It was a fitting symbol of the pack of lies that constitute “global warming.”

The President of the United States, along with the Speaker of the House, had to flee Copenhagen’s Climate Change Conference because of a snow storm of epic proportions for that Danish city and to return swiftly to Washington, D.C. because of a record-setting blizzard that hit the northeast.

In Copenhagen, the President continued to betray the will of the American people by blathering about “global warming” and the need to act swiftly to stop it by imposing limits on how much energy Americans could use. He also managed to anger the major environmental organizations by failing in this mission.

The Sierra Club sent a message to its members celebrating 2009 as a year in which they were instrumental in “stopping over 100 dirty coal plants” in a nation that depends on such plants for fifty percent of the electricity we use every day. They also took credit for “the protection of two million acres of natural spaces” that will never be used for timber, for mining, for any of the resources, minerals, oil, or natural gas the nation requires and which will likely be off limits for any form of recreation use as well.

Also returning from Copenhagen was California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who, as the Orange Country Register noted on December 17, “made the astonishing claim that the Golden State is evidence we need not choose between a clean environment and economic growth.” The editorial credited Schwarzenegger in part for the state’s “economic mess, largely thanks to taxes and government regulations. The governor’s pet environmental projects are chief culprits.”

One of those pet projects was “a Kyoto-type regulatory scheme to force California off fossil fuels” that the Small Business roundtable estimated would cost consumers $149.2 billion when it is fully implemented, small businesses $182.6 billion, and to kill about 1.1 million jobs in total.”

Sen. Harry Reid has managed finally to bribe the last Democrat holdout on Obamacare, Sen. Ben Nelson, in order to bring the bill to a vote. The brutal sellout included a White House threat to close a Nebraska Air Force base.

Obamacare is a complete betrayal of the American people, slashing a half trillion dollars from Medicare, a program designed to aid senior citizens respond to the illnesses and other debilitating effects of old age. It enables the federal government to take control of one sixth of the nation’s economy in the same way it has steadily extended its central control over education, energy and all other aspects of life in America.

Despite having beaten back a previous attempt to extend amnesty to the estimated twelve to seventeen million illegal aliens in America, another bill has been introduced in Congress to further undermine the nation’s obligation to protect its borders from millions of illegals who are sapping billions of taxpayer funds due to their use of our education system, our hospital system, and the need to respond to criminality of every description. In addition, illegals send home billions in remittances.

Environmentalism is an attack on the West, the industrialized nations of the world that, according to the Copenhagen conference, were supposed to transfer billions to “developing nations” that have been developing for as long as memory serves. The conference declared that their emissions of carbon dioxide were causing climate change. This is now a totally discredited lie.

Little wonder China and India would have nothing to do with the Copenhagen proposals as they apply themselves to providing more energy in the form of coal and nuclear plants in order to raise the standard of living for their billion-plus populations and bring about real growth and prosperity.

Meanwhile, in Europe, France relies on nuclear energy for 76% of its energy needs. In England, after shutting down its coal mines and nuclear plants, the government is in a frenzy to reinstitute them in order to avoid future energy blackouts after having spent billions on wind farms. The greening of Spain through subsidized wind and solar power has caused a financial crisis and destroyed 2.2 jobs for every alleged “green” job created.

And while this is occurring, the United States of America is being dragged into a Soviet-style centralized government by the most Marxist administration in its entire history; an administration that has no intention of paying heed to the will and the voice of the people.
The Constitution begins with the words, “We the People” but the people are no longer a component of the current government. The people are now the slaves of the Democrat Party.

 

WesternFront America

If you were told that you were about to meet a Conservative Firebrand… one who has been seen as a speaker and as a Master of Ceremonies at Tea Parties, who has appeared on the Hannity and Glen Beck shows on FOX, is a leader in the Tea Party Coalition, and has written a book critical of the Liberal Democrats; you would probably be a bit surprised when you were introduced to Kevin Jackson. You see, Kevin Jackson is a young and athletic, affable black man with an infectious smile and charming wit.

Notice that I didn’t say African-American. Jackson says he’s an AMERICAN. Not an “African-American”. At the 9-12 rally in Quincy , IL he stated that, while Africa is a beautiful place, with some of the most beautiful flora and fauna on the planet… he wouldn’t trade one acre of a free USA for all that is Africa !

Jackson’s new book, “The BIG Black Lie – How I Learned The Truth About The Democrat Party”, challenges the political stereotypes of race, and strongly makes the case that those why cry “Racism!” the most – the liberal left and the Democrat Party – are in fact the true home of racism in America today!

Controversial? You bet! But every revolutionary thought throughout history has been controversial! Flat earth? Steamboats? Manned Flight? Organ Transplants?

“The BIG Black Lie” was born out of an outcry of blog readers and radio show listeners, whose comments were often the same: “You say the things we can’t say.” Jackson feels that the problem wasn’t so much that others couldn’t say these things… but rather that they simply lacked the knowledge to handle the issues of being labeled racists and elitists. His premise is to turn that paradigm around and place that dreaded label back where he says it belongs… on the Democrat party!

When asked about the “inevitable” fallout of disapproval from the black community, Jackson shrugs it off.

“I have found a multitude of ‘like-thinkers’ in the black community. They may be less vocal, however these people exist, and in larger numbers than most think. I believe books like mine will provide the impetus for them to reveal themselves more readily…

Most of the world readily accepts people like me, i.e. people who want nothing except what they deserve and earn. Most people judge people by their deeds, their character, and by their personal experience with the individual…not anecdotal references.
As for disapproval of black Democrats, I frankly couldn’t care less. It’s this simple. I am right and they are wrong. I would be happy to debate any of them on what squandering their votes for Democrats, for decades, has done to improve “the black condition.” Further, my facts on the racist history of Democrats are irrefutable.  Those racist policies continue to this day, though they are more subtle.”

