Defining the Abstract

We spend a great deal of time in our country (way too much in my opinion) in arguing over what things mean.  How exactly do you define the abstract?  What does it mean when people say “they just want freedom” when talking about people from other nations?  Do they define freedom the same way you do?

We can’t agree on what freedom means in this country, yet people want to define it for someone who has no concept for government like ours.  They have never lived in a “free” society.  President Bush famously (or infamously depending on how you look at it)

“And my deepest conviction, the guiding principle of the administration, is that the United States of America must drive to expand the reach of freedom.”

Go and talk to the average person who lives in Europe and ask them if they are “free” and have “freedom”.  The answer you are very likely to get is yes.  Yet, you ask a person who is on the right in this country if they do the answer is very likely to be no.  Most European countries are set up as Socialist Democracies.  A very ugly concept to the view of many in this country.

The Arab spring didn’t happen because of the overwhelming desire for freedom.  It started over the price of bread.  In Egypt and Palestine they have gone to the polls and voted in the likes of Hamas and The Muslim Brotherhood.  While you do have to take into account that many of these elections are likely rigged, but sorry to burst your bubble, many people willingly voted these people into office.

While that sometimes is mind-boggling, one has to remember that both of these terrorist organizations also have an arm to them that aren’t at all terrorist, but work as a charitable organization.  They help the unemployed feed their families, they help with goods and services that many of the poor in those areas simply cannot afford to get on their own.  When you have close to 70% unemployment in the Palestinian Territories, you are going have a great deal of need.  These organizations go in and fill those needs.  It allows them to do their terrorist activities with a wink and nod from the population, they aren’t going to bite the hand that feeds them.  For many, this isn’t just a saying, but a literal thing for them.  They are dependent on these people for their livelihoods and for those of their children.  It is far more complicated than many in this country dare to even try to understand.

The world is a very complicated place.  It is very easy to sit in the cheap seats, which believe me the U.S. are the cheap seats, and make statements about what others want and need.   When you live in the U.S. you have safety nets in place (we can argue the right and wrong of these at another time).  No matter how poor you are in this country, you are still richer than approximately 70% of the rest of the world.  This isn’t about bashing poor people in this country, but just about perspective.

I saw this posted by Kira Davis on her Facebook page yesterday:

I make it a general rule not to argue about the Constitution or the principles of freedom with non-Americans. Not because of anything biased or personal, but just because being an immigrant myself I know that the way the rest of the world views freedom is far, far different than how Americans view freedom – yes, even the lefties. You can’t debate someone who has a fundamentally different understanding of what it means to be a free citizen and what a “right” is.

Decades ago we saw people in the streets in China demanding more “freedoms”.  The government crackdown was harsh and immediate.  But, in those preceding decades, the government of China has loosened some of the restrictions.  The citizens are getting more freedom over their lives from an economic perspective.  There are more jobs.  There is more autonomy.  They are allowing more and more people to drive cars.  I look at that country and am horrified at how little freedom those people have, yet they are feeling more comfortable with the changes the government is making.  It is about perspective.  I don’t get to define what freedom means to the average Chinese citizen. I wouldn’t want to live there, but that doesn’t mean that many of the people who do aren’t satisfied with their lives.

Emerging markets growth will also dramatically redistribute the bourgeois around the world. For instance, as our Rapid-Growth Markets Forecast explores, the number of households in Mexico with annual disposable incomes over US$50,000 is expected to reach 7.1 million by 2020, and 9.4 million in Brazil. For both countries this is an increase of over 50%.

Nevertheless, China’s and India’s contributions will be substantial.

Today, China has around 150 million people earning between US$10 and US$100 per day. As long as China continues to grow, and necessary economic reforms are made, we expect as many as 500 million Chinese could enter the global middle class over the next decade.

By 2030 around one billion people in China could be middle class — as much as 70% of its projected population.

To them this may mean “freedom”.  You can’t say that it does or it does not.  But many have said over the years the reasons that the communist government of China made economic reforms to help its citizens, is because it wanted to keep mass unrest from happening.  This likely will allow them to control the country for a longer period of time.  Are the people stupid for going along with it?  Some will say yes, others will say no.  That will depend on your perspective.  Many in this country look at this as a model of how government should work.  The heavy hand of government to guide economic policies that help all.  That is their idea of freedom.

