registration activities every election cycle. Every election cycle, they apologise and claim they will improve the "next time". This time they have pulled out all the stops in an attempt to help one of their own.
ACORN claims they have registered 1.3 million new voters this cycle. In Ohio, there are 600,000 new registrations. Of this, Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner has refused to make the known 200,000 questionable registrations available to county election officials. Federal law requires new registrations to be cross checked against Drivers License and Social Security numbers. Ohio's Secretary of State is making a naked attempt to steal Ohio's electoral vote and deliver them to Obama. Perhaps she is making a high profile bid for a position in an Obama administration.
ACORN is being investigated by the FBI, to see if they have an goal of disrupting the electoral process through nefarious means.
In Seattle, ACORN turned in one batch of registrations. Of the 1,800 registrations, investigators discovered only "6" were legitimate. During questioning, ACORN's employee's admitted they had gone to the public library downtown and made them up.
Obama worked for the Chicago chapter after completing law school. He was brought in to train their executive team on 'tactics'. As an adolescent, he was 'mentored' by Frank Davis, a self described communist. Obama wrote about him in his autobiography. Obama had also learned tactics from domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers.
Many people on the left ask us to ignore the 500# gorilla in the room (ACORN). They implore Americans to not believe their 'lying eyes'. Well folks, if it walks and quacks like a Duck. It is a Duck!
America is laying witness to the usurping of our electoral process.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
On The Precipice Of Pakistans Overthrow
America's semi-reliable ally, Pakistan, is on the precipice of overthrow. The political climate there has ripened into a disaster in the making. Benazir Bhutto's husband is now in office, but only tenuously. They are having energy and food shortages. Al-Qaeda has taken control of two regions. The military command is dicey. Terrorists have longed for an opportunity to gain control of nuclear weapons, and may have found their mark. If the government there falls to radical Islamists, then the western world will be fighting for it's own survival. Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal.
This is the picture being outlined in a soon-to-be released U.S. Intelligence Assessment.
A U.S. official who participated in drafting the top secret National Intelligence Estimate said it portrays the situation in Pakistan as "very bad." Another official called the draft "very bleak," and said it describes Pakistan as being "on the edge."
The first official summarized the estimates conclusions about the state of Pakistan as: "no money, no energy, no government."
Six U.S. officials who helped draft or are aware of the document's findings confirmed them on the condition of anonymity because NIEs are top secret and are restricted to the president, senior officials and members of Congress. An NIE's conclusions reflect the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.
The NIE on Pakistan, along with others being prepared on Afghanistan and Iraq, will underpin a "strategic assessment" of the situation that Army Gen. David Petraeus, who's about to take command of all U.S. forces in the region, has requested. The aim of the assessment - seven years after the U.S. sent troops into Afghanistan - is to determine whether a U.S. presence in the region can be effective and if so what U.S. strategy should be.
"Can it get that bad in Pakistan? The Pakistanis themselves now say that two vital regions - Swat and the area around Peshawar - are already in al-Qaeda's hands. The whole government is rotten to the core so it won't take much to push it over.
Then what? Same thing that happened in Afghanistan. A coalition of conservative fundamentalist parties take over and we have the nightmare scenario come true.
I want to say I'm confident Obama would do something if worse came to worse, but we just don't know, do we?" - Rick Moran
This is not the same world we lived in prior to 9/11. These radicals hate everything about the western culture. They want to destroy it. A member of Hamas was quoted as saying about our negotiations:"There is nothing to negotiate. We do not want anything from you. We want to destroy you."
I see people in the middle east supporting Obama. I hope they do so out of respect for him. However, I believe that he is viewed as the weaker Presidential candidate, naive and inexperienced. He would be easier to walk over. He might also be more hesitant to react. The radicals know what to expect from McCain and it gives them pause. Not so, with a perceived weaker Obama.
This is the picture being outlined in a soon-to-be released U.S. Intelligence Assessment.
A U.S. official who participated in drafting the top secret National Intelligence Estimate said it portrays the situation in Pakistan as "very bad." Another official called the draft "very bleak," and said it describes Pakistan as being "on the edge."