“The BIG Black Lie” has sold well since its release this summer, however Jackson has designs on seeing it go to #1 on September 23. To provide impetus toward that effort, he’s offering a free MOB T-shirt and free downloads for ONE DAY ONLY with the purchase of his book next Wednesday, September 23^rd.

The book is available on Amazon. For details of the special one day offers, visit Jackson ’s website at www.theblacksphere.net.

Jackson is an up-and-coming bright star in the ranks of the revitalized and vocal conservative movement. He has a wealth of knowledge, and he conveys it with humor, wit and charm. Keep and eye on this man… he’s making waves and he’s going places!

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Copyright © 2009 by Doug Edelman

Doug Edelman is a conservative political commentator and has been a contributing editor for The Conservative Voice. His work is also seen on News By Us, The American Daily, The Post Chronicle, New Media Journal, Capitol Hill Coffee House etc. For the support of his family, however, he is also an IT Consultant/Contractor and owner of a Computer Services Business.  He has taught PC Maintenance & Repair and Networking at his local Community College, and maintains a blog at http://edeldoug.blogs.com/. 

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WesternFront America

Multiculturalism, Diversity, and Political Correctness have Destroyed America

As I observe more and more frustrated Americans opining how “they/we want our country back,” I also observed that more and more Americans have no clue what we are asking! THAT was, in itself, and epiphany, of sorts, for this scribe. You see, our young people in America have been denied their lessons in history, especially the history of this country, the United States of America. And, yes, they ARE doomed to repeat the “mistakes of the past” and, equally as unfortunate, they are doomed to make new and event worse mistakes as a result of their ignorance of our sometimes tortured past as well as our sometimes glorious past.

I remembered that I had written about this a while ago and decided to look it up.

As I was reading over my ancient scribbling it occurred to me that not much had changed — if anything. It also occurred to me that now, right now, as our beloved nation is tearing itself apart trying to find a majority of Americans to either swing America completely over to socialism, which is the first step to national communism, or remain a representative republic, it might be a fairly good idea to re-publish my words of long ago.

So, I brushed off some of the cobwebs and dusted it off, a bit, and I present them now, with some updating for your edification.

First allow me to mention the following: I find nothing quite so repulsive as those who feel WE are the enemy of America. “We” being those of us who want our country back. It is THEY who demonstrate their own blinding ignorance of this country’s sacrifice to gain and maintain the freedoms granted us under the constitution as a representative republic. It is THEY who are ignorant of the blood sacrifice shed on the alter of freedom to preserve the constitution under which they are allowed the freedom to slander the very America that gave them the freedom they enjoy as a birthright. It is they who damage our beloved nation once described by one of America’s greatest presidents, Ronald Reagan, as a “Shining City on a Hill.”

Many Americans fell for one of the oldest political “come-ons” in history offered by one of the least qualified candidates for president this nation has ever had the misfortune to have offered it by a political party which has adopted so much of the socialist platform they are almost indistinguishable from those who openly claim their socialist beliefs. They feel for “C H A N G E .”

Change is not always good. Change for the sake of change is almost always BAD. And yet that is what put the current occupant of the presidency in the Oval Office as America’s President and the Commander – in-Chief of the US Armed forces.

So – how did we arrive, as a nation, at this pitiable juncture which, I sincerely hope will go doen in the future history books as an anomaly?

I think the words below may shed some light on how such a thing can happen to a nation, any nation, even one so blessed by Providence.

– — – — – — – — – — –

There was a time in America, not so long ago, when we had white people, black people, brown people, yellow people, etc. We had men and women. We had healthy people and we had sick people and we had handicapped people.

We had smart people and we had dumb people. We had retarded people and we had normal people.

We had queers and homosexuals and but we had no gay and lesbian people.

We had the truth and we had the lie.

We had people who loved America and people who hated America. There was no “in-between.”

We had Republicans and Democrats and no Independents. We had conservatives and liberals. We did not have moderates.

Well, what happened? Answer: World War Two!

What’s World War Two got to do with it, you may ask? Glad you asked. It has everything to do with the mess in which we find ourselves in America today.

Our US troops who fought in Europe, and were stationed there after the war, brought something back from Europe that was, up ‘til that time, alien to America. In those days it was called “Moral Relativism.” Simply defined it says there are no absolutes. There is no absolutely black and there is no absolutely white. There is no absolute truth and there is no absolute lie.

Now — this was like a bombshell going off in America. Those of religious faith saw it instantly for what it was. The GREAT LIE!

The pointy-head elites, all over the country, especially those of university academia, saw instantly a way to cover all the things they wanted to do and say with the cloak of moral relativism. And they took it up and reveled in it. They began to teach it to our kids. Then those kids became elementary and high schoolteachers themselves… and they, too, taught it to our kids and, their kids.

It is not accidental that those on the left side of the political spectrum in America came so quickly to adopt Moral Relativism. You see… they WERE the university elite. Someone has said recently, it is now a part of the DNA of the political left and the Democrat Party.

Nowadays, Moral Relativism is known as Political Correctness. No matter what it is called it is still the most effective way to live a lie and sell that life style to others.

When I was a boy, America was referred to as a great Melting Pot. People from all over the world would come to America and melt right into the unique American society and culture. Sometimes it took one, or even two, generations to make the cycle complete but they worked at it. And it made America strong.

