The Buck Stops

indyfromaz|

One of the best, Thomas Sowell:
President Barack Obama boldly proclaims, “The buck stops here!” But, whenever his policies are criticized, he acts as if the buck stopped with George W. Bush.
The party line that we are likely to be hearing from now until the November elections is that Obama “inherited” the big federal budget deficits and that he has to “clean up the mess” left in the economy by the Republicans. This may convince those who want to be convinced, but it will not stand up under scrutiny.
No President of the United States can create either a budget deficit or a budget surplus. All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives and all taxes are voted into law by Congress.
Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president (January 2007 to be precise). The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.
The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, Bill Clinton was president, so it was called “the Clinton surplus.” But Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, for the first time in 40 years. It was also the first budget surplus in more than a quarter of a century.
The only direct power that any president has that can affect deficits and surpluses is the power to veto spending bills. President Bush did not veto enough spending bills but Senator Obama and his fellow Democrats in control of Congress were the ones who passed the spending bills.
Today, with Barack Obama in the White House, allied with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in charge in Congress, the national debt is a bigger share of the national output than it has been in more than half a century. And its share is projected to continue going up for years to come, becoming larger than national output in 2012.
Having created this scary situation, President Obama now says, “Don’t give in to fear. Let’s reach for hope.” The voters reached for hope when they elected Obama. The fear comes from what he has done since taking office.
“The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place,” he said recently. “In November, you’re going to have that choice.”
These risky loans, and the defaults that followed, were what set off a chain reaction of massive financial losses that brought down the whole economy.
Was this due to George W. Bush and the Republicans? Only partly. Most of those who pushed the lowering of mortgage lending standards were Democrats– notably Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd, though too many Republicans went along.
At the heart of these policies were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who bought huge amounts of risky mortgages, passing the risk on from the banks that lent the money (and made the profits) to the taxpayers who were not even aware that they would end up paying in the end.
When President Bush said in 2004 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be reined in, 76 members of the House of Representatives issued a statement to the contrary. These included Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel.
If we are going to talk about “the policies that created this mess in the first place,” let’s at least get the facts straight and the names right.
The current policies of the Obama administration are a continuation of the same reckless policies that brought on the current economic problems– all in the name of “change.” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still sacred cows in Washington, even though they have already required the biggest bailouts of all.
Why? Because they allow politicians to direct vast sums of money where it will do politicians the most good, either personally or in terms of buying votes in the next election.
Another political fable is that the current economic downturn is due to not enough government regulation of the housing and financial markets. But it was precisely the government regulators, under pressure from politicians, who forced banks and other lending institutions to lower their standards for making mortgage loans.
Amen! And those were Democrats by and large.
The RINOs still have to learn that getting along with Socialist Democrats is not possible and that even if they win Obama will be ideologically opposed to them on everything.
But at least it can’t get any worse and there is some hope, especially from the Tea Party Candidates.
Now that’s real “Hope and Change”.

25 Reasons to “jaws” the Democrats…
But first, I would add #26: “Though the job losses we were experiencing earlier this year have slowed dramatically, we’re still not creating enough new jobs each month to make up for the ones we’re losing,” Obama said last week. “For families and communities across the country, this recession will not end until we completely turn that tide.”
Was this last week?
No.
It was December 2009.
Sounds like last week doesn’t it?
“We all know that there are limits to what government can and should do, even during such difficult times,” he said, alluding to the concerns about the soaring budget deficit. “But we have an obligation to consider every additional, responsible step that we can to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country.”
This week?
No.
November 2009.
“Democrats have to reassure voters we are not being reckless,” said a Democratic official involved in the planning. “The White House knows this and that’s why we’ll be hearing a lot about reducing the deficit early next year. Democrats owned this issue for the past four years and cannot afford to cede it to Republicans now.”

You got it. November 2009!

You be the Judge, Jury and hopefully executioner.

