Saturday 10 December 2016

The Folly of "PPP"

William Gairdner speaks out on PPP - Personal Pronoun Pressure

What follows is my contribution to a recent email discussion of "free speech" with a handful of close friends.

It began with one of our group deploring the fact that Professor Jordan Peterson, who teaches psychology at the University of Toronto, is currently under fire for refusing to bend to "ppp" - "personal pronoun pressure" - from students and other faculty members at that lost institution.

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There are many benighted folk at U of T who believe that when addressing another, the personal pronoun used to demarcate their gender must conform to the will of the addressee. These people apparently believe that human gender is not determined by God, human biology, procreative function, society, custom, or by anything other than one's own personal Will, to which they expect society to conform. A boy on campus who for some personal reason fancies himself to be a girl on Monday, may legitimately demand to be addressed as "she", but if sh/he changes hi/ser mind on Tuesday, may then as adamantly demand that we all revert to "he", as previously. It's a new form of speech control.
So I wrote what follows ...
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I admire the stout and rational defiance of Professor Peterson in the face of such leftist PC vitriol.

However, the truth is that university campuses have always been bastions of correctness, and have been attempting to control what people say and think for millennia. There is an extensive and bracing list of a wide range of different book-burning events on Wikipedia's website, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_book-burning_incidents

So, sadly, it is not true that the universities of the West have been bastions of "free speech." They have been bastions of qualified free speech. And this is still the case. So it seems the question is always - which group, or ideological belief system; in the name of what definable set of values - is speech to be qualified?

‎Seems to me that our widely-accepted definition of "free speech" until rather recently was qualified as follows:
barring libel and slander, you can say anything you want that does not offend public standards of decency, morality, or common religious belief, is not treasonous, and does not incite violence. I think that what supported those commonsensical prohibitions were three widely-held beliefs:

1) A belief that what Burke called the "social freedoms" (as allowed by the common bonds and common sense of the community) were prior in importance even to many, if not all, individual rights and freedoms.

2) Accordingly, there was a widespread belief that "democratic sovereignty" should be about the common will of the whole society (about what is good for all, not just for me as an individual). In other words, in a mature and self-conscious democracy, we are expected to discern the public good, and to choose this, even if it means our individual good may not improve. Mature adults were expected to subordinate their personal desires for the good of all. In this light, democracy was held to be far more than a mere aggregate of votes (a tally of what is good for me, and for millions of other self-centered individuals). It sought a higher vision of the good of all, whether I agree with it or not. In the past, everyone allowed a vote in a democracy was expected immediately to start thinking about the good of all, and to subordinate their own Will to that ideal.
3) Finally, these two beliefs resulted in a third: a belief that human life and society is to be understood as indelibly rooted in natural human biology (for sexual and family life, and child-rearing); and in natural law (for all moral concerns). Accordingly, that the Good was to be determined according to what came to be called "natural law" which may defined as "A command of right reason, that follows nature for the common good." So, a command, not just a personal urge of the moment; of right reason, not wrong reasoning; and that is rooted in human biological nature aiming at the common good - not just my personal good.
This has all been upended with incredible speed by what I describe (in The Great Divide) as "the triumph of Will over Nature". And so, alas, we have now come to believe that the Will of the individual is sovereign even (according to many intellectuals and judges) over the Will of the community, and most definitely, over the Will of nature, so to speak. Hence, an abortion right is defined as an individual woman's right, not in terms of the rights of society or the community as a whole, or by the natural-law idea that all life is naturally good and therefore to be protected, but rather, merely by the Mother's will to kill her own baby for her own convenience. Human gender is said to be defined by individual Will, rather than by one's natural biology, the idea being that individuals should not be slaves to nature; and marriage is now about "any two people" willing to marry, regardless of their natural biological genders, and so on ...

So the three beliefs above, have been upended, as follows:

1) Our traditional moral and social freedom (freedom to will what is good for all, even if not good for ourselves), has been replaced with the primacy of individual Will and freedom. Society and traditional morality have thus been upended. We now have "the world turned upside down" - a phrase heard in the seventeenth century when Cromwell's Army, close to revolt, voted in the idea that the soldiers should henceforth be giving orders to the Generals! ... an idea that quickly descended into chaos.
2) Democratic "sovereignty" (the Will for a public, or corporate good (meaning, of the whole body of the people) that transcends any individual good) is now redefined as a mere aggregate of individual wills, held to be prior in importance to any prior common social or moral standard.
3) What was always considered biologically, sexually, and pro-creatively natural, has been replaced in importance ‎by the strange idea that individual Will must be sovereign even over the dictates of one's own natural biology and gender. So we now have so-called transgender rights, gay rights, abortion rights, and personal pronoun rights - all dictated by individual Will rather than according to any public moral standard).

I believe that this baleful trend of modernity - the root source of which lies in what I have called
libertarian-socialism, which you can see spelled out in The Great Divide -has been aggressively dissolving the bonds of civil society. But historically it has been the strength of our social bonds that alone has served as a barrier to the invasions of state power. And so, with increasing speed, we have been been feeding ourselves into the hands of the state ("first individuate, the better to manipulate")


A Quick Note on Global Warming by William Gairdner

A Quick Note on Global Warming by William Gairdner

Friday, November 18, 2016 at 03:08PM

I just sent this brief note to a fellow who blames mankind for global warming, and asked him to refute all or any of it. No reply, as yet ...


  • we are now living in an inter­glacial age
  • the planet has been warming and cooling for eons
  • the medieval warming lasted about 200 years, and was far warmer than today, even though that was a pre­industrial age
  • no one can say for sure whether a rise in CO2 produces warming, or natural warming produces a rise in CO2
  • CO2 is a friendly gas and more of it is welcome. People confuse it with Carbon Monoxide (CO). More CO2 produces more crop growth, and hence more food.
  • the polar cap has always advanced and receded due to many natural factors not man made, such as warmer ocean currents
  • there is no imaginable cause that could melt the polar ice cap, which has an average annual temperature of ­26C, nor the antarctic ice cap, which has an annual average temperature of -51 degrees C
  • if all the ice that is floating at the polar cap were to melt, sea levels would not rise one centimeter (see: Archimedes Principle)
  • natural factors that seriously affect earth's climate include increases or decreases in solar radiation
  • solar radiation may be the cause of global warming, if in fact there is any. A clue? ­ there has been recession of the ice caps on Mars, where there are no people and no CO2, but Mars is exposed to solar radiation
  • even the IPCC says the global temperature has risen a little less than 1 degree C in a century. A century! Even if accurate, which is debatable, what this would signify is an incredible stability in global temperature over the past 100 years
  • instruments used for measuring temperature are not reliable, as too many of them are surrounded now by asphalt urban "heat islands, and so scientists have to "adjust" for this artificially­induced warming in their models. The adjustment made is ... a crap shoot.
  • America and Canada and most of Europe are peppered with measuring devices, but there are huge areas of earth ­ millions of square miles of land and ocean ­ including millions of square miles in northern Canada ­ which are not. Another crap shoot.
  • no one can explain why the upper atmosphere seems to have been cooling, not warming
  • Oh... one more point. Volcanoes are bad news. Mt Pinatubo alone put more greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere than did the entire industrial revolution 
Who Is William Gairdner? - See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gairdner


Friday 9 December 2016

George Soros Funded Organizations

This article comes from http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/

Organizations Funded Directly by George Soros and his Open Society Foundations
By Discover The Networks

Organizations that, in recent years, have received direct funding and assistance from George Soros and his Open Society Foundations (OSF) include the following. (Comprehensive profiles of each are available in the "Groups" section of DiscoverTheNetworks.org):