Then, the left came up with something called “Multiculturalism.” Basically, that is to say any and all cultures are as good as ours. (When we had a unique American Culture. And for those of you too young to remember… we DID have our own culture!) The breakdown of American society, and culture, began at that moment. The political left began to foist their plan to no longer have a single American culture but a vast array of cultures from all the peoples who had come here to ostensively become Americans.

It was kind of cute at first, the gay colors of the Hispanic peoples and their holidays… and the October fest of the Germans, and the Irish holidays, and the various other cultural celebrations of the host of other peoples in America. Then it became sinister. That unique American culture began to be absorbed into the multitude of other cultures. Now, for all intents and purposes, the American culture is gone. And with it went the identity of the American people.

And then came the icing on the cake: Diversity.

Ever since there has been the institution of marriage, a man and a woman deciding to live together and create a family… man has needed to get away from the little woman.

You have to understand, men are barbarians. We can’t help it, that’s the way Nature made us and we will never be house broken. Even in the pre-Columbian days of the Native Americans on this continent the tribes had their “Man’s House”. Even then, the men needed to get away. It’s not that the man loved or respected the woman any the less; he just needed to let the beast out for a while. He could not, and cannot, do that in a domesticated setting.

For a very long time, the work place served as the man’s retreat. Then the feminist movement came along and women decided they could have it all… including the heart attacks, ulcers, nervous breakdowns, alcoholism, infidelity to their spouse, and everything that goes with the workplace, and they chose that over their families! The invasion into the man’s retreat was on and it was overwhelming.

The office known as “Personnel” was suddenly changed to “Human Resources” and diversity in the workplace was near complete. But… not quite so in American society.

The Military was next. Man’s last retreat from curtains and all forms of domesticity was invaded and defeated. Again In the name of diversity.

Now, diversity and multiculturalism feed off each other and they both feed off Political Correctness. How IS that, you may ask?

Well, if we clear the fog of political correctness away for a brief moment, we can clearly see that multiculturalism is bad for the country. It has robbed us of our identity. Diversity has robbed us of our homes and families… and robbed us of our places in society. Male and female have morphed into one sex now. And again, we have lost our gender identity. Even the forced injection of different races into each other’s cultures, in the name of diversity, has robbed ALL races of their distinct identity. So we came up with hyphenated names to try to identify who we are. But… it doesn’t work. Not really.

Why can’t we see this? Because Political Correctness has laid the cloak of the Big Lie over everything and we dare not question any of it because that would be… you guessed it… Politically Incorrect.

And so… we are lost. We don’t know who we are anymore, we don’t know where we are anymore, and we don’t even know how we got here.

So how can we change it? We can’t. You can’t unring a bell. You cannot re-instate virginity. We’re stuck!

The US has succumbed to that fatal disease which strikes all great nations and brings them their knees. Guilt.

I mean, heck, we can’t even fight a successful war anymore for fear that we will hurt the enemy. And we feel guilty for, well, something or other. The left will certainly fill in the blank for us.

The Thanksgiving season in America is only a couple of months away. Certainly we can take a tip from our founders, those 102 frightened, but determined, souls who left their country in search of a new beginning.

Like the Pilgrims we are going to have to leave and begin anew. Where, you may ask? Antarctica? Hardly. I would point in one direction. Straight up. I firmly our destiny lies out there … among the stars.

Since government can’t afford to fund a colonization program, it will have to be private enterprise, which comes up with the money, the will, and the way. And do not kid yourselves; my guess is — they are hard at work on plans for such a venture right now.

In the past 2 decades or so, I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the nearness of our horizons. We have become fat, lazy, and satisfied. Our wanderlust is gone. The curiosity to learn what lies over the next hill has diminished. And THAT, Dear Reader, is a death sentence to any society. To paraphrase the scriptures “Without a vision, the people perish.” OUR vision is gone.

Well, that’s not ENTIRELY true. Some, among us, cling to the vision of spreading our collective wings and soaring into the universe. Some of us believe it is our destiny. And, as we look around us, some of us believe it is our salvation as well.

 

WesternFront America

“I cannot accept, your canon that we are to judge pope and king unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power … Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”… Lord Acton

What will it take to convince Americans that the people we place in office ought to be of high moral character? I no longer think it is even possible. I no longer think Americans even care… as evidenced by the results of the presidential election, and numerous congressional elections, and even state and local elections around the country just last year.

We have become so accustomed to self serving, double-dealing, dishonest, greedy, callous, crafty, deceitful, duplicitous politicians that we now accept it as “normal”. What that says about Americans, as a people, is absolutely shameful. What it says about the future of America is terrifying!

I dare say ancient Rome was not as corrupt as America is today. We have managed to dumb down our populace, the voter base, the electorate, concerning what is expected of public servants, until we think nothing of electing to public office people of such low morals they ought not be allowed IN public, let alone serve in a public office. Nowadays, the use of the phrase “choosing the lesser of two evils,” when describing our choice of candidates, is in regular use… and we don’t even raise an eyebrow. Why? Because it is true!

James L. Buckley once said: ” What people fail to appreciate is that the currency of corruption in elective office is, not money, but votes.” He was spot on!

I am not surprised at the corruption of our politicians. How could I be? How could YOU be? It is we who elected them. It is we, the people of America, who bear the shame and the guilt for placing these people of low repute in offices that good men fought, bled, and died for on foreign and domestic battlefields to secure for us. Do we not understand that we have disgraced our heritage? Do we not understand that we have brought shame upon our ancestors, upon our forefathers, upon the Founders of this nation, and… upon ourselves for not being good citizens and good stewards of this priceless jewel of a country?

Too long have we abrogated our singular duty to study the foundations of this country, the constitution of this country, the legal/judiciary system of this country, and, just as important, the government of this country, and… the way that government was intended to operate. We haven’t done any of this.

