Dr. Sowell is our greatest living philosopher and he is black, which means of course, that if you disagree with him it automatically makes you a racist.
Many years ago, as a young man, I read a very interesting book about the rise of the Communists to power in China. In the last chapter, the author tried to explain why and how this had happened.
Among the factors he cited were the country’s educators. That struck me as odd, and not very plausible, at the time. But the passing years have made that seem less and less odd, and more and more plausible. Today, I see our own educators playing a similar role in creating a mindset that undermines American society.
Thomas Sowell
Schools were once thought of as places where a society’s knowledge and experience were passed on to the younger generation. But, about a hundred years ago, Professor John Dewey of Columbia University came up with a very different conception of education — one that has spread through American schools of education, and even influenced education in countries overseas.
John Dewey saw the role of the teacher, not as a transmitter of a society’s culture to the young, but as an agent of change — someone strategically placed, with an opportunity to condition students to want a different kind of society.
A century later, we are seeing schools across America indoctrinating students to believe in all sorts of politically correct notions. The history that is taught in too many of our schools is a history that emphasizes everything that has gone bad, or can be made to look bad, in America — and that gives little, if any, attention to the great achievements of this country.
If you think that is an exaggeration, get a copy of “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn and read it. As someone who used to read translations of official Communist newspapers in the days of the Soviet Union, I know that those papers’ attempts to degrade the United States did not sink quite as low as Howard Zinn’s book.
That book has sold millions of copies, poisoning the minds of millions of students in schools and colleges against their own country. But this book is one of many things that enable teachers to think of themselves as “agents of change,” without having the slightest accountability for whether that change turns out to be for the better or for the worse — or, indeed, utterly catastrophic.
This misuse of schools to undermine one’s own society is not something confined to the United States or even to our own time. It is common in Western countries for educators, the media and the intelligentsia in general, to single out Western civilization for special condemnation for sins that have been common to the human race, in all parts of the world, for thousands of years.
Meanwhile, all sorts of fictitious virtues are attributed to non-Western societies, and their worst crimes are often passed over in silence, or at least shrugged off by saying some such thing as “Who are we to judge?”
There is a reason why the Department of Homeland Security refers to these guns as “Personal Defense Weapons” because that is what they are best used for.
It seems that the NRA is winning the PR battle…again.
The Fontana Unified School District Police Department purchased 14 AR-15 assault weapons to protect students in response to recent shootings across the country, but some school leaders and citizens think it’s a step in the wrong direction.
FUSD Superintendent Cali Olsen-Binks approved the acquisition of the rifles, which are being stored on campuses in locked safes for responding police officers in the event of an attack.
Fontana Police Chief Rodney Jones and Mayor Acquanetta Warren supported Olsen-Binks’ decision.
“It’s unfortunate that we have to have that, but it’s the best message we can send to anybody that thinks to harm our children,” said Jones. “The message we’re sending is…not here, not now, we’re prepared for you. And if you seek to harm our children, we will neutralize that threat and you will most likely be killed.”
In data released Thursday afternoon, the Federal Reserve revealed that its holdings of U.S. government debt had increased to an all-time record of $1,696,691,000,000 as of the close of business on Wednesday.
The Fed’s holdings of U.S. government debt have increased by 257 percent since President Barack Obama was first inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009, and the Fed is currently the single largest holder of U.S. government debt.
As of the end of November, according to the U.S. Treasury, entities in Mainland China owned about $1,170,100,000,000 in U.S. government debt, making China the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt.
When Obama was inaugurated in 2009, the Fed owned $475.322 billion in U.S. government debt. As of the close of business on Wednesday, Jan. 23, the Fed owned $1.696691 trillion in U.S. government debt, up $1.221369 trillion during Obama’s first term.
John Nolte at Big Government speaks truth at the New York Times’ expense. The NYT, along with much of the elite media, has become so much of a joke, that they cannot see why their circulation shrinks and shrinks while the Wall Street Journal, talk radio and Fox News are cleaning up, people no longer trust the elite media because they are so flamboyantly dishonest.
One of the first stories I came across this morning was the news that the New York Times is once again in financial turmoil. By 5PM today, thirty senior staffers must agree to voluntarily resign. If not, terminations will ensue. This is the fourth time this has happened to the Times in just five years.
Yeah, that is a shame.
