As we lectured about Why Republicans Lost in the last election, conservatives need to engage the culture war to reinforce the ideals the country was founded upon. There are so many “low information voters” who vote on the basis of who looks the best on TV, who tells the best joke or “who looks cooler” that giving up on the culture war is to never win another election again. The left will do anything to make traditionalists and conservatives look like jerks while portraying leftists with the morals of an ally cat such as Bill Clinton and John Edwards as the paragons of virtue.
For those of you who look at the title and have a knee jerk reaction “this is just conspiracy stuff” we assure you that we are the farthest thing from the Alex Jones types. With that said we would remind readers that people are prosecuted in court for conspiracy to do all sorts of illegal things every day, and in the case of white collar corruption working together with politicians the conspiracies to avoid paying taxes or enrich donors with taxpayer dollars are elaborate and often go on for years before being discovered.
Former KGB Agent Yuri Bezmenov participated in a documentary on how the Soviets targeted Hollywood, non-profits and education to undermine American culture. Civil rights groups such as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the Alliance Defense Fund are inundated with cases of universities and public schools that have progressive secular leftists administrators who actively seek out to persecute and fire or remove from school teachers and students who refuse to tote the far left ideological line. This very writer survived multiple attempts at persecution when attending Indiana University.
If you have even the slightest doubt as to just how big this problem is we encourage you to follow this link on our Academic Misconduct category and look through at least a couple of pages listing just a few of these incidents to get the idea of what you have been missing.
Here is a link to the editor’s old college blog with eight short videos documenting how the campus administrations actively conspired to grossly violate the civil rights of both students and teachers. In the video below at the Missouri State University a far left teacher ordered a Christian student to have a homosexual experience and write about it – and the persecution didn’t stop there – the academic department and the university administration actively persecuted her and dug in their heals defending their action until it went to federal court.
So what does all this have to do with the Father of the Year?
Bill Clinton was chosen by the Fathers Day Council to be the Father of the Year. Hmm what would poor Monica Lewinsky’s father think about that, or Juanita Broaddricks, or Elizabeth ward Gracen’s, Dolly Kyle Browning’s, Paul Jones’s, Kathleen Willey’s, and the rest of the fathers of the women Bill Clinton abused, assaulted and sexually harassed?
Smelling a rat I pulled up the list of who has won this Father of the Year award, for which they issue several per year, and you guessed it, for the most part it is a who’s who of leftist luminaries and members of Democrat presidential administrations.
The list includes, in 2007 Senator John Edwards, who as the time was fathering a love child with his mistress while his sweet wife Elizabeth was dying of cancer.
Other far left luminaries include NBC’s activist leftist Sunday morning talk host David Gregory, ABC’s version of the same in George Stephanopoulos, far left former Congressman Ron Klein, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill after he wrote a largely discredited Bush bashing book, Mark Shriver of the Kennedy clan, Hulk Hogan (who just made a sex tape with his best friend’s wife – way to go Dad! But I am sure he made a big donation). CNN’s Larry King, Mayor Bloomberg, Frank Rich (friend of Bill Clinton and the largest tax cheat in history who was pardoned by Clinton), Wolf Blitzer, Bobby Kennedy, NBC’s Brian Williams, former Democrat Senator Chuck Robb (who was having an affair with Tai Collins) and… well I think you are starting to get the picture.
The last two conservatives to get on of these awards were Donald Trump in 2005 (who was working for NBC and wasn’t politically active before Obama) and General Norman Schwarzkopf in 1991 who had just won the Gulf War and wasn’t politically active until the following year.
The last conservative political figures who were handed the award who weren’t otherwise mega-celebs outside of politics were conservative political writer Fred Barnes in 1994 (they had to pick someone because of the Republican revolution in 94) and Dan Quayle in 1989.
As recently covered by Examiner.com, the U.S. Army has floated a draft of a new training manual to be utilized for troops in the Afghanistan Theater of Operation.
According to the proposed manual, the reason behind many of the allied Afghan troops/police officers attacking and killing American and British personnel is due to ignorance on our part;
“Many of the confrontations occur because of [coalition] ignorance of, or lack of empathy for, Muslim and/or Afghan cultural norms, resulting in a violent reaction from the [Afghan security force] member.”
Listed among the “taboo” subjects of conversation include;
As reported by yesterday by WND.com, the linkage of pedophilia and/or homosexuality directly to the Islamic belief system has prompted founder of the terrorism watchdog group Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer to state;
“By mentioning pedophilia and women’s rights and saying that soldiers should not mention such things they are tacitly admitting that those things are indeed part of Islam.”
Following the well documented example of the founder of Islam, pedophilia is an accepted practice since its inception.
Admitted by Muslim scholars, Mohammed married his wife Aisha when she was 6-years-old, and consummated the marriage when she was nine.
That Was The 7th Century, This Is Now…
Examiner.com also covered the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, recently authorizing Muslim adult males to marry girls as young as 10.
In a comprehensive (and widely ignored by other major media outlets) news article published by the San Francisco Chronicle from August of 2010 titled “Afghanistan’s dirty little secret,” reporter Joel Brinkley details the widespread cultural and religious acceptance of man-to-boy pedophilia in the Central Asian nation.
As detailed by Brinkley;
“Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy.
Their behavior suggested he was not the boy’s father.
Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to ‘touch and fondle them.’
For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers.
Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover.
Literally it means ‘boy player.’
The men like to boast about it.”
And Women…?
As cited, a favored Afghan expression goes: “Women are for children, boys are for pleasure.”
Fundamentalist Muslim clerics throughout the nation teach the faithful that women are “unclean” and “therefore distasteful.”
One unnamed Afghan was quoted as asking how his wife could become pregnant.
When explained the physical actions required, the man “reacted with disgust” and then asked;
“How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?”
After 30 years, The New York Times has admitted that Reaganomics worked.
The inadvertent revelation comes in a November 29th article by Binyamin Appelbaum chronicling the steadily falling tax burden Americans have experienced since the 1980s.
AEI columnist James Pethokoukis notes that the heart of The Times’ article is that in 2010 Americans “paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago.”
Pethokoukis points out that some tax hike advocates think this means that America’s tax burden is too low and time has come for a hike. But Pethokoukis disagrees.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I think the reduction in the tax burden — staring with the Reagan tax cuts — has been a huge competitive advantage for the U.S. We should keep that edge. Check out these numbers. In 1981, France’s per capita GDP was 81% of U.S. per capita GDP, Germany’s 83%, Italy’s 81%, Britain’s 69%.
In 2010, France’s per capita GDP was 73% of U.S. per capita GDP (down 8 points), Germany’s 81% (down 2 points), Italy’s 68% (down 12 points), and Britain’s 76% (up 7 points).
Pethokoukis reminds readers that Europe was closing the gap with U.S. wealth by 1980, but after Reagan’s tax cuts that trend stagnated and in other cases even began to reverse.
There are many great points made in the Pethokoukis piece and you need to go read them, but his last one is the funniest—or saddest, depending on your point of view.