  • Advancement Project: This organization works to organize "communities of color" into politically cohesive units while disseminating its leftist worldviews and values as broadly as possible by way of a sophisticated communications department.
  • Air America Radio: Now defunct, this was a self-identified "liberal" radio network.
  • Al-Haq: This NGO produces highly politicized reports, papers, books, and legal analyses regarding alleged Israeli human-rights abuses committed against Palestinians.
  • All of Us or None: This organization seeks to change voting laws -- which vary from state to state -- so as to allow ex-inmates, parolees, and even current inmates to cast their ballots in political elections.
  • Alliance for Justice: Best known for its activism vis a vis the appointment of federal judges, this group consistently depicts Republican judicial nominees as "extremists."
  • America Coming Together: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to coordinate and organize pro-Democrat voter-mobilization programs.
  • America Votes: Soros also played a major role in creating this group, whose get-out-the-vote campaigns targeted likely Democratic voters.
  • America's Voice: This open-borders group seeks to promote “comprehensive” immigration reform that includes a robust agenda in favor of amnesty for illegal aliens.
  • American Bar Association Commission on Immigration Policy: This organization "opposes laws that require employers and persons providing education, health care, or other social services to verify citizenship or immigration status."
  • American Bridge 21st Century: This Super PAC conducts opposition research designed to help Democratic political candidates defeat their Republican foes.
  • American Civil Liberties Union: This group opposes virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by the U.S. government. It supports open borders, has rushed to the defense of suspected terrorists and their abettors, and appointed former New Left terrorist Bernardine Dohrn to its Advisory Board.
  • American Constitution Society for Law and Policy: This Washington, DC-based think tank seeks to move American jurisprudence to the left by recruiting, indoctrinating, and mobilizing young law students, helping them acquire positions of power. It also provides leftist Democrats with a bully pulpit from which to denounce their political adversaries.
  • American Family Voices: This group creates and coordinates media campaigns charging Republicans with wrongdoing.
  • American Federation of Teachers: After longtime AFT President Albert Shanker died in in 1997, he was succeeded by Sandra Feldman, who slowly “re-branded” the union, allying it with some of the most powerful left-wing elements of the New Labor Movement. When Feldman died in 2004, Edward McElroy took her place, followed by Randi Weingarten in 2008. All of them kept the union on the leftward course it had adopted in its post-Shanker period.
  • American Friends Service Committee: This group views the United States as the principal cause of human suffering around the world. As such, it favors America's unilateral disarmament, the dissolution of American borders, amnesty for illegal aliens, the abolition of the death penalty, and the repeal of the Patriot Act.
  • American Immigration Council: This non-profit organization is a prominent member of the open-borders lobby. It advocates expanded rights and amnesty for illegal aliens residing in the U.S.
  • American Immigration Law Foundation: This group supports amnesty for illegal aliens, on whose behalf it litigates against the U.S. government.
  • American Independent News Network: This organization promotes "impact journalism" that advocates progressive change.
  • American Institute for Social Justice: AISJ's goal is to produce skilled community organizers who can “transform poor communities” by agitating for increased government spending on city services, drug interdiction, crime prevention, housing, public-sector jobs, access to healthcare, and public schools.
  • American Library Association: This group has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's War on Terror -- most particularly, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which it calls "a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users."
  • The American Prospect, Inc.: This corporation trains and mentors young leftwing journalists, and organizes strategy meetings for leftist leaders.
  • Amnesty International: This organization directs a grossly disproportionate share of its criticism for human rights violations at the United States and Israel.
  • Applied Research Center: Viewing the United States as a nation where “structural racism” is deeply “embedded in the fabric of society,” ARC seeks to "build a fair and equal society" by demanding “concrete change from our most powerful institutions."
  • Arab American Institute Foundation: The Arab American Institute denounces the purportedly widespread civil liberties violations directed against Arab Americans in the post-9/11 period, and characterizes Israel as a brutal oppressor of the Palestinian people.
  • Aspen Institute: This organization promotes radical environmentalism and views America as a nation plagued by deep-seated “structural racism.”
  • Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now: This group conducts voter mobilization drives on behalf of leftist Democrats. These initiatives have been notoriously marred by fraud and corruption.
  • Ballot Initiative Strategy Center: This organization seeks to advance “a national progressive strategy” by means of ballot measures—state-level legislative proposals that pass successfully through a petition (“initiative”) process and are then voted upon by the public.
  • Bill of Rights Defense Committee: This group provides a detailed blueprint for activists interested in getting their local towns, cities, and even college campuses to publicly declare their opposition to the Patriot Act, and to designate themselves "Civil Liberties Safe Zones." The organization also came to the defense of self-described radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who was convicted in 2005 of providing material support for terrorism.
  • Black Alliance for Just Immigration: This organization seeks to create a unified movement for “social and economic justice” centered on black racial identity.
  • Blueprint North Carolina: This group seeks to “influence state policy in North Carolina so that residents of the state benefit from more progressive policies such as better access to health care, higher wages, more affordable housing, a safer, cleaner environment, and access to reproductive health services.”
  • Brennan Center for Justice: This think tank/legal activist group generates scholarly studies, mounts media campaigns, files amicus briefs, gives pro bono support to activists, and litigates test cases in pursuit of radical "change."
  • Brookings Institution: This organization has been involved with a variety of internationalist and state-sponsored programs, including one that aspires to facilitate the establishment of a U.N.-dominated world government. Brookings Fellows have also called for additional global collaboration on trade and banking; the expansion of the Kyoto Protocol; and nationalized health insurance for children. Nine Brookings economists signed a petitionopposing President Bush's tax cuts in 2003.
  • Campaign for America's Future: This group supports tax hikes, socialized medicine, and a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs.
  • Campaign for Better Health Care: This organization favors a single-payer, government-run, universal health care system.
  • Campaign for Youth Justice: This organization contends that “transferring juveniles to the adult criminal-justice system leads to higher rates of recidivism, puts incarcerated and detained youth at unnecessary risk, has little deterrence value, and does not increase public safety.”
  • Campus Progress: A project of the Soros-bankrolled Center for American Progress, this group seeks to "strengthen progressive voices on college and university campuses, counter the growing influence of right-wing groups on campus, and empower new generations of progressive leaders."
  • Casa de Maryland: This organization aggressively lobbies legislators to vote in favor of policies that promote expanded rights, including amnesty, for illegal aliens currently residing in the United States.
  • Catalist: This is a for-profit political consultancy that seeks "to help progressive organizations realize measurable increases in civic participation and electoral success by building and operating a robust national voter database of every voting-age American."
  • Catholics for Choice: This nominally Catholic organization supports women's right to abortion-on-demand.
  • Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good: This political nonprofit group is dedicated to generating support from the Catholic community for leftwing candidates, causes, and legislation.
  • Center for American Progress: This leftist think tank is headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, works closely with Hillary Clinton, and employs numerous former Clinton administration staffers. It is committed to "developing a long-term vision of a progressive America" and "providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals."
  • Center for Community Change: This group recruits and trains activists to spearhead leftist "political issue campaigns." Promoting increased funding for social welfare programs by bringing "attention to major national issues related to poverty," the Center bases its training programs on the techniques taught by the famed radical organizer Saul Alinsky.
  • Center for Constitutional Rights: This pro-Castro organization is a core member of the open borders lobby, has opposed virtually all post-9/11 anti-terrorism measures by the U.S. government, and alleges that American injustice provokes acts of international terrorism.
  • Center for Economic and Policy Research: This group opposed welfare reform, supports "living wage" laws, rejects tax cuts, and consistently lauds the professed achievements of socialist regimes, most notably Venezuela.
  • Center for International Policy: This organization uses advocacy, policy research, media outreach, and educational initiatives to promote “transparency and accountability” in U.S. foreign policy and global relations. It generally views America as a disruptive, negative force in the world.
  • Center for Reproductive Rights: CRR's mission is to guarantee safe, affordable contraception and abortion-on-demand for all women, including adolescents. The organization has filed state and federal lawsuits demanding access to taxpayer-funded abortions (through Medicaid) for low-income women.
  • Center for Responsible Lending: This organization was a major player in the subprime mortgage crisis. According to Phil Kerpen (vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity), CRL “sh[ook] down and harass[ed] banks into making bad loans to unqualified borrowers.” Moreover, CRL negotiated a contract enabling it to operate as a conduit of high-risk loans to Fannie Mae.
  • Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Reasoning from the premise that tax cuts generally help only the wealthy, this organization advocates greater tax expenditures on social welfare programs for low earners.
  • Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS): Aiming to redistribute wealth by way of higher taxes imposed on those whose incomes are above average, COWS contends that "it is important that state government be able to harness fair contribution from all parts of society – including corporations and the wealthy."
  • Change America Now: Formed in December 2006, Change America Now describes itself as "an independent political organization created to educate citizens on the failed policies of the Republican Congress and to contrast that record of failure with the promise offered by a Democratic agenda."
  • Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: This group litigates and brings ethics charges against "government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests" and "betray the public trust." Almost all of its targets are Republicans.
  • Coalition for an International Criminal Court: This group seeks to subordinate American criminal-justice procedures to those of an international court.
  • Common Cause: This organization aims to bring about campaign-finance reform, pursue media reform resembling the Fairness Doctrine, and cut military budgets in favor of increased social-welfare and environmental spending.
  • Constitution Project: This organization seeks to challenge the legality of military commissions; end the detainment of "enemy combatants”; condemn government surveillance of terrorists; and limit the President's executive privileges.
  • Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund: Defenders of Wildlife opposes oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It condemns logging, ranching, mining, and even the use of recreational motorized vehicles as activities that are destructive to the environment.
  • Democracy Alliance: This self-described "liberal organization" aims to raise $200 million to develop a funding clearinghouse for leftist groups. Soros is a major donor to this group.
  • Democracy 21: This group is a staunch supporter of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act.
  • Democracy Now!: Democracy Now! was created in 1996 by WBAI radio news director Amy Goodman and four partners to provide "perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media," i.e., the views of radical and foreign journalists, left and labor activists, and ideological foes of capitalism.
  • Democratic Justice Fund: DJF opposes the Patriot Act and most efforts to restrict or regulate immigration into the United States -- particularly from countries designated by the State Department as "terrorist nations."
  • Democratic Party: Soros' funding activities are devoted largely to helping the Democratic Party solidify its power base. In a November 2003 interview, Soros stated that defeating President Bush in 2004 "is the central focus of my life" ... "a matter of life and death." He pledged to raise $75 million to defeat Bush, and personally donated nearly a third of that amount to anti-Bush organizations. "America under Bush," he said, "is a danger to the world, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."
  • Demos: This organization lobbies federal and state policymakers to “addres[s] the economic insecurity and inequality that characterize American society today”; promotes “ideas for reducing gaps in wealth, income and political influence”; and favors tax hikes for the wealthy.
  • Drum Major Institute: This group describes itself as “a non-partisan, non-profit think tank generating the ideas that fuel the progressive movement,” with the ultimate aim of persuading “policymakers and opinion-leaders” to take steps that advance its vision of “social and economic justice.”
  • Earthjustice: This group seeks to place severe restrictions on how U.S. land and waterways may be used. It opposes most mining and logging initiatives, commercial fishing businesses, and the use of motorized vehicles in undeveloped areas.
  • Economic Policy Institute: This organization believes that “government must play an active role in protecting the economically vulnerable, ensuring equal opportunity, and improving the well-being of all Americans.”
  • Electronic Privacy Information Center: This organization has been a harsh critic of the USA PATRIOT Act and has joined the American Civil Liberties Union in litigating two cases calling for the FBI "to publicly release or account for thousands of pages of information about the government's use of PATRIOT Act powers."