We can talk all we want about what people in foreign lands want and or need.  We are doing so from our perspective, not from theirs.  We have not lived their lives in those places.  We don’t get to define what their lives should be, what their hopes and desires should be.  We also can do the same about people in this country.  We have plenty of people in this country who define freedom in ways that I don’t.

When you make broad statements about what abstract concepts mean, just remember that just because you define it a certain way that doesn’t mean that others do the same way.  When you talk about how everyone just wants freedom, just remember what they view as freedom won’t necessarily match up with what you think it means.

Tony Blair believes in “freedom” heck President Bush even gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and he is a socialist.

“We are a left of centre party, pursuing economic prosperity and social justice as partners and not as opposites”

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Hugo Chavez – Champion of the Poor?

This from 2010:

Analyst estimates Chávez’s family fortune at around $2 billion

Criminal Justice International Associates (CJIA), a risk assessment and global analysis firm in Miami, estimated in a recent report that the Chávez Frías family in Venezuela has “amassed a fortune” similar to that of the Castro brothers in Cuba.

According to Jerry Brewer, president of CJIA, “the personal fortune of the Castro brothers has been estimated at a combined value of around $2 billion.”

“The Chávez Frías family in Venezuela has amassed a fortune of a similar scale since the arrival of Chávez to the presidency in 1999,” said Brewer in an analysis published in their website.

Brewer said that Cuba is receiving about $5 billion per year from the Venezuelan treasury and in oil shipments and other resources.

“We believe that organized bolivarian criminal groups within the Chávez administration have subtracted around $100 billion out of the nearly $1 trillion in oil income made by PDVSA since 1999.”

From ABC News Jan 2013:

1. Venezuela has gone from being dependent on oil to being extremely dependent on oil.

Former minister Gerver Torres points out that in 1998 oil represented 77 percent of Venezuela’s exports but by 2011 oil represented 96 percent of exports. That means today only around 4 percent of the goods that Venezuela exports are non-oil products! The Venezuelan economy relies almost exclusively on the price of oil and the ability of the government to spend oil revenues. This will take years to reverse because of item two below.

2. The Chavez government has crippled private businesses and national industry through expropriations and nationalizations.

The Chavez government has expropriated or nationalized numerous companies (no one seems to be able to count them all) involved in various sectors including aluminum, cement, gold, iron, steel, farming, transportation, electricity, food production, banking, paper and the media. The number of private companies in industry has dropped from 14,000 in 1998 to only 9,000 in 2011, according to Torres.

Companies need investment to grow and hire new workers. One of the biggest failures of the Chavez government has been to drive away both domestic and foreign investors. In 2011 Latin America enjoyed a record of more than $150 billion in foreign investment with Brazil receiving $67 billion. Venezuela’s neighbor Colombia received $13 billion while Venezuela received only $5 billion. To avoid expropriation and find investment a number of Venezuelan companies have moved to Colombia, Panama and the United States.

3. The Venezuelan currency is a mess.

The new currency, the Bolivar fuerte, is anything but strong. The Bolivar fuerte has lost nearly two-thirds of its value since it was launched in 2008. Many analysts expect Venezuela will have to go through a painful devaluation sometime this year or next. This will further reduce the value of wages and sharply increase the costs of imports of basic staple goods. Life will get tougher for most Venezuelans but Chavez probably won’t be around to see it.

4. Prices in Venezuela have gone up by 23 percent a year for more than ten years.

Inflation in Venezuela has averaged 23 percent during 1999-2011 compared to a Latin American average of 4.6 percent. Imagine what life would be like if the price of groceries went up 23 percent every year. This craziness combined with stringent price controls has completely distorted the economy, creating black markets and shortages. In 2012 Venezuela will again have one of the highest inflation rates in the world.

5.Under Chavez Venezuela has become one of the most violent countries on the planet.

