DATED: January 28, 2013.

BY: Socialist Central Committee, Ltd.

LOCATION:  Indianapolis, Indiana

The Socialist Agenda was able to return to its original domain name - http://www.socialistagenda.info/. To reflect this return to the original, the site was retitled Original Socialist Agenda.

Along with the switch back, the Original Socialist Agenda has received an extensive overhaul as well. The site now curates other socialist websites – at least those websites with modern internet features.

There will be a period of tweaking, but the primary upgrade is completed. The Socialist Central Committee hopes everyone enjoys what we did. The Original Socialist Agenda is operating on socialistNET - the Socialist Central Committee’s socialized webhosting service.

The goldfish like memory of the general public allows them to endlessly forget that this message has been screamed at them, loudly and clearly, by the awake and concerned for well over one hundred years. What it will take for this to sink in is frankly beyond my limited ability to calculate.

If you honestly can’t see the agenda that has been playing out now for decades, you are seriously beyond saving and should probably join some orderly queue somewhere and wait to be shipped off to the re education camp.

If Michelle is like Marie Antoinette to whom shall we compare Barack?  The thought that he’s Louis XVI is unthinkable.  George III is too easy.  All of the megalomaniacs or despots of the twentieth century would be politically incorrect in the extreme.  Some would be considered too far left and some too far right though in reality the extreme on both sides meet at the intersection of totalitarianism and brutality.  Since he rode a wave of secular messianic fever into power and since he won a second term due to the devotion of his disciples perhaps an appropriate paraphrase from the Good Book would be, “Who does he say that he is?”

First, who do others say Mr. Obama reminds them of?

His rapid supporters have finally gone the extra mile.  During his first presidential campaign they merely treated him as if he was their messiah.  After his second victory they are shouting it from the roof tops.  At the BET Soul Train Awards show Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx actually called Barack Obama “our lord and savior.”  Some will say he’s a comedian and this was said tongue in cheek.  From the reaction of the crowd it was received like a proclamation from Mount Sinai.  The wild cheering brought down the house.  If this isn’t a cult of personality what is?

I heard a woman who fled Venezuela to escape Hugo Chavez and his democratic revolution crying, “Obama is doing the same things as Chavez!  He’s following the same path, going to the same place, but now we have nowhere to run.”   Someone who escaped the USSR told me, “I’ve seen all this before. Obama is like Nikita Khrushchev. He says he brings hope and change but really he’s just blaming the past because he hopes to rule the present while destroying the hope of the future.”  According to an escapee of East Germany, “Obama is like Leonid Brezhnev. He promises security, pensions and benefits but all he brings are taxes, regulations and more bureaucrats, always more bureaucrats.”

I cannot bring myself to compare an American President to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, not even to Mussolini.  To who shall I compare this man who brings the crest of the century-long Progressive wave crashing against the American experiment?  Instead of doing the comparing myself let’s explore who he and his unpaid media arm in the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Press compare himself to.

President Obama announced his run for the presidency in Springfield, Illinois on the steps of the old state capitol building.  Choosing a setting in Springfield where Abraham Lincoln once gave a speech condemning slavery and calling for the United States to unite prompted the Progressives at ABC News to observe, “Springfield allowed Obama to immodestly and continuously compare himself to Lincoln.”

Immediately after his first victory the cover of Time magazine depicted the President-elect as FDR riding in an open car with his trademark cigarette holder clamped tightly in his smile.  So we know his promoters in the press want us to compare him to the four term president-for-life who until now has been the epitome of a Progressive president.  But does President Obama make the comparison himself?  According to Politico, “President Barack Obama compared himself to FDR.”  What does History tell us about FDR? Major portions of his New Deal were declared unconstitutional, many economists believe  his policies prolonged the Great Depression, his advisor Alger Hiss really was a communist spy, and at Yalta Roosevelt gave Poland, whose freedom World War II was fought to preserve, to Stalin who initially invaded the country as an ally of Hitler.  If we forget the facts I guess comparing yourself to FDR is a good thing.

During his first campaign the Washington Post said that Mr. Obama, “Sells Himself as the New JFK.”  At the time other news outlets noted, fellow Progressive’s disputed the comparison using the headline, “Hillary to Obama: You’re No JFK.”  Undeterred Mr. Obama continued to cast himself as the successor to Camelot.  In a  review of his first term we could agree his glorious adventure in Libya as revealed in Benghazi makes him the rightful heir to such shameful military adventures as the Bay of Pigs or his much proclaimed victory over Al Qaeda to such questionable victories as the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Turning to JFK’s most memorable phrase Mr. Obama, as any good Harvard trained lawyer would do, has parsed the meaning of “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”  In Progressive newspeak this becomes, “If you’re a non-tax payer let me tell you what I’m going to do for you –if you’re a tax payer let me tell you what I’m going to do to you.”

President Obama also compares himself to the icon of the anti-Progressives: Ronald Reagan.  According to Politico in an interview with a print journalist the President, “made the case that his movement is as much about a national moment as about him as a ‘singular’ individual” also noting “he drew a rather odd analogy for a Democrat: Ronald Reagan.”  President Reagan told us, “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.”  President Obama told us, “Only Government Can Fix the Economy.”  President Ragan told us, “We are today, the last best hope of man on earth.”  President Obama told us, “America is no longer what it could be, what it once was.”  That’s not even comparing apples to oranges it’s more like comparing truth to fiction, good to bad, or freedom to dependency.

All the people mentioned above who escaped socialism, left homes, families, and countries seeking freedom remind me of something else Ronald Reagan said, “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”

The Americans devoted to constitutionally limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom may have lost a battle.  We may finally accept that we have become a minority in our own land.  However, we will never accept serfdom and we will never accept the permanent imposition of socialism in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Now is the time for all good citizens to come to the aid of their country.  Educate yourself regarding the History of our Republic.  Learn so that you may teach.  We must educate new generations of patriots to carry the torch so that the light of freedom is never extinguished.  A slender majority of our fellow voting citizens may have chosen the path of central-planning and collectivism.  Most through ignorance, some through avarice, and a few through pure evil have diverted the American experiment into an economic and political dead-end, but like all dead ends it will eventually end.  The empires of looters always collapse when the loot runs out and another day will dawn.

That same Good Book tells us, “the evil man has no future; the lamp of the wicked will be put out.”  And it also promises, “I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  So the Progressives may have followed their play book to a worldly victory.  I don’t know about you, but I’m going to follow that Good Book to an eternal one.

Keep the faith.  Keep the Peace.  We shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

Suicides Increasing As Morality and Economy Decreasing.

[Breitbart.com]

by Sarah Palin 17 Sep 2012, 7:29 AM PDT

I don’t normally read “true crime” books, and I’ve certainly never written a review of one, but Errol Morris’ new book, “A Wilderness of Error,” isn’t typical of the genre. It’s much more interesting and I think important. It’s a book about the failings of a legal system administered by very fallible human beings, and it’s a book about how we buy into false media narratives that tidy up uncomfortably complex stories and give us permission to call off any further search for truth – and, yes, Morris argues with refreshing clarity that objective truth is real and worthy of being sought after despite the pretentious nonsense preached in faculty lounges about all truth being relative. In fact, he argues passionately that the search for truth is what journalism and justice is all about.

Morris describes how false narratives can become a sort of prison. He opens by reminding us of the story of “The Count of Monte Cristo” – the novel about an innocent man who escapes from the seemingly inescapable island prison he was sent to. Morris writes that today we have an even worse prison than that fictional one – only ours is “built out of newsprint and media. A prison of beliefs. You can escape from prison, but how do you escape from a convincing story? After enough repetitions, the facts come to serve the story and not the other way around. Like kudzu, suddenly the story is everywhere and impenetrable.”

Like a relentless gardener, Morris tries to remove the “impenetrable” vines forming one such prison. Most people of a certain age will recall the story of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald. People remember him as the Green Beret doctor who killed his family and blamed it on hippies. That quick description also conveniently sums up the conventional narrative about him. The murders of his wife and two little daughters in 1970 at Fort Bragg were monstrous, and for the last three decades society has been content to know that MacDonald is serving three life sentences for the crime. But Morris asks his readers to consider something very upsetting: What if this man is innocent? How horrible is it to imagine a man first having to witness the brutal murder of his family and then being falsely convicted for it and spending over thirty years in prison?