4. Another bit: “Economists agree that taxes on business are passed on to investors, reducing profits, and to workers, reducing wages. Upper-income households bear the brunt of these taxes, and corporate tax collections have fallen sharply.” That is right. Taxes matter.
Funny, the NYT never mentioned this widely known economic fact when Mitt Romney was attacked for saying “Corporations are people.”
While the media pants with exhilaration over a dip in the unemployment level that was created by over a half-million people giving up and dropping out of the workforce, a deep-dive into the employment numbers also reveals that it’s mainly government workers benefitting from what meager job growth we are seeing. Over the last five months, 73% of all jobs created were government jobs. Moreover, the unemployment rate for government workers plunged to 3.8% in November — which is considered full employment.
Even though deficits rule the day at every level of government, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 847,000 new jobs created since June, a full 621,000 were government jobs. In November alone, 35,000 new government jobs were created.
In other words, as the labor participation rate plummets to a thirty year low — which means we have fewer taxpayers — we’re not only increasing the number of taxpayer-funded jobs, but the government is using the creation of these jobs to juice the employment numbers in a way that makes it look as though the job situation is actually improving.
Naturally, none of this would be possible without a compliant media working overtime to bring out the pom-poms and cover up what’s really going on.
Let me tell you something, if Obama had an “R” after his name and creating the exact same economic results, the media would make damn sure the public was familiar with what “labor participation rate” means. [Emphasis ours – Political Arena]
Michael Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.
What makes better headlines? Is it numbing figures such as the 8,000 Palestinian rockets fired at Israel since it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and the 42.5 percent of Israeli children living near the Gaza border who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder? Or is it high-resolution images of bombed-out buildings in Gaza and emotional stories of bereaved Palestinians? The last, obviously, as demonstrated by much of the media coverage of Israel’s recent operation against Hamas. But that answer raises a more fundamental question: Which stories best serve the terrorists’ interest?
Hamas has a military strategy to paralyze southern Israel with short- and middle-range rockets while launching Iranian-made missiles at Tel Aviv. With our precision air force, top-notch intelligence and committed citizens army, we can defend ourselves against these dangers. We have invested billions of dollars in bomb shelters and early-warning systems and, together with generous U.S. aid, have developed history’s most advanced, multi-layered anti-missile batteries. For all of its bluster, Hamas does not threaten Israel’s existence.
But Hamas also has a media strategy. Its purpose is to portray Israel’s unparalleled efforts to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza as indiscriminate firing at women and children, to pervert Israel’s rightful acts of self-defense into war crimes. Its goals are to isolate Israel internationally, to tie its hands from striking back at those trying to kill our citizens and to delegitimize the Jewish State. Hamas knows that it cannot destroy us militarily but believes that it might do so through the media.
One reason is the enlarged images of destruction and civilian casualties in Gaza that dominated the front pages of U.S. publications. During this operation, The Post published multiple front-page photographs of Palestinian suffering. The New York Times even juxtaposed a photograph of the funeral of Hamas commander Ahmed Jabari, who was responsible for the slaughter of dozens of innocent Israelis, with that of a pregnant Israeli mother murdered by Hamas. Other photos, supplied by the terrorists and picked up by the press, identified children killed by Syrian forces or even by Hamas itself as victims of Israeli strikes.
In reporting Palestinian deaths, media routinely failed to note that roughly half were terrorists and that such a ratio is exceedingly low by modern military standards — much lower, for example, than the NATO campaign in the Balkans. Media also emphasize the disparity between the number of Palestinian and Israeli deaths, as though Israel should be penalized for investing billions of dollars in civil-defense and early-warning systems and Hamas exonerated for investing in bombs rather than bomb shelters.
The poll asked respondents, “President Obama has said he will not negotiate with Republicans on cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare, until they agree to raise tax rates on the wealthy. Do you think he is right or wrong to insist on that as a precondition to broader negotiations?”
As Bloomberg reported in its story, 58 percent percent of respondents indicated that the president was “right” to insist on the precondition, while 37 percent said he was “wrong.”
But in the same poll, American adults were asked “whether it is better to raise the top tax rate the wealthy pay, or to limit the amount people can claim in tax breaks, such as mortgage interest and charitable contributions, so they end up paying tax on a bigger share of their income.”
Fifty-two percent responded that they preferred limited tax breaks to a tax-rate hike.
[Political Arena Editor’s Note – The tax reform to eliminate some deductions and loop holes that tend to favor the richest players with the most political influence is the Boehner (Republican) plan. Bloomberg News did not report that according to their own poll, more people favored the Republican tax plan.]
Only 39 percent said they would rather see tax rates on the wealthy increase. Nine percent indicated they weren’t sure.
The Bloomberg News story quoted the president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the survey, saying the results indicated that Republicans and Speaker of the House John Boehner should yield to the president.
The “true socialism” argument is what every would be tyrant (or useful idiot) says for the excuse of every human atrocity that has resulted from experiments in socialism and a state run economy.
“For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, in De Republica
The Founders warned of just this very type of leader in the Federalist Papers; as did Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America.
Here is famed Hollywood Screen writer Andrew Klavan explaining de Tocqueville warning:
“If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, and the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 – establishes the repeated, complete, and inevitable failure of gun laws to control crime.”
–Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah)
Quoted from “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Report of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1982, p. vii.”
Liberal activists stopped new laws in Connecticut that could have helped Adam Lanza get the mental help he needed…..
[Political Arena Editor’s Note: Before we get onto the the disturbing details, this very writer has a great deal of experience in helping treating a schizophrenic. I have pretty much seen it all. As well as read the articles, dealt with good doctors and as well as the bad ones who just “don’t get it”. I have dealt with the insurance issues, legal issues and the social issues of it. As much as any non MD can be I am an expert.
With that said, I was lucky in that most of the time mine wanted treatment because she was getting the “Clive Barker” treatment behind her eyes and that scared her. Some patients resist treatment which is a mistake. The legal system must back parents up and help the patient even if it is against their wishes. D.J. Jaffe has a GREAT editorial about changes in the law that can help such patients – LINK ]
There is little doubt that not only was Adam Lanza partially autistic, (Asperger’s syndrome – this disorder has no history of causing violence), he also suffered from extreme depression and/or schizophrenic disorder as he fits the profile like a glove.
What is schizophrenia?
It is not multiple personality disorder as is so often shown on television. Schizophrenia acts to change how your brain perceives what the five senses tell it. The signals to the brain intermix the schizophrenic’s perception of reality with ones own imagination and even memories such as what one has seen in a movie.
What the schizophrenic sees, feels, and hears sometimes becomes a jumble. At other times one can hallucinate and/or hear voices. Those with schizophrenia have a hard time relating with others because they misperceive the nonverbal cues that are so crucial in interpersonal communication. If the disorder is pronounced enough the direct verbal cues may also be misperceived.