Our public education system has failed, utterly, in educating our young about their heritage as Americans. It has failed at instilling pride in our young as Americans. The angry cries of “nationalism” have drowned out “patriotism” until one is frowned upon for any public display of pride in America. There is something intrinsically wrong about that! In modern day America education has been devalued while ignorance is celebrated… even unto the voting booth! It is revolting!

Yes, I am angry. It is an anger born of frustration. I am frustrated with my fellow Americans who absolutely refused to see that substance does trump style every time. The percentage of the electorate who voted to place a man in office, primarily because of the color of his skin and, secondly, his eloquent way with words, have done America a huge disservice. The cost is going to be monumental, biblical, even.

One of the great men of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams, said this: “The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”

I would draw your attention to the last portion of the last sentence above: “… or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.” THAT is precisely where we find ourselves in America today. And we have no one, no one, to blame… but ourselves.

Are you ready for the years, immediately ahead, with tailgating scandals and stories of corruption and graft and the peccadilloes of powerful men unable to restrain themselves when let lose on an ignorant populace? You’d better be – for I am mighty afraid that is exactly where we are heading. The political shenanigans in Washington, to which we have, unfortunately, become accustomed, are, I’m afraid, only the tip of a vastly underestimated iceberg of such conduct. America’s ship of state is sailing directly into that iceberg.

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J. D. Longstreet is a conservative Southern American (A native sandlapper and an adopted Tar Heel) with a deep passion for the history, heritage, and culture of the southern states of America. At the same time he is a deeply loyal American believing strongly in “America First”.

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom

 

WesternFront America

The war in Afghanistan is making me nervous. Everyday, as I read the wire reports, and listen, and watch the broadcast news and glean the news from the Internet, I am detecting many of the same mistakes the US made in Vietnam being made in Afghanistan. Micromanaging the war from Washington has already cost the lives of more US servicemen than is necessary.

The political Left in America has been wishing for a war for sometime now so they can prove their prowess. The little war in what used to be called Yugoslavia was unsatisfying for their public relations people. Dropping bombs on an enemy from so high up the jet engines of your aircraft are laboring for lack of oxygen and your aircraft can’t even be seen, is, somehow, not heroic enough for the 6 o’clock news. No, they need a war that can be splashed across the HDTV screens of Americans in all its bloody gore. They THINK AFGHANISTAN is IT! Once again, they have, as they say, figured wrong!

Liberals/Progressives/socialists/democrats love the very thought of Nation Building. As a conservative I don’t.

The US SUCKS at nation building. I am inclined to believe that democracy is not for everyone. Democracy is a thinking, reasoning person’s form of government.

A republican form of democratic government is even more difficult to set up and sustain. I believe there simply are some countries on this globe not capable, at this point in their history, of setting up and sustaining, a democratic, republican, form of government – such as the one we have in the US. I also believe that forcing them to create such a government is a terrible mistake on our part and will, almost assuredly, backfire on us – and, if we are not very careful we will be at war once again in those countries we have just left, or, are leaving.

As an example, I am convinced that soon after the US and it’s allies leaves Iraq it will revert back to a strongman form of dictator government. If that does, in fact happen, what will the US and it’s coalition partners have won? Not much, it seems to me.

Now, I know it is not the popular thing to say these days, but we won the war in Iraq. We invaded, completely destroyed the military of Iraq, overthrew the government of Iraq, and captured the Iraqi “Dictator-in-Hiding.”

I’m not a Neo-Con. If anything, I’m an old moss-backed Paleo-Con. I do not believe in Nation Building… at all. I’m from the old school in which you invade a country, and destroy it’s military, it’s government, it’s infrastructure and then … you leave. A very important part of the punishment of that enemy country is to leave it a smoking pile of rubble!

This is an important part of any victory. The ability to point to a former enemy’s pile of rubble and say: “hey, you mess with us and you, too, will wind up like that!” It has something to do with the “fear factor.” Scare the living daylights out of any potential enemies.

Granted, it’s not pretty, but it is effective. You see, I’m not into trying to win friends and influence people. Never have been. I’m into winning.

See, I told you it was not pretty.

This Nation Building is costing us treasure and blood. I’m sort of averse to contributing either one!

The US has to make attacking us too costly for any country to even contemplate. To demonstrate that cost, we need to completely obliterate a country, or two, sort of as examples, don’t you see?

But, so long as we go into countries and knock them down, and them help them back up, and rebuild their country, we minimize the cost to them. For example, Iraq will be in better shape when US forces finally DO leave than it has been since, well, I don’t know when.

I think Genghis Khan had it about right. Hit fast, hit hard, destroy everything in sight… and leave!

Did anyone ever ask “ole Genghis” what HIS exit strategy was? Huh? Guess not. You see, everybody knew, already!

No, our politicians are hell-bent on preventing our military from performing the jobs they were trained to do – kill and destroy. Instead, they seem to want our troops to all sit in a circle, hold hands, and sing “cum baya.” It is a scenario straight out of the sixties and it is doomed to eventual defeat.

It’s utter nonsense. It should be as simple as one, two, three:

One: Deploy to the enemy country

Two: Cream the enemy (and his country)

Three: Re-deploy home.

Yes, I KNOW this is simplistic, and NOTHING ever goes this easily. But – you get the idea.

In the meantime, keep the troops razor sharp, and leaning forward, so the next time a troublemaker sticks his head up, he knows what’s coming. You cannot keep the troops militarily sharp when they are building a city’s infrastructure and not training for combat.

Our troops have won the war. Now the politicians, in Washington, are so uncomfortable with victory, they feel this overpowering urge to “kiss and make-up” by rebuilding that which we have just destroyed. Makes no sense to me.