It’s no coincidence, either, that this day of downsizing occurs just a few days after a NYT editor, Andrew Rosenthal, not only slobbered all over Obama like a teenage groupie, but publicly accused the GOP of racism for daring to try to stop Lightbringer’s socialist agenda:
Mr. Obama took over a country gravely damaged by his predecessor. (In fact I was convinced in 2008 that whoever succeeded President George W. Bush could only last one term). He got a raw deal, and then he helped prevent the Great Recession from turning into the Second Great Depression. Wall Street doesn’t like Mr. Obama, but corporate profits have soared in the last four years. He ended the war in Iraq, and he’s on his way to getting us out of Afghanistan. He passed health care reform. Along the way, he faced a Republican Party that was not only implacable in its opposition to his agenda but also hostile toward him personally (no doubt in part because of his race.).
If the NYT wants to know why it’s in the middle of its fourth personnel massacre in only five years, this is why.
The paper is completely off the rails, unable to engage in any kind of intellectually honest discussion, and so determined to see Obama have his way that its editors are reduced to slander and ad hominem.
The NYT has always been biased, but it’s now an increasingly cheap and alienating publication unable to distinguish itself from the fever swamps of the Daily Kos and Salon. And since those outlets are available online for free, why squander money few can afford during Obama’s “recovery” for the Times?
The Obama Administration has been using the EPA and the permitting process to make easy permitting for friends and campaign donors, but a GOP state like Texas gets the hand. This is the type of bnana republic abuse of power that is so typical with this administration. Welcome to Chicago.
Chase Power, the parent company behind the $3 billion Las Brisas coal power plant in Corpus Christi, Texas, announced yesterday that it was cancelling the project.
“Chase Power … has opted to suspend efforts to further permit the facility and is seeking alternative investors as part of a plan of dissolution for the parent company,” Chase CEO Dave Freysinger told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
Freysinger made it very clear who was responsible for the projects death. “The (Las Brisas Energy Center) is a victim of EPA’s concerted effort to stifle solid-fuel energy facilities in the U.S., including EPA’s carbon-permitting requirements and EPA’s New Source Performance Standards for new power plants,” he said.
Not everyone will have to abide by Senator Dianne Feinstein’s gun control bill. If the proposed legislation becomes law, government officials and others will be exempt.
“Mrs. Feinstein’s measure would exempt more than 2,200 types of hunting and sporting rifles; guns manually operated by bolt, pump, lever or slide action; and weapons used by government officials, law enforcement and retired law enforcement personnel,” the Washington Times reports.
The Huffington Post confirms these exemptions, and adds that guns owned prior to the legislation becoming law will be permissible, too. “[T]he bill includes a number of exemptions: It exempts more than 2,200 hunting and sporting weapons; any gun manually operated by a bolt, pump, lever or slide action; any weapons used by government officials and law enforcement; and any weapons legally owned as of the date of the bill’s enactment.”
The bill’s measures include stopping “the sale, manufacture and importation of 158 specifically named military-style firearms and ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. It would also ban an additional group of assault weapons that accept detachable ammunition magazines and have at least one military characteristic,” according to the Huffington Post.
The left-leaning website adds: “Other new provisions include requiring background checks on all future transfers of assault weapons covered under the bill and eliminating the 10-year sunset that allowed the original ban to expire.”
Homeland Security buys 7,000 “Assault Rifles” and calls them “Personal Defense Weapons”…
But they told us that such firearms have no self defense purpose…
The Department of Homeland Security is seeking to acquire 7,000 5.56x45mm NATO “personal defense weapons” (PDW) — also known as “assault weapons” when owned by civilians. The solicitation, originally posted on June 7, 2012, comes to light as the Obama administration is calling for a ban on semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines.
Citing a General Service Administration (GSA) request for proposal (RFP), Steve McGough of RadioViceOnline.com reports that DHS is asking for the 7,000 “select-fire” firearms because they are “suitable for personal defense use in close quarters.” The term select-fire means the weapon can be both semi-automatic and automatic. Civilians are prohibited from obtaining these kinds of weapons.
The RFP describes the firearm as “Personal Defense Weapon (PDW) – 5.56x45mm NATO, select-fire firearm suitable for personal defense use in close quarters and/or when maximum concealment is required.” Additionally, DHS is asking for 30 round magazines that “have a capacity to hold thirty (30) 5.56x45mm NATO rounds.”