The mind tries to make order out of the chaos. The mind does not wish to accept their condition so the schizophrenic invents elaborate conspiracies to attempt to rationalize and make order out of the chaos they are perceiving. Since schizophrenic events are often accompanied with a cognitive skills impact the conspiracies do not seem too outlandish to one so affected.
Most normal people can look at a problem of moderate complexity and come to the same conclusion. The schizophrenic will come to a different, completely irrational conclusion, and if you don’t agree with them YOU must be crazy, because to them it is so obvious. For Example:
Three plus seven is 18 and I can prove it by counting the clouds outside. If you can’t see that than you are either an effing idiot or a liar.
The unfortunate truth is that for those so affected such as Jarrod Loughner, who perpetrated the Gabby Giffords shooting in Arizona, in his schizophrenic mind he had to shoot Giffords and her party because reason demanded it.
In more severe cases the schizophrenic may hear voices, see people who aren’t there and have conversations with them that are as real to them as can be. For some schizophrenics the life they live behind their own eyes is like a Clive Barker horror movie that they can never escape from without treatment.
Those who get the help can usually be treated with the proper medication. Those who do not usually try to self medicate with drugs or alcohol to try to cope.
To compound the problem, there are a great many family doctors who simply “don’t get” schizophrenia and I have personally encountered a staff psychiatrist at a hospital who could not comprehend the condition. Why? Largely because of “Normalcy Bias”. In a nutshell, those with “Normalcy Bias” apply their ability to reason to everyone else and assume that simply because the person with the bias can make out the situation with relative ease, that the schizophrenic patient must also, so therefore the patient is just lying, or acting out for attention etc. They will ask things like, “Well if you heard things then how come you don’t now” and “you are all better now you faker?” Those with schizophrenia and associated conditions have episodes where the problem is much worse, and much better. Stress can bring about a psychotic episode even over the effects of medication.
As in the case of Jarrod Loughner, the signs were there, lots of people including parents, teachers, administrators and even police saw them and yet, no one took the appropriate action.
The UK Daily Mail published a quite complete bio of Adam Lanza that shows that he fit the profile of someone with a schizophrenic or similar disorder. Here are excerpts:
Crazed killer Adam Lanza was a ‘ticking time bomb’ who suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome and was painfully shy and awkward, former classmates said yesterday.
Last night, a troubling portrait began to emerge of the ‘Goth’ loner, who dressed all in black and was obsessed with video games.
Goth like “death music” with theses about rejection, suicide, and the horrors of the world seem appealing to schizophrenics as in some ways it is how they perceive their own world. Some video games are popular with schizophrenics because in them they can have some control over their reality and create dramatic scenarios , again, in which unlike in the real world, they have some control.
Others say Lanza used to be a mild-mannered student in high school, making the honor roll, and living with his mother, Nancy Lanza, who in turn loved playing dice games and decorating their upscale home for the holidays.
‘No one is surprised. He always seemed like he was someone who was capable of that because he didn’t really connect with our high school, with our town.’
Another former school friend, Jamie Crespo, 19, said: ‘He used to hang with the freaks, guys who dressed in trench coats.’
Other students remember him walking through school dressed in black, carrying a black briefcase.
Family friends said Lanza’s problems started to escalate when his parents divorced in 2008 after 18 years together.
His father Peter, a wealthy executive for General Electric, who is believed to earn $1 million a year, moved out of the family home in 2006, citing ‘irreconcilable differences’.
One of Lanza’s former classmates spoke of his ‘noticeable decline’ after his parents’ divorce. ‘He was a loner at school and hyper intelligent,’ he said. ‘But in recent years he disappeared off the radar.
‘The word is that he was badly affected when his parents split and that might be what pushed him over the edge.’
‘He was always weird but the divorce affected him. He was arguing with his mother. He was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.’
In several press accounts, Adam Lanza went from a typical Asperger’s kid, to a dark, more disturbed, more isolated troubled young man. This is typical of those with schizophrenia because it tends to manifest itself after puberty. Stress tends to bring on more psychotic events and makes the condition worse.
A relative to the family said that Adam Lanza was ‘obviously not well,’ adding that he often seemed troubled.
Lanza’s aunt, Marsha Lanza, said her nephew was raised by kind, nurturing parents who would not have hesitated to seek mental help for him if he needed it.
Everyone hesitated including mom and dad. As is so often the case, parents and some relatives just won’t see it. Some are shamed into inaction, some are just too proud to admit that “their offspring is schizo” because of the stigma. Some are simply in denial. “Oh he just had a bad day”, “but he only does that sometimes”, “the stressful situation made him do it”, “no really he is better now (until the next psychotic episode)”, “but what can I do”, “it’s just kids being kids” and “every kid now a days acts strange” are typical rationalities.
How long did mom (who is now dead sadly) hesitate?
Less than a week before her son would launch his horrifying attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School, Nancy Lanza knew “she was losing him” and that “he was getting worse.”
A drinking buddy of Lanza told The Daily News that her son Adam had long been troubled and rarely came up in conversation.
“She just looked down at the glass and said, ‘I don’t know. I’m worried I’m losing him,’” said the bar pal, who did not wish to be named, of the ominous conversation at the bar My Place in Newtown, Conn.
“She said it was getting worse. She was having trouble reaching him.”
Adam, who the coroner’s office said Sunday shot Nancy Lanza, 54, several times in the head before unleashing a nightmarish attack that killed 20 schoolchildren and six others Friday, was prone to hurting himself, the drinking buddy said.
“Nancy told me he was burning himself with a lighter. In the ankles or arms or something,” he recalled of a conversation they had about a year ago. “It was like he was trying to feel something.”
Self mutilation such as cutting and burning actually provide temporary relief to those having psychotic events of depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Criminal Psychologist Dr. Alan Lipman:The FACT is that every One of these episodes Is proceeded by an undiagnosed mental illness:
Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine, is the son of a pastor at an area church where many of the victims’ families worship.
“From what I’ve been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed,” Flashman told FoxNews.com. “Adam was apparently very upset about this. He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him off.”
Off the cuff, I do not think this update is true. If it is where is the court petition and where is the attorney? I do think that it is entirely possible that she discussed doing this at one point. However, if Connecticut had an AOT law such as “Laura’s Law” Nancy Lanza would have been able to get Adam Lanza the help he needed with little difficulty. But who is it who actively resists such laws? Read below.
Far Left Groups Defeated Connecticut Mental Health Protection Laws Just Months Before Shooting (Via Jim Hoft):
Here’s a fact you might not know – Connecticut is one of only SIX states in the U.S. that doesn’t have a type of “assisted outpatient treatment” (AOT) law (sometimes referred to as “involuntary outpatient treatment”). There’s no one standard for these types of laws, but (roughly speaking) these are laws that allow for people with mental illness to be forcibly treated BEFORE they commit a serious crime. Whereas previous legal standards held that the mentally ill cannot be institutionalized or medicated until they harm someone or themselves, or until they express an immediate intent to do so, AOT laws (again, roughly speaking) allow for preventative institutionalization or forced medication (I highly recommend reading the data cited in the link I provided in this paragraph, especially regarding what is known as “first episode psychosis”).