  • Ella Baker Center for Human Rights: Co-founded by the revolutionary communist Van Jones, this anti-poverty organization claims that “decades of disinvestment in our cities” -- compounded by “excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration” -- have “led to despair and homelessness.”
  • EMILY's List: This political network raises money for Democratic female political candidates who support unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
  • Energy Action Coalition: Founded in 2004, this group describes itself as “a coalition of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice groups working together to build the youth clean energy and climate movement.” For EAC, this means “dismantling oppression” according to its principles of environmental justice.
  • Equal Justice USA: This group claims that America's criminal-justice system is plagued by “significant race and class biases,” and thus seeks to promote major reforms.
  • Fair Immigration Reform Movement: This is the open-borders arm of the Center for Community Change.
  • Faithful America: This organization promotes the redistribution of wealth, an end to enhanced interrogation procedures vis a vis prisoners-of-war, the enactment of policies to combat global warming, and the creation of a government-run heath care system.
  • Feminist Majority: Characterizing the United States as an inherently sexist nation, this group focuses on "advancing the legal, social and political equality of women with men, countering the backlash to women's advancement, and recruiting and training young feminists to encourage future leadership for the feminist movement in the United States."
  • Four Freedoms Fund: This organization was designed to serve as a conduit through which large foundations could fund state-based open-borders organizations more flexibly and quickly.
  • Free Exchange on Campus: This organization was created solely to oppose the efforts of one individual, David Horowitz, and his campaign to have universities adopt an "Academic Bill of Rights," as well as todenounce Horowitz's 2006 book The Professors. Member organizations of FEC include Campus Progress (a project of the Center for American Progress); the American Association of University Professors; theAmerican Civil Liberties UnionPeople For the American Way; the United States Student Association; theCenter for Campus Free Speech; the American Library AssociationFree Press; and the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups.
  • Free Press: This "media reform" organization has worked closely with many notable leftists and such organizations as Media Matters for AmericaAir America RadioGlobal ExchangeCode PinkFairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the Revolutionary Communist PartyMother Jones magazine, and Pacifica Radio.
  • Funding Exchange: Dedicated to the concept of philanthropy as a vehicle for social change, this organization pairs leftist donors and foundations with likeminded groups and activists who are dedicated to bringing about their own version of "progressive" change and social justice. Many of these grantees assume that American society is rife with racism, discrimination, exploitation, and inequity and needs to be overhauled via sustained education, activism, and social agitation.
  • Gamaliel Foundation: Modeling its tactics on those of the radical Sixties activist Saul Alinsky, this group takes a strong stand against current homeland security measures and immigration restrictions.
  • Gisha: Center for the Legal Protection of Freedom of Movement: This anti-Israel organization seeks to help Palestinians "exercise their right to freedom of movement."
  • Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect: This group contends that when a state proves either unable or unwilling to protect civilians from mass atrocities occurring within its borders, it is the responsibility of the international community to intervene -- peacefully if possible, but with military force if necessary.
  • Global Exchange: Established in 1988 by pro-Castro radical Medea Benjamin, this group consistently condemns America's foreign policy, business practices, and domestic life. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Global Exchange advised Americans to examine "the root causes of resentment against the United States in the Arab world -- from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil to our biased policy towards Israel."
  • Grantmakers Without Borders: GWB tends to be very supportive of leftist environmental, anti-war, and civil rights groups. It is also generally hostile to capitalism, which it deems one of the chief "political, economic, and social systems" that give rise to a host of "social ills."
  • Green For All: This group was created by Van Jones to lobby for federal climate, energy, and economic policy initiatives.
  • Health Care for America Now: This group supports a “single payer” model where the federal government would be in charge of financing and administering the entire U.S. healthcare system.
  • Human Rights Campaign: The largest "lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender" lobbying group in the United States, HRC supports political candidates and legislation that will advance the LGBT agenda. Historically, HRC has most vigorously championed HIV/AIDS-related legislation, “hate crime” laws, the abrogation of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and the legalization of gay marriage.
  • Human Rights First: This group supports open borders and the rights of illegal aliens; charges that the Patriot Act severely erodes Americans' civil liberties; has filed amicus curiae briefs on behalf of terror suspect Jose Padilla; and deplores the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities.
  • Human Rights Watch: This group directs a disproportionate share of its criticism at the United States and Israel. It opposes the death penalty in all cases, and supports open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.
  • I'lam: This anti-Israel NGO seeks "to develop and empower the Arab media and to give voice to Palestinian issues."
  • Immigrant Defense Project: To advance the cause of illegal immigrants, the IDP provides immigration law backup support and counseling to New York defense attorneys and others who represent or assist immigrants in criminal justice and immigration systems, as well as to immigrants themselves.
  • Immigrant Legal Resource Center: This group claims to have helped gain amnesty for some three million illegal aliens in the U.S., and in the 1980s was part of the sanctuary movement which sought to grant asylum to refugees from the failed Communist states of Central America.
  • Immigrant Workers Citizenship Project: This open-borders organization advocates mass immigration to the U.S.
  • Immigration Advocates Network: This alliance of immigrant-rights groups seeks  to “increase access to justice for low-income immigrants and strengthen the capacity of organizations serving them.”
  • Immigration Policy Center: IPC is an advocate of open borders and contends that the massive influx of illegal immigrants into America is due to U.S. government policy, since “the broken immigration system […] spurs unauthorized immigration in the first place.”
  • Independent Media Center: This Internet-based, news and events bulletin board represents an invariably leftist, anti-capitalist perspective and serves as a mouthpiece for anti-globalization/anti-America themes.
  • Independent Media Institute: IMI administers the SPIN Project (Strategic Press Information Network), which provides leftist organizations with "accessible and affordable strategic communications consulting, training, coaching, networking opportunities and concrete tools" to help them "achieve their social justice goals."
  • Institute for America's Future: IAF supports socialized medicine, increased government funding for education, and the creation of an infrastructure "to ensure that the voice of the progressive majority is heard."
  • Institute for New Economic Thinking: Seeking to create a new worldwide "economic paradigm," this organization is staffed by numerous individuals who favor government intervention in national economies, and who view capitalism as a flawed system.
  • Institute for Policy Studies: This think tank has long supported Communist and anti-American causes around the world. Viewing capitalism as a breeding ground for "unrestrained greed," IPS seeks to provide a corrective to "unrestrained markets and individualism." Professing an unquestioning faith in the righteousness of the United Nations, it aims to bring American foreign policy under UN control.
  • Institute for Public Accuracy: This anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Israel organization sponsored actor Sean Penn’s celebrated visit to Baghdad in 2002. It also sponsored visits to Iraq by Democratic Congressmen Nick Rahall and former Democrat Senator James Abourezk
  • Institute for Women's Policy Research: This group views the U.S. as a nation rife with discrimination against women, and publishes research to draw attention to this alleged state of affairs. It also advocates unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, stating that "access to abortion is essential to the economic well-being of women and girls."
  • International Crisis Group: One of this organization's leading figures is its Mideast Director, Robert Malley, who was President Bill Clinton's Special Assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs. His analysis of the Mideast conflict is markedly pro-Palestinian.
  • J Street: This anti-Israel group warns that Israel’s choice to take military action to stop Hamas' terrorist attacks “will prove counter-productive and only deepen the cycle of violence in the region”
  • Jewish Funds for Justice: This organization views government intervention and taxpayer funding as crucial components of enlightened social policy. It seeks to redistribute wealth from Jewish donors to low-income communities “to combat the root causes of domestic economic and social injustice.” By JFJ's reckoning, chief among those root causes are the inherently negative by-products of capitalism – most notably racism and “gross economic inequality.”
  • Joint Victory Campaign 2004: Founded by George Soros and Harold Ickes, this group was a major fundraising entity for Democrats during the 2004 election cycle. It collected contributions (including large amounts from Soros personally) and disbursed them to two other groups, America Coming Together and the Media Fund, which also worked on behalf of Democrats.
  • Justice at Stake: This coalition calls for judges to be appointed by nonpartisan, independent commissions in a process known as “merit selection,” rather than elected by the voting public.
  • LatinoJustice PRLDF: This organization supports bilingual education, the racial gerrymandering of voting districts, and expanded rights for illegal aliens. 
  • Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law: This group views America as an unremittingly racist nation; uses the courts to mandate race-based affirmative action preferences in business and academia; has filed briefs against the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to limit the wholesale granting of green cards and to identify potential terrorists; condemns the Patriot Act; and calls on Americans to "recognize the contribution" of illegal aliens.
  • League of United Latin American Citizens: This group views America as a nation plagued by "an alarming increase in xenophobia and anti-Hispanic sentiment"; favors racial preferences; supports the legalization of illegal Hispanic aliens; opposes military surveillance of U.S. borders; opposes making English America's official language; favors open borders; and rejects anti-terrorism legislation like the Patriot Act.
  • League of Women Voters Education Fund: The League supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; supports "motor-voter" registration, which allows anyone with a driver's license to become a voter, regardless of citizenship status; and supports tax hikes and socialized medicine.
  • League of Young Voters: This organization seeks to “empowe[r] young people nationwide” to “participate in the democratic process and create progressive political change on the local, state and national level[s].”
  • Lynne Stewart Defense Committee: IRS records indicate that Soros's Open Society Institute made a September 2002 grant of $20,000 to this organization. Stewart was the criminal-defense attorney who was later convicted for abetting her client, the "blind sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman, in terrorist activities connected with his Islamic Group.
  • Machsom Watch: This organization describes itself as "a movement of Israeli women, peace activists from all sectors of Israeli society, who oppose the Israeli occupation and the denial of Palestinians' rights to move freely in their land."
  • MADRE: This international women's organization deems America the world's foremost violator of human rights. As such, it seeks to "communicat[e] the real-life impact of U.S. policies on women and families confronting violence, poverty and repression around the world," and to "demand alternatives to destructive U.S. policies." It also advocates unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
  • Malcolm X Grassroots Movement: This group views the U.S. as a nation replete with racism and discrimination against blacks; seeks to establish an independent black nation in the southeastern United States; and demands reparations for slavery.
  • Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition: This group calls for the expansion of civil rights and liberties for illegal aliens; laments that illegal aliens in America are commonly subjected to "worker exploitation"; supports tuition-assistance programs for illegal aliens attending college; and characterizes the Patriot Act as a "very troubling" assault on civil liberties.
  • Media Fund: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to conceptualize, produce, and place political ads on television, radio, print, and the Internet.
  • Media Matters for America: This organization is a "web-based, not-for-profit … progressive research and information center" seeking to "systematically monitor a cross-section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation." The group works closely with the Soros-backed Center for American Progress, and is heavily funded by Democracy Alliance, of which Soros is a major financier.
  • Mercy Corps: Vis a vis the Arab-Israeli conflict, Mercy Corps places all blame for Palestinian poverty and suffering directly on Israel.
  • Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund: This group advocates open borders, free college tuition for illegal aliens, lowered educational standards to accommodate Hispanics, and voting rights for criminals. In MALDEF's view, supporters of making English the official language of the United States are "motivated by racism and anti-immigrant sentiments," while advocates of sanctions against employers reliant on illegal labor seek to discriminate against "brown-skinned people."
  • Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein, PC: This influential defender of Big Labor is headed by Democrat operativeHarold Ickes.
  • Midwest Academy: This entity trains radical activists in the tactics of direct action, targeting, confrontation, and intimidation.
  • Migration Policy Institute: This group seeks to create "a North America with gradually disappearing border controls ... with permanent migration remaining at moderate levels."