The first official summarized the estimates conclusions about the state of Pakistan as: "no money, no energy, no government."
Six U.S. officials who helped draft or are aware of the document's findings confirmed them on the condition of anonymity because NIEs are top secret and are restricted to the president, senior officials and members of Congress. An NIE's conclusions reflect the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.
The NIE on Pakistan, along with others being prepared on Afghanistan and Iraq, will underpin a "strategic assessment" of the situation that Army Gen. David Petraeus, who's about to take command of all U.S. forces in the region, has requested. The aim of the assessment - seven years after the U.S. sent troops into Afghanistan - is to determine whether a U.S. presence in the region can be effective and if so what U.S. strategy should be.
"Can it get that bad in Pakistan? The Pakistanis themselves now say that two vital regions - Swat and the area around Peshawar - are already in al-Qaeda's hands. The whole government is rotten to the core so it won't take much to push it over.
Then what? Same thing that happened in Afghanistan. A coalition of conservative fundamentalist parties take over and we have the nightmare scenario come true.
I want to say I'm confident Obama would do something if worse came to worse, but we just don't know, do we?" - Rick Moran
This is not the same world we lived in prior to 9/11. These radicals hate everything about the western culture. They want to destroy it. A member of Hamas was quoted as saying about our negotiations:"There is nothing to negotiate. We do not want anything from you. We want to destroy you."
I see people in the middle east supporting Obama. I hope they do so out of respect for him. However, I believe that he is viewed as the weaker Presidential candidate, naive and inexperienced. He would be easier to walk over. He might also be more hesitant to react. The radicals know what to expect from McCain and it gives them pause. Not so, with a perceived weaker Obama.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The Democrat's Shameful War On Poverty
President Johnson professed to declare war on poverty in the United States. He promised the less fortunate an Government issued check to lift them out of poverty. Medicaid was also supposed to help alleviate the scourge of those who lacked health care.
I believe this was perhaps one of the most cynical political plays of the 20th century.
Our population is much larger now. Three trillion dollars have gone into this effort in the forty plus years since adopted. Is there less poverty? As a percentage of our population it is lower. However, in raw numbers, there are in fact more Americans living below the poverty level now, then when the program began. How could this be?
The Democrats gave the poor a check, under the guise of helping them. The greatest number of poor, tend to be the least educated of our nation. These people saw the Democrats as caring for and about their plight. It did not take long for these recipients to come to believe this paltry sum was their worth as a people. The poor repaid the Democrats by becoming a loyal voting block. In their eyes it was quid pro quo. Something for something.
Did the Democrats really help them? No. Had the Democrats cared about them, they would not merely sustained them in poverty. The Democrats would have given these recipients a way out of this pit. Where were the accompanying educational opportunities for school age children, meaningful college assistance, parenting classes, nutrition classes? Any attempts at addressing child care issues? How about birth control or abstinence? Not to mention a mentoring program to help these people navigate their way through the myriad of nonexistent, truly helpful programs. Had these extra steps been taken at the time that the 'free money' began flowing, then we would be closer to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
The Democrats are tethered to the NEA, and teachers unions. They approach education accordingly. We shackle the poor to failing schools. We continue to pay our teachers meager wages. We need to pay our teachers a sum that is commensurate and reflective of the task we give them. There needs to be enough incentive in teaching to attract and retain the quality of teachers needed to prepare our children to compete in a global economy. We have some excellent teachers, and I applaud them. We also have some teachers who are biding their time until their retirement or they find something 'better'. We need to untie school administrators hands and end tenure for all educators.
The Democrats beholden to the unions refuse to seriously consider providing our children the opportunity to escape the schools that are failing. Merely throwing good money after bad has not helped. Our children's test scores, when compared to other developed countries are lagging way behind.
Serious options that the Democrats refuse to consider are vouchers, charter schools, home schooling, etc. We know that there is a direct correlation between quality and competition. School funding is tied to an per-pupil ratio. If the schools have to compete for students and the related dollars, they will clean up their act. This increase in education quality will be reflective in test scores. I do believe we need to also explore additional new metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of the transfer of knowledge being imparted upon our children.