AOT laws vary state-by-state, and often bear the name of a person murdered by an untreated mentally ill person (“Kendra’s Law” in New York, “Laura’s Law” in California, etc.).
Most states have laws and even a 1-800 mental health hotline and free clinics to help those who are mentally ill. Arizona had such laws and facilities, but not even the local police called the number after they determined that Jarod Loughner had troubles perceiving reality. Loughner, like Lanza should have been forcibly evaluated. If evaluated, Jarrod Loughner would not have been able to buy the weapon that he bought to do his terrible deed as his evaluation would have been reported to the proper authorities.
We have gun laws that work pretty well, but no system works unless the people on the ground take action to put those laws and resources into action.
Those who engage in “Normalcy Bias” when it comes to mental illness have plenty of cover in leftist academia (also via Jim Hoft):
For Your Country posted this back after schizophrenic Jared Loughner went on his shooting rampage in Arizona that left several people dead and US Rep. Gabby Giffords seriously wounded.
It actually very hard to force people with severe mental diseases to be treated because of a range of reforms pushed by progressives starting in the 60′s:
Ronald David Laing, a Scottish Psychiatrist, In the 60′s put forth the foundation of the Anti-Psychiatry movement. He maintained that schizophrenia was “a theory not a fact”. The popularity of Laing’s theories is blamed for decline in students entering the psychology profession.
Kenneth Kesey, wrote “One Flew over the Cukoo’s Nest” based in part on Laing’s thinking (and his own intensive use of drugs). “Kesey did not believe that these patients were insane, rather that society had pushed them out because they did not fit the conventional ideas of how people were supposed to act and behave.” The Book,play, and later the movie, portrayed a anti-psychiatry philosophy leading to a public displeasure with residential mental facilities resulting in further deinstitutionalization policies.
As a result of Laing, Kennedy, Kesey and public efforts to transform the mental health care system to be more humane, to characterize mentally ill people as “Just thinking differently”, and characterizing mental health care as some form of evil, we now have a system that makes it virtually impossible to get folks like Loughner the care they need.
Deinstitutionalization policies driven by “do good” liberals and the federal government put focus on limited bad acts. Kesey wrote a story based on his LSD induced observations in one VA mental hospital. Once his story was put into film, his small example falsely characterized the bulk of mental health care as dehumanizing and made it impossible to force the Loughners of the world to get treatment.
Critics will focus on gun control after today’s school massacre. The focus should be on failed liberal policies that excuse rather than assist extremely dysfunctional individuals.
We here at Political Arena are the last to look for government to offer up solutions, but in the case of the mentally ill, most do not have insurance and need state assistance for treatment. Only by education and treatment on a level comparable to that which has been used to combat AIDS will this problem get seriously better.
But What About Guns
Israeli Teacher Protecting Children
[Editor’s Note – While not every teacher in Israel carries a rifle, military personnel, reservists, and those with a gun license may carry a weapon openly in Israel. Israel provides armed security for most of its institutions including schools.]
While there is no question that those who are bent on destruction will often find a way to do so with or without access to firearms, sometimes access to guns, in this case stolen guns from a relative, amplifies the damage a disturbed person can cause.
It is important to examine the big picture. In Switzerland and Israel where guns are everywhere there is very little gun crime and very few mass shootings, but in areas of Europe that have gun control laws that essentially turn the citizens into mere subjects, according to studies by Dr. John R. Lott and others, per capita they have about the same number of deaths via mass shooting as the United States does. In states areas where more citizens carry guns legally there are drops in crime and gun violence in almost every instance. Put simply, criminals and those with ill intent prefer helpless unarmed victims.
In fact, it seems that the Aurora, Colorado Cinemark shooter, aside from being schizophrenic, targeted that particular theater because it had signs up announcing that it was a “Gun Free Zone”.
UPDATE– When Adam Lanza discovered that armed responders were on the scene, that is when the rampage ended – “We surmise that it was during the second classroom episode that he heard responders coming and apparently at that, decided to take his own life,” Mr. Malloy said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Dana Loesch has put together a handy list of sourced and credible statistics about gun crime in general. Notice how violent crime, according to government and academic sources, is much higher in areas where citizens are restricted from using firearms for self defense.
Those with a knee jerk reaction may blame the guns, but do they credit guns with the killing of Osama bin Laden or do they credit the Navy Seals? There is clearly a double standard at play here, and in the case of politicians who know better, the double standard is an agenda driven one.
That agenda is parroted by a liberal elite media which not only focuses on the guns due to their statist ideology, that agenda is also what results in that same elite media not reporting cases where armed citizens prevented mass shooting such as the case of Appalachian Law School, and just two days ago an armed citizen stopped a mall shooting in Portland. When the deranged gunman saw the armed citizen he took cover and then took his own life. When heroic Sandy Brook School principal Dawn Hochsprung lunged at Adam Lanza, she deserved to have the right to lunge at him with something better than a ball point pen.
Many critics are being nakedly political by blaming the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA trains every police firearms instructor and almost every civilian firearms safety instructor in the country. The NRA runs the largest firearm safety program for kids in the country and teaches in many schools. The NRA is also the most powerful political lobby in Washington DC.
Blaming the NRA for this tragedy is like blaming anti-drug war groups for substance abuse and drug overdoses. It really does not get much more irrational than that.
This is a demonstration of the elaborate type of bullshit that politicians use to confuse people and spread false narratives. Today’s example is from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
The thing to keep in mind in all of this: If money is not proposed to be spent or appropriated for XXX then not doing XXX is NOT a spending cut.
For example: Lets say that I make $30,000 a year and I need to go on a budget to help pay my debt. So I say, “I just cut $50,000 from my budget because I am not buying a new Mercedes Benz 500 Convertible”. Has your budget changed? No. Has your savings increased? No. Is more money going to paying your debt? No.
Why? Because you never took out a loan and never was spending money or had money set aside for the Mercedes in the first place. This is the scam you are watching happen before your eyes. And look at the intensity Sec. Geithner uses while he pushes his lie. Then rather than admitting it he starts tossing in distractions about Republicans etc etc.
Do you ever wonder why every politician will tell you that he wants a balanced budget, but we don’t get one, and in fact we get record deficits and spending year after year?
WALLACE: Or they now say because you’re not willing to cut spending enough.
GEITHNER: No, but that’s not true. Again, if they want to do more on the spending side than the $600 billion we proposed on top of the trillion already enacted, in top of the savings from the wars, then they can tell us how they propose –
WALLACE: Savings in the wars that we were never going to fight?
GEITHNER: No, that’s not true. We’re — as you know, we’re winding down two wars.
WALLACE: I understand that.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: And you are thinking savings that nobody thought that you were going to spend that money any way. It’s a budget gimmick, sir.
GEITHNER: No, that’s not right. You know, let me say it this way, those were expensive wars, not just in Americans lives but in terms of the taxpayers’ resources. And when you end them as the president is doing, they reduce our long term deficits and like in the Republican budget proposals, the world should reflect and recognize what that does in savings.