  • Military Families Speak Out: This group ascribes the U.S. invasion of Iraq to American imperialism and lust for oil.
  • Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment: This group is the rebranded Missouri branch of the now-defunct, pro-socialist, community organization ACORN.
  • MoveOn.org: This Web-based organization supports Democratic political candidates through fundraising, advertising, and get-out-the-vote drives.
  • Ms. Foundation for Women: This group laments what it views as the widespread and enduring flaws of American society: racism, sexism, homophobia, and the violation of civil rights and liberties. It focuses its philanthropy on groups that promote affirmative action for women, unfettered access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, amnesty for illegal aliens, and big government generally.
  • NARAL Pro-Choice America: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, and works to elect pro-abortion Democrats.
  • NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund: The NAACP supports racial preferences in employment and education, as well as the racial gerrymandering of voting districts. Underpinning its support for race preferences is the fervent belief that white racism in the United States remains an intractable, largely undiminished, phenomenon.
  • The Nation Institute: This nonprofit entity sponsors leftist conferences, fellowships, awards for radical activists, and journalism internships.
  • National Abortion Federation: This group opposes any restrictions on abortion at either the state or federal levels, and champions the introduction of unrestricted abortion into developing regions of the world.
  • National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty: This group was established in 1976 as the first "fully staffed national organization exclusively devoted to abolishing capital punishment."
  • National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy: This group depicts the United States as a nation in need of dramatic structural change financed by philanthropic organizations. It overwhelmingly promotes grant-makers and grantees with leftist agendas, while criticizing their conservative counterparts.
  • National Committee for Voting Integrity: This group opposes "the implementation of proof of citizenship and photo identification requirements for eligible electors in American elections as the means of assuring election integrity."
  • National Council for Research on Women: This group supports big government, high taxes, military spending cuts, increased social welfare spending, and the unrestricted right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
  • National Council of La Raza: This group lobbies for racial preferences, bilingual education, stricter hate-crime laws, mass immigration, and amnesty for illegal aliens.
  • National Council of Women's Organizations: This group views the United States as a nation rife with injustice against girls and women. It advocates high levels of spending for social welfare programs, and supports race and gender preferences for minorities and women in business and academia.
  • National Immigration Forum: Opposing the enforcement of present immigration laws, this organization urges the American government to "legalize" en masse all illegal aliens currently in the United States who have no criminal records, and to dramatically increase the number of visas available for those wishing to migrate to the U.S. The Forum is particularly committed to opening the borders to unskilled, low-income workers, and immediately making them eligible for welfare and social service programs.
  • National Immigration Law Center: This group seeks to win unrestricted access to government-funded social welfare programs for illegal aliens.
  • National Lawyers Guild: This group promotes open borders; seeks to weaken America's intelligence-gathering agencies; condemns the Patriot Act as an assault on civil liberties; rejects capitalism as an unviable economic system; has rushed to the defense of convicted terrorists and their abettors; and generally opposes all U.S. foreign policy positions, just as it did during the Cold War when it sided with the Soviets.
  • National Organization for Women: This group advocates the unfettered right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; seeks to "eradicate racism, sexism and homophobia" from American society; attacks Christianity and traditional religious values; and supports gender-based preferences for women.
  • National Partnership for Women and Families: This organization supports race- and sex-based preferences in employment and education. It also advocates for the universal "right" of women to undergo taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand at any stage of pregnancy and for any reason.
  • National Priorities Project: This group supports government-mandated redistribution of wealth -- through higher taxes and greater expenditures on social welfare programs. NPP exhorts the government to redirect a significant portion of its military funding toward public education, universal health insurance, environmentalist projects, and welfare programs.
  • National Public Radio: Founded in 1970 with 90 public radio stations as charter members, NPR is today a loose network of more than 750 U.S. radio stations across the country, many of which are based on college and university campuses. (source)
  • National Security Archive Fund: This group collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act to a degree that compromises American national security and the safety of intelligence agents.
  • National Women's Law Center: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; lobbies against conservative judicial appointees; advocates increased welfare spending to help low-income mothers; and favors higher taxes for the purpose of generating more funds for such government programs as Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, foster care, health care, child-support enforcement, and student loans.
  • Natural Resources Defense Council: One of the most influential environmentalist lobbying groups in the United States, the Council claims a membership of one million people.
  • New America Foundation: This organization uses policy papers, media articles, books, and educational events to influence public opinion on such topics as healthcare, environmentalism, energy policy, the Mideast conflict, global governance, and much more.
  • New Israel Fund: This organization gives support to NGOs that regularly produce reports accusing Israel of human-rights violations and religious persecution.
  • NewsCorpWatch: A project of Media Matters For America, NewsCorpWatch was established with the help of a $1 million George Soros grant to Media Matters.
  • Pacifica Foundation: This entity owns and operates Pacifica Radio, awash from its birth with the socialist-Marxist rhetoric of class warfare and hatred for capitalism.
  • Palestinian Center for Human Rights: This NGO investigates and documents what it views as Israeli human-rights violations against Palestinians.
  • Peace and Security Funders Group: This is an association of more than 60 foundations that give money to leftist anti-war and environmentalist causes. Its members tend to depict America as the world's chief source of international conflict, environmental destruction, and economic inequalities.
  • Peace Development Fund: In PDF's calculus, the United States needs a massive overhaul of its social and economic institutions. "Recently," explains PDF, "we have witnessed the negative effects of neo-liberalism and the globalization of capitalism, the de-industrialization of the U.S. and the growing gap between the rich and poor ..."
  • People for the American Way: This group opposes the Patriot Act, anti-terrorism measures generally, and the allegedly growing influence of the "religious right."
  • People Improving Communities Through Organizing: This group uses Alinsky-style organizing tactics to advance the doctrines of the religious left.
  • Physicians for Human Rights: This group is selectively and disproportionately critical of the United States and Israel in its condemnations of human rights violations.
  • Physicians for Social Responsibility: This is an anti-U.S.-military organization that also embraces the tenets of radical environmentalism.
  • Planned Parenthood: This group is the largest abortion provider in the United States and advocates taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
  • Ploughshares Fund: This public grantmaking foundation opposes America's development of a missile defense system, and contributes to many organizations that are highly critical of U.S. foreign policies and military ventures.
  • Prepare New York: This group supported the proposed construction of a Muslim Community Center near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan – a project known as the Cordoba Initiative, headed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
  • Presidential Climate Action Project: PCAP's mission is to create a new 21st-century economy, completely carbon-free and based largely on renewable energy. A key advisor to the organization is the revolutionary communist Van Jones.
  • Prison Moratorium Project: This initiative was created in 1995 for the express purpose of working for the elimination of all prisons in the United States and the release of all inmates. Reasoning from the premise that incarceration is never an appropriate means of dealing with crime, it deems American society's inherent inequities the root of all criminal behavior.
  • Progressive Change Campaign Committee: This organization works “to elect bold progressive candidates to federal office and to help [them] and their campaigns save money, work smarter, and win more often.”
  • Progressive States Network: PSN's mission is to "pass progressive legislation in all fifty states by providing coordinated research and strategic advocacy tools to forward-thinking state legislators."
  • Project Vote: This is the voter-mobilization arm of the Soros-funded ACORN. A persistent pattern of lawlessness and corruption has followed ACORN/Project Vote activities over the years.
  • Pro Publica: Claiming that “investigative journalism is at risk,” this group aims to remedy this lacuna in news publishing by “expos[ing] abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.”
  • Proteus Fund: This foundation directs its philanthropy toward a number of radical leftwing organizations.
  • Public Citizen Foundation: Public Citizen seeks increased government intervention and litigation against corporations -- a practice founded on the notion that American corporations, like the capitalist system of which they are a part, are inherently inclined toward corruption.
  • Public Justice Center: Viewing America as a nation rife with injustice and discrimination, this organization engages in legislative and policy advocacy to promote "systemic change for the disenfranchised."
  • Rebuild and Renew America Now (a.k.a. Unity '09): Spearheaded by MoveOn.org and overseen by longtime activist Heather Booth, this coalition was formed to facilitate the passage of President Obama’s "historic" $3.5 trillion budget for fiscal year 2010.
  • Res Publica: Seeking to advance far-left agendas in places all around the world, RP specializes in “E-advocacy,” or web-based movement-building.
  • Roosevelt Institute: Proceeding from the premise that free-market capitalism is inherently unjust and prone to periodic collapses caused by its own structural flaws, RI currently administers several major projects aimed at reshaping the American economy to more closely resemble a socialist system.
  • Secretary of State Project: This project was launched in July 2006 as an independent "527" organization devoted to helping Democrats get elected to the office of Secretary of State in selected swing, or battleground, states.
  • Sentencing Project: Asserting that prison-sentencing patterns are racially discriminatory, this initiative advocates voting rights for felons.
  • Social Justice Leadership: This organization seeks to transform an allegedly inequitable America into a "just society" by means of "a renewed social-justice movement."
  • Shadow Democratic Party: This is an elaborate network of non-profit activist groups organized by George Soros and others to mobilize resources -- money, get-out-the-vote drives, campaign advertising, and policy iniatives -- to elect Democratic candidates and guide the Democratic Party towards the left.
  • Sojourners: This evangelical Christian ministry preaches radical leftwing politics. During the 1980s it championed Communist revolution in Central America and chastised U.S. policy-makers for their tendency "to assume the very worst about their Soviet counterparts." More recently, Sojourners has taken up the cause of environmental activism, opposed welfare reform as a "mean-spirited Republican agenda," and mounted a defense of affirmative action.
  • Southern Poverty Law Center: This organization monitors the activities of what it calls “hate groups” in the United States. It exaggerates the prevalence of white racism directed against American minorities.
  • State Voices: This coalition helps independent local activist groups in 22 states work collaboratively on a year-round basis, so as to maximize the impact of their efforts.
  • Talking Transition: This was a two-week project launched in early November 2013 to “help shape the transition” to City Hall for the newly elected Democratic mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio.
  • Think Progress: This Internet blog "pushes back, daily," by its own account, against its conservative targets, and seeks to transform "progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world."
  • Thunder Road Group: This political consultancy, in whose creation Soros had a hand, coordinates strategy for the Media FundAmerica Coming Together, and America Votes.
  • Tides Foundation and Tides Center: Tides is a major funder of the radical Left.
  • U.S. Public Interest Research Group: This is an umbrella organization of student groups that support leftist agendas.
  • Universal Healthcare Action Network: This organization supports a single-payer health care system controlled by the federal government.
  • Urban Institute: This research organization favors socialized medicine, expansion of the federal welfare bureaucracy, and tax hikes for higher income-earners.
  • USAction Education Fund: USAction lists its priorities as: "fighting the right wing agenda"; "building grassroots political power"; winning "social, racial and economic justice for all"; supporting a system of taxpayer-funded socialized medicine; reversing "reckless tax cuts for millionaires and corporations" which shield the "wealthy" from paying their "fair share"; advocating for "pro-consumer and environmental regulation of corporate abuse"; "strengthening progressive voices on local, state and national issues"; and working to "register, educate and get out the vote ... [to] help progressives get elected at all levels of government."
  • Voto Latino: This group seeks to mobilize Latin-Americans to become registered voters and political activists.
  • We Are America Alliance: This coalition promotes “increased civic participation by immigrants” in the American political process.
  • Working Families Party: An outgrowth of the socialist New Party, WFP seeks to help push the Democratic Party toward the left.
  • World Organization Against Torture: This coalition works closely with groups that condemn Israeli security measures against Palestinian terrorism.
  • YWCA World Office, Switzerland: The YWCA opposes abstinence education; supports universal access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; and opposes school vouchers.