Morris, an Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker whose past work was instrumental in freeing a man falsely convicted of murder, takes apart the key elements of the MacDonald case bit by bit. As the New York Times reviewer put it, “[Morris] will leave you 85 percent certain that Mr. MacDonald is innocent. He will leave you 100 percent certain he did not get a fair trial.” But how did we not hear about this sooner? The incompetent and corrupt manner in which this case was handled is outrageous. The errors are glaring. In order to comfortably be assured that MacDonald got a fair trial and is guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” we have to forget a number of significant facts.

Forget the fact that a racist good old boy judge was openly contemptuous and hostile to MacDonald’s Jewish lead defense attorney and his opinion seeped into his decisions. Forget the fact that the prosecution withheld evidence and lab reports (and, according to new evidence, actually threatened the key defense witness to make her change her testimony). Forget the fact that the crime scene itself was badly mishandled – with evidence moved, destroyed, contaminated, and even stolen. Forget the fact that MacDonald had no motive for the crime, and that the in-laws who testified against his character had previously testified under oath praising his character. And most of all, forget the fact that MacDonald gave the police who arrived at the crime scene detailed descriptions of four suspects, and the police had spotted a woman who fit his description wandering around his neighborhood at 3 a.m. while they were on their way to the crime scene. Forget the fact that this same suspect also coincidentally confessed to multiple people that she and three men who fit MacDonald’s descriptions were involved in the murder of his family. Forget the fact that she was spotted that night with these three men by multiple witnesses – including by a witness who saw blood on her boots. Forget the fact that one of the men also confessed to the murders. Forget the fact that they even confessed to having a clear motive for wanting to commit the crime specifically against MacDonald and his family.

So, how was the public convinced that MacDonald was guilty despite all of these “reasonable doubts”?

Enter my old neighbor Joe McGinniss.

MacDonald signed a contract giving McGinniss exclusive rights to his life story, and so McGinniss was given unprecedented access to the defense team – living with them, working with them, eating with them. But when the guilty verdict came down, McGinniss did a one-eighty on them. Apparently, falsely convicted men don’t make for good books. McGinniss decided it was a better story to agree with the jury. MacDonald wasn’t a sympathetic figure. He did himself no favors with some media appearances. So, McGinniss went about writing a book that would convince people the government got the right verdict and we could all pat ourselves on the back and leave Jeffrey MacDonald to rot in his jail cell till Judgment Day.

McGinniss’ book actually embellished the prosecution’s case – even supplying a motive. According to McGinniss’ theory of the case, MacDonald secretly wanted to break free of his wife and kids and so he murdered them one night in a fit of rage induced by some diet pills he was taking. (Oddly enough, the millions of other people who were also taking those same diet pills somehow avoided murdering their families.)

Morris’ final description of McGinniss is apt: “a craven and sloppy journalist who confabulated, lied, and betrayed while ostensibly telling a story about a man who confabulated, lied, and betrayed.”

But perhaps the most disturbing passage in the book is when Morris considers just how McGinniss came by his theory of the case. Morris writes (and I hope I’ll be forgiven for quoting the whole passage):

McGinniss had claimed that MacDonald was “the kind of guy who could do it.” But who was McGinniss? Who was the guy who betrayed not only Jeffrey MacDonald, but the entire defense team? Not only did he live with them, eat with them, exercise with them— he worked with them, investigated with them, and worried with them. Or so it seemed.

There is a curious passage in Joe McGinniss’s book Heroes, which was published in 1976, long before he met Jeffrey MacDonald and began work on Fatal Vision. The passage was part of a diary kept by McGinniss and dated 1970. It starts in January of that year— just before the triple homicide in the MacDonald home— and chronicles McGinniss’s increasing fame, the end of his first marriage, and his affair with Nancy Doherty, who was to become his second wife.

Here are two brief quotes from the diary:

JANUARY My book was number one. Great to be young and a Yankee. I came to town to do the Cavett show and I threw a party in my suite at the Warwick. Six months earlier, I had lain in front of a television set with my wife, watching the Cavett show, and it had seemed another world, light-years away. She had said maybe someday you’ll be on it, and I had said oh, don’t be silly, and I’d meant it. Now I had done Cavett, Carson, Griffin, and all the rest. I had debated the House minority leader, Gerald Ford, on the David Frost show, and, quite clearly, he had come out second best.

MAY And warm mellow weekends. Nancy’s two teen-age sisters came to visit. And brought another girl along. The five of us swam naked in the river. We traveled a lot: to the Caribbean, to the Kentucky Derby, to speeches I was making around the country. Then we came back and gave a party. We opened up the whole house and gave a party for sixty people on the weekend of the Preakness. It was marvelous. I was Gatsby. And the rest of my life would be a party. Except that my wife called often on the phone. She pleaded with me to return. There were long, stuttering silences filled with sorrow. And my mother called, and my father, and pleaded, too. And my dreams were bad. I dreamed of going back to my wife and finding her old and horribly wrinkled. And I dreamed terrible dreams about the maiming and destruction of my daughters.

McGinniss wrote these diary entries nine years before the beginning of his partnership with Jeffrey MacDonald. The parallels between the biographies of Joe McGinniss and Jeffrey MacDonald are endlessly suggestive. McGinniss is writing about himself in these entries— not about Jeffrey MacDonald. And yet the outline of what McGinniss was to write about Jeffrey MacDonald nine years later was (in some nascent but clearly identifiable form) already there.

They were roughly the same age. McGinniss was born on December 9, 1942, MacDonald on October 12, 1943— less than a year apart. Both came from lower-middle-class families. Both were on the fast track. McGinniss in 1969 had published a bestseller, The Selling of the President 1968. MacDonald had gone to Princeton, received early admission to medical school at Northwestern, and became a Green Beret doctor with a promising career ahead of him. Both had married early and had been unfaithful to their wives. Both had two young daughters, and (at the time these diary pages were written) both of their wives were pregnant with a third child— a son.

But here’s a terrible irony. There is no evidence— despite McGinniss’s desperate efforts to find it— to suggest that Jeffrey MacDonald had “terrible dreams of the maiming and destruction of my daughters.” And there is evidence that Joe McGinniss did. He wrote about them in his diaries, and published them in 1976.

What are we to make of a man who projected onto a presumed murderer his own motives and impulses? But was MacDonald a murderer?

It is apparent to anyone who reads Morris’ book that MacDonald didn’t get a fair trial. But definitive proof of innocence may be impossible to establish now with the passage of so many years, with evidence lost and destroyed, and with so many key witnesses and potential suspects dead. If MacDonald is indeed guilty, then perhaps we should be more forgiving of McGinniss’ actions because despite his lies, he reached the right conclusion. But if MacDonald is innocent, which Morris’ book will leave you at least “85 percent certain of,” than what McGinniss did is disgraceful beyond measure.

Let me repeat that I don’t know with 100 percent certainty if MacDonald is innocent. I don’t know if he’s a monster who killed his family, or an innocent man tragically railroaded by the legal system. But I was sadly sympathetic to this letter he wrote to the author Janet Malcolm:

“…by altering the known facts, [McGinniss] has constructed an evil thing— his book— which unfortunately impacts many, many people as well as myself— all negatively— with the end result that a climate has been created that prevents any neutral airing of real facts. By lying for money, by selling an artificial view of reality, McGinniss has stolen from me, (or anyone) the ability to ever get the full truth out. Even assuming more truthful accounts of these eighteen years eventually are in the public domain, his work will always linger there, to poison the minds of many. How do you fight it…?”

The words of a murderer or an innocent man wrongfully convicted and then betrayed by a writer who lured the public into complacently accepting a false narrative? I don’t know with 100 percent certainty. But I do know from personal experience that McGinniss is a stone cold manipulative liar.

McGinniss shattered long-time relationships within my circle of friends and family with his horrendous actions while living 12 feet away from my kitchen and lying to people for his book about me and making them lie or twisting their words or even inventing “sources” out of whole cloth. The result of the “evil thing” he “constructed” was unjustly trashed reputations, shattered relationships, and a book of lies vomited into the public record.