Republican New York state Sen. Greg Ball also issued a press release this week bringing attention to the weapons purchase request.
Calls made to DHS seeking information regarding whether or not the RFP was accepted and fulfilled were not immediately returned on Saturday.
Props to progressive liberal Prof. Michael Shermer, who got (figuratively) his butt kicked in debates with Dinesh D’Souza and well knew it. Shermer was well humored about it and was a real good sport. Most liberals would have simply snapped.
Even though I have made it my specialty to study liars and the propaganda that is used to market evil to those who are not vigilant, it amazes me when I watch President Obama because, unlike most politicians who lie to get themselves out of trouble or do it off the cuff in the heat of the moment, this new crew of Saul Alinsky inspired Democrats use lies and the most advanced propaganda and deception techniques as a tool for calculated aggression. This writer has no doubt that Obama’s staff has “think tank” sessions where they come up with such lies, distortions, and dishonest associations and even take the time to focus group the lies so as to tweak them for believability.
What I found most offensive was when he perverted the message of America’s Founders as an affirmation of Marxist collectivist propaganda:
… fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people [government must do it]
Individualism of course does not mean always acting alone. Did George Washington with the revolution by himself? Can people not cooperate to make things as complex as a pencil do so without government controlling it all? By using false definitions and associative propaganda techniques this line is designed to undermine and twist the idea of rugged individualism and the idea that in our form of government is the citizen that is the sovereign, not the state.
What we saw in Obama’s speech are the kinds of self serving twists, distortions, and straw-man arguments that tyrants have used for centuries. What makes this different is that , it is being used by an American president, and the quality of such lies is the best I have ever seen since Goebbels.
I was in the process of going through the entire speech so I could deconstruct the lies, but Mytheos Holt at The Blaze has done a nice job of doing this that.
Unfortunately, another characteristic was also in evidence in Obama’s speech: namely, his tendency to argue against positions that nobody holds (and by extension, to mischaracterize his opponents’ views so as to make them easier to argue against). In logic, this unfortunate tendency is referred to as a “straw man fallacy” and it was well-worn in President Obama’s speech today – so well-worn that at times, he seemed to cough up a new straw man fallacy with every sentence. How many of these arguments in bad faith did the President use? Read on as we list each one and explain their fallacious nature.
Straw Man #1:
“For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.”
The President’s line about muskets and militias is a rhetorical flourish more than an argument, but the first part of this line is an obvious straw man. No one in the current political climate is arguing for a complete dissolution of government power such that only the American people as a collective would be responsible for defending the country or performing any other task. Rather, the question is how much responsibility should be left to private citizens. Saying “private citizens cannot handle all responsibilities” is not the same as saying “private citizens cannot handle any responsibility at all.”
Straw Man #2:
“No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores.”
Like the first straw man, this one argues against something which is obviously false, and which no one believes. A single, individual person obviously cannot do all of this alone, but again, that does not imply that if someone cannot do something alone, the government must step in and do it for them. For instance, an architect cannot build a skyscraper alone. He needs laborers, engineers, and other people. But saying he can’t do this alone is not the same thing as saying that private citizens cannot cooperatively agree to do this without help from the government.
Straw Man #3:
“We reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn.”
No one is proposing completely giving up caring for older generations, nor is anyone proposing completely ignoring young people’s needs. The question is how much government can afford to spend on each. More to the point, no one on either side is proposing complete abolition of programs that help the elderly or the disabled.
Straw Man #4:
“We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few.”
This particular straw man presumably is meant to apply to income inequality. At least, that’s the only public policy issue that this author can see it relating to. However, as with the others, it is a misreading of people who argue against greater income equality. For one thing, freedom and happiness are not necessarily the same as money, and luck is not the only thing that makes a person wealthy. Moreover, people who argue that income inequality is not necessarily a problem are not defending the idea that only a few can be wealthy, which is a question of income mobility, not equality.
Straw Man #5:
“Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms.”
This straw man, which deals with global warming, is actually two fallacies in one. It is a straw man because no one believes they can avoid the impact of natural disasters completely, and it also begs the question by assuming that solving global warming will solve the problem of fires, drought and storms, while simultaneously trying to prove that by solving global warming, natural disasters will be lessened.