"Secondary" or "Indirect" Affiliates of the George Soros Network
By Discover The Networks


In addition to those organizations that are funded directly by George Soros and his Open Society Foundations (OSF), there are also numerous "secondary" or
"indirect" affiliates of the Soros network. These include organizations which do not receive direct funding from Soros and OSF, but which are funded by one or more organizations that do.

  • Center for Progressive Leadership: Funded by the Soros-bankrolled Democracy Alliance, this anti-capitalist organization is dedicated to training future leftist political leaders.
  • John Adams Project:This project of the American Civil Liberties Union was accused of: (a) having hired investigators to photograph CIA officers thought to have been involved in enhanced interrogations of terror suspects detained in Guantanamo, and then (b) showing the photos to the attorneys of those suspects, some of whom were senior al-Qaeda operatives.
  • Moving Ideas Network (MIN): This coalition of more than 250 leftwing activist groups is a partner organization of the Soros-backed Center for American Progress. MIN was originally a project of the Soros-backed American Prospect and, as such, received indirect funding from the Open Society Institute. In early 2006, The American Prospect relinquished control of the Moving Ideas Network.
  • New Organizing Institute: Created by the Soros-funded MoveOn.org, this group "trains young, technology-enabled political organizers to work for progressive campaigns and organizations."
  • Think Progress: This "project" of the American Progress Action Fund, which is a "sister advocacy organization"of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress and Campus Progress, seeks to transform "progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world."
  • Vote for Change: Coordinated by the political action committee of the Soros-funded MoveOn.org, Vote for Change was a group of 41 musicians and bands that performed concerts in several key election "battleground"states during October 2004, to raise money in support of Democrat John Kerry's presidential bid.
  • Working Families Party: Created in 1998 to help push the Democratic Party toward the left, this front group for the Soros-funded ACORN functions as a political party that promotes ACORN-friendly candidates.

Obama learned his lesson well


"Obama learned his lesson well. I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday." --Letter from L. DAVID ALINSKY, son of Neo-Marxist Saul Alinsky


Hillary, Obama and the Cult of Alinsky: "True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties....

"One Alinsky benefactor was Wall Street investment banker Eugene Meyer, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post. They used their newspaper to promote Alinsky....Her series, called 'The Orderly Revolution', made Alinsky famous....

"Alinsky’s crowning achievement was his recruitment of a young high school student named Hillary Rodham. She met Alinsky through a radical church group. Hillary wrote an analysis of Alinsky’s methods for her senior thesis at Wellesley College. ...

"Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Alinsky’s counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power.

"Barack Obama is also an Alinskyite.... Obama spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project.... Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer." [by Richard Poe, 11-27-07] See also Community Oriented Policing


Quote from Saul Alinsky's Book "Rules for Radicals"

In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace.... "Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.' This means revolution." p.3

"Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing." p.6

"A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism." p.10

The one thing he did not learn is the passion of FREE people to be free! - Press4TRuth

Saul Alinsky - Mentor of Obama

WorldNetDaily

What Obama DOES NOT Know Can Hurt Us


The Financial Post today carried the following article by Alex Epstein that pretty well sums up the problem with a president with NO economic or business experience.

Obama doesn’t get roots of crisis
Posted: April 07, 2009, 7:04 PM by NP Editor
By Alex Epstein

Barack Obama rightly stresses that we first must understand how today’s problems emerged. It is “only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we’ll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.”
Unfortunately, Obama (along with most of the Washington establishment) has created only misunderstanding. In calling for a massive increase in government control over the economy, he has evaded the mountain of evidence implicating the government. For example, Obama’s core explanation of all the destructive behaviour leading up to today’s crisis is that the market was too free. But the market that led to today’s crisis was systematically manipulated by government.
Fact This decade saw drastic attempts by the government to control the housing and financial markets — via a Federal Reserve that cut interest rates to all-time lows and via a gigantic increase in Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s size and influence.
Fact Through these entities, the government sought to “stimulate the economy” and promote home ownership (sound familiar?) by artificially extending cheap credit to home-buyers.
Fact Most of the (very few) economists who actually predicted the financial crisis blame Fed policy or housing policy for inflating a bubble that was bound to collapse.
How does all this evidence factor into Obama’s understanding of “how we arrived at this moment”? It doesn’t. Not once, during the solemn 52 minutes and 5,902 words of his speech to Congress did he mention the Fed, Fannie or Freddie. Not once did he suggest that government manipulation of markets could have any possible role in the present crisis. He just went full steam ahead and called for more spending, more intervention and more government housing programs as the solution.
A genuine explanation of the financial crisis must take into account all the facts. What role did the Fed play? What about Fannie and Freddie? To be sure, some companies and CEOs seem to have made irrational business decisions. Was the primary cause “greed,” as so many claim — and what does this even mean? Or was the primary cause government intervention — like artificially low interest rates, which distorted economic decision-making and encouraged less competent and more reckless companies and CEOs while marginalizing and paralyzing the more competent ones?
Entertaining such questions would also mean considering the idea that the fundamental solution to our problems is to disentangle the government from the markets to prevent future manipulation. It would mean considering pro-free-market remedies such as letting banks foreclose, letting prices reach market levels, letting bad banks fail, dismantling Fannie and Freddie, ending bailout promises and getting rid of the Fed’s power to manipulate interest rates.
But it is not genuine understanding the administration seeks. For it, the wisdom and necessity of previous government intervention is self-evident; no matter the contrary evidence, the crisis can only have been caused by insufficient government intervention. Besides, the administration is too busy following Obama’s chief of staff’s dictum, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste,” by proposing a virtual takeover of not only financial markets but also the problem-riddled energy and health-care markets — which, they conveniently ignore, are also already among the most government-controlled in the economy.
While Obama has not sought a real explanation of today’s economic problems, the public should. Otherwise, we will simply swallow “solutions” that dogmatically assume the free market got us here — namely, Obama’s plans to swamp this country in an ocean of government debt, government controls and government make-work projects.
Alternative, free-market explanations for the crisis do exist — ones that consider the inconvenient facts Washington ignores — and everyone should seek to understand them. Those who do will likely end up telling our leaders to stop saying “Yes, we can” to each new proposal for expanding government power, and start saying “Yes, you can” to those who seek to exercise their right to produce and trade on a free market.
Financial Post
Alex Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

Deciphering Obama in Cairo


Deciphering Obama in Cairo

Center for Security Policy | Jun 05, 2009
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

By and large, President Obama's address yesterday in Cairo has been well received in both the so-called "Muslim world" and by other audiences. Nobody may be happier with it, though, than the Muslim Brotherhood - the global organization that seeks to impose authoritative Islam's theo-political-legal program known as "Shariah" through stealthy means where violence ones are not practicable. Egyptian Muslim Brothers were prominent among the guests in the audience at Cairo University and Brotherhood-associated organizations in America, like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), have rapturously endorsed the speech.

The Brotherhood has ample reason for its delight. Accordingly, Americans who love freedom - whether or not they recognize the threat Shariah represents to it - have abundant cause for concern about "The Speech," and what it portends for U.S. policy and interests.

Right out of the box, Mr. Obama mischaracterized what is causing a "time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world." He attributed the problem first and foremost to "violent extremists [who] have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims." The President never mentioned - not even once - a central reality: The minority in question, including the Muslim Brotherhood, subscribes to the authoritative writings, teachings, traditions and institutions of their faith, namely Shariah. It is the fact that their practice is thus grounded that makes them, whatever their numbers (the exact percentage is a matter of considerable debate), to use Mr. Obama euphemistic term, "potent."

Instead, the President's address characterized the problem as a "cycle of suspicion and discord," a turn of phrase redolent of the moral equivalence so evident in the Mideast peace process with it "cycle of violence." There was not one reference to terrorism, let alone Islamic terrorism. Indeed, any connection between the two is treated as evidence of some popular delusion. "The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. This has bred more fear and mistrust."

Then there was this uplifting, but ultimately meaningless, blather: "So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity."

More often than not, the President portrayed Muslims as the Brotherhood always does: as victims of crimes perpetrated by the West against them - from colonialism to manipulation by Cold War superpowers to the menace of "modernity and globalization that led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam." Again, no mention of the hostility towards the infidel West ingrained in "the traditions of Islam." This fits with the meme of the Shariah-adherent, but not the facts.

Here's the irony: Even as President Obama professed his determination to "speak the truth," he perpetrated a fraud. He falsely portrayed what amounts to authoritative Islam, namely Shariah Islam, as something that is "not exclusive," that "overlaps" and "need not be in competition" with "America. Actually, Shariah is, by its very nature, a program that obliges its adherents to demand submission of all others, Muslims (especially secular and apostate ones) and non-Muslims, alike.

This exclusiveness (read, Islamic supremacism) applies most especially with respect to democratic nations like America, nations founded in the alternative and highly competitive belief that men, not God, should make laws. Ditto nations that stand in the way of the establishment of the Caliphate, the global theocracy that Shariah dictates must impose its medieval agenda worldwide. In practice, Shariah is the very antithesis of Mr. Obama's stated goal of "progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings." Its "justice" can only be considered by civilized societies to be a kind of codified barbarism.