And we propose to use those savings to reduce the deficits and help invest in rebuilding America. We think that makes a lot of sense.
WALLACE: But it was money that wasn’t going to be spent anyway, and –
GEITHNER: If those wars have gone on, they would be spent.
WALLACE: I understand. But you’re not saving — you’re not ending the wars for budget purposes. You’re ending the wars because of a foreign policy decision. The wars weren’t going to be fought. You’re not really saving money.
GEITHNER: Chris, we all agree –
WALLACE: I mean, it’s a budget gimmick, but it’s money never intended to spend.
GEITHNER: No, it’s not a budget gimmick unless you are — when Republicans propose, it’s a budget gimmick?
WALLACE: Sure, absolutely.
GEITHNER: And you should address that to them. But what it does is –
As reported by the Daily Mail, Florida restaurant owner John Metz says he will offset the costs of Obamacare by “adding a five percent surcharge to customers’ bills and will reduce his employees’ hours.”
Obamacare is so filled with senseless mandates, bureaucratic overhead and taxes that it has already driven up the cost of family health insurance by $2,500 a year and this will just get worse as more of Obamacare is implemented.
Obamacare requires businesses or franchises with more than 50 workers must offer an approved insurance plan or pay a penalty of $2,000 for each full-time worker over 30 workers.
The program mandates that only employees working more than 30 hours a week are covered under their employers health insurance plan, chains like Olive Garden and Red Lobster are already considering reduced worker hours.
“Obviously, I’d love to cover all our employees under that insurance,” said Metz.
“But to pay $5,000 per employee would cost us $175,000 per restaurant and unfortunately, most of our restaurants don’t make $175,000 a year. I can’t afford it.”
Democrat campaign operatives had tried to paint those businesses reacting to as just a few actors disgruntled by the election and tried to fool people into believing that Obamacare makes healthcare more affordable.
A new web site called The Daily Job Cuts is attempting to catalogue the layoffs and business closings and even though they are making a worthy full time effort to list them all, they are still only able to report a fraction of the actual job losses.
In the last month:
Aside from the evil Papa Johns, Democrat political operatives need to be prepared to also ‘boycott’ these companies who are laying off thousands of people due to Obamacare and associated taxes: Olive Garden, Applebee’s, Red Lobster, Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut, Burger King, McDonald’s, Longhorn Steakhouse……
…..Google, Martha Stewart Living, Pepsi, PayPal, Groupon, Best Buy, Cisco Systems, Kraft Foods, Lockheed Martin, Sears, Lexmark, Yahoo!, Dupont, Boeing, Bristol-Myers, Cummins, Smithfield Foods, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, NBC/Universal, American Airlines, United Continental Holdings, JC Penney, Wausau Paper, Procter & Gamble, Texas Instruments, Pierce Manufacturing, Panasonic, Xerox, Citigroup, Atlantic City Casinos, Majestic Star Casino, RIM (Blackberry), Vestas Wind Systems, Utah American Energy, Turkey Point Nuclear Plant FL, United Technologies, Gamesa Energy, Wingspan Portfolio Advisors, Stryker Corp (A big Obama Donor), First Solar, Solel Solar Systems, LuLu Publishing, New Energy Corp, Supervalue (Albertson’s), Dana Corp, American Coal, Gamestop, Commercial Appeal, Patriot Coal, Archer-Daniels-Midland, SAS, CIGNA, 169 Shaws Supermarkets, Judson University, ATI Career Training Centers, …
But boycotting these companies may be tough if you get sick or injured:
Nebraska Medical Center, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Aveo Oncology, Kaiser Permanente, St Jude Medical, Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, St Lukes Cornwall Hospital, Emanuel Medical Center, GE Healthcare, WPS Health Insurance, Lower Bucks Hospital, United Blood Services Gulf Region, NY Center for Hospice/Palliative Care, CVPH Medical Center, Ameridose, Crouse Hospital Syracuse NY, San Diego Hospice, Glens Falls Hospital NY, Wake Forest Baptist Medical NC, Southwest Vermont Health Care, St Mary’s of Michigan Hospital, Orlando Health (hospitals), Carney Hospital, Good Samaritan Hospital, Englewood Hospital, LSU’s 7 Hospitals, Westchester Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, UMass Memorial Medical Center, NCH Healthcare System, Peace Health, Northwest Community Healthcare, Cooley Dickinson Hospital, E.J. Noble Hospital, Health Alliance of the Hudson Valley, St. Joseph Hospital, St. Josepth Hospital East, Community Memorial Health System, Danbury Hospital, New Milford Hospital, Marian Regional Medical Center, Inland Hospital, Lawrence General Hospital, Blue Hill Memorial Hospital, Hutchinson Regional Medical Center, Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center, St Vincent Health System (hospital), Mercy Health Partners’ Hospital, St Mary’s Hospital, Jordan Hospital, Brattleboro Retreat (psychiatric hospital), CVPH Medical Center Pittsburg, Western Maryland Regional Medical Center (hospital), Cook Medical.
Unfortunately, you will not be able to boycott Hostess or the closings of 10 Boston area Upper Crust Pizzas, or the 200 Gamestop outlets. All are closing. There are so many closures that we just don’t have the space…
MORE:
Abbott Labs, Activision, Adventist Health, Airlines SAS, AMD, American Cotton Growers, Arcelor Mittal, American Independence Museum, Ameridose, American Airlines, American Coal, Atlantic Lottery Corporation, Assc Milk Producers, Aveo Oncology, Bankia, Bechtel Power Corp, Bigpoint Games, Boston Scientific, Brake Parts, Brattleboro Retreat,
Career Education, Cigna, Commerzbank, Consol Energy in W.V., Covidien, Crouse Hospital Syracuse NY, CVPH, DEP in Tallahassee FL, DuPont, Eagle-Tribune, Emanuel Medical Center, Energizer Holdings, Ericsson, Exide Tech, First Energy, Gameforge Berlin, GenOn Energy Inc, Groupon, GT Advanced Tech, Harris’ Broadcast, Hawker Beechcraft, Hill Rom,
Hills Holdings. HMX Group, Iberia Airlines, ICM of Colwich, ING, Juniper Networks, Kinetic Concepts, Kratos Defense Security, Lightyear Network Solutions, Lonza, Majestic Star Casino, Major Wind Company, Medtronic, Mills Manufacturing NC, Momentive Inc, Monitor Group, Montco Behavioral Health, NBC, Nebraska Medical Center, Neovia Logistics Services, New Energy, Ormet, Panasonic, PayPal, Penn Refrigeration, Penske Logistics, Pepsi, Philips Electronics, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Research in Motion, Rheem Manufacturing, Sentry Foods, Shaw’s Supermarket, Shawano Foundry WI, Smith & Nephew, Smithfield Packing Co., Southeastern Container, SpaceX, SRA Intl Inc, St. Jude Medical, Sulake, Sun Media, TE Connectivity, TECO Coal Corporation, The Providence Journal Co, TMX Group Ltd., Turbocare, Oce North America, UBS, US Cellular, Volvo Trucks Pulaski County, West Ridge Mine, Westinghouse, World Media Enterprises Inc, WPS Health Insurance, Wright Patterson AFB, Wyodak Coal Mine, Yakima Reg Med Ctr Washington.