The Democrats cynically left these provisions out of the mix, because winning the war on poverty was not their goal. Sustaining and expanding the war was the goal. They now have a loyal, uneducated voting block that they can continue to take for granted.
I support helping those who need help. If they have the physical and mental capacity to become productive contributors to society, than we need to provide some of the provisions outlined above. If a person has physical or mental limitations, they can be evaluated on case by case basis. Merely sustaining poverty is not an option. Not if we really care.
The more people we have contributing to the economy, the better for all of us. Think where our country would be today had this been fully funded and resolved in 60's dollars versus just "helping" the poor get by. We would have largely moved beyond this as an issue and been reaping the return-on-investment.
I believe this was perhaps one of the most cynical political plays of the 20th century.
Our population is much larger now. Three trillion dollars have gone into this effort in the forty plus years since adopted. Is there less poverty? As a percentage of our population it is lower. However, in raw numbers, there are in fact more Americans living below the poverty level now, then when the program began. How could this be?
The Democrats gave the poor a check, under the guise of helping them. The greatest number of poor, tend to be the least educated of our nation. These people saw the Democrats as caring for and about their plight. It did not take long for these recipients to come to believe this paltry sum was their worth as a people. The poor repaid the Democrats by becoming a loyal voting block. In their eyes it was quid pro quo. Something for something.
Did the Democrats really help them? No. Had the Democrats cared about them, they would not merely sustained them in poverty. The Democrats would have given these recipients a way out of this pit. Where were the accompanying educational opportunities for school age children, meaningful college assistance, parenting classes, nutrition classes? Any attempts at addressing child care issues? How about birth control or abstinence? Not to mention a mentoring program to help these people navigate their way through the myriad of nonexistent, truly helpful programs. Had these extra steps been taken at the time that the 'free money' began flowing, then we would be closer to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
The Democrats are tethered to the NEA, and teachers unions. They approach education accordingly. We shackle the poor to failing schools. We continue to pay our teachers meager wages. We need to pay our teachers a sum that is commensurate and reflective of the task we give them. There needs to be enough incentive in teaching to attract and retain the quality of teachers needed to prepare our children to compete in a global economy. We have some excellent teachers, and I applaud them. We also have some teachers who are biding their time until their retirement or they find something 'better'. We need to untie school administrators hands and end tenure for all educators.
The Democrats beholden to the unions refuse to seriously consider providing our children the opportunity to escape the schools that are failing. Merely throwing good money after bad has not helped. Our children's test scores, when compared to other developed countries are lagging way behind.
Serious options that the Democrats refuse to consider are vouchers, charter schools, home schooling, etc. We know that there is a direct correlation between quality and competition. School funding is tied to an per-pupil ratio. If the schools have to compete for students and the related dollars, they will clean up their act. This increase in education quality will be reflective in test scores. I do believe we need to also explore additional new metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of the transfer of knowledge being imparted upon our children.
The Democrats cynically left these provisions out of the mix, because winning the war on poverty was not their goal. Sustaining and expanding the war was the goal. They now have a loyal, uneducated voting block that they can continue to take for granted.
I support helping those who need help. If they have the physical and mental capacity to become productive contributors to society, than we need to provide some of the provisions outlined above. If a person has physical or mental limitations, they can be evaluated on case by case basis. Merely sustaining poverty is not an option. Not if we really care.
The more people we have contributing to the economy, the better for all of us. Think where our country would be today had this been fully funded and resolved in 60's dollars versus just "helping" the poor get by. We would have largely moved beyond this as an issue and been reaping the return-on-investment.
Monday, October 13, 2008
America Under Obama Styled Socialism
I found a decent explanation of Socialism and how Obama's brand of Socialism could change the face of America forever. The U.S. already has minor touches oF Socialism, (public transportation, social security, medicare, schools, etc) but an Obama victory will push us into an uglier realm that many Americans do not realize. We learned recently that Obama once belonged to an Socialist Party. Obama realized that in order to succeed in American politics he would have to leave the Socialist Party and join the Democrats, if he was to have a chance to really push his agenda, ideals and himself.