The murder rate per 100,000 citizens has risen from 25 in 1999 to 45.1 in 2011. This is not an economic stat per se but violence has an economic impact. It is more challenging and dangerous than ever to do business and go to work in Venezuela. When you consider these points, it’s hard to call the economic legacy of Chavez and his band of 21st Century Socialists a good one.

From Amnesty International:

Police and security forces

Public security remained a major concern and, according to latest figures released by the Institute of National Statistics, more than 21,000 people were killed nationwide in 2009. There were allegations of police involvement in killings and enforced disappearances.

• In September, Wilmer José Flores Barrios became the sixth member of the Barrios family to be killed in circumstances suggesting the involvement of members of the Aragua State Police. At the end of the year, Venezuela had not adopted measures to protect the family, nor had it ordered an effective investigation into these crimes.
• In March, eyewitnesses saw three labourers – Gabriel Antonio Ramírez, José Leonardo Ramírez and Nedfrank Xavier Cona – being bundled into an unmarked car by a group of between 17 and 20 police officers in the city of Barcelona, Anzoátegui State. At the end of the year, the whereabouts of the men remained unknown. Six police officers were under arrest at the end of 2010 in connection with the incident; a higher-ranking officer remained at liberty.

Repression of dissent

Those critical of the government were prosecuted on politically motivated charges in what appeared to be an attempt to silence them.

• In March, Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, a member of an opposition party and ex-governor of the Zulia State; Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of TV station Globovisión; and Wilmer Azuaje, an opposition candidate for the governorship of Barinas State, were detained for several days on spurious charges. The charges remained pending at the end of the year.
• Richard Blanco, Prefect of Caracas, was released in April, after four months in prison, but continued to face unsubstantiated charges of inciting violence and injuring a police officer during a demonstration against an education law in 2009.
• In November, the trial began of trade unionist Rubén González, general secretary of Sintraferrominera, the union representing workers at the state-run iron mine CVG Ferrominera Orinoco in Bolivar State. He was charged with inciting a crime, curtailing people’s freedom to work, and violating a security zone following his participation in a strike in 2009. He had been in pre-trial detention for over a year and the charges against him appeared to be disproportionate.

People boast on how he was “democratically elected”:

He cemented his rule by rewarding allies. Opportunists, notably senior military officers and the tycoons known as “boligarchs”, got rich manipulating government contracts. Civilian ideologues and Cuba got power and influence. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people got jobs in a bloated bureaucracy. And millions of the poor got social services, scholarships and handouts, notably fridges, tumble dryers and washing machines. Those who voted against him were often barred from government jobs and benefits.

Other Latin American governments knew of the abuses, that elections were free though not fair, but stayed silent. Venezuela’s hollowed economy required huge imports from its neighbours to keep shelves stocked. Why risk the bonanza? Plus Chávez offered discounted oil, called time on Yankee meddling and told the IMF to stuff itself.

And:

Venezuela hasn’t invited international observers to watch its elections since 2006, although it does allow “witnesses” to the process

Somehow this man is a hero to the left:

Hollywood liberals Sean Penn, Michael Moore and Oliver Stone have paid tribute to Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who died on 5 Marchafter a long battle with cancer, at the age of 58.

Penn, who first met Chávez in Venezuela in 2007 and attended a candlelit vigil for the stricken firebrand in Bolivia in December, bemoaned the politician’s lack of credibility in North America. “Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion,” he said in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter. “I lost a friend I was blessed to have. My thoughts are with the family of President Chávez and the people of Venezuela.” Penn added: “Venezuela and its revolution will endure under the proven leadership of vice president [Nicolas] Maduro.”

Oliver Stone, who celebrated Chávez’s presidency and the successes of left wing politicians across South America in his 2009 documentarySouth of the Border, said the Venezuelan leader would be remembered fondly by historians as a champion of the poor. “I mourn a great hero to the majority of his people and those who struggle throughout the world for a place,” he said in a statement. “Hated by the entrenched classes, Hugo Chávez will live forever in history. My friend, rest finally in a peace long earned.”