What McGinniss did in my town and to my family was sick and vicious. I sympathize with MacDonald and his defense team because I saw firsthand the twisted way McGinniss operates. Before he moved in right next door to spy on us, he stalked us for months, making creepy unwelcomed “visits” to our house, as he tried to manipulatively win our trust the same way he won the trust of MacDonald and his defense team – all so that he could betray us just as he betrayed them.

Of course, I realize that what McGinniss did to thrash my reputation is nowhere near as horrible as what he did to corrupt the narrative of a murder case (especially if it helped keep an innocent man in jail), but it’s still egregious and disgusting because many in the media ran with it in order to add another chapter to their own false narrative. An “artificial view of reality” was sold to the public and no doubt many Americans were led to believe the garbage McGinniss wrote.

“How do you fight it?” I don’t know. But I recommend reading Morris’ book as a start and understanding for yourself what a character our former neighbor Joe McGinniss really is. If MacDonald is indeed innocent, I sincerely hope he receives justice. For what it’s worth, I am confident that with his track record of destructive lies, McGinniss will understand justice someday, in this life or the next.

Headline image: Joe McGinniss portrait for Random House/photographer Nancy Doherty.

 The Red Ranger:
Issue # 5: Rising gasoline prices 
Gas prices, which seemed to be heading downward several months ago, have now gone in the opposite direction and are nearing $4.00/gallon again; they may already be there in some parts of the country. In regard to gasoline prices I believe that this is one area where some greater control may be warranted. It has always baffled me how the impact of any negative event always has the immediate impact of increasing gas prices but the effects of positive events are always muted and delayed. I rate this impact as MINIMAL at this time, only because we have become accustomed to higher gas prices since Obama took office and made that his goal.

Nattering Naybob: There is very little that Presidents can do to influence gas prices. Any President is in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” bind when it comes to steering the country towards sources of energy other than petroleum derivatives. If he (or “she”, someday, hopefully in 2016) takes steps to divert demand away from the oil industry, Republicans (and some Democrats from oil-producing states), cries foul. Regarding the charge that Obama “made [it] his goal” to increase oil prices, that is nothing more than another urban myth propagated by Republicans while sitting around their “Get Obama” campfire. In the March 13th edition of “The Fact Checker”, the Washington Post gave this bogus claim, “Three Pinocchios”. The article is a little lengthy but it covers all sides of whether he did or didn’t.

The Red Ranger: So in reading the article, Obama didn’t come out against higher gas prices initially but wanted to put more money in people’s pockets. Is this just another veiled attempt for wealth redistribution where lower income families would get more money to pay for their gas at the expense of higher income families. He didn’t come out against higher gas prices until he realized his initial statement was causing him grief. Also, Energy Secretary Chu, has stated that the US needs to get its gas prices as high as Europe. I have not heard Obama refute that statement and since Chu is part of Obama’s administration I have to believe he supports this position.

Nattering Naybob: I see… when Obama wants to put more money in people’s pockets, it is “wealth distribution”. When Obama is perceived as taking money out of people’s pockets, he is accused of… well, taking money out of people’s pockets. This is typical of the Modern Republican habit of ALWAYS having some kind of “yeah, but” response for every scenario no matter what happens. If Obama suddenly announced that he had discovered a definitive, final cure for cancer, your reply would be “he should have allowed the private sector to cure cancer”, or “what took him so long to cure cancer, he’s been in office over three years”, or “sure, he cures cancer NOW…. right before the election. What a cheap stunt”. Regarding the statements made by Chu, these were uttered BEFORE he joined the administration, and Chu recanted them subsequently, as outlined in an article in USA Today by David Jackson on March 14th, 2012:
 

As for Chu’s comment, White House spokesman Jay Carney said critics “who try to suggest that the statement of someone who wasn’t even in government at the time is somehow a more significant indicator of the president’s policy than the president’s policy are engaging in politics on this issue.” After yesterday’s Senate hearing, Chu himself said: “There is a real hardship that Americans are suffering at the gasoline pump. The recovery is fragile. Another spike in gasoline prices could put that recovery at jeopardy. So there are many, many reasons why we do not want the price of gasoline to go up.”

The Red Ranger: Chu recanted his statement so that gullible people like yourself would be fooled into thinking that this wasn’t the Energy department’s policy going forward.  Or maybe Chu really was so desperate for the position that he was willing to give up his stated beliefs and make a 180% change on policy  just to get the position (unlikely).  Am I to believe that there wasn’t one equal candidate to Chu out there who was on the record agreeing with Obama’s policy without having to recant prior statements.

….On to Issue 6: Stagnant wages
This is one of the major obstacles to future prosperity in the US. Unless you are part of a government union, meaningful wage increases are getting harder and harder to come by. As world economies become more and more intertwined wages are tending toward an equilibrium that is above those in third world countries but below those in developed countries thereby raising the standard of living in some countries and lowering it in others. I don’t really see how the US can grow with wages increasing at 2% and basic necessities increasing at 4%. We will all be doing without in the future. I rate this one as SEVERE.

Nattering Naybob: Not much argument here that wages are stagnant. I think that American workers as a whole have become the victims of their own productivity. Corporate profits are at an all-time high as detailed in this June article from business.insider.com, but wages remain, conversely, at an all-time low based on real-dollar adjustments. From my decidedly “un-studied” perspective, I think there are two problems with this, first, why would corporations high more workers if the ones the ones they have, keep taking on more responsibilities in the wake of the layoffs and downsizing of the last decade or so? Second, the workers who DO remain employed, trying to avoid the specter of unemployment in this tough job market, seem only too willing (understandably) to take on this extra work if it means saving their own job.

There are other factors to this, including the erosion of unions, woeful inadequacy of the minimum wage, the eagerness to send American jobs overseas to workers who are content to receive literally pennies on the dollar compared to wages (however stagnant) back in America… but these topics are too complex to talk about in this post, perhaps a future SGM offering.

The Red Ranger: Agree with your thoughts on workers. I certainly am constantly taking on more responsibilities but like you astutely point out that with my improved productivity I can take them on without as much hardship as in the past. I disagree with your comments about unions as I believe that unions are one of the biggest causes of our issues in the first place. Why do federal employees need unions (I believe that even FDR said that was wrong). The same progressives who tout the benefits of government largess are the ones who belong to unions to protect them from the evil government who may force them to work too much. Not to rile up our loyal readers too much but why do teachers need unions?  So now the Chicago teachers go on strike throwing 400,000 kids out into the streets of Chicago. Just what Chicago needs given the lawlessness that is running rampant there currently. If the teachers truly cared about their students they would work without a contract. If one kid who should have been in school gets killed during the strike they should throw the head of the teacher’s union in jail.

Nattering Naybob: Using the trademark Red Ranger reasoning, if a teacher invokes their contractual right to strike, and a child is “killed” as a result (specious as that connection may be), is that the same thing as when a Republican governor tries to eviscerate a police department, or cuts firefighters to pay for a tax cut for the rich, and someone dies as a result, is that governor responsible for the death? And please explain the criteria for forming a union? Why should public sector employees be prevented from forming unions? Or are you against the concept of unions totally?

The Red Ranger: Chicago teachers are just about the highest paid in the country and have the shortest workday. Chicago is facing serious financial challenges, funny how that happens when you have Dems in charge and they consistently spend more than they bring in. While they may have the right to strike that doesn’t make it the right thing to do.Just like the Dems, and you in a previous discussion, view the constitution as an outdated document that has not kept up with the times, I view unions as outdated and unnecessary except in a few limited conditions.

Nattering Naybob: I think you had a seventh problem, any chance we can defer this to another post?….

The Red Ranger: No…

Issue # 7: The fiscal cliff is coming
Given the current makeup in Congress I do not see how anything productive will arise on this problem. I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised but am not holding my breath. 