At least as troubling are what amount to instances of presidential dawa, the Arabic term for Islamic proselytization. For example, Mr. Obama referred four times in his speech to "the Holy Koran." It seems unimaginable that he ever would ever use the adjective to describe the Bible or the Book of Mormon.

Then, the man now happy to call himself Barack Hussein Obama (in contrast to his attitude during the campaign) boasts of having "known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed." An interesting choice of words that, "first revealed." Not "established," "founded" or "invented." The President is, after all, a careful writer, so he must have deliberately eschewed verbs that reflect man's role, in favor of the theological version of events promoted by Islam. Thus, Mr. Obama has gone beyond the kind of "respectful language" he has pledged to use towards Islam. He is employing what amounts to code - bespeaking the kind of submissive attitude Islam demands of all, believers and non-believers alike.

Elsewhere in the speech, Mr. Obama actually declared that "I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." Note that, although he referred in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict to "vile stereotypes" of Jews, he did not describe it as "part of his responsibility as President" to counter anti-Semitic representations.

Unremarked was the fact that such incitement is daily fare served up by the state media controlled by his host in Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak, by the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas and by every other despot in the region with whom Mr. Obama seeks to "engage." Worse yet, no mention was made of the fact that some of those "vile stereotypes" - notably, that Jews are "descendants of apes and pigs" - are to be found in "the Holy Koran," itself.

Perhaps the most stunning bit of dawa of all was a phrase the President employed that, on its face, denies the divinity of Jesus - something surprising from a self-described committed Christian. In connection with his discussion of the "situation between Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs," Mr. Obama said, "...When Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer."

Muslims use the term "peace be upon them" to ask for blessings on deceased holy men. In other words, its use construes all three in the way Islam does - as dead prophets - a treatment wholly at odds with the teachings of Christianity which, of course, holds Jesus as the immortal Son of God.

If Mr. Obama were genuinely ignorant about Islam, such a statement might be ascribed to nothing more than a sop to "interfaith dialogue." For a man who now pridefully boasts of his intimate familiarity with Muslims and their faith, it raises troubling questions about his own religious beliefs. At the very least, it conveys a strongly discordant message to "the Muslim world" about a fundamental tenet of the faith he professes.

Finally, what are we to make of Mr. Obama statements about America and Islam? Since he took office, the President has engaged repeatedly in the sort of hyping of Muslims and their role in the United States that is standard Muslim Brotherhood fare. In his inaugural address, he described our nation as one of "Christians, Muslims and Jews." Shortly thereafter, he further reversed the demographic ordering of these populations by size in his first broadcast interview (with the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya network), calling America a country of "Muslims, Christians and Jews."

Yesterday in Cairo, the President declared that "Islam has always been a part of America's story." Now, to be sure, Muslims, like peoples of other faiths, have made contributions to U.S. history. But they have generally done so in the same way others have, namely as Americans - not as some separate community, but as part of the "E pluribus unum" (out of many, one) that Mr. Obama properly extolled in The Speech.

Unfortunately, a pattern is being established whereby President Obama routinely exaggerates the Muslim character of America. For example, at Cairo University, he claimed there are nearly seven million Muslims in this country - a falsehood promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood and its friends - when the actual number is well-less than half that. Shortly before The Speech, in an interview with a French network, Mr. Obama said, "If you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

Incredible as these statements may seem, even more astounding is their implication for those who adhere to Shariah. The President's remarks about America as a Muslim nation would give rise to its treatment by them as part of dar al-Islam, the world of Islam, as opposed to dar al-harb (i.e., the non-Muslim world).

Were the former to be the case, Shariah requires faithful Muslims to rid the United States of infidel control or occupation. And we know from last year's successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation - a so-called "charity" engaged in money-laundering for one of the Muslim Brotherhood's terrorist operations, Hamas - that such an agenda tracks precisely with the Brothers' mission here: "To destroy Western civilization from within America, by its own miserable hand."

This reality makes one of Mr. Obama's promises in Cairo especially chilling. Near the end of his address, the President expressed concern that religious freedom in the United States was being impinged by "rules on charitable giving [that] have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation." He went on to pledge: "That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat."

Let us be clear: Muslim charities have run into difficulty with "the rules" because they have been convicted in federal court of using the Muslim obligation to perform zakat (tithing to charity) to funnel money to terrorists. At this writing, it is unclear precisely what Mr. Obama has in mind with respect to this commitment to "ensure [Muslims] can fulfill zakat." But you can bet that the Brotherhood will try to translate it into the release of their imprisoned operatives and new latitude to raise money for their Shariah-promoting, and therefore seditious, activities in America.

I could go on, but you get the point. The Speech contained a number of statements about the laudable qualities of America, the need for freedom in the Muslim world, about women's rights and the desirability of peace. But its preponderant and much more important message was one that could have been crafted by the Muslim Brotherhood: America has a president who is, wittingly or not, advancing the Brotherhood's agenda of masking the true nature of Shariah and encouraging the West's submission to it.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy in Washington. An abbreviated version of this article appeared in Newsmax, June 5, 2009.

OBAMA for CHANGE ??? A Stimulating Thought !!!

[As you will see below, even Jackie Mason doesn't think this is funny!] Rahm Emanuel's statement in November, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."

Well now we have the proof. I said it before Mr. Obama was elected. The ONLY change that Obama expects to bring to Washington is him in the white house!

Now we have the proof. This "STIMULUS" bill is anything BUT stimulating! Apparently hundreds of phone calls against the bill are coming into government offices. But the government of the people, by the people and for the people has now become the government OVER the people, right by the people and FOR the democratic party in government!

Didn't Mr. Obama say that he wanted to CHANGE the way Washington worked? Ha, well now we know how.

So Mr. Obama has brought CHANGE TO AMERICA... yes CHANGE AS TO WHO GETS THE PORK. - His soundbytes about there being NO PORK in the bill are absolute blatant lies.

The letters and calls to the congress were 100:1 AGAINST this package but that did not thwart the courageous congress from paying back all their supporters AGAINST the will of the people!

However it was that unofficial third party in the U.S. called the left-wing socialist media combined with the fairy-tale elite in Hollywood. who actually elected Mr. Obama.

The so-called "stimulus" bill just passed in the U.S. will stimulate that famous employer, the National Association for the Endowment for the Arts, build Milwaukee schools when 15 are empty with declining enrolment and so on.

It is complete PORK. There may be a few million of the billions here and there which might actually do a little but the stock market tells all as they have been in freefall as the "package" made it's way through the congress.

Yes is it payback time as the hog trough package goes out to all the supporters which the Democrats did not have the power to reward previously.

What Mr. Obama came to the Whitehouse to change was ONE THING ... WHO GET'S THE PORK?

The bill is full of nothing but spending to reward those who elected Mr. Obama and his "Democratic" presidential guards and very little to help the average worker at all.

It is a sad time when telling blatant lies and rewarding those who support you are more important than actually helping people cope with this deep recession.

So much for the country of Abraham Lincoln and a country which was "of the people, by the people, for the people". Unless of course those people are Democratic suckies.

If even comedian Jackie Mason sees this, there perhaps is hope for the American people somewhere.

Research Suggests That GOVERNMENT STIMULUS SPENDING May Worsen Situation

Terence Corcoran reports in the National Post on Friday, January 16, 2009 that the STIMULUS everyone is yelling for may only work over a short period and may actually MAKE THE ECONOMY WORSE over longer periods.

See original article here.


WHO SAYS A STIMULUS ACTUALLY STIMULATES?

or is it simply temporary VIAGRA for the ECONOMY?

POINTS from article above ...

-"Except for one problem: What if it's not true? What if, as a wide and growing school of economists now suspect, the government spending and stimulus theory is a crock that is shovel-ready to be heaved out into the barnyard of economic waste?

- "What if, as a wide and growing school of economists now suspect, the government spending and stimulus theory is a crock that is shovel-ready to be heaved out into the barnyard of economic waste?"

- Even disciples of Keynes, such as Harvard's Greg Mankiw, recently highlighted economic studies that show government spending binges -- shocks, they are sometimes called -- don't seem to help the economy grow. They might even make it worse.

-One of the studies cited by Mr. Mankiw was by two European economists (Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig), titled "What are the Effects of Fiscal Shocks?" It looked at big deficit-financed spending increases and found that they stimulate the economy for the first year, but "only weakly" compared with a deficit financed tax cut. The overriding problem is that the deficits crowd out private investment and, over the long run, may make the economy worse. "The resulting higher debt burdens may have long-term consequences which are far worse than the short-term increase in GDP."

-A paper by two economists, including the current chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, concluded that increased taxes and "increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending."

-Roberto Perotti, an Italian economist with links to Columbia University, in "Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries," found nothing but bad news for Keynesians. Economic growth is little changed after big increases in government spending, but there are signs of weakening private investment.

- What we all might logically intuit to be true -- spend government money, especially borrowed money, and you stimulate growth -- has long been thought to be a fallacy by some economists. That thought is now spreading. British economist William Buiter said the massive Obama fiscal stimulus proposals "are afflicted by the Keynesian fallacy on steroids."

Except for one problem: What if it's not true? What if, as a wide and growing school of economists now suspect, the government spending and stimulus theory is a crock that is shovel-ready to be heaved out into the barnyard of economic waste?

The Prime Minister, in his comments on Friday, seemed to be riding right into the barnyard. He said the government would be simply "borrowing money that is not being used" and "that business is afraid to invest." By borrowing that money, and turning it over to all the groups and interests looking for part of the stimulus spending, he would be jump-starting activity while the private sector got its legs back.

Even disciples of Keynes, such as Harvard's Greg Mankiw, recently highlighted economic studies that show government spending binges -- shocks, they are sometimes called -- don't seem to help the economy grow. They might even make it worse.

One of the studies cited by Mr. Mankiw was by two European economists (Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig), titled "What are the Effects of Fiscal Shocks?" It looked at big deficit-financed spending increases and found that they stimulate the economy for the first year, but "only weakly" compared with a deficit financed tax cut. The overriding problem is that the deficits crowd out private investment and, over the long run, may make the economy worse. "The resulting higher debt burdens may have long-term consequences which are far worse than the short-term increase in GDP."

Two other studies point in the same direction. A paper by two economists, including the current chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, concluded that increased taxes and "increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending."

Roberto Perotti, an Italian economist with links to Columbia University, in "Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries," found nothing but bad news for Keynesians. Economic growth is little changed after big increases in government spending, but there are signs of weakening private investment.