Michael Moore, who met Chávez at the Venice film festival in 2009 and posted pictures of himself with the president, tweeted: “Hugo Chávez declared the oil belonged 2 the ppl. He used the oil $ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health & education 4 all. That made him dangerous. US approved of a coup to overthrow him even though he was a democratically-elected president.”

If this is a hero, what does a villain look like?  Oh yeah, I forgot George W. Bush.

I would like to give Kudos to Think Progress of all sources.  They had the balls to stand up to the crazies on the left:

Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-NY) released a statement today praising former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, despite the latter’s record of harsh crackdowns on his political opponents and state-sanctioned persecution against Venezuela’s Jewish population. Serranotweeted a statement praising Chavez as an a champion of the oppressed, writing that “Hugo Chavez was a leader that understood the needs of the poor. He was committed to empowering the powerless. R.I.P. Mr. President.” Serrano’s office later released a statement expanding on the tweet:

President Chavez was a controversial leader. But at his core he was a man who came from very little and used his unique talents and gifts to try to lift up the people and the communities that reflected his impoverished roots. He believed that the government of the country should be used to empower the masses, not the few. He understood democracy and basic human desires for a dignified life. His legacy in his nation, and in the hemisphere, will be assured as the people he inspired continue to strive for a better life for the poor and downtrodden.”

While even Chavez’s critics admit that he did attempt to address the plight of Venezuela’s poorest, the decline in economic inequality in Venezuela reflected a broader egalitarian trend in Latin America, and can’t be fully credited to Chavez’s policies. However, Chavez’ policies harmed Venezuela’s poorest in other ways: the value of the Venezuelan currency dropped while prices soared, making it harder for people to buy basic necessities, and crime skyrocketed.

Moreover, Chavez hurt the vulnerable in Venezuela in other ways. Chavez’s state-run media hounded Venezuela’s small, beleaguered Jewish population — he himself once said “Don’t let yourselves be poisoned by those wandering Jews.” A study released by the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University found that Chavez’s rule “witnessed a rise in antisemitic manifestations, including vandalism, media attacks, caricatures, and physical attacks on Venezuelan Jewish institutions.” Indeed, roughly half of Venezuelan Jews fled the country because of “the social and economic chaos that the president has unleashed and from the uncomfortable feeling that they were being specifically targeted by the regime.”

Chavez also attacked Venezuela’s democratic political system. Human Rights Watch reported in 2012 that “the accumulation of power in the executive and the erosion of human rights protections have allowed the Chávez government to intimidate, censor, and prosecute critics and perceived opponents in a wide range of cases involving the judiciary, the media, and civil society.” Contra Serrano, Venezuela’s elections were not certified as “free and fair” by international monitors of late: Chavez had not allowed international election monitors to observe Venezuelan elections since 2006.

Quote of the Day – Bernard Grinspan Edition

 “Some of our clients are very seriously discussing relocation – not only to London but also Singapore and New York. There’s a lot of uncertainty.”

Bernard Grinspan, Managing Partner, Paris office of Gibson Dunn.  International Law firm on his discussions with his “wealthy” French clients.

A 75% income tax on the “rich” is expected with the election of Francois Hollande.

History teaches these people nothing, this tax will lower revenues and push them even closer to the edge of bankruptcy.  The Germans should expect them hat in hand looking for a bailout in the not too distant future.

 

Quote of the Day – Anonymous Edition

I was there with my child and wife. I work as an engineer for a living. I make 90k a year. I am also an anarchist.
Those pictures are spot on. There were lots of communists and socialists at the rally. Me being one of them.
However, you fail to tell the whole story. You failed to show the real communists. The ones giving out free sandwiches and ice-cream.
Your understanding of socialists is also fairly primitive and at times absolutely wrong.
It is clear you tried to scare your readers into thinking that these people want to take over and destroy freedom and liberty!
You fail to tell the whole story. That the socialist movement is about freedom. That it is the highest form of liberty and individualism.
I would recommend you read “Why Socialism?” by Albert Einstein.
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Einstein.htm

A comment left on Marathon Pundit’s post on May Day celebrations in Chicago.

Well all is good if you get free sandwiches and ice cream.  Property rights are not so important.