We are on the fringes of the perfect storm. Since the consumer drives 70% of the US economy we are on the precipice of a very long and scary decline. I just do not see any way around it at this time. The Fed cannot do much more to stimulate the economy. QE1 and QE2 have basically just kept us afloat. Any future QE will just do the same. If the Fed is doing QE 6,7 and 8 isn’t safe to say that the QE efforts did not work otherwise they would not have had to keep doing them.
Rating is ON HOLD, pending future decisions to address.

Nattering Naybob: My response is simple. Until both parties put aside their differences and come up with a plan in which they both give up something, and walk hand-in-hand “over the cliff”, so that one party does not seem to be solely wearing the black hat, nothing will get done with regards to the fiscal cliff. Hopefully after Obama is re-elected (a prospect that has become more likely since the respective Conventions, as reported by the reliably non-partisan and insightful political prognosticator Nate Silver), the Republicans will stop trying to impede Obama at every turn and realize that the American people come out the losers when partisan ideology trumps all.

The Red Ranger: No surprise that Obama gets a bump after the way the conventions were handled by the media.  Any short-term bump from the skewed coverage will shortly wear off after another dismal jobs report.  Maybe my next topic will be about the way the administration distorts the jobs figures. 

Natering Naybob: Another odious and tiresome Modern Republican tactic: Obama receives good poll numbers, it is the work of the fawning, liberal, “main stream media”. Obama receives bad poll numbers, “the American people are finally rejecting his Socialist agenda”. Red Ranger, we all understand the Modern Republican shtick, and we are tired of it.

The Red Ranger: I know you cling to the belief that CBS, NBC and ABC are the bastions of true and honest journalism but those days are long gone.

Despite attempts to conceal President Obama’s radical progressive liberal socialist views by his campaign and the media acolytes who protect it, the evidence of his first term continues to pile up and overwhelmingly exposes the fallacy of attempts to portray Obama as centrist. President Obama has waged a war on the fossil fuel-based energy industry to promote radical environmentalist policies at the expense of American consumers who are forced to pay higher energy prices. Upon losing the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, President Obama decided to bypass Congress altogether and rule by Executive Order. He has directed the Department of Homeland Security to stop enforcement of immigration laws, the Justice Department to sue states from enforcement of voter identification laws, and directed the Defense Department to purchase expensive biofuels to support the failing alternative energy markets. Candidate Obama was portrayed as an empty canvas onto which voters could project their ideal fantasy candidate, but President Obama has shattered those illusions with three years of pushing a radical leftist agenda that has bankrupted the country and left millions out of work.

Some of President Obama’s most telling moments occur when he ignores the carefully scripted words on his teleprompter in lame attempts to appear spontaneous. His recent remarks concerning businesses not being built by their owners is a case in point. President Obama, in a campaign speech in Roanoke, VA last Friday, waxing on the role of government in building businesses, stated “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” The uproar from the business community was instant and loud. This is socialist thinking put into words and reveals exactly how President Obama views the role of government.

First, by the logic of this statement, President Obama is stating that no one can take credit for any achievement because there are other people on the planet and they contributed through their efforts. This is the ultimate socialist statement that places everyone on the same level and wipes away any recognition of individual achievement. By this logic, unless one grew up on a deserted island with no help from anyone else, then their achievements are undermined by the efforts of others. Socialism seeks to define everyone as a collective where individual efforts are combined for the good of the collective and no individual stands out. Individual efforts are never special, but expected as part of one’s duty to the collective. Everyone is expected to give a 110% all the time for the collective.

Second, President Obama is attempting to portray all good things as the result of government and all bad things as the result of individuals who go against the collective. This is another classic socialist propaganda point which regards government as the provider of good and individuals as the spoilers of all that is good. The fallacy of this tortured logic is the fact that government infrastructure is provided for all citizens to use regardless of whether they start a business or work for someone else. In other words, government benefits are provided equally to those who try and those who don’t, so everyone is equal in this regard. The difference is that some people choose to work hard at starting a business therefore their success is due entirely to their efforts and not to the government. Government benefits provided equally to all citizens are not the difference in a business owner’s success, rather his/her hard work is the deciding factor.

Ironically, President Obama has no trouble taking credit for the work of others without acknowledging their contributions when things go right, and blaming others when things go wrong. All good things are the result of his efforts alone, while all bad things are the fault of someone else. This is the narcissist coming out in him and Americans have come to expect this attitude as events unfold. Obama was quick to rush to the podium and claim credit for Osama bin Laden’s rendezvous with justice. The contributions of Seal Team Six were acknowledged as color commentary in how Obama went about the task, but all credit rested with Obama. Also unacknowledged at the time were the orders issued to the admiral in charge of the operation which read in such a way as to give Obama an out by allowing him to place blame on the admiral if the operation failed. Obama the narcissist was covering his bases instead of leading.

Third, by subtly nudging Americans towards a collectivist mindset, Obama seeks to further ingrain socialist thinking into the American experience to replace thoughts of individualism and questioning of government authority. This is most clearly seen in the left’s attempts to denigrate the TEA Party movement whose members came together to question President Obama’s progressive liberal agenda of massive spending and increasing taxes. The TEA Party exists to question Obama’s authority and socialism abhors any questioning of its authority. Most frightening to the progressive liberals is the fact that the TEA Party attracts members from across the political spectrum who share the common fear that government is spending too much money on an unsustainable course that is bankrupting America and will result in massive tax increases.

This latest political gaffe by President Obama reveals his deep-seated socialist agenda and is a telling insight into his views on government and America in general. Since taking office, much has come out about Obama’s leftist upbringing that was purposely hidden by a complacent media during the campaign. President Obama represents the pinnacle of the progressive liberal socialist control of the Democrat Party, and his first two years in office represented the pinnacle of their control of government as they held the White House and both houses of Congress. Americans have gotten a good look at the unvarnished progressive liberal agenda and have recoiled in horror. All the warnings from conservatives are coming true and the emphasis is on stopping this harmful agenda in an attempt to save America from financial ruin.

Socialism has been refuted numerous times by the historical precedence of experience. It is a failed ideology relegated to the ash heap of history, but adherents like President Obama refuse to let it die. They promise something for nothing, but these promises turn out to be empty and unsustainable with the cost being liberty itself. America realizes the socialist agenda of President Obama, and this latest gaffe only underscores what is already so evident. Those who seek government benefits will continue to follow his siren song while those of us who produce will continue to resist his efforts to integrate us into the socialist collective.

[Spectator.org]

The Right Prescription (Stop the Obama Tax Tidal Wave)

Whether Left, Right, Independent, or Confused, no one who is not bought and paid for as part of the Obama political machine is going to like the Obama Double Cross of the American people on Obamacare. Before Obamacare was passed, Obama told the American people over and over, even on national TV, that the individual mandate was not a tax. After Obamacare was passed, Obama sent his lawyers into courts all over the country to argue that the individual mandate is constitutional precisely because it is a tax.

This is the top argument to feature now in discrediting Obama and Obamacare. No one likes a dishonest liar. Even worse when that dishonest liar is supposed to be our nation’s leader. When he sent his own lawyers into courts all over America to argue that the individual mandate is constitutional because it is a tax, he demonstrated that when he told the nation it was not a tax, he knew all along that was not true, and that he was planning all along to double cross the people he was supposed to be leading. That alone disqualifies him from serving as President. The majority of Americans who are still capable of thinking will recognize that we can’t have as our nation’s leader a dishonest double crosser.

Romney and his Republicans must now play in ads all over America the clips of Obama and his Democrats denying in dismissive terms that the individual mandate could in any way be considered a tax. Then they need to dramatize that after the Obamacrats had tricked the American people, they sent their lawyers into court to argue just the opposite, thinking that the American people are too stupid to realize they had been tricked.

Stop the Obama Tax Tidal Wave

Obamacare consequently becomes yet another of the huge tax increases pending to take effect starting next year, unless Obama himself is repealed and replaced. CBO estimates that the health insurance that Obamacare mandates that employers must buy for each of their workers, or that every individual otherwise must buy, will cost on average about $15,000 per year for a family of four, just to start, growing robustly every year after that. Obamacare tries to make that palatable by adopting a new entitlement program providing federal welfare for the purchase of such insurance for families with incomes ranging over $100,000 per year in a few years, as the eligibility cutoff rises with health care inflation.