It’s not very diplomatic, I know. But then, again the French are credited with inventing diplomacy. That’s all I need to know about diplomacy!

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think “ole Genghis” was on to something there.

© J. D. Longstreet

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom … … http://csadispatch.blogspot.com/

longstreet1862@gmail.com

 

WesternFront America

“Tailgunner” Joe McCarthy, a 1950s U.S. Senator who lent his name to any effort to expose America’s enemies, was right. At the height of his fame, he said the U.S. government was shot through with communists, many of whom were participating in a vast espionage effort orchestrated by the Soviets.

Though McCarthy was singularly unsuccessful in uncovering communists within the government during Eisenhower’s first term, the “Army-McCarthy” hearings, April 22 to June 17, 1954, were televised for all to see and he became one of the best known anti-communists of his day. Were there Communists and spies for the Soviet Union? Yes, but we would not learn more until a young Senator from California, Richard M. Nixon identified Alger Hiss, a high-ranking State Department official as one.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the records that became available to historians and other scholars confirmed McCarthy’s worst fears.

During the 1930s and 1940s, communism appealed to many Americans. Some had soured on capitalism because of the Great Depression. Others saw communism at work in the Soviet Union and, believing the propaganda, concluded it was a viable alternative to capitalism. It would take a speech by Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Krushchev to draw back the curtain and reveal the horrors of living under Stalin.

Then, as now, communists found a home in the American labor movement and among the liberal elites of the Democrat Party who saw in the New Deal the way to transform America into a socialist nation, as well as among America’s intellectuals on its college campuses. Not much has changed.

One of the founders of the “Weathermen” group that conducted a number of bombings in the 1960s is now a “distinguished professor” at the University of Illinois—Chicago. Bill Ayers is also a longtime, close friend of Barack Obama.

Sen. McCarthy was quite possibly the worst person of his era to lead the investigation of communist infiltration and Soviet espionage. He was bombast and a boozer. In August 1954, a Senate committee released a report censoring him for having abused his power as a committee chairman. He would remain in the Senate, but his days of glory were over. His drinking increased and in May 1957 he died from acute hepatitis.

The sad irony of McCarthy’s story is that the government was, indeed, filled with communist sympathizers, known as “fellow travelers”, and with Soviet-run spies. The story can be found in “The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors” by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel. “Venona” was the U.S. code word given to secret Soviet spy communications.

Venona revealed the full extent of the spying that was occurring. Venona documented that Harry Hopkins, a close friend and advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt was also a spy. Both the FDR and Truman administrations were chockablock with communists. The Venona program of interception and analysis ran from February 1943 to 1980.

In the post-war years, the U.S. created the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency to discover and monitor not just the Soviets, but many other enemies of the nation.

A significant example is the way the Soviets were able to build their own atomic bomb long before their own scientists ever could thanks to their espionage program. There were many others who were known in spy craft as “agents of influence”. One of them was I.F. Stone who wrote a widely read newsletter that provided cover for the actual spies and their activities. Stone continues to be hailed in journalism circles as an outstanding investigative reporter.

Among the Soviet spies were the Rosenbergs who were found guilty of passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets. The most famous spy of that era was Alger Hiss who at one point served as the director of the Office of Special Political Affairs in the State Department. He would go on to serve as the secretary general of the founding conference of the United Nations and later become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The current attacks on the CIA, include a statement by the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who said “They lie to us all the time.” The Obama Justice Department has re-opened an investigation into interrogation techniques of the CIA as a further effort to discredit the Agency. If you don’t believe this is at the direction of President Obama, you’re being naïve.

In “The Venona Secrets”, the authors note that a classic Stalinist tactic was “demonizing an opponent and then using his vilified name in a broad-brush smear against anyone who challenged Communist views or activities.” This is why the term “McCarthyism” has entered our political vocabulary. This is also what is occurring right now as former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Governor Sarah Palin, get the treatment.

How can you spot a communist sympathizer in the U.S. Congress? You can visit the website of the “Progressive Caucus” where, as of February 2009, more than 80 members of the House, including two from the Senate, self-identify themselves as progressives. “Progressive” was the term communists used after the McCarthy era. It is still in use today.

Some of the progressive caucus members are Ed Markey and Henry Waxman, co-authors of the “Cap-and-Trade bill that would impose a huge tax on all energy use in America. You will find Charles Rangel, currently under ethics investigation for having hidden hundreds of thousands of dollars from authorities. Barney Frank, the “brains” behind Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s purchase of millions in worthless mortgage loans, is a member. He is the godfather of a meltdown on Wall Street that remains a threat to our capitalist economy.

A significant number of the caucus are Afro-Americans. They include Jesse Jackson, Jr., John Conyers, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Donald Payne, and Bobby Rush to name just a few.

With the collapse of the former Soviet Union, many former communists became “environmentalists”, often playing major roles in the many organizations serving that cause.

Among President Obama’s ever-expanding circle of “czars” is Carol Browner, the former Clinton-era director of the Environmental Protection Agency (1993-2000) whose latest appointment also revealed that she served on the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which is part of Socialist International. Her association with the group has since been scrubbed from their website.

Most obvious and notorious is Van Jones who has never made a secret of his political preference for communism and who is Obama’s new “Green Jobs” czar. The links between the environmental movement and communist goals are numerous, nor should it surprise anyone that the “global warming” hoax was birthed in the bowels of the United Nations.

Today, thanks to the way history is taught in America’s government schools, the threat to freedom that communism posed then and still does pose, is barely a subject for discussion. When he was still an adolescent in Hawaii, President Obama came under the influence of Frank Marshall Davis, a widely known communist in the 1950s.