There is Hope for America Yet – Americans Prioritize Growing Economy over Spreading the Wealth

Gallup released a new poll that is not good for President Obama’s campaign strategy.  

But what is really fascinating is this:

Even with the economy being much worse than it was in 1998 more than half feel that there being a difference between rich and poor is acceptable.  Another words, they like capitalism. 

President Obama should take heed.  Even in a horrible economy Americans don’t want a quasi-socialist economy that President Obama has spent the past three years trying to create.  

God Bless America.  

Cross Posted at Pundit Press and just a conservative girl

Oh, Isn’t This Special – They Have Demands

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Demand four: Free college education.

Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.

Well, lets see.  Every person in America gets paid $20 per hour.  How much are we going to paying for a bar of soap in this universe?  You don’t even have to work to get it. 

I especially like demand eight – This is them admitting that the constitution is color blind.  So it isn’t that they don’t know that, they just choose to ignore it, and demand “rights” that don’t exist. 

How long would it take to count all ballots in this country by hand? 

Apparently, some of these people actually have a brain and are getting upset at this list of demands.  Someone there may actually realize that this won’t work.  Although, I doubt it.

 

 

There Are No Words……………….

I don’t know about you, but I when I go to church, I don’t want to hear about Walmart. 

Is Rahm Evil? And what about The One

His opponent in the mayor’s race cuts an ad accusing him on Freddie Mac. Evil-Man Economics Is Rahm evil?

You decide.

But I suggest those wanting a better future for Chicago, Illinois, and this country read Stanley Kurtz’s book, Radical-in-Chief:Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism . Rahm, never let a good crisis go to waste Emanuel was involved with the Left early on.

We are reaping the ruin the Left has sown for decades. Midwest Academy. ACORN. SEIU. The Dem Machine. The Chicago Way goes to Washington.

Shakedown after shakedown.

Are there any honest leaders left in Chicago?

And who is our president.

And the Midwest Academy folks, maybe they’re kicking themselves right now – I hope they are – for putting their files on record. And when I finally dug up these files, I truly was amazed because what we really had here was a living, breathing, Socialist front group as if it had been taken from the 1930s and transported into the ’80s and the ’90s and beyond in the United States.

Related posts: Acorn fells Obama tree?

The Core of Barack Obama.

More. In case you missed it. Jeffrey Lord, TAS:Boehner Takes On Radical-In-Chief

…Who will they demonize next? Jan Schakowsky is Frightened

UPDATE: Obama’s Double Vision. Logo above. And this.

WTF.

–crossposted at BackyardConservative

Heading for Hot dogs and beans in Obama economy

I caught part of this earlier today, and was especially struck by this woman. An Obama voter at the CNBC townhall is a CFO of a company, describes herself as middle class, and goes on:”I’m Exhausted Of Defending You”. RCP video.

See if you think he gives her a good answer.

Plus more on the Marxist, redistributionist mentality of Dem Senate candidate Coons. Taken to real extremes.

And are some CFO’s more guilty than others?

Stanley Kurtz is back, with a book: Radical-in-Chief

I became a huge fan of Stanley Kurtz during the 2008 campaign. Dr. Kurtz, a painstaking, scholarly, responsible researcher, was, in my view, foremost among those happy few who dug deep into the question the liberal media struggled so very hard to ignore — Who is Barack Obama? Of course, Kurtz received the smear treatment for his efforts.

I have wondered what he’s been up to since then. Now we know:

I am pleased to announce that my political biography of President Obama, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, will be published on October 19 by the Threshold imprint of Simon & Schuster. Here is the Amazon page. Here is the cover:

Given my various adventures during the last presidential campaign, it seemed best to remain discrete until now. The goal has been to minimize any possible interference with my research, which has proceeded non-stop since 2008. The book is under embargo, so I cannot detail its revelations. Today’s press release conveys the core argument, however. Here’s the text:

Part biography, part history, part detective story, RADICAL-IN-CHIEF reveals the carefully hidden tale of Barack Obama’s political past. Stanley Kurtz, who’s research helped inject the Bill Ayers and ACORN issues into the 2008 presidential campaign, presents the results of more than two years of digging into President Obama’s radical political world. The book is filled with previously unknown information about the president’s past, tied together by a bold argument about what Obama’s deepest political convictions really are.