What we all might logically intuit to be true -- spend government money, especially borrowed money, and you stimulate growth -- has long been thought to be a fallacy by some economists. That thought is now spreading. British economist William Buiter said the massive Obama fiscal stimulus proposals "are afflicted by the Keynesian fallacy on steroids."

Over at Stimulus Canada, Mr. Harper's plan looks somewhat more modest and Canada is not in the same fiscal fix as the United States. But Ottawa and the provinces are clearly ready to borrow big wads of money from the future to stimulate the economy today. It's money that is supposedly sitting out there in the timid hands of investors who will be repaid with tax dollars later.

But if that stimulus spending does not generate much fresh economic growth, and the borrowing chews up money that private investors could invest in the future, the shovel-ready brigades who get the cash today will produce only short term gains at the expense of the long term health of the economy.

[Doesn't it make you wonder when nobody seems to know what to do but some of the advice of the best researchers suggests that a STIMULUS may actually HARM the economy? Some economic researchers point to FDR and the Great Depression and suggest that FDR actually INCREASED the length of the depression. He was obviously and encourager and inspired hope which is an important factor as we see when the markets fall like bricks. But did his fiscal policy actually make it longer?]

FDR POLICIES Prolonged Depression

FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

"President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services," said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. "So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies."

Using data collected in 1929 by the Conference Board and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Cole and Ohanian were able to establish average wages and prices across a range of industries just prior to the Depression. By adjusting for annual increases in productivity, they were able to use the 1929 benchmark to figure out what prices and wages would have been during every year of the Depression had Roosevelt's policies not gone into effect. They then compared those figures with actual prices and wages as reflected in the Conference Board data.

In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt's policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in productivity.

Meanwhile, prices across 19 industries averaged 23 percent above where they should have been, given the state of the economy. With goods and services that much harder for consumers to afford, demand stalled and the gross national product floundered at 27 percent below where it otherwise might have been.

"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."

The policies were contained in the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which exempted industries from antitrust prosecution if they agreed to enter into collective bargaining agreements that significantly raised wages. Because protection from antitrust prosecution all but ensured higher prices for goods and services, a wide range of industries took the bait, Cole and Ohanian found. By 1934 more than 500 industries, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of private, non-agricultural employment, had entered into the collective bargaining agreements called for under NIRA.

Cole and Ohanian calculate that NIRA and its aftermath account for 60 percent of the weak recovery. Without the policies, they contend that the Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of the year when they believe the slump actually ended: 1943.

Roosevelt's role in lifting the nation out of the Great Depression has been so revered that Time magazine readers cited it in 1999 when naming him the 20th century's second-most influential figure.

"This is exciting and valuable research," said Robert E. Lucas Jr., the 1995 Nobel Laureate in economics, and the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. "The prevention and cure of depressions is a central mission of macroeconomics, and if we can't understand what happened in the 1930s, how can we be sure it won't happen again?"

NIRA's role in prolonging the Depression has not been more closely scrutinized because the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional within two years of its passage.

"Historians have assumed that the policies didn't have an impact because they were too short-lived, but the proof is in the pudding," Ohanian said. "We show that they really did artificially inflate wages and prices."

Even after being deemed unconstitutional, Roosevelt's anti-competition policies persisted — albeit under a different guise, the scholars found. Ohanian and Cole painstakingly documented the extent to which the Roosevelt administration looked the other way as industries once protected by NIRA continued to engage in price-fixing practices for four more years.

The number of antitrust cases brought by the Department of Justice fell from an average of 12.5 cases per year during the 1920s to an average of 6.5 cases per year from 1935 to 1938, the scholars found. Collusion had become so widespread that one Department of Interior official complained of receiving identical bids from a protected industry (steel) on 257 different occasions between mid-1935 and mid-1936. The bids were not only identical but also 50 percent higher than foreign steel prices. Without competition, wholesale prices remained inflated, averaging 14 percent higher than they would have been without the troublesome practices, the UCLA economists calculate.

NIRA's labor provisions, meanwhile, were strengthened in the National Relations Act, signed into law in 1935. As union membership doubled, so did labor's bargaining power, rising from 14 million strike days in 1936 to about 28 million in 1937. By 1939 wages in protected industries remained 24 percent to 33 percent above where they should have been, based on 1929 figures, Cole and Ohanian calculate. Unemployment persisted. By 1939 the U.S. unemployment rate was 17.2 percent, down somewhat from its 1933 peak of 24.9 percent but still remarkably high. By comparison, in May 2003, the unemployment rate of 6.1 percent was the highest in nine years.

Recovery came only after the Department of Justice dramatically stepped enforcement of antitrust cases nearly four-fold and organized labor suffered a string of setbacks, the economists found.

"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened."

-UCLA-

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx?RelNum=5409

LSMS368


Mr Obama: Please Prove You ARE Non-Partisan

Mr. Obama will now have to prove he is non-partisan.

Editor: If he makes the mistake of believing that he is only the President of the 52% of the population that elected him and of the far-left liberal democrats, and tries to enact laws which the 46% who voted for McCain vehementally oppose, he will create more partisanship than has ever occurred before.

Now is his test. Will he leave failed socialistic policies like the War on Poverty and the Great Society behind, or will he make the same mistakes as his liberal precessors?

So now is the time for Mr. Obama to shine, but shine on the right as well as the left. Shine on the almost half the United States which are part of red states and red counties in blue states. He will become president of both and to be inclusive as an agent of change, he must govern in the best interests of middle America.

This article from the NP reflects some of that concern:

Sharing wealth will drain it

Obamanomics a drag on growth

Jacqueline Thorpe, National Post Published: Thursday, November 06, 2008

As the fervour fades, the world will have to get used to a new word: Obamanomics.

It means tax hikes for the rich, tax cuts for the poor and middle class, a promise to renegotiate NAFTA, greater union power, windfall taxes on oil and gas profits, higher taxes on capital gains and corporate dividends and more comprehensive health care coverage.

Barack Obama's economic plan may deliver the greater income equality Americans have apparently been craving, but also slower growth. Despite the vast tax hikes, it will cost a vast sum and U. S. federal finances, already ravaged by bailouts and recession, will slide deeper into the red.

The plan is not market-friendly but that does not mean the markets will not like an Obama presidency. If he can give the U. S. back its confidence, restore its reputation and sense of optimism, markets will take the bait as they have done with Democratic presidents so often in the past.

If he can become a Clintonstyle pragmatist, resist caving to every whim of a deeply left Congress, and not meddle with the bailouts that seem to be gingerly gaining traction, markets might even run with his presidency. The year from hell for investors could then be nearing an end.

Obamanomics is essentially about taking more money from the rich and giving it to the poor, plain old-fashioned "neighbourliness" as Mr. Obama has described it.

-

Or, as others have remarked, taking money from those who earn it and giving it to those who don't.

Under his income tax plan, Mr. Obama says he will provide tax cuts for 95% of Americans. He will do this by repealing Bush tax cuts -- set to expire in 2010 -- and bumping the top rates back to 36% from 33% and to 39.6% from 35%. Individuals earning over US$200,000 and families over US$250,000 will see sizable tax increases. This includes sole proprietors of businesses such as lawyers, accountants or plumbers called Joe.

Since 38% of Americans currently do not pay federal income taxes, Mr. Obama will provide them with refundable tax credits. Under his plan, 48% of Americans will pay no income tax.

"For the people that don't pay taxes, he is simply going to write them a cheque," says Andy Busch, global foreign exchange strategist at BMO Capital Markets. "That is income redistribution at its worst and produces very little value."

Other plans include raising taxes on capital gains and dividends to 20% from 15% for families earning more than US$250,000. He plans to leave the corporate tax rate at 35%, which in a world of rapidly falling rates, looks positively anti-business. He will introduce windfall taxes on oil and gas companies but offer US$4-billion in credits to U. S. auto-makers to retool to greener cars.

Much has been made of Mr. Obama's plan to renegotiate NAFTA to make it more labour-friendly, though no one seems to believe he will actually make it more protectionist.

The bottom line is this: Obama's economic plan is likely to be a drag on growth and it will cost money. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates Obama's program would add US$3.5-trillion to U. S. debt over the next 10 years, including interest. His plans for health care-- which may be delayed by financial necessity -- would tack on another US$1.6-trillion.

Read more here.

OBAMA Comment by AltMuslim.com

This is an interesting comment by the website AltMuslim.com.
[Editor:Just because his middle name is Hussain does NOT mean he's a Muslim. Just because his church gave Lewis Farakhan last year a Lifetime Achievement award does

NOT mean he is a Muslim. Just because he wore traditional Muslim dress when visiting in Sudan does NOT mean he is a Muslim. So what does it mean? Read what they say for yourself.]
=================================

Friday, April 18, 2008

Obama's Problem with the Truth [David Freddoso]

First the "hundred years" controversy, and now this. Is the man a liar, or are his speechwriters and advisors just that willing to leave him vulnerable to attack?

Obama's Problem
February 07, 2008 01:00 PM EST

The Peculiar Theology of Black Liberation

Spengler, Asia Times (Hong Kong), March 18, 2008

Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, contrary to invidious rumors. But he belongs to a Christian church whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a “black messiah” and blacks as “the chosen people”. At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy.

What played out last week on America’s television screens was a clash of two irreconcilable cultures, the posture of “black liberation theology” and the mainstream American understanding of Christianity. Obama, who presented himself as a unifying figure, now seems rather the living embodiment of the clash.

One of the strangest dialogues in American political history ensued on March 15 when Fox News interviewed Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, of Chicago’s Trinity Church. Wright asserted the authority of the “black liberation” theologians James Cone and Dwight Hopkins:

Wright: How many of Cone’s books have you read? How many of Cone’s book have you read?

Sean Hannity: Reverend, Reverend?

(crosstalk)

Wright: How many books of Cone’s have you head?

Hannity: I’m going to ask you this question . . .

Wright: How many books of Dwight Hopkins have you read?

Hannity: You’re very angry and defensive. I’m just trying to ask a question here.

Wright: You haven’t answered—you haven’t answered my question.

Hopkins is a full professor at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School; Cone is now distinguished professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. They promote a “black power” reading of Christianity, to which liberal academic establishment condescends.