Obama is completely at home with communists, but is ironically being attacked by the nation’s far Left for not fulfilling their dream of the complete transformation of the nation from capitalism to socialism fast enough.

The destruction of the nation’s economy is necessary to complete the transformation and it is only the outrage and protests of Americans that will save us from a fate that has been and remains the goal of the nation’s communist enemies.

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at FactsNotFantasy and a weekly commentary at the website of The National Anxiety Center.

 

WesternFront America

– 1^st in A Series -

“This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it,” President Barack Obama quipped, upon word on August 16, 2009, that his administration is supposedly revisiting the Public Option of its proposed healthcare legislation. Indeed. For virtually missing from the nationwide dialogue on President Barack Obama’s call to reform healthcare as we know it, is any detailed discussion as to how it would essentially operate and be structured; slivers and all.

Perhaps such details have wisely remained absent, as the proposed infrastructure, as laid out primarily in the House of Representatives’ H.R. 3200, known as America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, would not only change healthcare for every American, but would reconstitute its delivery system both for the private sector as well as federal agencies, some of which have yet to be formed.

Inducing Americans into believing that of which fairy tales are made is at worse deceitful and at best disingenuous:

“But what we’ll do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.”

– Presidential Candidate Barack Obama (Cluster, VA – 8/21/08)

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Unlike federal programs that may less directly impact taxpayers, an individual’s healthcare encompasses very personal and vital information that will be embedded in a complex new system utilizing multiple federal and state agencies in new and unprecedented ways. Such cannot simply be mandated by way of politics-as-usual.

No matter how badly the president and the Democratic Party apply strong-arm tactics to dictate passage of their healthcare legislation, it is such recalcitrance that flies in the face of representative government or good government, and improperly denies the American people of full disclosure on matters so vital to their personal well-being.

This series of reports will attempt to highlight those issues pertinent to Americans that are not being covered clearly, if at all, by the mainstream media nor by elected officials or lawmakers; that which depicts the elemental infrastructure for the implementation of this immense and controvertible proposed body of law.

The proposed layout of agencies or its hierarchy by the Obama administration and presently encased in H.R. 3200 and its various renditions, is draconian in nature. It would encompass up to 31 new federal programs, commissions and agencies, to be touched upon in this report.

Also, keep in mind, that all involved agencies, commissions and appointees will either have some type of systemic control of or access to Electronic Health Records (EHR), which will be a requirement for all healthcare providers and patients; that which is our most personal healthcare information. It is a mandate of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, (ARRA) also referenced as the stimulus package, which became law in February 2009. Such will be more fully covered in the 2^nd report of this series.

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By now, in the early Obama administration, many Americans are well aware that a broad-based change in the way in which they will access medical care and its delivery system in the United States is coming and in an aggressive manner. But it also requires change in the way the federal government shall be retrofitted in order to deliver such medical care to all.

And it has been seemingly decided by lawmakers and from those on-high that key words such as expenditures, cost containment, choice and privacy rights are no longer allowed into any honest discussion. Unfortunately, the American people will witness unabated unilateral healthcare reform measures, many of which will be only be realized by future dates certain, which will be provided subsequent to such legislation becoming law.

Yet, the term reform falls far short of its intended consequence. For not only will there be an expanse of federal mandates over Americans’ personal healthcare records and data, but necessary systems required to protect such data are still being discussed as we speak, for an initial rollout as early as 2011.

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H.R. 3200, as well as its various renditions in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, all provide for the restructuring of certain agencies, new cabinet secretaries, committees, appointees and councils, as key contributors to the impending bureaucratic upheaval. To wit, reinventing Medicare and Medicaid with new conditions for each state to embody in their own statutes.

Key to the new infrastructure is the White House’s heavy-handed dominance in the ultimate plan that waits for ratification by the Congress. The conglomerate for oversight and rule making will firstly stem from hand-picked White House czars, executive branch appointees, and White House and agency committees all chosen by President Obama. Essential to note, however, is that a majority of these appointments by the White House are out of the jurisdictional oversight of the U.S. Congress, nor require confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

Thus far, both the House and the Senate Democratic majority has backed such a re-engineering plan, also considered in the interest of reform. And it will impact multi-levels of both federal and state governments’ current systems.

Wide discretion has been awarded the executive branch in the Obama administration thus far, and in this, for purposes of healthcare reform. But the White House itself is not set up to administer or oversee agencies and legislation. That is the reason the U.S. Congress exists and why cabinet level officers are picked and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. And it is these types of legal complexities and knowing exactly which body of government will be looking out for constituents’ concerns, only heightened by an issue as compelling as their own personal healthcare.

And let us not forget the admission by many lawmakers, however only recently, that they do not read proposed legislation, suffer its details nor consider the future impact it will have on the American people. And in this case, they will not even be consumers of such new healthcare legislation, as their own platinum healthcare plan remains intact.

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Most notably, the legislation will give new and unprecedented power to the U.S. Surgeon General, which historically has been a position of advocacy, as an appointee by the president, rather than one that yields administrative power over other agencies or officials. There will also be a Health Choices Committee, appointed by the president, a Health Exchange agency, and formidable roles by both the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of the U.S. Treasury, each with new directives and capacities specific to healthcare.

In addition, Senator Jay. D. Rockefeller, Jr., (D-WV) has recently introduced legislation to expand the role of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, (MedPAC) for determination and implementation of Medicare reimbursement policies. All the more remarkable, at such time in our history, that Senator Rockefeller believes that “It’s time to move MedPAC into the executive branch …. Congress has proven itself to be inefficient and inconsistent in making decisions about provider reimbursement under Medicare.”