For conservatives opposed to an Obama presidency, the last few days have brought the wonder of the smoking gun: Obama really was a socialist. Combine that hidden paper trail with his Ayers affiliation, and it's reasonable to believe that Obama still holds these socialist political views.
Conservatives' excitement at finally having found the real socialist hiding inside that empty suit is tempered by one thing -- outside of conservative circles, nobody really seems to care. The media, of course, is very aggressive about not caring, but the malaise seems to affect ordinary Americans as well.
The only way to explain this disinterest in Obama's past and its relationship to his present is that Americans no longer consider the label "socialist" to be a pejorative. To them, it's just another content-neutral political ideology. In our non-judgmental age, it falls into the same category as Liberal vs. Conservative, or Left vs. Right. To most people, it just means Obama is a more liberal Liberal, or a leftier Lefty, and they already knew that.
Socialism is not simply a more liberal version of ordinary American politics. It is, instead, its own animal, and a very feral, dangerous animal indeed.
If it were up to me to attach labels to modern political ideologies, I would choose the terms "Individualism" and "Statism." "Individualism" would reflect the Founder's ideology, which sought to repose as much power as possible in individual citizens, with as little power as possible in the State, especially the federal state. The Founder's had emerged from a long traditional of monarchal and parliamentary statism, and they concluded that, whenever power is concentrated in the government, the individual suffers.
And what of Statism? Well, there's already a name for that ideology, and it's a name that should now be firmly attached to Sen. Obama: Socialism.
It took Marx and Engels to carry socialism to the next level, in which they envisioned the complete overthrow of all governments, with the workers of the world uniting so that all contributed to a single socialist government, which in turn would give back to them on an as needed basis. Assuming that you're not big on individualism and exceptionalism, this might be an attractive doctrine as a way to destroy want and exploitation, except for one thing: It does not take into account the fact that the state has no conscience.
Once you vest all power in the state, history demonstrates that the state, although technically composed of individuals, in fact takes on a life of its own, with the operating bureaucracy driving it to ever greater extremes of control. Additionally, history demonstrates that, if the wrong person becomes all-powerful in the state, the absence of individualism means that the state becomes a juggernaut, completely in thrall to a psychopath's ideas.
One sees the same pattern as in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia: individuals were instantly subordinated to the needs of the state and, as the state's needs became ever more grandiose, more and more people had to die. Current estimates are that Mao's "visionary" Great Leap Forward resulted in the deaths of up to 100 million people. The people died from starvation, or were tortured to death, or just outright murdered because of thought crimes. The same pattern, of course, daily plays out on a smaller scale in socialist North Korea.
Those are examples of hard socialism. Soft socialism is better, but it certainly isn't the American ideal. Britain springs to mind as the perfect example of soft socialism. Britain's socialist medicine is a disaster, with practically daily stories about people being denied treatment or receiving minimal treatment. Invariably, the denials arise because the State's needs trump the individual's: Either the treatment is generally deemed too costly (and there are no market forces at work) or the patients are deemed unworthy of care, especially if they're old.
British socialism has other problems, aside from the dead left behind in her hospital wards. As did Germany, Russia, and China (and as would Obama), socialist Britain took guns away (at least in London), with the evitable result that violent crime against innocent people skyrocketed.
The British socialist bureaucracy also controls people's lives at a level currently incomprehensible to Americans, who can't appreciate a state that is constantly looking out for its own good. In Britain, government protects thieves right's against property owner's, has it's public utilities urge children to report their parents for "green" crimes; tries to criminalize people taking pictures of their own children in public places; destroys perfectly good food that does not meet obsessive compulsive bureaucratic standards; and increasingly stifles free speech. (Impressively, all of the preceding examples are from just the last six months in England.)
Both history and current events demonstrate that the socialist reality is always bad for the individual, and this is true whether one is looking at the painfully brutal socialism of the Nazis or the Soviets or the Chinese, with its wholesale slaughters, or at the soft socialism of England, in which people's lives are ever more tightly circumscribed, and the state incrementally destroys individual freedom. And that is why Obama's socialism matters.