RADICAL-IN-CHIEF marshals a wide array of never-before-seen evidence to establish that the president of the United States is indeed a socialist. Tracing an unbroken thread of socialist activities and political partnerships, from Obama’s youth through his community organizing days and beyond, the book confirms that the president’s harshest critics have been right about his socialism all along.

RADICAL-IN-CHIEF also exposes the truth about community organizers–the socialist beliefs they hold and hide, and how they trained and groomed a president. Obama’s community organizer colleagues had a strategy for slowly and stealthily turning the United States into a socialist nation. The Obama administration is carrying out that strategy today.

This book will forever change our national debate about who Barack Obama is.

I’m excited to be able to offer this book to the public, and look forward to reentering our collective debate over the political character of the Obama administration.

I’m sure Dr. Kurtz is fully aware of what will come his way when the book is released.

I’m going to add Radical-in-Chief to my Amazon store immediately.

Cross-posted at P&P.

The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties To Communists, Socialists And Other Anti-America Extremists

Ed Morrissey, of Hot Air, mentioned that he is reading The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists in advance of his interview with its author Aaron Klein.

Morrissey later learned that The Manchurian President was co-authored by Brenda J. Elliott and corrected his post with an update acknowledging Elliott’s contribution to the book.

The book is riding high on Amazon rankings even before its May 3 publication and is in high demand in bookstores across the country. Mr. Klein will be a guest on the Michael Savage radio show on May 3 and on Sean Hannity’s TV show on Fox News on Tuesday, May 4.

“I believe [The Manchurian President] is crucial to Americans from across the political spectrum, including mainstream Democrats who should be alarmed that their party has been hijacked by an extreme-left fringe bent on permanently changing the party to fit its radical agenda. Indeed, this book will document, with new information, Obama’s own involvement with a socialist party whose explicit goal was to infiltrate and eventually take over the Democratic Party and mold it into a socialist organization.”—Aaron Klein

The Real Barack Obama website has an interview with Elliott. Here is an excerpt:

Pundita: Was there a specific alliance, or set of alliances, in Obama’s personal or political life that caused you to revise your initial view of him? If I recall your initial view was that he was a fairly typical corrupt Chicago Machine politician.

Elliott: We discovered a lot of socialists of many stripes, including Marxists and Maoists. Although never claiming to be one of them, Obama is certainly a fellow traveler in that he was, and still is, constantly surrounded by them, and has been more than willing to share political space and ideology with them.

For decades Obama has surrounded himself with a large number of radicals of many stripes. It does truly boggle the mind.

As Marxist professor Manning Marable wrote in the December 2008 ‘Socialist Review,’ a lot of people working with Obama have a background in Marxism and socialism and communism. Obama, Marable says, is a “progressive liberal.” However, he writes, Obama “understands what socialism is.”

You can read the rest of the interview here.

The Manchurian President contains potentially explosive information not only about President Obama but also concerning other officials in the White House, including top czars and senior advisers Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod.

Read more at No Sheeples Here.

Don’t You Dare Ask For My ID, But You Are Welcome to My Body Parts

Of all the creepy, nightmare, sci-fi scenarios that liberal lunacy is assaulting us with, I think New York’s assumption that American citizens don’t even own our own bodies is the topper.

Here in New York, we are so thoroughly considered the property of the state that when we die, our lawmakers plan on having the state move in and harvest our organs, no questions asked. Die in New York State, and your heart, lungs, eyes, and liver go to the highest bidder, the state, nobody’s saying.

What could go wrong? Especially in the age of death panels, world demand for transplant organs and the enormous profits to be made by selling organs, not to mention the inevitable desire to get an organ while it’s nice and fresh, maybe from a body that’s still warm (not quite dead, perhaps). Who’s watching, anyway? After all, it can’t happen here (here, maybe).

Oh, I’m telling you, my dear, that it can’t happen here.