Special thanks to C. Steven Tucker for helping me to build this list.
Why is “tax the rich” false narrative not going to lower the deficit but will only lower the economy? Tony Robbins illustrated just how ridiculous the Obama “class warfare” model is in this short film. This is simply devastating…..
This is one of the best videos Pat Condell has put out.
Radical Islamists are great at playing the victim card when in the minority, but when in the majority they become “aggressive oppressors” as Condell says. .
I will add that I am friends with some Shiia Muslims who escaped the Mullah’s in Iran and they hate the radicals such as Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Political Arena Editor Chuck Norton – Instead of calling it the “Fiscal Cliff” Republicans should call it “Taxmageddon”. It is more accurate and serves the battle of the narratives MUCH better.
“The rhetoric in Washington has done more to defeat liberty than all the armies and police forces in the world. This war all around us is being fought over the very meanings of words.
Meaning does not exist a priori. It is order imposed by individuals with arsenals of communication devices. Every inscription, every utterance, every gesture seeks to dominate the plain of meaning. Real violence is only an extension of this process.
Culture by definition a shared territory of meaning, inspires conflicts far more destructive than any other dispute over territory on the Earth’s surface. It is the message — the communication event — that we target.” – Warren Spector
Parents, what you are about to read here is commonplace on American universities today. And you may be thinking, “I am in a conservative town so not my local university”…. well you are sadly mistaken.
This very writer is from South Bend, Indiana. Mike Pence is our new governor, Jackie Walorski is our new Member of Congress, and Indiana was the first state to go to Mitt Romney in the election. Yet, I can tell you with absolute certainty that Christians, traditionalists, and conservatives face discrimination and persecution on campus.
This very writer, when faced with persecution on campus, went very high profile on campus and used a strategy of making the left fear me. Having been a radio talk show host and a person with some resources I had that option, but many traditional students don’t.
Pro-life professors at Notre Dame, the largest Catholic University in the world, are persecuted on campus because the radical left has all but taken over the institution since Father Hessburg actively recruited Marxists to work at the university.
Hundreds of thousands of communists didn’t suddenly become libertarians after the East German wall fell. They had to go somewhere and most of them ended up “teaching” our kids. There are plenty of them on almost every campus in America.
At Tufts, a conservative newspaper committed “harassment” by printing accurate quotations from the Koran and a verified fact about the status of women in Saudi Arabia. Lukianoff says that Tufts may have been the first American institution “to find someone guilty of harassment for stating verifiable facts directed at no one in particular.”
He documents how “orientation” programs for freshmen become propaganda to (in the words of one orthodoxy enforcer) “leave a mental footprint on their consciousness.” Faculty, too, can face mandatory consciousness-raising.
In 2007, Donald Hindley, a politics professor at Brandeis, was found guilty of harassment because when teaching Latin American politics he explained the origin of the word “wetbacks,” which refers to immigrants crossing the Rio Grande. Without a hearing, the university provost sent Hindley a letter stating that the university “will not tolerate inappropriate, racial and discriminatory conduct.” The assistant provost was assigned to monitor Hindley’s classes “to ensure that you do not engage in further violations of the nondiscrimination and harassment policy.” Hindley was required to attend “anti-discrimination training.”
Such coercion is a natural augmentation of censorship. Next comes mob rule. Last year, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the vice provost for diversity and climate — really; you can’t make this stuff up — encouraged students to disrupt a news conference by a speaker opposed to racial preferences. They did, which the vice provost called “awesome.” This is the climate on an especially liberal campus that celebrates “diversity” in everything but thought.
“What happens on campus,” Lukianoff says, “doesn’t stay on campus” because censorship has “downstream effects.” He quotes a sociologist whose data he says demonstrate that “those with the highest levels of education have the lowest exposure to people with conflicting points of view.” This encourages “the human tendency to live within our own echo chambers.” Parents’ tuition dollars and student indebtedness pay for this. Good grief.
A good reason to have a Reagan.com email address and to use encryption.
William Binney, whistleblower and former NSA crypto-mathematician who served in the agency for decades. Virtual privacy in US, Petraeus affair and whistleblowers’ odds in fight against the authorities are among key topics of this exclusive interview.
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.
But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
For the NSA, overflowing with tens of billions of dollars in post-9/11 budget awards, the cryptanalysis breakthrough came at a time of explosive growth, in size as well as in power. Established as an arm of the Department of Defense following Pearl Harbor, with the primary purpose of preventing another surprise assault, the NSA suffered a series of humiliations in the post-Cold War years. Caught offguard by an escalating series of terrorist attacks—the first World Trade Center bombing, the blowing up of US embassies in East Africa, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and finally the devastation of 9/11—some began questioning the agency’s very reason for being. In response, the NSA has quietly been reborn. And while there is little indication that its actual effectiveness has improved—after all, despite numerous pieces of evidence and intelligence-gathering opportunities, it missed the near-disastrous attempted attacks by the underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009 and by the car bomber in Times Square in 2010—there is no doubt that it has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created.
In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.
The fastest way to undermine a country is to undermine its history, and the best place to begin is in the nation’s classrooms where pliable young minds are easily influenced. This is precisely what the left has been doing for decades, and with evident success. The left has made great strides in undermining the family, taking over the public square, and dominating education at all levels. But some of its most effective work has been in revising America’s history. Russian philosopher Alexander Solzhenitzyn said: “To destroy a people you must first sever their roots.” Patrick Buchanan said: “To create a ‘new people,’ the agents of our cultural revolution must first create a new history; and that project is well advanced.”
In 1992 that bastion of liberal thought, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), received a two-million-dollar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education to develop new standards for history books for grades five through twelve. UCLA completed this assignment in 1997. Since that time, its standards have had the intended effect. UCLA’s standards for history books for public school children have resulted in the following:
No mention in history books of such American luminaries as Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, or the Wright Brothers. It is the lives of exceptional Americans such as these, among many other factors, that validate the concept of American exceptionalism. Consequently, to undermine the concept, liberals must remove any reference to exceptional acts and exceptional people in American history.
The founding dates of the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women are given special significance. In truth, the only thing that warrants inclusion of these organizations in history books is that they are considered sacred institutionsby the left.
Instructions for teachers concerning how to teach the unit which covers the traitor Alger Hiss and the spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg encourages leeway to teach the unit either way. In other words, teachers are given the leeway to teach the unit as if Hiss was not a traitor and the Rosenbergs were innocent. This is the same Alger Hiss who was convicted by a jury on the basis of hard evidence, evidence that since his conviction has been validated many times over by further discoveries. These are the same Rosenbergs who gave America’s atom-bomb secrets to Joseph Stalin.