Regardless of Obama’s presumed good intentions, socialism always brings a society to a bad ending. I don’t want to believe that Americans who live in a free society that allows people to think what they will, do what they want, and succeed if they can, will willingly hand themselves over to the socialist ideology. They must therefore be reminded, again and again and again, that socialism isn’t just another political party; it’s the death knell to freedom. So remember, while McCain wants to change DC, Obama wants to change America.
For conservatives opposed to an Obama presidency, the last few days have brought the wonder of the smoking gun: Obama really was a socialist. Combine that hidden paper trail with his Ayers affiliation, and it's reasonable to believe that Obama still holds these socialist political views.
Conservatives' excitement at finally having found the real socialist hiding inside that empty suit is tempered by one thing -- outside of conservative circles, nobody really seems to care. The media, of course, is very aggressive about not caring, but the malaise seems to affect ordinary Americans as well.
The only way to explain this disinterest in Obama's past and its relationship to his present is that Americans no longer consider the label "socialist" to be a pejorative. To them, it's just another content-neutral political ideology. In our non-judgmental age, it falls into the same category as Liberal vs. Conservative, or Left vs. Right. To most people, it just means Obama is a more liberal Liberal, or a leftier Lefty, and they already knew that.
Socialism is not simply a more liberal version of ordinary American politics. It is, instead, its own animal, and a very feral, dangerous animal indeed.
If it were up to me to attach labels to modern political ideologies, I would choose the terms "Individualism" and "Statism." "Individualism" would reflect the Founder's ideology, which sought to repose as much power as possible in individual citizens, with as little power as possible in the State, especially the federal state. The Founder's had emerged from a long traditional of monarchal and parliamentary statism, and they concluded that, whenever power is concentrated in the government, the individual suffers.
And what of Statism? Well, there's already a name for that ideology, and it's a name that should now be firmly attached to Sen. Obama: Socialism.
It took Marx and Engels to carry socialism to the next level, in which they envisioned the complete overthrow of all governments, with the workers of the world uniting so that all contributed to a single socialist government, which in turn would give back to them on an as needed basis. Assuming that you're not big on individualism and exceptionalism, this might be an attractive doctrine as a way to destroy want and exploitation, except for one thing: It does not take into account the fact that the state has no conscience.
Once you vest all power in the state, history demonstrates that the state, although technically composed of individuals, in fact takes on a life of its own, with the operating bureaucracy driving it to ever greater extremes of control. Additionally, history demonstrates that, if the wrong person becomes all-powerful in the state, the absence of individualism means that the state becomes a juggernaut, completely in thrall to a psychopath's ideas.
One sees the same pattern as in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia: individuals were instantly subordinated to the needs of the state and, as the state's needs became ever more grandiose, more and more people had to die. Current estimates are that Mao's "visionary" Great Leap Forward resulted in the deaths of up to 100 million people. The people died from starvation, or were tortured to death, or just outright murdered because of thought crimes. The same pattern, of course, daily plays out on a smaller scale in socialist North Korea.
Those are examples of hard socialism. Soft socialism is better, but it certainly isn't the American ideal. Britain springs to mind as the perfect example of soft socialism. Britain's socialist medicine is a disaster, with practically daily stories about people being denied treatment or receiving minimal treatment. Invariably, the denials arise because the State's needs trump the individual's: Either the treatment is generally deemed too costly (and there are no market forces at work) or the patients are deemed unworthy of care, especially if they're old.
British socialism has other problems, aside from the dead left behind in her hospital wards. As did Germany, Russia, and China (and as would Obama), socialist Britain took guns away (at least in London), with the evitable result that violent crime against innocent people skyrocketed.
The British socialist bureaucracy also controls people's lives at a level currently incomprehensible to Americans, who can't appreciate a state that is constantly looking out for its own good. In Britain, government protects thieves right's against property owner's, has it's public utilities urge children to report their parents for "green" crimes; tries to criminalize people taking pictures of their own children in public places; destroys perfectly good food that does not meet obsessive compulsive bureaucratic standards; and increasingly stifles free speech. (Impressively, all of the preceding examples are from just the last six months in England.)