1) Remember the stimulus bill? Republicans strongly opposed it and said it wouldn’t work. Democrats said it would revive the economy and keep unemployment under 8 percent. So, what happened? Democrats shoved through a bill that cost $1.1 trillion when you add in the interest. It cost more than the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase (the real one not the Health Care one ), and putting a man on the moon — combined. The result? The economy didn’t take off, the unemployment rate is still at 9.6 percent, and Democrats are calling for…you guessed it, another stimulus bill.
2) Perhaps the biggest problem with the economy right now is that businesses are so afraid of what the government will do that they’re stockpiling cash instead of spending it. Having a pro-market, Republican Congress that will oppose tax hikes, red tape, and damaging new legislation will reduce uncertainty and help give businesses the confidence they need to start hiring and expanding again.
3) While he was campaigning, Barack Obama promised to cut the deficit in half, but in his first 100 days alone, he quadrupled the deficit. As if that wasn’t bad enough, his budget blueprint adds more, “debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined.” No civilization in human history has spent like America has over the last two years of Democratic rule and unless we can get more Republicans in office, this country’s economic future is going to be deader than King Tut and uglier than a 7 day old chunk of roadkill.
4)The Democrats seem hellbent on taking over as much of the private sector as possible. In a relatively short period of time, our government has taken over much of the banking industry, auto industry, health care industry, and student loans. There are currently no viable plans to get out of any of these industries either. This sort of Sovietization of the American economy can only end badly. After all, look what similar policies did to the Soviet Union.
5) In the middle of a recession, the Democrats in Congress still seem to be on track to enact the largest tax increase in American history by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. Here we are with a struggling economy and businesses that are afraid to move because they can’t be sure of what the Democrats will do, and Pelosi, Reid, and Obama still haven’t addressed this massive tax hike. How incompetent. How short-sighted. How foolish.
I would add (#27): In the middle of a recession, with joblessness hovering around the 10% mark, the Obama administration made a deliberate decision to impose a drilling moratorium knowing it would cost at least 23,000 jobs. Why?
Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.
Never mind the fact that an event like this had never happened before in deep water.   Never mind there were hundreds of deepwater wells functioning properly and well.  Never mind that those jobs were well paying jobs  and that through their elimination would cause ripple-effect unemployment down the supply chain.
Instead, deliberately trash the lives of 23,000 workers – and their families – because of unfounded fears.
And a deep seated radical environmentalist “green” agenda. They weren’t the right kind of jobs, after all.
Yeah, that’s leadership, isn’t it?
6) “Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’ The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” — Joe Biden
7) Our economy is no longer suffering from the recession. At this point, the economy is suffering from the policies the Democrats put in place that were supposed to create a “recovery.”
So how was the “summer of recovery” for you?

I don’t mind a President taking a vacation now and then or playing a little golf, but Barack Obama has taken it to a ridiculous extreme. The man has already played more golf in two years than George W. Bush did in his whole presidency. Is he planning to try out for the PGA after he gets out of office? And what’s with the never ending vacationinh? It’s like the presidency is a distraction from taking time off for this guy. Wait, is that the phone ringing? Oh, it’s Marie Antoinette. She is just calling to say that Obama needs to show more sensitivity to the people during tough economic times.
9) “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn’t be worth wasting the urine.” — Democratic Congressman Pete Stark to a constituent at a Townhall.
10) “But I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.” — Barack Obama explains his views on bipartisanship.
11) The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home… What I think we know — separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact. — President Barack Obama explains that racism was behind the arrest of his friend, Bill Gates
12) “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” — Attorney General Eric Holder
12a) Suing Arizona. Period.