The Constitutional Convention is not even mentioned. One of the reasons for this is that the deliberations of America’s founders as recorded in numerous documents such as the Federalist Papers as well as those of the anti-federalists are clearly at odds with today’s liberal orthodoxy. The tactic of the left is simple. If the founder’s views do not reinforce those of the left, eliminate any reference to their views in history books.
George Washington’s presidency is not mentioned nor is his famous farewell address. Rather than learn about the two terms of our country’s first president—two terms in which everything Washington did was precedent setting—students are encouraged to develop an imaginary dialogue between an Indian Leader and General Washington at the end of the Revolutionary War. What students are supposed to learn and how students are supposed to benefit from this hypothetical dialogue is not explained.
The Soviet Union is commended for its great strides in space exploration, but America’s moon landing is not mentioned.
Teachers are urged to have students conduct a mock trial for John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil. No mention is made of the fact that the homes of most of the students are heated by energy derived from petroleum and the gasoline in the cars driven by teachers comes from petroleum.
The new history standards developed by UCLA have had far-reaching effects. Look at any history book written for public school students in the K-12 system and you will be appalled at what is included and what is not. There are now history books being used in America classrooms that give more coverage to Madonna than to George Washington. Further, America is often portrayed in the way that Barack Obama appears to view it: as a villainous nation bent on world dominance, imperialism, the perpetuation of slavery, and a variety of other evils. What is less likely to be found is any positive coverage concerning a Constitution that guarantees the rights of everyone, including liberals who are bent on the destruction of America as the founders envisioned it.
This wonderful column by Steve McCann eloquently describes many of the problems this very web site was created to address and it is one of the most important columns of the year.
“Yet there is no sense of urgency or desire on the part of the governing class to level with the American people” – Indeed and think about it. Every politician says that they want a balanced budget, but will we ever get one again?
The United States will not reverse its descent into the abyss of financial and societal bankruptcy until the current political and governing establishment is replaced. That will not happen until the American people, who have been deliberately ill-educated and deceived, experience first-hand the early stages of the turmoil and suffering extant in Europe and elsewhere.
While professing to care for the interests of the average person, the underlying motivation for the vast majority of the governing class or Establishment is first and foremost self-aggrandizement and the acquisition of wealth. While a few may be motivated by ideology, the preponderance are not.
There are no offices on Connecticut Avenue in Washington D.C. with signs reading “The Republican Establishment” or the “The Democratic Establishment”; rather it is an amalgam of like-minded groups with one common interest: the control of the government purse-strings and the attendant power contained within.
The Republican and Democratic political establishments are made up of the following:
1) many current and nearly all retired national office holders whose livelihood and narcissistic demands depends upon fealty to Party and access to government largesse;
2) the majority of the media elite, including pundits, editors, writers and television news personalities based in Washington and New York whose proximity to power and access is vital to their continued standard of living;
3) academia, numerous think-tanks, so-called non-government organizations, and lobbyists who fasten onto those in the administration and Congress for employment, grants, favorable legislation and ego-gratification;
4) the reliable deep pocket political contributors and political consultants whose future is irrevocably tied to the political machinery of the Party; and
5) the crony capitalists, i.e. leaders of the corporate and financial community as well as unions whose entities are dependent on or subject to government oversight and/or benevolence .
The current iteration of the Democratic establishment was begun during Franklin Roosevelt’s 12 years in office as the Party chose to follow the lead of those such as Benito Mussolini in Italy, who promoted government as the source of all salvation and survival. This philosophy fit in nicely with those whose egos and drive was directed toward the aggregation of power and wealth.
The Republican members of the governing class, with the exception of the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the Republican controlled House of Representatives from 1995 to 1998, have been content since 1946 to merely slow down the big-government policies of the Democrats, while publically decrying their tax and spend policies. However, in truth, many have been comfortable with reaping the financial and ego-gratifying rewards of such indifference.
Since the1950’s this overall scenario has been tolerated and generally ignored as the nation was experiencing overwhelming and seemingly endless prosperity. The Democrats, with the tacit consent of the Republican establishment, promoted an ever-increasing litany of government programs to ostensibly help the people, under the rubric that the nation could not only afford it but was, in fact, obligated to guarantee a “decent” standard of living for everyone. Further, in the 1960’s the American left, as the Republican establishment turned a blind eye, began to dominate the education agenda. The public’s children were no longer taught American history and the importance of individual liberty; instead, the basics of capitalism and wealth creation were demonized. Additionally, the essential characteristic of a flourishing republic — a society wedded to honor, decency and integrity — was demeaned and ridiculed.
Thus the citizenry has become more willing to not only vote for whoever promises the most financial security, but they are now easily susceptible to unconscionable demagoguery and are increasingly tolerant of dishonesty as well as unethical behavior. Today, with the advent of welfare, food stamps, near endless unemployment benefits, free health care (Medicaid), and a myriad of other state and federal programs, the Democrats have succeeded in creating a virtually permanent voting bloc. One the Republican Establishment now claims, if they wish to win future elections, they must pander to as part of a new strategy of inclusion. Yet, by their acquiescence and indifference over the years, they helped create their electoral dilemma.
How have all these promises and deceptions perpetrated on the American people placed the nation’s financial future in jeopardy? Since 1956 the United States has seen a phenomenal growth in its Gross Domestic Product from $3,700 Billion (inflation adjusted) to $16,100 Billion (+335%). However, government spending at all levels has grown from $978 Billion (inflation adjusted) to $6,400 Billion (+554%) and the nation’s debt, $2,250 Billion in 1956 (inflation adjusted) is now $16,300 Billion (+625%). (source: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com)
As of today, the nation’s true indebtedness (promises that have been made for spending obligations, less all the taxes the Treasury expects to collect) exceeds $222,000 Billion. The indebtedness to Gross Domestic Product ($16,100 Billion) is a staggering 13.8 to 1. The United States is not facing bankruptcy, itis bankrupt.
Yet there is no sense of urgency or desire on the part of the governing class to level with the American people. This nation is living on the residue of the economic growth begun in the 1950’s and accelerated in the 1980’s. That tidal wave of prosperity has ebbed. The United States has entered into a death spiral of unrestrained spending, excessive taxation, printing near worthless money, and stagnant economic activity. Rather than be straightforward with the populace, the governing class is content to paper over the problem by the usual shell games of phony long-term spending cuts, more borrowing, and prevarications about the efficacy of raising taxes on “the rich.”
The true nature of the GOP establishment’s motivation has been exposed by their reaction to the Tea Party movement. This grassroots rebellion was the first manifestation of the awareness by a large portion of the American public of the nation’s problems and ultimate consequences. Despite the overwhelming success of the Tea Party working within the Republican Party in the 2010 mid-term elections, nearly all of the Republican elites downplayed their success and fell-in with the mainstream media and the Democrats in their well-worn and gratuitous aspersions against these concerned and patriotic Americans. The Tea Party movement poses a threat to not only the accumulated power of the governing class but their livelihoods, thus the concerted effort to marginalize them by any vile or preposterous means possible.