But those unrestrained health welfare handouts are paid for by taxpayers as well. So the Obamacare mandate tax becomes the entire $15,000 per family cost of the required insurance, including the welfare handouts to help pay it. That is close to $1.5 trillion per year, not the $1.76 trillion CBO now estimates for the next 10 years, which does not count what families and employers are required to pay for the mandated insurance. That $1.5 trillion per year and growing adds up to more than $15 trillion over 10 years! That is the full Obamacare mandate tax.

The employer mandate is a particularly egregious job killer, adding roughly $6,000 to $15,000 per worker per year to start to employment costs for jobs not now covered by health insurance. Even for jobs with current health insurance coverage, the cost of employment would still rise, because the new mandated Obamacare health insurance is likely to be more expensive than the employer’s current health coverage. Employers already seem to be reducing hiring in anticipation of these increased costs when the employer mandate goes into effect in a year and a half. To the extent the employer offsets these added costs by reducing what the worker would otherwise be paid, that means the workers suffer declining incomes.

That would all be on top of the tax increases now scheduled for next year under current law from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, which Obama refuses to renew for the nation’s small businesses, job creators, and investors. Along with the Obamacare tax increases also going into effect next year, that means the top two income tax rates would rise by nearly 20%, the capital gains tax rate would rise by nearly 60%, the tax on dividends would nearly triple, the Medicare payroll tax would rise by 62% for these disfavored taxpayers, and the death tax would rise from the grave with a 55% top rate.

That is all on top of the corporate income tax rate, which is already the highest in the industrialized world under Obama at nearly 40% counting state corporate income taxes on average. As noted here before, even Communist China sports a 25% corporate rate, while the social welfare states of the European Union average even less. Formerly socialist Canada now features a 15% federal rate, with Germany nearly that low. This leaves American businesses uncompetitive in the global economy. But under Obama there is no relief in sight.

Instead Obama has been barnstorming the country for over a year calling for still more tax increases. His Buffett rule would impose on America the fourth highest capital gains tax rate in the industrialized world, along with the highest corporate rate. And he regularly proposes still more tax increases on business, industry, savers, investors, and job creators. That is who he is talking about when he uses the crass term “the rich.”

This tidal wave of tax increases is the perfect formula to drive America into another severe recession next year, before we have even recovered from the last one. That means a return to double digit unemployment, and deficits soaring to over $2 trillion, with wages continuing to decline. Reversing course to avert that historical reenactment of the 1930s will only be possible if we take our last chance this fall to repeal and replace the Marxist infiltrator in the White House.

The Roberts Double Cross
What is most clear from the Obamacare decision June 28 is that after 70 years of dominant liberalism on the Supreme Court, conservatives were all set up for an historic victory. There were five votes to strike down the individual mandate as unconstitutional in violation of the Commerce Clause, five votes to recognize that meant the entire law had to be struck down, and five votes to put a limit even on the spending power by striking down the mandatory Medicaid expansion. Then Chief Justice John Roberts blinked, joining the unprincipled court “liberals” to save the double time march to socialized medicine.

There is no silver lining to the Great Wimp Out of John Roberts. The Commerce Clause ruling does not regain any prior lost ground, but just upholds the prior status quo. But this line held regarding the Commerce Clause was obliterated by holding the individual mandate to be a tax. It is not even just that in the future the government can impose a tax on you if you do not buy and eat your broccoli, or buy a new electric car from Government Motors, achieving the same result as any mandate. The decision stands as a historic precedent for holding any future mandate to effectively be a constitutional tax authorized by the taxing power.

The decision at best creates a talking point against any such mandate, enabling opponents to say that the Supreme Court has recognized it to be a tax. But don’t expect the liberal media that intimidated Roberts and elected the Marxist infiltrator to broadcast the point, or even concede it as valid. And don’t expect too many voters to read the opinion. You can see even now right after the decision Obama’s minions pronouncing that anyone who says the individual mandate is a tax is lying. This is the equivalent of old Soviet style disinformation.

The individual mandate is by its own terms a regulation not a tax. That is what Obama and the Democrats insisted it was in ramming it through the Congress. What became the four dissenting conservatives did an excellent job in the Obamacare decision of explaining why under prior Supreme Court precedent the mandate must be considered a regulation enforced by a penalty, and not a tax. What the narrow putative conservative court majority should have done is enforce the democratic process, requiring the Congress to enact an openly constitutional tax to finance socialized medicine if that is what it wanted, rather than allowing it to evade the voters by passing a regulatory mandate publicly denied to be a tax, and then calling it a constitutional tax in court. But what Roberts and the unprincipled, result-oriented court liberals did is affirm the fundamental dishonesty of our politics, refined to an art form of telling voters one thing, and doing the opposite behind closed doors once elected.

Roberts whined in justification of his double cross of the conservatives that put him in office that it is not his job to “to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” But that is exactly his job when the political choices result in leaders and policies in violation of the Constitution. As the Wall Street Journal put it on Monday, “But the Court’s most important role is to protect liberty when the political branches exceed the Constitution’s bounds, not to bless their excesses in the interests of personal or political expediency.” Transparently, Roberts was intimidated by Obama and the liberal media, the way the Venezuelan Supreme Court used to be intimidated by Hugo Chavez, before he finally just packed the Court with his party cronies, as Obama would do in a second term.

Alan Caruba ~

Barack Hussein Obama promised to transform America with an ill-defined message of change during his 2008 campaign. As Americans discovered what that change involved, they began to reject it. It was a change to the Left, to liberalism, to socialism.

The first sign of rejection was the 2010 election when voters returned power in the House of Representatives to Republicans. Since the 2006 midterm elections that gave the Democratic Party a sweeping victory and elevated Nancy Pelosi as the first woman to become Speaker of the House, Americans have had an opportunity to experience the liberal agenda and they don’t like it.

They didn’t like the way Obama wasted 2009 on pushing his socialization of one sixth of the nation’s economy with Obamacare, a bill then-Speaker Pelosi told voters that the bill would have to be passed so they “could see what was in it.” Soon enough the Supreme Court will render a decision on its constitutionality and the likely outcome is that it will be struck down.

The voters didn’t like Obama’s massive “stimulus” redistribution of their taxes that included a bailout of General Motors and Chrysler that could have been avoided by simply allowing them to go through the normal process of bankruptcy and restructuring. Instead, Obama screwed their creditors, normally the first in line to be compensated for their losses, and gave the auto unions a seat on the auto companies’ boards of directors, erasing the line between management and unions.

Recall, too, that the 2006 elections reflected the dissatisfaction of voters with the long years of wars in Afghanistan and, in particular, in Iraq. When the financial crisis hit in 2008, just before the national elections, combined with the unalloyed worship of a completely unknown Illinois Senator, the outcome was the election of Obama.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Now the shame of the failure to address the financial crisis in time-tested and proven ways is Obama’s. He could have cut taxes. Instead he pushed for an end to the Bush tax cuts and talked endlessly about raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires.” In point of fact, his tax programs were and are aimed at the middle class. He could have cut government spending. Instead he increased it with all manner of phony schemes such as “cash for clunkers.”

Since 2009 Obama has added four trillion dollars to the nation’s debt and has presided over the first, historic downgrade of America’s triple-A credit rating. The continuing news of taxpayer losses in his administration’s disastrous “investments” in solar and other “clean energy” firms that continue to fail has added to the clear perception of an ideologically driven agenda that is out of touch with reality.

The victory of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, barely five months before the forthcoming November elections is yet another reason to celebrate the rejection of Obama and his policies that have given the nation 42 months of an unemployment rate that is unprecedented since the Great Depression. Gov. Walker’s election signals the decline of the union movement and his reforms resulted in tens of thousands of union members choosing to leave the unions in Wisconsin.

The realization that unions, in particular the public service unions, have raped the public coffers of states, marks a turning point that will result in reforms that will greatly aid recovery. The millions the union movement poured into the defeat of Gov. Walker are millions that have been diverted from Obama’s reelection.