Furthermore, Rockefeller believes, “Establishing MedPAC as an independent executive branch agency – which can only change through an act of Congress – is the cornerstone of improving our delivery system reform.”

Therefore, MedPAC will solely be under the auspices of the White House through a five-member independent Medicare Advisory Council, which by mandate would produce two reports per year, establishing Medicare rates for physicians, hospitals, nursing homes and medical equipment.

MedPAC will be remodeled after the Federal Reserve Board. And the only jurisdiction the U.S. Congress would have is to block a recommendation by resolution, provided it is done within 30 days. But the greater veto power would rest with the White House. Presently, MedPAC operates in an advisory capacity only. If that does not remain the case, then MedPAC would act unilaterally without any accountability to the U.S. Congress.

Additionally, under Rockefeller’s legislation, Congress would have even less authority, requiring a 3/5 majority of both the House and the Senate prior to overturn any payment decisions recommended by MedPAC. The MedPAC Council’s priority would be to reform payment rates healthcare providers receive for services for the elderly and the disabled. Secondarily, to date, private sector insurance rates generally follow the established rates approved for Medicare for their own customers.

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A Health Choices Commissioner, also appointed by the president, would oversee a new independent agency noted as the Health Choices Administration. It would be the regulatory agency of health insurance compliance. It does not provide for a collaborative effort with the various states and their set legislation concerning healthcare and would fundamentally require them to abdicate their authority to the federal government.

The new Health Choices Administration would also control the new Health Insurance Exchange, noted in H.R. 3200, Section 201, Title II, which calls for the Congress to establish such under the power of the Health Choices Commissioner. A Health Choices Committee, also appointees of the president, would advise the Health Choices Commissioner on crucial matters such as whether to recommend, for example, expenditures for medical procedures or funding for known cures for specific diseases.

The Health Choices Commissioner must establish “standards for and accept bids from qualified health benefit plans and negotiate and enter into contracts with these qualified health benefit plans, which must offer at least 3 different levels of benefits that are statutorily required with high degree of specificity.”

The Public Option, one of the more controversial elements of the drafted legislation in both the House and the Senate at present, will be overseen by the Health and Human Services Secretary and will involve both the IRS and the Department of the Treasury taking on brand new roles.

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And central to the distribution and flow of patients’ confidential medical records will be how it will be accessed throughout the country and the federal government, as mandated in ARRA. Presently, two committees are rushing to suggest a working framework, initially, for how health information systems shall at least be certified.

The National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, David Blumenthal, also a presidential appointee, has wide and sweeping power to make such decisions on IT, along with input from Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius, concerning not only how information will be disseminated but how it will be protected when shared.

But key to centralizing the exchange of medical records is a set of criteria for myriad software applications to be used by healthcare providers. And Blumenthal expects to unveil a framework for such certification guidelines by September 30, 2009.

Importantly, certification of such applications has a direct bearing as to whether Medicare and Medicaid providers will be appropriately reimbursed, a maximum of $44,000.00, if at all, for their cash outlay costs for the required certified software, which can cost an average of $300,000.00 for a 3 physician practice. The software will also be used to receive payments from Medicare and Medicaid for services rendered.

What remains to be decided is if there will be numerous certifying agencies or an additional new oversight agency. Yet, protection of patients’ rights in light of collection and dissemination of their medical information without systems already in place to protect such data has already spurred legal action by patients’ rights advocates. They wish to legally block allocation of the $22 billion provided in ARRA for EHR development. The concern is possible violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as well as possible violation of Federal Common Law.

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As the federal government continues to seize more power, as more and more oversight is designed to originate from the executive branch in the White House, it will but leave states left to succumb to federal authority. To wit, the Health Choices Commissioner’s authority will encumber the ability of states to rely upon their own reforms for health insurance in their local markets, as they see fit. It will not be a relationship of mutual interests but rather one of domination and control by federal statute. And if the word nationalize is offensive to some, then try on the word federalize; perhaps the more correct legal term, yet just as much of a threat to states’ sovereignty.

And finally, this initial report has been an attempt to bring some clarity to an enormous change forthcoming, not only in how healthcare will be consumed by Americans, but the extreme and unprecedented governmental changes put forth in the process and in how the federal government and the White House will conduct the peoples’ business going forward. And that sets the foundation for all aspects of the future of U.S. governance, its management, oversight, accountability and its relationship to the private sector.

Part 2 of this series shall venture into providing more detail of the proposed responsibilities or powers many these fore-mentioned agencies, commissions, appointees, councils and committees will have, or those that have at least been thus far disclosed in H.R. 3200.

And whatever you may hear or read over the next few weeks, keep in mind that you are only hearing but a very small aspect of the real facts; intentionally so.

Copyright ©2009 Diane M. Grassi

Contact: dgrassi@cox.net

 

WesternFront America

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

~ Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals,” No. 13

We have all heard about how crazy liberals are. Conservative intellectual and radio host Michael Savage even wrote a book about this phenomenon, his 2005 New York Times best-seller, “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.” Likewise, in 2008, Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter Jr., M.D., wrote in his best-seller, “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness,” the following:

The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind.

Liberals are liberals first. Am I being polemical? Yes, to a degree, but I am not being personal. I’m not contending that all liberals are crazy, but I will say, along with Dr. Savage and Dr. Rossiter, that a logical, legal and medical case can be made that liberalism (i.e., socialism, progressivism, egalitarianism) is not a rational political belief system.

On this point, last Friday, President Obama chided Republican leaders for being stupid enough to listen to conservative stalwart Rush Limbaugh. Obama said, “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.” With a hushed silence over the room, the messiah went further saying, “If we don’t get this done we (the Democrats) could lose seats and I could lose re-election. But we can’t let people like Rush Limbaugh stall this. That’s how things don’t get done in this town.”