Straw Man #6:
“We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.”
The President’s critics on national security do not believe in perpetual war. They may believe in seeing some wars through to their conclusion, or starting other wars out of necessity, but none of them believes in perpetual war for its own sake.
Straw Man #7:
“For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.”
People arguing against bills such as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which claim to be devoted to ensuring equal pay for women, often do so because they are concerned that these laws give trial lawyers too much of an excuse to sue, not because they believe women should be underpaid.
Straw Man #8:
“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”
Again, there are no mainstream political figures who believe that gays should be unequal before the law. In fact, gays enjoy all the same constitutional protections as straight people. The question of whether the right to marriage is one of those constitutional protections, however, is an unresolved question, though the Supreme Court may resolve it later this year. This straw man also assumes that the only function of marriage is to facilitate love. That is certainly one view, but it is not one that all critics of gay marriage subscribe to, and thus assuming that they oppose gay marriage out of opposition to love is a straw man.
Straw Man #9:
“Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity.”
Shutting off immigration completely is not a policy proposal being offered. What is being argued about is the question of what to do with people who immigrated to the US in contradiction to its laws.
Straw Man #10:
“Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life. It does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way or follow the same precise path to happiness.”
This is obviously true, but is also a straw man because no one believes that following a blueprint for governance requires the people following that blueprint to make all the same lifestyle choices. This is not even an argument that constitutional originalists on the Supreme Court advance. The President is arguing against a position that is not held by his critics.
So let me get this straight. When a police officer pulls over a car with possible illegal aliens in it he cannot ask certain questions because liberals say it’s racism. But liberals want gun owners to be registered, fingerprinted and data-based up and down, as well as having our names and addresses printed in the paper.
Who is preferred and who is treated as the non-citizen?
And junk science it is. This “study” (see below) is filled with very bogus cliché in the book. This “study” , like all too many writings from radicalized academics, is filled with opinion presented as fact, including but not limited too: small government activists are racists, leftists are “future oriented” modern and “progressive” while conservatives are backwards and “in the past”.
The left is future oriented? As if centralized government control of society and the economy is somehow a new concept? On the contrary that idea is as old as the idea of government itself. The vast majority of man throughout history has lived under such rule.
The idea that rights come from God and cannot be usurped by government, government should be limited by rules and separation of powers, and where the minority is protected from the whims of the majority by law are new concepts and the United States was the first country in the history of the world to be founded upon those ideas; so if anything it is American conservatism that is modern, and those who favor a leviathan state, whatever the spin used to sell it, the dinosaur form of government.
The “study” also says that the left values separation of powers. Anyone skilled in politics is already laughing at this one. It is the Democratic Leader in the Senate who is asking President Obama to violate separation of powers by legislating via executive order and unilaterally raise the debt ceiling illegally. It is the left that ignores the limits placed in Article I, Section 8, as well as the 9th and 10th Amendments as well as the 5th Amendment clause about not taking property without just compensation and that is just for starters.
This is far from the first time an “academic study” ended up being nothing more than a vehicle for politically motivated slander. The IU School of Journalism published this study comparing Bill O’Reilly to the Nazi’s using laughable “fast and loose” terms and tactics. These attacks from radicalized academia are used to justify the kind of hate that we saw when far left groups attacked a charity that helps rape victims for the terrible crime of letting Bill O’Reilly raise money for them.
The report issued this week by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., is titled “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.”
The center — part of the institution where men and women are molded into Army officers — posted the report Tuesday. It lumps limited government activists with three movements it identifies as “a racist/white supremacy movement, an anti-federalist movement and a fundamentalist movement.”
The West Point center typically focuses reports on al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists attempting to gain power in Asia, the Middle East and Africa through violence.
But its latest study turns inward and paints a broad brush of people it considers “far right.”
It says anti-federalists “espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights. Finally, they support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self government. Extremists in the anti-federalist movement direct most their violence against the federal government and its proxies in law enforcement.”
The report also draws a link between the mainstream conservative movement and the violent “far right,” and describes liberals as “future oriented” and conservatives as living in the past.
“While liberal worldviews are future- or progressive -oriented, conservative perspectives are more past-oriented, and in general, are interested in preserving the status quo.” the report says. “The far right represents a more extreme version of conservatism, as its political vision is usually justified by the aspiration to restore or preserve values and practices that are part of the idealized historical heritage of the nation or ethnic community.”