The United States finds itself in a circumstance once thought unthinkable. An ill-educated and near morally bankrupt society increasingly made up of those dependent on government combined with a governing class whose primary interest is themselves. The nation cannot, therefore, make any meaningful course correction unless and until the people finally understand they have been lied to and conned by the current establishment. That will, in all likelihood, not occur until America faces imminent collapse and the citizenry turns on those who brought the nation to its knees.
But Obama says that he is transferring wealth to protect the middle class……
The only ones who get rich when government transfers wealth is government, because they transfer a LOT more to themselves per person than they do to the poor.
WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – The median net worth of American households has dropped to a 43-year low as the lower and middle classes appear poorer and less stable than they have been since 1969.
According to a recent study by New York University economics professor Edward N. Wolff, median net worth is at the decades-low figure of $57,000 (in 2010 dollars). And as the numbers in his study reflect, the situation only appears worse when all the statistics are taken as a whole.
According to Wolff, between 1983 and 2010, the percentage of households with less than $10,000 in assets (using constant 1995 dollars) rose from 29.7 percent to 37.1 percent. The “less than $10,000″ figure includes the numerous households that have no assets at all, or “negative assets,” which is otherwise known as “debt.”
Over that same period of time, the wealthiest 1 percent of American households increased their average wealth by 71 percent.
[Political Arena Editor’s Note – in that 1% are government bureaucrats many of whom make six figures:
The person who needs help to get out of poverty gets about what $11,000 a year if they are lucky while the Democrat appointee who runs welfare gets over $187,000 a year.
Government programs are not anti-poverty program, they are government appointee and government union enrichment programs. It is no different than “paying protection”.]
As noted by Daily Finance, from 1983 to 2010 the share of total wealth held by the richest 10 percent of American households increased from 68.2 percent to 76.7 percent. Meanwhile, all the rest of Americans lost financial ground.
An August Pew Research Center study found that many in the middle-class are divided on how they believe his gap widened.
Fully 85 percent of self-described middle-class adults say it is more difficult now than it was a decade ago for middle-class people to maintain their standard of living.
We have said many times here at Political Arena that just quoting people facts and Lincoln-Douglass style debate isn’t enough. In order to teach the great lessons of life and deeper wisdom, it must be done through stories and narratives.
Star Trek is one of the very best programs that demonstrates this truth. Several of the Greek philosophers, plays, and literature have their work retold in Star Trek. The Roman legal philosopher and rhetorician Cicero is featured throughout the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine shows. William Shakespeare also is well represented in Star Trek.
To the intellectually dim Star Trek is just “space invaders” with actors, but to those with eyes to see and ears to hear, to the intellectually and philosophically curious, Star Trek becomes a wondrous teaching tool that can be used to reinforce the ideals that America was founded upon.
Here is an example:
Star Trek: Samuel T. Cogley Attorney at Law
Star Trek: The Wisdom of Captain Jean Luc Picard
Another reason why Star Trek works as a story telling medium is that the people of Star Trek are exploring the final frontier. Americans are a frontier people who have run out of “frontier”.
With Canada, Sweden and other countries making steady progress moving away from Government run health care it seems that at least some people are starting to get the fact that e do not want the same people who run the BMV, Embassy Security, the Post Office, and DC Metro Escalators running our health care.
The rationing is already begun and the Obama administration is targeting women’s cancer health screenings as the first target, but unless Republicans move to keep educating people, Obama, his corporate backers, and his allies in the media will launch a propaganda campaign to swing the opinion back the other way. Obama has no mandate for more government control of healthcare.
Views of healthcare system overall more positive in some respects
by Jeffrey M. Jones
PRINCETON, NJ — For the first time in Gallup trends since 2000, a majority of Americans say it is not the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage. Prior to 2009, a majority always felt the government should ensure healthcare coverage for all, though Americans’ views have become more divided in recent years.
The current results are based on Gallup’s annual Health and Healthcare poll, conducted Nov. 15-18 this year.
The shift away from the view that the government should ensure healthcare coverage for all began shortly after President Barack Obama’s election and has continued the past several years during the discussions and ultimate passage of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010. Americans are divided on that legislation today — 48% approve and 45% disapprove — as they have been over the last several years.
Republicans, including Republican-leaning independents, are mostly responsible for the drop since 2007 in Americans’ support for government ensuring universal health coverage. In 2007, 38% of Republicans thought the government should do so; now, 12% do. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners there has been a much smaller drop, from 81% saying the government should make sure all Americans are covered in 2007 to 71% now.
One thing that has not changed is that Americans still widely prefer a system based on private insurance to one run by the government. Currently, 57% prefer a private system and 36% a government-run system, essentially the same as in 2010 and 2011. Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the percentage of Americans in favor of a government-run system ranged from 32% to 41%.
No one in the GOP is even defending themselves much less making a fight of it (please correct us if I we are wrong).
Robert Davi
Famed actor Robert Davi said recently that he believes that elements in the establishment GOP and the Democratic Leadership are in a conspiracy to bring the country down. It is nonsense like this that make him correct.
It is nonsense like this that will finally push those who care about good policy to form a new party to replace the Republican Party because its brand is damaged and it’s establishment doesn’t seem to even really believe what it preaches.
I bet many in the GOP wishes they had Newt Gingrich right about now to make the case.
A new poll from CNN/ORC shows that President Obama remains Teflon despite the fact that he designed the upcoming fiscal cliff to speculation. Even though Obama insisted on massive defense cuts and huge tax increases as the two alternative parts of the fiscal cliff, the American public will apparently blame Republicans if the fiscal cliff isn’t stopped. A full 45% of respondents said they would blame Congressional Republicans – even though the Democrats control the Senate – while just 34% would blame President Obama.
The public, by and large, sees Republicans as obstructionist. That’s due to a combination of messaging failure on the part of the GOP — nothing new, in that they seem incapable of explaining the simple fact that low tax rates, particularly on job creators, spur economic growth and thereby raise tax revenues — and a media concerned only with saving its flailing president. The Republicans’ mixed messaging on the fiscal cliff has been astounding to watch. They signed off on the sequester, which put a fiscal gun to their heads, forcing them to choose between raising taxes partially or watching tax rates skyrocket and defense get slashed. Then they turned around and complained about the gun being put to their heads. Now, they’re standing for the principle that we need more tax revenue, but it can’t be raised by raising rates. No wonder the public is confused.
Poll numbers like this could be the reason that Republicans are looking to cave on tax increases, or ending tax deductions. 25% of the country says that the nation would undergo a crisis if we hit the fiscal cliff; 44% expect major problems. 25% say that it would cause minor problems. A full 77% of the public believes the fiscal cliff would hurt them personally.
Republicans have done such a poor job of informing the public about why taxes shouldn’t be increased that even Republicans, by a margin of 52%-44%, say they want both spending cuts and tax increases. An unbelievable 56% of Americans say they want high taxes on higher income earners, despite the fact that higher income earners pay a vastly disproportionate share of all tax revenue.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 