Both history and current events demonstrate that the socialist reality is always bad for the individual, and this is true whether one is looking at the painfully brutal socialism of the Nazis or the Soviets or the Chinese, with its wholesale slaughters, or at the soft socialism of England, in which people's lives are ever more tightly circumscribed, and the state incrementally destroys individual freedom. And that is why Obama's socialism matters.
Regardless of Obama’s presumed good intentions, socialism always brings a society to a bad ending. I don’t want to believe that Americans who live in a free society that allows people to think what they will, do what they want, and succeed if they can, will willingly hand themselves over to the socialist ideology. They must therefore be reminded, again and again and again, that socialism isn’t just another political party; it’s the death knell to freedom. So remember, while McCain wants to change DC, Obama wants to change America.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Obama Sponsored 'Global Poverty Act'
The United States Senate may vote any day on the stealth imposition of what could amount to an $845 BILLION United Nations style global tax on American citizens.
It's called the Global Poverty Act (S.2433), and it is being sponsored by none other than Senator Barack Obama.
According to some conservative sources, this disastrous legislation could eventually force U.S. taxpayers to fork over as much as 0.7 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product -- or $845,000,000,000-- on welfare to third-world countries.
Here's what Phyllis Schlafly, conservative activist and founder of Eagle Forum, recently wrote: "Obama's costly, dangerous and altogether bad bill (S. 2433), which could come up in the Senate any day, is called the Global Poverty Act. It would commit U.S. taxpayers to spend 0.7 percent of our Gross Domestic Product on foreign handouts..." Time is of the essence because Senator Joe Biden, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee just issued a report on the Global Poverty Act and it was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on Thursday the 24th.
Let them know in no uncertain terms that you are watching and you will not tolerate massive United Nations style giveaways that are passed in the dark of night -- or in broad daylight for that matter.
Tell them that putting us on the road to give billions to petty tyrants and dictators is NOT a solution to poverty. The Senate Shell Game...Advocates of the Global Poverty Act are claiming that it does not really commit the United States to anything... that it won't really cost anything... that it simply requires the President -- in conjunction with the Secretary of State -- to "develop" strategies to alleviate world poverty.
In fact, Biden's report incredulously states, "implementing S. 2433 would cost less than $1 million per year..."Technically he's correct... after all, it doesn't really cost that much to develop and formulate strategies...But such a cleverly worded contention begs the question: Why formulate or develop a strategy if there is no intention to follow through on that strategy?
And what would it cost to actually follow through on a strategy to alleviate world poverty?
The Global Poverty Act intentionally gives no specific figures but it does contain clues, and those clues are stated repeatedly in the legislation's reliance on the United Nations Millennium Development Goal.
WorldNetDaily.com quotes Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media as saying: "The bill defines the term 'Millennium Development Goals' as the goals set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration..."
"In addition to seeking to eradicate poverty, that declaration commits nations to banning 'small arms and light weapons' and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child."
As for specific figures... WorldNetDaily.com reports: "Those U.N. protocols would make U.S. law on issues ranging from the 2nd Amendment to energy usage and parental rights all subservient to United Nations whims."
"[T]he legislation, if approved, dedicates 0.7 percent of the U.S. gross national product to foreign aid, which over 13 years... would amount to $845 billion 'over and above what the U.S. already spends.'"
"The plan passed the House in 2007 'because most members didn't realize what was in it.' Congressional sponsors have been careful not to calculate the amount of foreign aid spending that it would require."
And, how would the United States pay for this $845 BILLION commitment? According to Kincaid, who published a report on the legislation; "A global tax will clearly be necessary to force American taxpayers to provide the money." And that $845 BILLION global tax is in addition to our nation's current Foreign Aid programs, which, in 2006, cost American taxpayers about $300 BILLION!
It Gets Worse! Here are some of the additional provisions of the Millennium Development Goal:a "currency transfer tax," that is, a tax imposed on companies and individuals who must exchange dollars for foreign currency; a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources"; a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy projection -- oil, natural gas, coal"; "fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for airplane use of the skies, fees for use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels." a "standing peace force," meaning a standing United Nations army that might, in time, be large enough to force us to bend to its will; a "UN arms register of all small arms and light weapons," the beginning of the end of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; the "eradication of poverty" by the "redistribution [of] wealth and land"
How do you suppose the United Nations expects to "redistribute" the land and the wealth? And what country do you think the third-world majority will go after first? cancellation of "the debts of developing countries," "a fair distribution of the earth's resources." and "political control of the global economy."