USA Today reported that “The residents of only nine states have returned their economies to the level that existed before the downturn struck at the end of 2007—and most of those states are energy producers.” The nation runs on the energy that the oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear provide. Obama has waged a war on oil and coal in particular and the public has taken notice of how insane this policy has been.

The outcome of the Wisconsin elections has not been lost on the Democratic Party. It will now be in full panic mode and Americans will be subjected to a campaign of lies intended to distract and deceive them.

Obama can no longer blame former President Bush for his failures, cannot blame events in Europe, and cannot blame Mother Nature. He has only himself to blame. Voters from the Left to the Right know this. Except for the hardcore liberal base and the mainstream media, the rest are ready to reject Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2012   Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs . http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center . http://www.anxietycenter.com

h/t GatewayPundit

May 07, 2012

Sara D. Davis / Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign rally May 5 at Virginia Commonwealth University.

By NBC’s Carrie Dann and Ali Weinberg

Gentlemen, start your airwaves.

Senior Obama campaign officials said Monday that a new major television ad buy reflects their broader media strategy: underscoring the need to build on the president’s first term while also responding to all attacks from what they characterize as a Republican monolith of the Romney campaign and its affiliated Super PACs.

The campaign will spend $25 million on swing-state ads this month, top strategist David Axelrod told reporters on a conference call. The ad is a positive one, the first positive ad the campaign has run. Axelrod argued that the sum spent on this ad would be more than Mitt Romney spent on positive ads through the entire GOP primary.

“I believe that by the end of this week — certainly by the end of next — we will have spent more money offering people a positive vision for the future, talking about the president’s record and the nation’s record under his leadership and where we’re going than Gov. Romney has in his entire campaign,” Axelrod said, “and there’s a reason for that.”

Watch the Video from MSNBC

President Obama and the first lady hit the campaign trail on Saturday in key battleground states. NBC’s Brian Moor reports.

The campaign’s new 60-second ad, which will air in nine swing states, does not mention Romney but highlights Obama’s record on the auto bailout and on national security and job creation.

But in addition to the positive messaging, Axelrod warned, the Obama team will respond to ads aired by outside groups like those funded by the Koch brothers and other “contract killers over there in Super PAC land.”

“We will respond vigorously,” he said. “We will treat every ad that comes from those entities as an ad from Gov. Romney.”

The Obama campaign has already aired three television ads — each responding to Super PAC commercials by tying the outside groups directly to Romney.

Axelrod and campaign manager Jim Messina also faced questions on the call regarding Vice President Joe Biden‘s comment yesterday that he is “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage, a statement widely interpreted to be a more conspicuous embrace of same-sex marriage than Obama has publicly expressed.

As he did yesterday, Axelrod disputed the idea that there is substantial daylight between Biden and the commander-in-chief, saying the veep’s comments were “entirely consistent with the president’s position which is that couples who are married — whether they’re gay or heterosexual couples — are entitled to the very same rights and very same liberties.”

(He also noted the “clear distinction” between Obama’s views and those of Romney, who has advocated for a constitutional amendment to prevent same-sex marriages.)

The two officials were also asked about new poll numbers out Monday that show Romney and Obama in a virtual tie in key battleground states, with Romney leading on key issues like the economy.

Ignoring that dead heat, Messina focused on one angled from one of those polls — USA Today/Gallup — that showed a reversal in the enthusiasm gap in 12 swing states. Republicans had held a 14-point advantage in enthusiasm at the end of last year, but Democrats now lead by 11 points. Messina, predictably, tied the drop in enthusiasm to voters learning more about the eventual Republican nominee.

“The more people get an up close view of Gov. Romney the less enthusiastic they get,” Messina said. “We’ll continue to see that.”

Axelrod added that the Romney campaign’s constant primary-season attack ads led to an erosion in excitement about the candidate.

“It turns out that if you spend a year running negative ads grinding down your opponent instead of making a case for yourself, if your vision is basically backward-looking, you diminish enthusiasm,” he said.

The Romney campaign responded to the conference call in a written statement from spokesman Amanda Henneberg which read in part, “President Obama just hasn’t lived up to his promises. It’s harder to get a job, buy or sell a home, and those fortunate enough to have jobs often have less in their paychecks. Mitt Romney will get our country back on track and stop the middle-class squeeze of the Obama economy.”

While the Obama campaign prides itself on technological prowess, Monday’s conference call was not without some good old fashioned phone issues – several reporters’ lines were muted as they were called upon by the operator to ask a question.

Axelrod joked that it was all a ploy of the opposing party.

“These Republicans will stop at nothing,” he contended. “They’ve snipped our lines.”

For some reason, the individual in this clip believes that you – yes YOU – should pay for his college debt!! The sad part of it is this guy can’t even explain why he believes what he does. Like a dumb sheep, he is just following the advice and proclamations from the leadership of the Occupy movement that he’s decided to be a part of. He probably can’t explain why he joined it either. So my question to you and to this guy is: what good will a free college education do for if you have no desire to educate yourself and you’re just going to listen to whatever somebody else tells you to do anyways?

What happened to personal responsibility? Did parents just stop teaching our children how to be responsible human beings?

Don’t fall into the same pit that these people are in. If we all learn to take responsibility for our actions, this world will be a much better place and the cost of education would be the least of our worries.

pb:dy

By David Martosko
Executive Editor

A blackout landing page is displayed on a laptop computer screen inside the “Anti-Sopa War Room” at the offices of the Wikipedia Foundation in San Francisco, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney mocked President Barack Obama‘s re-election campaign slogan — “Forward” — during a fundraiser Wednesday night. “‘Forward,’ what, over the cliff?” he joked.

Romney isn’t the only one trying to make hay over Obama’s head-scratcher of a choice on Monday. A Wikipedia page exploring the historical significance of the word “Forward” as a socialist rallying cry has made it the subject of dueling snarks from assorted would-be Wiki editors and vandals.

Within hours of the Obama campaign’s slogan unveiling, the online page had its first edit since November 2011. ”Forward is the official slogan of the Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2012,” the simple entry read.
But nothing in Wiki-land is simple, especially when the name “Barack Obama” is sandwiched between references to “Avante!, organ of the Portuguese Communist Party” and “Voorwaarts!, organ of the Communist Youth Movement (Netherlands).”

Apples and oranges, a persnickety editor claimed around 1 a.m. Tuesday: “The Obama campaign is not a publication, socialist or otherwise.” And with the click of a mouse, the Obama connection disappeared — for nearly 14 hours, at least.

The next edit seemed earnest enough. “Forward was used by the US President Barrack [sic] Obama as his 2012 presidential campaign slogan,” the semi-literate Wikipedian wrote. “The slogan was used to look back at the begining [sic] of his Presidency and the situation he inherited, and the bold strides taken over the four years of his term in office, and as a message towards his reelection.”

Within four minutes, that, too, was gone. “Obama’s campaign slogan,” another editor sniped, “is irrelevant to an entry on Forward as a generic name for socialist publications.”

And so it went. By dinner time Tuesday an editor proposed that the entire “Forward” page should be deleted. “This is patent garbage,” he wrote. “I wonder what the right wing author thinks of the State Motto of Wisconsin?” His account was later frozen.

But the edit war raged on. First came the addition of “Forward!,” cryptically described as “President Obamas change for America Divided States Of America Communist League.” Then “Forward” was replaced by “Forward 2: Electric Boogaloo.”

Those edits came after Neal Boortz, the libertarian talk radio host, published an article online alerting his listeners to the possibility that the page in question could disappear.

“Clearly Obama has an official or unofficial Wikipedia team ready to cleanse postings that might not play well with voters still on the edge,” Boortz wrote Wednesday. “Control the message. Always control the message.”

Perhaps it was one of Boortz’s more enthusiastic followers who made the next move. “DO NOT DELETE,” the Wiki page suddenly included. “ITEM MARKED FOR DELETION DUE TO POLITICAL REASONS FROM THE INCUMBENT!”

The last laughs clearly have not yet come. During the 6 p.m. hour Wednesday, “Boortz Rules!!! Get Obama out of office!!” appeared, grafitti-like, at the top of the page.

That edit lasted for about one minute. But less than ten minutes later, a clever left-wing vandal turned the entire article on its head by changing a single word.