The report adds: “While far-right groups’ ideology is designed to exclude minorities and foreigners, the liberal-democratic system is designed to emphasize civil rights, minority rights and the balance of power.”
The report says there were 350 “attacks initiated by far-right groups/individuals” in 2011.
Details about what makes an attack a “far right” action are not clear in the report, which was written by Arie Perliger, who directs the center’s terrorism studies and teaches social sciences at West Point.
A Republican congressional staffer who served in the military told The Washington Times: “If [the Defense Department] is looking for places to cut spending, this junk study is ground zero.
“Shouldn’t the Combating Terrorism Center be combating radical Islam around the globe instead of perpetuating the left’s myth that right-wingers are terrorists?” the staffer said. “The $64,000 dollar question is when will the Combating Terrorism Center publish their study on real left-wing terrorists like the Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front, and the Weather Underground?”
Dennis Prager, on why the left doesn’t just disagree with, but truly hates Sarah Palin even though she has done nothing wrong and hasn’t harmed anyone.
Megyn Kelly and Mark Levin are both lawyers. Mark Levin is a former justice department staffer for the Reagan Administration and has argued in front of the Supreme Court multiple times. Levin is also the author of the best selling book on the Supreme Court in history.
Lou Dobbs and the NRA President talking about how to protect children and how to get those adjudicated to be mentally unstable inserted into the National Instant Check (NICS) for back ground checks:
Ironic that the editors of the local newspaper who say that all guns are bad, have now gone into hiding, aren’t answering questions, and have hired armed guards to protect themselves.
UPDATE –“Anti-Gun” group finds that prominent anti-gunners are armed (video) – LINK
UPDATE II –Greg Gutfeld on armed “anti-gun” journalists: More guns = dumber writing (video) – LINK
This is what modern journalism has devolved to, and as far as we know, not a single “journalist” has resigned from the paper in the name of journalistic ethics.
The list is already being used by criminals to target homes on the list. Lawsuits will likely be filed. The Journal-news will try to hide behind the First Amendment, but that might not be successful as demonstrating that the Journal-News acted maliciously will be pretty easy in light of the editorial board’s members already previous public comments. Women who are armed to protect themselves from stalkers as well as some celebs have been endangered by this list.
And she is right. With the leadership of the GOP seeming to be all over the place, and an RNC that isn’t leading a rhetorical, philosophical, or policy battle; traditionalists, conservatives and those simply wanting some fiscal and regulatory sanity feel like people without a party, and for some they feel like aliens on their own country, but in reality such people are the majority.
[Note: The staff of Political Arena resides in South Bend, Indiana, the home of the University of Notre Dame, although we have no affiliation with the university.]
When Laura Hollis, a Notre Dame University business and law professor, looks at America’s path forward, she cannot help but see a dead end.
“Many people say to me, ‘If it gets worse than this, I’m not sure we can survive it,’ and I’m inclined to agree with them,” Hollis said in an interview with The College Fix. “It’s never been as bad as it is now.”
Hollis, who in addition to her professorship is a popular conservative columnist and political commentator, is the author of a post-election column titled “Post Mortem” that went viral across America. It was reposted on many websites, spread like wildfire across social media sites, and emailed far and wide, landing in mom-and-pop inboxes across the nation.
In fact, just as recently as Dec. 28, the popular left-leaning political blog Daily Kos posted an “open letter to Laura Hollis” denouncing her piece.
This ongoing whirlwind of a world wide web debate was prompted by Hollis’ Nov. 8 column, which analyzed the state of the union the day after President Barack Obama was re-elected.
It argued, among other things, that: conservatives are outnumbered; they’re losing the culture war; too many Americans are immature, seeking only self-gratification; and the so-called Republican War on Women played a role in the election outcome.
“America is on a horrific bender; has been for some time now,” Hollis wrote. “The warning signs of our fiscal profligacy and culture of lack of personal responsibility are everywhere – too many to mention. We need only look at other countries which have gone the route we are walking now to see what is in store. … I see the country I love headed toward its own ‘rock bottom,’ and I cannot seem to reach those who are taking it there.”
In an interview this week with The College Fix, Hollis said feedback she’s received from that piece has led her to believe millions of Americans feel as if they have no voice. But the answer, she argued, is not to cower in the corner and give up.