In other words, it's a blueprint for a world government, owned and operated by the United Nations. One thing is clear: the Millennium Development Goal is a dagger aimed at the heart of America. While the Global Poverty Act, as presently championed by its Senate supporters, embraces certain aspects of the Millennium Development Goal, one should wonder if some of our legislators also support land and wealth "redistribution." We must stop this bill dead in its tracks. We must stop this subversion NOW! Don't let Senator Obama's Global Poverty Act sneak through the Senate.
Other Appropriate Entities...Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs -- a Columbia University economist -- is monitoring the Millennium Development Goal for the United Nations. In his 2005 report to Kofi Annan -- based on the research of 265 "poverty specialists" -- Sachs criticized the United States for giving only a mere $16.3 billion a year to alleviate global poverty. He argued that we should spend at least an additional $30 billion a year. And Sachs has decreed that the only way to force the United States to commit that much money is to IMPOSE A GLOBAL TAX. Has Senator Obama
-- along with the other Senate co-sponsors -- introduced the Global Policy Act at least in partial obedience to Sachs' wishes?
Joe Farah, publisher of WorldNetDaily.com said of this treacherous bill:"Now comes an even grander proposal by Barack Obama. It's called the Global Poverty Act, that would, in the next decade, transfer at least $845 billion of U.S. taxpayer money overseas. Think of Johnson's failed war on poverty going international -- directed not by Americans but by the United Nations."
And yes, just in case you think the massive amounts of your tax dollars that were wasted under the United Nation's Oil for Food program were an aberration, and that such a thing could not eventually happen on a more massive scale were the Global Poverty Act to sneak through the Senate, Doug Powers, writing for WorldNetDaily.com made this observation: "Not long ago, Nigeria's 'anti-corruption commission' -- runner-up in the 'oxymoron of the year' competition, second only to 'U.S. Senate Intelligence' -- found that past rulers of Nigeria have stolen or misused billions of dollars."
"The commission discovered that the amount of money 'missing' adds up to all the Western aid given to Africa in four decades. Obama, Hagel and Cantwell want to throw more at them. Apparently they won't be happy until there are trillions of our tax dollars stolen by crooke leaders and warlords."
It's called the Global Poverty Act (S.2433), and it is being sponsored by none other than Senator Barack Obama.
According to some conservative sources, this disastrous legislation could eventually force U.S. taxpayers to fork over as much as 0.7 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product -- or $845,000,000,000-- on welfare to third-world countries.
Here's what Phyllis Schlafly, conservative activist and founder of Eagle Forum, recently wrote: "Obama's costly, dangerous and altogether bad bill (S. 2433), which could come up in the Senate any day, is called the Global Poverty Act. It would commit U.S. taxpayers to spend 0.7 percent of our Gross Domestic Product on foreign handouts..." Time is of the essence because Senator Joe Biden, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee just issued a report on the Global Poverty Act and it was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on Thursday the 24th.
Let them know in no uncertain terms that you are watching and you will not tolerate massive United Nations style giveaways that are passed in the dark of night -- or in broad daylight for that matter.
Tell them that putting us on the road to give billions to petty tyrants and dictators is NOT a solution to poverty. The Senate Shell Game...Advocates of the Global Poverty Act are claiming that it does not really commit the United States to anything... that it won't really cost anything... that it simply requires the President -- in conjunction with the Secretary of State -- to "develop" strategies to alleviate world poverty.
In fact, Biden's report incredulously states, "implementing S. 2433 would cost less than $1 million per year..."Technically he's correct... after all, it doesn't really cost that much to develop and formulate strategies...But such a cleverly worded contention begs the question: Why formulate or develop a strategy if there is no intention to follow through on that strategy?
And what would it cost to actually follow through on a strategy to alleviate world poverty?