“The name Forward carries a special meaning in tea party political terminology,” the article’s opening sentence now read, substituting “tea party” for “socialist.”

A similar edit war continues on the Wikipedia page exploring the Obama-Biden campaign’s use of “Forward” as its slogan.  What now stands as a one-line explainer already went through more than 500 edits on Wednesday alone. It has since been locked down and protected from further editing.

Along the way, however, the page became a monument to vulgarity, garden-variety political discord and plain old silliness.

“We all know that the economy is in fact racing backwards,” one vandal quipped in the article. ”It would seem that this is just wishful thinking.”

Another changed the slogan to “Forewarned.”

Others took liberal tacks, writing that “Newt Gringrich’s greatest regret regarding his failed Presidential bid is that he did not adopt ‘Backwards’ as his campaign slogan” and carping that the “noted Marxist President Ronald Reagan” once gave a speech titled “Forward for Freedom.”

But for every attempt to be somewhat serious, another relied on stand-up comedy.

“Seriously, what a strange slogan,” one nameless editor wrote Wednesday evening. “You’d think they’d want to go backwards… back to when people had jobs… back to when health care was affordable… back before Obama ate Bo cause he had the munchies.”

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‘One Nation Under God’ is Jon McNaughton’s witness and
reminder that those who went before us knew from whence their
blessings came!   http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/

H/T know-the-law (FreeRepublic)

United States Congressional Record January 19, 1976, page 240,
Representative Marjorie S. Holt (Maryland):

“Mr. Speaker, many of us recently received a letter from the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, inviting members of Congress to participate in a ceremonial signing of “A Declaration of Interdependence” on January 30 in Congress Hall, adjacent to Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

A number of Members of Congress have been invited to sign this document, lending their prestige to its theme, but I want the record to show my strong opposition to this declaration.

It calls for the surrender of our national sovereignty to international organizations. It declares that our economy should be regulated by international authorities. It proposes that we enter a “New World Order” that would redistribute the wealth created by the American people.
Mr. Speaker, this is an obscenity that defiles our Declaration of Independence, signed 200 years ago in Philadelphia. We fought a great Revolution for independence and individual liberty, but now it is proposed that we participate in a world socialist order.

Are we a proud and free people, or are we a carcass to be picked by the jackals of the world, who want to destroy us? When one cuts through the high-flown rhetoric of this “Declaration of Interdependence,” one finds key phrases that tell the story.

For example, it states that ‘The economy of all nations is a seamless web, and that no one nation can any longer effectively maintain its processes of production and monetary systems without recognizing the necessity for collaborative regulation by international authorities.’ How do you like the idea of “international authorities” controlling our production and our monetary system, Mr. Speaker?

How could any American dedicated to our national independence and freedom tolerate such an idea? . . . America should never subject her fate to decisions by such an assembly, unless we long for national suicide. Instead, let us have independence and freedom . . . If we surrender our independence to a “new world order” . . . we will be betraying our historic ideals of freedom and self-government. Freedom and self-government are not outdated. The fathers of our Republic fought a revolution for those ideals, which are as valid today as they ever were. Let us not betray freedom by embracing slave masters; let us not betray self-government with world government; let us celebrate Jefferson and Madison, not Marx and Lenin.”

PLEASE WATCH THIS – YOU NEED TO KNOW:

By: Curt

April 12, 2012

“”If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from….You make a big election about small things,” ” – Barack Obama 08/28/08

Obama uttered these words just a few short years ago. It was supposedly a charge against politics as usual. Now, he is following the politics as usual playbook to a tee.  And as he continues on his “anything but my record” tour he had the gall to say Ronald Reagan would be FOR the Buffet Rule:

President Obama continued his push Wednesday to build support for the Buffett rule by suggesting that Ronald Reagan would’ve backed the plan to set a minimum 30 percent income tax for the wealthiest Americans.“If it will help convince folks in Congress to make the right choice, we could call it the Reagan rule instead of the Buffett rule,” Obama said in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

“I’m not the first president to call for this idea that everyone has to do their fair share,” he said, quoting one speech in which Reagan said it was “crazy” for the rich to be able to use loopholes to get out of paying taxes. “He thought that in America the wealthiest should pay their fair share and he said so.”

This new talking point was spearheaded by ThinkProgress which put up a video of a speech Reagan gave in 1985 in which he remarked about an executive paying a lower tax rate than his secretary.

Yet Reagan told the story as part of a larger pitch for tax reform. Unlike Obama, Reagan was interested in targeting loopholes so that he could lower rates, to allow people to keep more of their own money.

“Lower, flatter tax rates will give Americans more confidence in the future,” Reagan said in the speech referenced by Obama. “It’ll mean if you work overtime or get a raise or a promotion or if you have a small business and are able to turn a profit, more of that extra income will end up where it belongs — in your wallets, not in Uncle Sam’s pockets.”

And Obama isn’t trying to close any of those loopholes. Whether the rich get richer or the poor get poorer is not the point. It’s getting re-elected, that’s the point. We spend 1,500 billion a year and he’s making speech after speech about a rule that would net 4-5 extra billion a year. What’s the point?

To get re-elected. To get his Socialist vision of our country more widely accepted. And when he is re-elected (and he will be, Romney has no chance) he can then begin pushing for the expiration of ALL the Bush tax cuts, including those on the middle class. That is the only way they can pay for the entitlement state envisioned by Obama and pals. Hell, even that won’t pay for it.

Sneaky Obama:

The Buffett rule is really nothing more than a sneaky way for Mr. Obama to justify doubling the capital gains and dividend tax rate to 30% from 15% today. That’s the real spread-the-wealth target. The problem is that this is a tax on capital that is needed for firms to grow and hire more workers. Mr. Obama says he wants an investment-led recovery, not one led by consumption, but how will investment be spurred by doubling the tax on it?

The only investment and hiring the Buffett rule is likely to spur will be outside the United States—in China, Germany, India, and other competitors with much more investment-friendly tax regimes.

Which means we’re screwed.

Exit quote:

So now we find out today that not only was Ronald Reagan for tax increases on the rich, Ronald Reagan was pro-abortion. Have you ever stopped to realize this bunch of people, the Democrat Party, Barack Obama, they hate Reagan. They have always hated Reagan. They engage in revisionist history about the Reagan years. But when they need to move their agenda forward, when they need to marshal support for what they’re trying to do, who do they invoke? LBJ? No. Teddy Kennedy? No. JFK? No. RFK? No. Bill Clinton? No. They invoke Ronald Reagan, the beloved Ronaldus Magnus.

Now, what does that tell you? They have to take one of the most popular presidents in history, a Republican, a person with whom they have absolutely nothing in common and without any agreement whatsoever and try to convince the American people Barack Obama is Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan did what Obama’s doing. It is shameless. It is offensive, and, like everything else Obama is doing, it’s a lie.

Exit video: (especially the last half when Stephen Hayes asks “don’t reporters have a job to do?”….why yes they do….to ensure Obama gets re-elected)

FoxNews VIDEO – Special Report with Bret Baier

And this was from the end of 2011, so we might have a bigger lead, now!! This is fantastic! OH, and hey, don’t forget about our other trophy, too: highest debt per capita!

Ask yourself: Will this get better under another Obama term or will we be ground into the dirt to be made “equal” to the rest of the world . . . or worse off, if that’s possible. Is there any hope of this changing with the socialist regime that we have, or do we have a far better chance at surviving if we return to the Constitution and work through the hard times as we set this thing right?

Pretty simple questions, folks. And while I’m thinking of the election, allow me to share a couple other nuggets. Today, we saw the unfortunate, but (unfortunately) fateful withdraw of Rick Santorum from the race. It seems, unless something really bizarre happens, Romney will be the GOP candidate. I don’t trust him and I’d imagine many of you are like me. However, I’d vote for a skunk’s butt before voting for the alternative. So, folks, It’s time to be troopers and rally behind the guy . . . any guy . . . who will be the one that will go up against Obama. Here are some things to think about, though. This is not just about the presidential part of the election. If we get the Presidency back into America’s hands, that’s great, but nothing will be done to reverse the mindless, massive government agenda that has been put in place unless we get the House and Congress, too. So, please. I beg of you. Get to know your reps and senators. Learn who they are, what they stand for, they’re voting records, etc. Learn who their opponents are. Vote for people of merit and honor . . . principled people with principles and beliefs based on the Bible and the Constitution . . . like America is, has been, and will always be, lest it ceases to exist. We must take back both sides of Congress and the Presidency in order to START righting all the wrongs. It will go way beyond one election cycle, though. Which brings me to my final point . . .