“Speak up,” Hollis said. “Because being polite does not mean being silent.”
First and foremost, the culture war must to be addressed, she said. It’s time to stop worrying about stepping on people’s toes or hurting people’s feelings, she said.
Some Republican and conservative commentators argued after the election the solution to regain the White House, Congress and the country is to become more moderate, acquiesce to the social norms promulgated by the Left.
Bad idea, Hollis said.
“We have to decide we need to change the tone and tenor of culture in the country,” Hollis said. “In order to change the culture, you have to be a part of the culture.”
Take, for example, the alleged War on Women. During the presidential campaign, women’s rights discussions served as a façade for something more sinister, she said. What appeared to be a discourse about access to birth control was really about expanding abortion services and physician-assisted suicide, Hollis said.
“I’m pro-better choice—all choices are not equal,” Hollis said. “If my father is suffering from advanced dementia, I don’t have the right to smother him with a pillow.”
Hollis said advances in science have provided new and startling information about life from conception through natural death that every American should learn. This is one example of the kinds of things that could help turn the culture war tide in conservatives’ favor.
Hollis said “the left” has become politically adept at demonizing people, but it is important for all Americans to understand everyone wants to make things better, she said.
While Hollis’ first point in her “Post-Mortem” work declared Americans who champion free enterprise are outnumbered by those who want free stuff, she said that did not mean throw in the towel.
“No matter where you are, that can be ground-zero for changing things,” Hollis said.
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.
CAIR is the Council for American Islamic Relations. CAIR employees work as consultants with the US Government in both the Bush and Obama Administrations and and the government has even referred to them as an unindicted co-conspiritor in raising funds in America to give to terror groups.
They are also in the process of taking over Libya, Syria and Jordan, with Obama and NATO giving them military support. Al-Qaeda, you know, those guys who hit is on 9/11, are a sub-group of the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama is giving them tanks and F-16′s too.
While Egyptians take to the streets to oppose what they claim is a nascent tyranny, Morsi and his Islamist government can count on support from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). For example, CAIR-Los Angeles boss Hussam Ayloush praised Morsi for assuming more power in order to prevent “corrupt judges” from the “undermining and undoing of every democratic step.”
In a Facebook post, Ayloush blamed Egypt’s internal strife on the secular opposition: “Much of the Egyptian opposition seem to be more interested in opposing Morsi and the MB than actually helping Egypt become a stable and institutional democracy,”
CAIR-New York’s Cyrus McGoldrick disparaged criticism of Morsi as “a last stand by old pro-West/Mubarak/Israel crowd to keep power in judiciary.”
CAIR-San Francisco chief Zahra Billoo dismissed American concerns that the Islamist-backed draft constitution wouldn’t protect human rights. “Why do we care about what the Egyptian Constitution says about indefinite detention, when it is being practiced by the U.S. government?” she wrote in a Twitter post Monday.
It has already been reported that the Obama Administration abuse of the Patriot Act is off the charts. Now this. Where are all of the Democrat civil libertarians now?
Illustrating just how close big brother is watching, the Obama Justice Department has secretly granted the government broad new powers to gather and keep personal information about ordinary U.S. citizens not suspected of any crimes.
It’s an unprecedented move by any administration that’s outraged even the powerful leftist civil rights groups that usually support the president. The public was kept in the dark as the controversial measure was quietly enacted by Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this year without input or discussion from legislators under the auspice of fighting terrorism.
Details were uncovered by a mainstream newspaper that pieced together how the attorney general helped counterterrorism officials who wanted to create a government dragnet by sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens, even those not suspected of any crimes. Some top officials opposed the idea of this unprecedented government surveillance of U.S. citizens, according to the story, but Holder signed the changes into effect anyways.
The measure grants the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) the power to store dossiers on ordinary citizens, including flight records, casino-employee lists, those hosting foreign exchange students and other personal data for up to five years. There need not be any suspicion that the person presents any sort of danger or has committed any crimes. The idea is to study for “suspicious patterns of behavior.”
Under the changes the NCTC can also give foreign governments information on American civilians so that they can conduct analysis of their own on our citizens. One former senior Obama White House official calls it “breathtaking” in its scope. A top Homeland Security official who fought the changes says “this is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public.”