13) Iran, a nation that’s known for supporting terrorism and chanting “Death to America,” is about to get nukes and Barack Obama’s reaction has been…well, pretty much nothing.
14) On the other hand Israel, a nation that’s known for being a bastion of freedom in a backwards region and for supporting America, is just trying to survive and Obama’s reaction has been cold and hostile. Maybe if Benjamin Netanyahu started leading “Death to America” chants in the Knesset, Obama might become a little friendlier.
15) The President of the United States should not bow to foreign leaders.
16) Nancy Pelosi once promised to run the most “ethical and honest Congress in history.” She wasn’t alone. Yet, how have the Democrats been doing on that front? Perhaps we could ask Eric Massa, Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters, Roland Burris, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Alan Mollohan, Laura Richardson, Pete Visclosky, and William Jefferson among others. Sorry that all the charges aren’t laid out, but covering all the Democratic corruption that has occurred would be a double sized article in and of itself.
17) In one of the most corrupt deals in American history, Barack Obama broke existing contracts and tossed away billions in taxpayer dollars to give his union pals an outsized ownership stake in Chrysler and General Motors. Now, every time you buy a car from one of those companies, you’re essentially contributing to the Democratic Party. Calling that sleazy is like calling the ocean “wet.”
18) “The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act. The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.” — Energy Secretary Steven Chu on the public’s lack of concern over greenhouse gasses
19) “How about just tracking down every single person who said drill baby drill and putting them all in prison. Why don’t we do that? Starting with Michael Steele.” — Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson
19a) By Grayson himself on the floor during the Health care debate: Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) warned Americans that “Republicans want you to die quickly” during an after-hours House floor speech Tuesday night, highlighted by a sign reading “The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly.”
Then the apology for this hyper-partisan rhetoric: “I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,” he said on the House floor Wednesday afternoon.
Now that’s your Obama Post-Partisan Congress for you.

20) “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the (Ground Zero) mosque being funded. How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City — Nancy Pelosi
20a) If you disagree with a Democrat you’re a racist, a bigot, or a terrorist. Or all three. Isn’t that enough right there?
21) “When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — (Obama) charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.” — NASA Administrator Charles Bolden explaining that Democrats no longer view space as one of NASA’s top priorities
22) The Democrats in the House actually managed to pass a cap and trade bill that’s supported by Barack Obama. This bill would impose massive new energy costs on American consumers. Estimates range from $1600 to $4000 in new costs per family. Although the Senate hasn’t passed this legislation yet, in an almost unbelievable show of arrogance, they’re considering trying to push it through during the lame duck session. If they try that, the American people should rise up as one and proclaim that it will be a “cooked duck session” for anybody who tries to shove significant legislation through before the next Congress arrives.
22a) The massive, seismically so, tax increases that the Democrats want to see on 1/01/11  when the Bush Tax Cuts expire. They actually think it’s a good idea to raise taxes on everyone during a recession. But they will be dishonest and say “it’s only the rich” we want to target. This kind of Class Warfare has never worked out in the past and won’t now.

23) How about Obama’s big, oily Katrina? Know what the difference was between the oil spill in the Gulf and the other programs Obama has pushed? With most of the other programs, it’ll take years for people to see how bad they are. With the oil spill, the country could see the complete and utter incompetence of the Obama Administration in real time.
24) It’s bad enough that the federal government ignored the law, isn’t trying to finish the fence, and refuses to secure our southern border. But now, not only are they still talking up amnesty, they’re actually harassing and suing Arizona because that state has decided to do the job that the federal government is refusing to do. If only the trial lawyers, unions, or ACORN were demanding that the border be secured, we might get some action.
25) You’d have to go all the way back to the days when the British were bossing around American colonists at the point of a bayonet to find the sort of government arrogance that led to Obamacare being shoved through in Congress. No matter how loudly the American people said they didn’t want the bill, Democrats insisted that they knew best. So now, the quality of American health care will be destroyed, private health insurance will end, rationing will occur, death panels will be instituted, the deficit will soar, and taxpayer dollars will be used to fund abortion — but on the upside, Democrats think over the long-term, it will be good for their political prospects. However, there is an alternative. The GOP House Leadership has pledged to defund and repeal Obamacare. If we can get them into power, we can start putting the brakes on now and start working on health care reform that will actually improve what we have now instead of destroying it utterly and replacing it with an inferior system. (John Hawkins- Townhall.com)

So when the Democrats trot out their bribes in the next few months, don’t buy it. It’s just more Marxist Snake Oil.
We don’t need anymore Snake Oil. That buck has to stop.

Trust in Me

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property. –Thomas Jefferson
Trust, but verify. –Ronald Reagan
If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost. –Senator Barack Obama August 2006

25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -17. (Rasmussen)
For the past year, those giving Congress good or excellent marks have remained in the narrow range of nine percent (9%) to 16%, while 53% to 71% have rated its performance as poor. (Rasmussen)
Guess when the 71% was. Health Care “deem and pass” cram down talk in February. Right before they did cram it down your throat!