Consider Obama and his radical, socialist agenda. Consider the radical, anti-Constitutional Supreme Court justices he has appointed. If he is re-elected, there is a chance he’ll get another one or 2 appointees which will further screw us for another 20, 30, . . . 50 years! (depending on how long they live) If conservatives can take the government back from the “progressives” (socialists), the GOP guy gets that potential one or two appointees. If done well, we could get a little more strength on the conservative side, thus CONSERVE the Constitution at that level.

By John Berlau on 3.19.12 @ 6:08AM

Key Senate Democrats do a job on small business startups that even Maxine Waters and Barney Frank support.

Call it the Maxine Waters test of political moderation. Late last week, this test was failed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.), and Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

They comprise, as Politico writes, “a chorus of Democratic senators… raising objections to a bill designed to help small businesses — throwing bumps in the road to passage of the legislation that had sailed through the GOP-led House and won President Barack Obama’s endorsement.” And this bill, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, also won the endorsement of 158 House Democrats who voted “aye” on Mar. 8, including Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)

Waters, in line to be the top Democrat on the House Financial Services committee upon the retirement of current ranking member Frank, has made some inflammatory statements such as wishing the Tea Party would go “straight to hell.” But she was sounding some congenial notes in the House debate leading up to passage of the JOBS Act.

“We worked from both sides of the aisle because we are all concerned about job creation and access to capital,” Waters said. She and other House Democrats praised the bill’s measures to allow emerging entrepreneurs to raise limited amounts of capital through social media “crowd funding” and other methods without triggering millions of dollars in red tape from Securities and Exchange Commission rules.

In addition to raising the shareholder threshold for when a company must go public and be subject to regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting mandates and Dodd-Frank proxy provisions, the bill creates an “on-ramp” that would delay the most onerous of these rules for most new firms until five years after they go public.

The bill’s purpose is to address the long-term decline in U.S. initial public offerings, which began well before the financial crisis and which, according to the Treasury Department’s IPO Task Force, may have cost the U.S. economy 22 million jobs not created over the last decade. The bill also reflects the emerging consensus, from the respected Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., to President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness that startups and “emerging growth” firms less than five years old create the bulk of America’s new jobs

Waters also noted that she worked with Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) “to add critical investor protection provisions to this crowd funding bill.” But the bill with investor protections deemed sufficient by Waters and supported by 157 other House Democrats is the same measure coming under fire by Senate Democrats as too laissez faire. Levin, Landrieu, and Reed are expected to introduce an amendment Monday substantially weakening the already modest regulatory relief in the House bill. It’s unclear whether Majority leader Reid will even allow a vote on anything close to the House-passed bill should this amendment fail.

As Politico reported, Levin said Thursday: “I am frankly stunned by the speed with which these special interest folks representing very powerful interests in this country have been able to move this bill through the House, and we’re going to try to see if we can’t build in some protections in the Senate.”

But the question remains: once a bill has investor protections accepted by Maxine Waters, Barney Frank, and the Obama administration, what exactly do you need further protection from? The answer is that these Senators wish to protect the Wall-Street centric system of securities regulation enacted eight decades ago, when many households didn’t have telephones, from any meaningful modernization for the age of the Internet. While Republicans are accused of being stuck in the ’50s on cultural issues, it is fair to say that these Democrats are mired in the 1930s when it comes to entrepreneurs’ accessing of capital.

Jack Reed, for instance, can’t bear the thought of entrepreneurs and investors pooling capital online. He said in the Senate on Thursday, “The Craigslist or eBay model may work to enable people to sell unwanted clothing, bikes, and other goods, but it certainly doesn’t work for a financial security that requires a much more careful analysis than simply kicking the tires.” Yes, as millions of its users know, all that is sold on Ebay are clothes and bikes… and valuable antiques priced in the thousands and real estate priced in the hundreds of thousands. If anything, these transactions require more “careful analysis” than the purchase of shares of stock.

Yet because of outdated and all-encompassing securities laws, an entrepreneurs can’t even raise money online in $100 increments from Facebook friends Twitter followers without complying with Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, and nearly all the SEC regulation that large public companies face. Popular crowd funding sites like Kickstarter are basically limited to a donation model, in which musicians and filmmakers can only offer token rewards such as movie or album credits, rather than a share of the product’s proceeds.

The House-passed JOBS Act changes this in two ways. First it lifts the “threshold” for many SEC mandates from 500 to 1000 shareholders (and to 2,000 shareholders for community banks). This threshold, which hasn’t been raised in more than 50 years, is woefully out of date given that many social network uses have way more than 500 connections. This limit also prevents growing firms from rewarding rank-and-file employees with ownership stakes.

The bill then allows an exemption from these mandates for crowd funding, or pooling capital, of up to $2 million. Ordinary investors are permitted to invest the lesser of $10,000 or 10 percent of their income. As Patrick Ruffini notes at Huffington Post, the JOBS Act “limits the size of investments so that no investors could lose their shirts in the same way they did with traditional investments in GM, Fannie Mae.”

And contrary to the Dem Senators who say the bill has no investor protections, the bill requires to crowd funding operators to provide notice to the SEC to be shared with state securities regulators, and prevents “bad actors” from engaging in crowd funding. True, the bill does not force on investors and entrepreneurs all the accounting minutiae from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, but these mandates — burdensome as they are for legitimate entrepreneurs — didn’t exactly protect investors from the implosions of Lehman Brothers and MF Global.

The South by Southwest technology and entertainment festival that wrapped up this weekend, which I attended earlier this month as a correspondent for the Daily Caller, is not exactly a GOP-friendly venue both due to its location in Texas’s blue island in Austin and the attendees from the Left Coasts. But speaker after speaker hailed the revolutionary implications of crowd funding and urged the attendees to tweet the Senate to pass the JOBS Act.

AOL co-founder Steve Case, now chairman of the Startup America Partnership that connects entrepreneurs with venture capitalists and advocates for startups in public policy, hailed the JOBS act from at an event on the stage of the PBS series “Austin City Limits,” calling it “the chance to do something positive.”

So kudos to Maxine Waters for getting on board the crowd funding train. And raspberries to her party’s colleagues in the Senate who don’t even understand how eBay works.

About the Author

John Berlau is director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and blogs at OpenMarket.org.

Article Send a Tip by Ben Shapiro

March 08, 2012

Well, we found it. And it is damaging, because Barack Obama was as close or closer to Derrick Bell than he ever was to Jeremiah Wright. Obama didn’t merely sit in the pews – or not — for Derrick Bell. He didn’t just hang out with Derrick Bell for prayers. He said:

“Open up your hearts and your minds to the words of Professor Derrick Bell.”

If we did, here’s what we’d be opening our hearts and minds to. This is a close associate of Jeremiah Wright, a man who was quoted by Jeremiah Wright regularly. This is a man who posited that the civil rights movement was too moderate because it accepted the status quo, and believed that the entire legal and constitutional system had to be transformed in radical fashion. This is a man so extreme that, as we’ve reported, he wrote a story in 1993 in which he posited that white Americans would sell black Americans into slavery to aliens to relieve the national debt, and that Jews would go along with it.

There’s far more coming on Derrick Bell. This is just the beginning. And this video is a smoking gun showing that Barack Obama not only associated with radicals, he was their advocate.

Below is footage of Barack Obama praising and hugging Professor Derrick Bell.  It was spliced and diced by the media to avoid showing just how close Obama was to Bell. More than that, a close associate of the Obama campaign, Harvard Law School’s Professor Charles Ogletree, admitted on our exclusive tape, “We hid this throughout the 2008 campaign. I don’t care if they find it now.”

Exclusive Breitbart.tv MUST SEE VIDEO