Don’t be nervous about going into a hospital for that risky surgery. If you are viewed as a prospective donor, you don’t need to worry about how hard a medical team will work to save you if they (or the government) perceive a greater benefit to harvesting the organs. Nah. They’ll return you with all your parts. You can always trust the state.

But don’t you find it just a tad interesting that a group of New York’s lowly state assemblymen and assemblywomen are so confident of the state’s ownership of us that they have no problem blithely informing us that they (reluctantly) will approve of individuals owning their own body parts (for now), only if individuals petition the state, in writing, for ownership of their own body parts. That’s for those of us who are in a good situation to write, of course. In enlightened, ultra-charitable New York State, there are no poor, disabled, illiterate, or sick people (or even non-English speakers) who could be taken advantage of — or, let us say –who could “fall through the cracks.” No. Uh, uh. Not here. It can’t happen here.

I mean, some politician wouldn’t dream of confiscating your organs for one of his family members. Nah. Well, maybe the guy who dreamed up New York’s latest “New York wants your heart” legislation because he had a hard time finding new kidneys for his daughter and didn’t want to wait for “an act of God” to provide her with organ donors.

Under current New York State law, if I want to donate my organs and tissues to someone after I die, all I have to do is check a box on my drivers license renewal form (or license application), and my license will be mailed to me clearly emblazoned with the words “ORGAN DONOR.” All legal and set to go.

But that’s not good enough. Or convenient enough.

I keep saying it, and I’ll say it again:  The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Cross-posted at Bread upon the Waters.

Without black swan, Dems’ goose is cooked

Charlie Cook predicts that November 2, 2010, will be a very bad day for Democrats:

As we head toward November’s mid-term elections, the outlook remains dire for Democrats. For the trajectory of this campaign season to change in their favor, two things need to happen — unemployment must drop significantly, and the public’s attitude toward the new health care reform law must become much more positive. Neither seems likely, though.

Increasingly, it appears that for Democrats to turn things around, Republicans would have to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or a “black swan” — an extraordinarily unexpected event that causes a tremendous change — would have to swim to the rescue of the president’s party.

He goes through the various ways the GOP could blow it, but concludes:

So the Republican Party has its difficulties, but the national political environment remains good for the GOP. If anything holds down GOP gains, it’s more likely to be Republican voters’ in some races opting for weak nominees or a huge game-changing event that takes everyone by surprise rather than Democrats’ figuring out how to turn their own situation around.

h/t: Jennifer Rubin

Obamacare isn’t something that improves upon closer acquaintance:  States have no idea how to implement Obamacare or what it will cost. Well, at least the states are in good fiscal shape. Oops. Not so much. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to drop a 16-ton entitlement on them.

And the entire Obama agenda is terminally unpopular: It’s the agenda, stupid.

Tocqueville’s prophetic soul

Brought to you by Michael Ledeen:

“That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild.  It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.  For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”

Wish we could say he was wrong.

How exceptional?

A must-read from Mark Steyn. Not short. One excerpt:

Two-thirds of a century on, almost every item on the list has been abandoned, from “independence and self-reliance” (40 percent of people receive state handouts) to “a healthy suspicion of power and authority” — the reflex response now to almost any passing inconvenience is to demand the government “do something,” the cost to individual liberty be damned. American exceptionalism would have to be awfully exceptional to suffer a similar expansion of government and not witness, in enough of the populace, the same descent into dependency and fatalism. As Europe demonstrates, a determined state can change the character of a people in the space of a generation or two. Look at what the Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population: That’s what happened in Britain.

“The aroma of coercion”

A must-read from the great Roger Kimball:

Even as the Obama administration shows itself racing to revolutionize one aspect of American society after the next, so it demonstrates once again that socialism is only another name for paternalism, which, with Tocqueville, we may file under the heading of “Democratic Despotism.” Remember Obama’s promise in October of 2008 that he was on the threshold of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America”? Here we go. You don’t “fundamentally transform” a capitalist country that puts a premium on entrepreneurship and individual liberty without undermining capitalism, innovation, and freedom.

Hence no one should be surprised at the aroma of coercion that is such a prominent feature of Obama’s various proposals to remake this country.

Read the rest. In his conclusion he quotes one of our favorite bloggers.