The Global Poverty Act intentionally gives no specific figures but it does contain clues, and those clues are stated repeatedly in the legislation's reliance on the United Nations Millennium Development Goal.
WorldNetDaily.com quotes Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media as saying: "The bill defines the term 'Millennium Development Goals' as the goals set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration..."
"In addition to seeking to eradicate poverty, that declaration commits nations to banning 'small arms and light weapons' and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child."
As for specific figures... WorldNetDaily.com reports: "Those U.N. protocols would make U.S. law on issues ranging from the 2nd Amendment to energy usage and parental rights all subservient to United Nations whims."
"[T]he legislation, if approved, dedicates 0.7 percent of the U.S. gross national product to foreign aid, which over 13 years... would amount to $845 billion 'over and above what the U.S. already spends.'"
"The plan passed the House in 2007 'because most members didn't realize what was in it.' Congressional sponsors have been careful not to calculate the amount of foreign aid spending that it would require."
And, how would the United States pay for this $845 BILLION commitment? According to Kincaid, who published a report on the legislation; "A global tax will clearly be necessary to force American taxpayers to provide the money." And that $845 BILLION global tax is in addition to our nation's current Foreign Aid programs, which, in 2006, cost American taxpayers about $300 BILLION!
It Gets Worse! Here are some of the additional provisions of the Millennium Development Goal:a "currency transfer tax," that is, a tax imposed on companies and individuals who must exchange dollars for foreign currency; a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources"; a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy projection -- oil, natural gas, coal"; "fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for airplane use of the skies, fees for use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels." a "standing peace force," meaning a standing United Nations army that might, in time, be large enough to force us to bend to its will; a "UN arms register of all small arms and light weapons," the beginning of the end of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; the "eradication of poverty" by the "redistribution [of] wealth and land"
How do you suppose the United Nations expects to "redistribute" the land and the wealth? And what country do you think the third-world majority will go after first? cancellation of "the debts of developing countries," "a fair distribution of the earth's resources." and "political control of the global economy."
In other words, it's a blueprint for a world government, owned and operated by the United Nations. One thing is clear: the Millennium Development Goal is a dagger aimed at the heart of America. While the Global Poverty Act, as presently championed by its Senate supporters, embraces certain aspects of the Millennium Development Goal, one should wonder if some of our legislators also support land and wealth "redistribution." We must stop this bill dead in its tracks. We must stop this subversion NOW! Don't let Senator Obama's Global Poverty Act sneak through the Senate.
Other Appropriate Entities...Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs -- a Columbia University economist -- is monitoring the Millennium Development Goal for the United Nations. In his 2005 report to Kofi Annan -- based on the research of 265 "poverty specialists" -- Sachs criticized the United States for giving only a mere $16.3 billion a year to alleviate global poverty. He argued that we should spend at least an additional $30 billion a year. And Sachs has decreed that the only way to force the United States to commit that much money is to IMPOSE A GLOBAL TAX. Has Senator Obama
-- along with the other Senate co-sponsors -- introduced the Global Policy Act at least in partial obedience to Sachs' wishes?
Joe Farah, publisher of WorldNetDaily.com said of this treacherous bill:"Now comes an even grander proposal by Barack Obama. It's called the Global Poverty Act, that would, in the next decade, transfer at least $845 billion of U.S. taxpayer money overseas. Think of Johnson's failed war on poverty going international -- directed not by Americans but by the United Nations."
And yes, just in case you think the massive amounts of your tax dollars that were wasted under the United Nation's Oil for Food program were an aberration, and that such a thing could not eventually happen on a more massive scale were the Global Poverty Act to sneak through the Senate, Doug Powers, writing for WorldNetDaily.com made this observation: "Not long ago, Nigeria's 'anti-corruption commission' -- runner-up in the 'oxymoron of the year' competition, second only to 'U.S. Senate Intelligence' -- found that past rulers of Nigeria have stolen or misused billions of dollars."
"The commission discovered that the amount of money 'missing' adds up to all the Western aid given to Africa in four decades. Obama, Hagel and Cantwell want to throw more at them. Apparently they won't be happy until there are trillions of our tax dollars stolen by crooke leaders and warlords."
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