Obama referred to this when he asserted in a March 14 statement, “I knew Reverend Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago.” But the fact the liberal academy condescends to sponsor black liberation theology does not make it less peculiar to mainstream American Christians. Obama wants to talk about what Wright is, rather than what he says. But that way lies apolitical quicksand.

Since Christianity taught the concept of divine election to the Gentiles, every recalcitrant tribe in Christendom has rebelled against Christian universalism, insisting that it is the “Chosen People” of God—French, English, Russian, Germans and even (through the peculiar doctrine of Mormonism) certain Americans. America remains the only really Christian country in the industrial world, precisely because it transcends ethnicity. One finds ethnocentricity only in odd corners of its religious life; one of these is African-American.

During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the “black liberation” school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains:

Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.

Theologically, Cone’s argument is as silly as the “Aryan Christianity” popular in Nazi Germany, which claimed that Jesus was not a Jew at all but an Aryan Galilean, and that the Aryan race was the “chosen people”. Cone, Hopkins and Wright do not propose, of course, to put non-blacks in concentration camps or to conquer the world, but racially-based theology nonetheless is a greased chute to the nether regions.

Biblical theology teaches that even the most terrible events to befall Israel, such as the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, embody the workings of divine justice, even if humankind cannot see God’s purpose. James Cone sees the matter very differently. Either God must do what we want him to do, or we must reject him, Cone maintains:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love. [1]

In the black liberation theology taught by Wright, Cone and Hopkins, Jesus Christ is not for all men, but only for the oppressed:

In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors. . . . Either God is for black people in their fight for liberation and against the white oppressors, or he is not [Cone].

In this respect black liberation theology is identical in content to all the ethnocentric heresies that preceded it. Christianity has no use for the nations, a “drop of the bucket” and “dust on the scales”, in the words of Isaiah. It requires that individuals turn their back on their ethnicity to be reborn into Israel in the spirit. That is much easier for Americans than for the citizens of other nations, for Americans have no ethnicity. But the tribes of the world do not want to abandon their Gentile nature and as individuals join the New Israel. Instead they demand eternal life in their own Gentile flesh, that is, to be the “Chosen People”.

That is the “biblical scholarship” to which Obama referred in his March 14 defense of Wright and his academic prominence. In his response to Hannity, Wright genuinely seemed to believe that the authority of Cone and Hopkins, who now hold important posts at liberal theological seminaries, was sufficient to make the issue go away. His faith in the white establishment is touching; he honestly cannot understand why the white reporters at Fox News are bothering him when the University of Chicago and the Union Theological Seminary have put their stamp of approval on black liberation theology.

Many things that the liberal academy has adopted, though, will horrify most Americans, and not only “black liberation theology” (Queer Studies comes to mind, among other things). It cannot be in Obama’s best interests to appeal to the authority of Cone, whose unapologetic racism must be repugnant to the great majority of Americans, including the majority of black Americans, who for the most part belong to Christian churches that preach mainstream Christian doctrine. Christianity teaches unconditional love for a God whose love for humankind is absolute; it does not teach the repudiation of a God who does not destroy our enemies on the spot.

Whether Obama takes seriously the doctrines that Wright preaches is another matter. It is possible that Obama does not believe a word of what Wright, Cone and Hopkins teach. Perhaps he merely used the Trinity United Church of Christ as a political stepping-stone. African-American political life is centered around churches, and his election to the Illinois State Senate with the support of Chicago’s black political machine required church membership. Trinity United happens to be Chicago’s largest and most politically active black church.

Obama views Wright rather at arm’s length: as the New York Times reported on April 30, 2007:

Reverend Wright is a child of the 60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through,” Mr Obama said. “He analyzes public events in the context of race. I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality.

Obama holds his own views close. But it seems unlikely that he would identify with the ideological fits of the black-power movement of the 1960s. Obama does not come to the matter with the perspective of an American black, but of the child of a left-wing anthropologist raised in the Third World, as I wrote elsewhere (Obama’s women reveal his secret , Asia Times Online, February 26, 2008). It is possible that because of the Wright affair Obama will suffer for what he pretended to be, rather than for what he really is.

Note

1. See William R Jones, “Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology”, in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press).

Original article

(Posted on March 17, 2008)


Comments

I have mixed feelings about the whole Jeremiah Wright ordeal. On one hand, I understand his feelings. As a white man, I choose to stand with my race just as he chooses to stand with his. Thus, I can’t fault him for his views. On the other hand, I also recognize that Rev. Wright would never attempt to understand my feelings or concerns so why should I try to understand his? The fact is, people like Wright are not intellectually consistent with their beliefs; they preach ethno-centrism and border-line hatred of other races yet would accuse a white man of being “racist” for the slightest perceived insult.

Posted by Conrad R. at 6:03 PM on March 17


Jeremiah Wright, Obama's Former Pastor - Christian in Name but what???

March 26, 2008

How the Leftist Churches Set a Time Bomb for the Democrats

By James Lewis
Until the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama's spiritual mentor in Black Liberation Theology, popped out of the woodwork, I didn't even know about BLT -- Black Liberation Theology. But the doctrines of Black Liberation have been preached since 1966 in black churches, with the enthusiastic support of white churches of the Left, notably the United Church of Christ. The Rev. Wright runs an official UCC church.

Though I am not a professional theologian, I daresay that Jesus would not, repeat not, approve of BLT. Because Black Liberation Theology seems to go straight against every single word in the Sermon on the Mount. Odd that the UCC has never noticed that over the last fifty years.

In fact, the liberal churches have bestowed great influence and prestige on the inventor of Black Liberation Theology, a Dr. James Hal Cone. Writes Dr. Cone, among other things,


* "Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him."

* "All white men are responsible for white oppression."

* "While it is true that blacks do hate whites, black hatred is not racism."

* "Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man "the devil.""

* "The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples."

* "We have had too much of white love, the love that tells blacks to turn the other cheek and go the second mile. What we need is the divine love as expressed in black power, which is the power of blacks to destroy their oppressors, here and now, by any means at their disposal."

Apparently liberal religious authorities like those at the United Church of Christ love this preaching so much that they have made Dr. Cone a professor at the Union Theological Seminary, the "Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology." It is a stamp of official approval for a peddler of race hatred.

What would Jesus say? Well, we may never know that, but in a month we'll know what Pennsylvania Democrats will say. And if they turn thumbs down on that grandchild of Black Liberation Theology, Senator Barack Obama, the Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves. Including the Churches of the Left, which have reveled in rage-mongering radical chic since the Sixties.

If you've ever wondered why black people in America have had such a hard time rising in society, even after slavery ended in 1865, even after the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, even after affirmative action tilted the playing field in their favor, the answer has to be found in the doctrines that have been preached to blacks by their most powerful leaders. If Black Liberation Theology is to be believed, blacks can never make it on their own. They have to rely on a separatist, rage-filled ideology, supported whole-heartedly by white Leftist churches.

The Left has a long, long habit of shafting the very people is purports to love. Instead, the Left only empowers Leftist elites. Look at the history of the Soviet Union, of Maoist China, of Fidel Castro. Who profited from those regimes except the elites, dining on caviar while ordinary people starved? Today Hugo Chavez is squandering Venezuela's oil wealth on his personal ego trips. It is the poor who suffer from Chavez' caudillismo.

What the Church of the Left have done to poor blacks is just like that. Instead of supporting messages of hope and strength, they celebrated the rage demagogues who keep people in thrall. "Black Liberation" is an enslavement of the mind. If you keep black people popping with anger at whites, half a century after the end of Jim Crow, you are not helping them. You are hurting them.

For the Democrats, who have knowingly supported this corruption of the poor for decades, the churches of Left have set a time bomb. Next month we'll see if it explodes.

Maybe it's Divine justice.

James Lewis blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com/

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/how_the_leftist_churches_set_a.html at March 30, 2008 - 11:06:16 PM EDT

Why is Obama Ducking the Questions? Only One Possible Reason!

[excerpted from http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=11541]

March 21, 2008
Dems 2008: McClatchy discovers Black Liberation Theology [Karl]

Given the chain’s general leftward slant, it is all the more notable that McClatchy is perhaps the first establishment media outlet to report some of the specifics of the Black Liberation Theology that is the vision of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama’s church — and to note (as already noted here) that Obama dodged the larger issue:

Obama’s speech Tuesday on race in America was hailed as a masterful handling of the controversy over divisive sermons by the longtime pastor of Trinity United, the recently retired Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

But in repudiating and putting in context Wright’s inflammatory lines about whites and U.S. foreign policy, the Democratic presidential front-runner didn’t address other potentially controversial facts about his church and its ties.

McClatchy’s Margaret Talev went so far as to interview Dr. James H. Cone, who first presented Black Liberation Theology as a system of thought in the late 1960s. Dr. Cone reaffirmed his prior view that Trinity most embodies his message and opined that he thought the Rev. Wright’s successor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, would continue the tradition. (It does seem likely so far.)

Unfortunately, the piece quotes only Dr. Cone and Dwight Hopkins, a Trinity member and liberation theology professor at the University of Chicago’s divinity school. Apparently, McClatchy could not be bothered to contact neutral theologians or critics of Black Liberation Theology. As a result, Cone and Hopkins get away with softening the harder edges of their theology.

Nevertheless, McClatchy has now done more than most of the establishment media (and certainly more than TIME magazine’s new puff piece or the ignorant and inane ramblings of E.J. Dionne, Jr.) on the underlying issue, even as it hypothesizes Obama’s church membership is one of political convenience rather than reading Obama’s writings on the subject, which are consistent with the theology.

Most important, McClatchy sought answers from the Obama campaign on the issue:

It isn’t clear where Obama’s beliefs and the church’s diverge. Through aides, Obama declined requests for an interview or to respond to written questions about his thoughts on Jesus, Cone or liberation theology.

That is the standard response of the Obama campaign to any controversy, as anyone trying to report on Obama’s relationship with Tony Rezko will tell you. Obama will not answer press inquiries until the establishment media turns up the heat to the point where he feels compelled to do so. That pattern should trouble people far beyond those concerned about the degree to which Obama susbscribes to Black Liberation Theology.

(h/t Gateway Pundit.)

Update: Allah-lanche!

Truth?

Press4Truth contains opinions of various authors and does not necessarily represent the views of Press 4 Truth. They are presented often to challenge the accepted thinking which very often is obtained from soundbytes rather than study of the issues.