Rush was clicking on all cylinders over the weekend when he remarked about Obama’s criticism of him in this manner:

Obama’s plan would buy votes for the Democrat Party in the same way FDR’s New Deal established majority power for 50 years of Democrat rule, and it would also simultaneously seriously damage any hope of future tax cuts. … Put simply, I believe [economic] stimulus is aimed at re-establishing “eternal” power for the Democrat Party rather than stimulating the economy, because anyone with a brain knows this is NOT how you stimulate the economy.

When President Obama promised America “FDR, part II,” few of the political pundits took notice because ideologically they are elitists, liberals and socialists like Obama. The propaganda press, the professors of the academy, judges, the Democrats and most Republicans all have fallen prey to the siren song of socialism and leviathan government taking over more and more of private enterprise. Wall Street, the investment banks, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the home mortgage industry, the auto industry, states like California, Arizona and Michigan on the verge of bankruptcy, even the porn industry, is just the beginning. They all want “bailouts” i.e., “welfare,” i.e., unearned, undeserved, unconstitutional confiscation of money belonging to “We the People” and given to others who didn’t earn it and don’t deserve it to secure Democrat Party votes in perpetuity. It’s legalized thievery. It is Mafia tactics on a grand scale.

What the GOP seems oblivious to knowing and what I am trying to teach my students at Savannah State University is politics through a historical lens. That means we study politics (or any other subject for that matter) through the lens and judgment of history and through the non-partisan philosophy of Veritas – truth. All else is irrelevant propaganda.

That said, history has definitively demonstrated that since President Theodore Roosevelt, liberals (or “progressives,” which was what socialists and liberals were called 100 years ago) made policy proposals not with the intent of solving real social, economic, education, legal, race, class, gender problems, but to solidify their power over the people forever. Just look at some of the political philosophy, policy and legislation passed by presidential executive order or by illegal collusion with Congress over the past 100 years:

• Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09) – the first true “progressive” president, though a Republican, invented the “imperial presidency” and used the “bully pulpit” and his “Fair Deal” policies to concoct all sorts of policies and programs that had no correlation with free-market capitalism (i.e., “trust busting”) or respect for private property. (Roosevelt set aside more land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined, 194 million acres.)
• Woodrow Wilson (1913-21) – Jonah Goldberg, in his important book, “Liberal Fascism,” quoted this president: “True leaders” uses the masses like “tools”; “All progressives ask or desire is permission – in an era when ‘development,’ ‘evolution,’ is the scientific word – to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle.”
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt [FDR] (1933-45) – Used the stock market crash of October 1929 and the Great Depression as a pretext to enact his “New Deal” to grow the government in gargantuan proportions over the people and to use the socialist welfare state as the “power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe. …”
• Lyndon B. Johnson [LBJ] (1963-69) – “The Great Society” or “War against Poverty” programs including AFDC, Food Stamp Act, Medicare, Medicaid; greatly expanded FDR’s welfare state to connect every conceivable aspect of the American citizen to the tentacles of leviathan government. (Remember LBJ was a protégé of FDR.)
• Richard Nixon (1969-74) – Although a “Republican,” Nixon gave America socialist wage and price controls, the Environmental Protection Agency and affirmative action. He also gave us two unremarkable liberal justices on the Supreme Court: Chief Justice Warren Burger and Harry Blackmun. Blackmun authored the Roe v. Wade decision in 1972, arguably (after Dred Scott v. Sanford [1854] upholding slavery) the most murderous, infamous decision in the history of American constitutional law.
• George W. Bush (2001-09) – singlehandedly deconstructed the Reagan Revolution by his bungling, incoherent, incompetent domestic policies (amnesty for illegal aliens, No Child Left Behind), foreign policy (the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) and reinstituting a Bob Michaelesque GOP irrelevance that will probably mimic the wilderness years of 1954-94.
• Barack Obama (2009- ) – His first call as president was to Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat’s protégé and the leader of the “former” Palestinian terrorist group Fatah. His first public interview as president was with the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya. Obama’s first executive order was to limit lobbyist influence in Washington, D.C., while at the same time granting Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn an exemption because Lynn was a lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon. Other early policies that seem critical to Obama’s legacy and the Democrat majority in Congress can be summarized in three words – abortion, abortion and abortion.

Rush Limbaugh was right – “liberals are liberals first.” Liberal Democrats create policies not to solve problems, but to win elections and make more and more people dependent on the government welfare programs they provide. Since FDR, liberals have used every Machiavellian tactic to create a Leninist groupthink mentality; a slavish and addictive dependence on government that Democrats hope will keep them in power in perpetuity. This is what Rush meant he said, “Obama’s plan would buy votes for the Democrat Party in the same way FDR’s New Deal established majority power for 50 years of Democrat rule.”

When I see the GOP sitting politely with President Obama before the cameras – neutered, compliant and irrelevant – I start shouting at my TV set: “WHERE ARE THE REAL MEN IN THE GOP!?” Then Rush helped me to remember: Don’t think Obama, think Saul Alinsky, Obama’s community organizer mentor, who said in Rule 13 of Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” – “Pick the target [Rush Limbaugh, the conservative base], freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.” This is what President Obama masterfully executed at last Friday’s press conference with the GOP.

Why don’t the Republicans understand that they are playing checkers while Obama and the Democrats are playing chess? The GOP is trying to win an election in the next two years, and the Democrats are using Machiavellian tactics to win elections for the next 40 years. Perhaps that’s why the GOP doesn’t stand for the “Grand Old Party” anymore. The more appropriate acronym is “GIP” … the “Grand Irrelevant Party.”
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WesternFront America