Though little is known about the NCTC, it does appear to serve a purpose by keeping a database, known as Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), of more than 500,000 people suspected of terrorist activities or having terrorist ties. Under the new rules the government has the green light to gather and store anything it wants on any U.S. citizen, including everything from in health records to financial forms.
This seems to be in direct conflict with a law passed by Congress in the mid 70s specifically to prevent federal agents from rummaging through government files indiscriminately. The measure prohibits government agencies from sharing data with each other for purposes that aren’t “compatible” with the reason the data were originally collected.
They are also in the process of taking over Libya, Syria and Jordan, with Obama and NATO giving them military support. Al-Qaeda, you know, those guys who hit is on 9/11, are a sub-group of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Obama is giving them tanks and F-16’s too (but wants to take your guns)
What would the elite media reaction be if Bush had been doing this?
The New York Times Cairo bureau chief David K. Kirkpatrick insists that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “moderate, regular old political force,” despite Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi’s recent power grab and the Islamist organization’s radical views.
Kirkpatrick called into Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Wednesday from Egypt as the Brotherhood’s supporters battled opponents who feared a return to dictatorship on the streets of Cairo. When asked by Hewitt whether the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi, a former top ideological enforcer in the movement, were consolidating power in Egypt to pursue an undemocratic Islamist agenda, Kirkpatrick said he thought such criticism was “misplaced.”
“The Brotherhood, they’re politicians,” he said.
“They are not violent by nature, and they have over the last couple of decades evolved more and more into a moderate — conservative but religious, but moderate — regular old political force. I find that a lot of the liberal fears of the Brotherhood are somewhat outside. That said, you know, you don’t know what their ultimate vision of what the good life looks like. But in the short term, I think they just want to win elections.”
Founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s slogan is the not-so-moderate “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on Egypt, told The Daily Caller that Kirkpatrick’s assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood as moderate was simply a regurgitation of Muslim Brotherhood propaganda.
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?”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Foreign ownership of U.S. Treasury securities rose to a record level in October, a sign that overseas investors remain confident in U.S. debt despite a potential budget crisis.
Total foreign holdings of U.S. Treasurys rose to $5.48 trillion in October, the Treasury Department said Monday. That was up 0.1 percent from September. Still, the increase of $6 billion was the weakest since total holdings fell in December 2011.
China, the largest holder of U.S. government debt, increased its holdings slightly to $1.16 trillion. Japan, the second-largest holder, boosted its holdings by a smaller amount to $1.13 trillion. Brazil, the country with the third-largest holdings, increased its total to $255.2 billion.
“Did Jesus Die for Klingons too?” was just one session at a recent workshop funded by the Defense Advances Research Projects Agency:
Further, DARPA paid nearly $100,000 for a strategy planning workshop on the 100 Year Starship project last year included an interesting discussion involving the Klingons, a fictional alien species who were villains and then later allies of humanity in the Star Trek series. The session entitled “Did Jesus die for Klingons too?” featured philosophy professor Christian Weidemann of Germany’s Ruhr-University Bochum who pondered the theological conflict to Christianity if intelligent life was found on other planets. (page 17)
At another DoD-funded gathering, the brainstorming sessions covered topics such as how to make deep space travel most efficient, how scientists would go about creating a “warp bubble,” and whether or not humans would need to wear clothing during space travel.
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.”
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s $60.4 billion request for Hurricane Sandy relief has morphed into a huge Christmas stocking of goodies for federal agencies and even the state of Alaska, The Post has learned.
The pork-barrel feast includes more than $8 million to buy cars and equipment for the Homeland Security and Justice departments. It also includes a whopping $150 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to dole out to fisheries in Alaska and $2 million for the Smithsonian Institution to repair museum roofs in DC.
Other big-ticket items in the bill include $207 million for the VA Manhattan Medical Center; $41 million to fix up eight military bases along the storm’s path, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; $4 million for repairs at Kennedy Space Center in Florida; $3.3 million for the Plum Island Animal Disease Center and $1.1 million to repair national cemeteries.
Budget watchdogs have dubbed the 94-page emergency-spending bill “Sandy Scam.”
Matt Mayer of the conservative Heritage Foundation slammed the request as an “enormous Christmas gift worth of stuff.”
“The funding here should be focused on helping the community and the people, not replacing federal assets or federal items,” he said.
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.
“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 