30% of Likely Voters say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken the week ending Sunday, August 8.
Confidence in the nation’s current course has ranged from 27% to 35% since last July.

Pew Research Center:

Distrust

Thomas Sowell–Democracy: It’s an awful thing in a country when its people no longer believe the government protects them and their rights. Yet, a new poll shows that’s exactly where Americans are headed right now.
In a Rasmussen poll of 1,000 adults taken last Friday and Saturday, nearly half, or 48%, said they see government today as a threat to their rights. Just 37% disagreed. The poll also found that only one in five (21%) believe current government has the consent of the governed.
In other words, people think much of what our government does today is illegitimate — possibly even illegal.
For a democratic republic such as our own, this is extraordinarily dangerous. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were created explicitly to protect Americans’ rights by limiting the scope, reach and power of the federal government.
The Declaration promises “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and goes on to say that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
In short, our government was designed to protect our rights — not to serve as an all-embracing nanny state that slowly, silently strips us of our ability to act as free individuals.
Bailouts, TARP, the takeover of the auto industry, nationalization of health care, the micromanagement of Wall Street and the banks, the expected $12 trillion explosion in U.S. publicly held debt over the next decade — all this and more adds up to a feeling of loss of control by the American people over their lives, both public and private, and a diminution of their rights.
The Founding Fathers understood this could happen. “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence,” George Washington presciently warned. “It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
His generation understood it would be up to us, the citizens, to ensure government wouldn’t trample our rights. That’s what the Constitution was — an agreement to limit government to certain, carefully prescribed duties. And that’s why we vote.
Today, Americans feel their rights are threatened by a government that has grown beyond its constitutional bounds. Once merely a dangerous servant, our federal government is on its way to becoming a fearful master. The only question is, will we let it?
How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but very different values and ways of governing?
Something of this magnitude does not happen all at once or in just one administration in Washington. What we are seeing is the culmination of many trends in many aspects of American life that go back for years.
Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the institutions set up by that Constitution are enough to ensure the continuance of a free, self-governing nation. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what members of the Constitution Convention were creating, he replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
In other words, a Constitutional government does not depend on the Constitution but on us. To the extent that we allow clever people to circumvent the Constitution, while dazzling us with rhetoric, the Constitution will become just a meaningless piece of paper, as our freedoms are stolen from us, much as a pick-pocket would steal our wallet while we are distracted by other things.
It is not just evil people who would dismantle America. Many people who have no desire to destroy our freedoms simply have their own agendas that are singly or collectively incompatible with the survival of freedom.
Someone once said that a democratic society cannot survive for long after 51 percent of the people decide that they want to live off the other 49 percent. Yet that is the direction in which we are being pushed by those who are promoting envy under its more high-toned alias of “social justice.”
Those who construct moral melodramas– starring themselves on the side of the angels against the forces of evil– are ready to disregard the Constitution rights of those they demonize, and to overstep the limits put on the powers of the federal government set by the Constitution.
The outcries of protest in the media, in academia and in politics, when the Supreme Court ruled this year that people in corporations have the same free speech rights as other Americans, are a painful reminder of how vulnerable even the most basic rights are to the attacks of ideological zealots. President Barack Obama said that the Court’s decision “will open the floodgates for special interests”– as if all you have to do to take away people’s free speech rights is call them a special interest.
It is not just particular segments of the population who are under attack. What is more fundamentally under attack are the very principles and values of American society as a whole. The history of this country is taught in many schools and colleges as the history of grievances and victimhood, often with the mantra of “race, class and gender.” Television and the movies often do the same.
When there are not enough current grievances for them, they mine the past for grievances and call it history. Sins and shortcomings common to the human race around the world are spoken of as failures of “our society.” But American achievements get far less attention– and sometimes none at all.
Our “educators,” who cannot educate our children to the level of math or science achieved in most other comparable countries, have time to poison their minds against America.
Why? Partly, if not mostly, it is because that is the vogue. It shows you are “with it” when you reject your own country and exalt other countries.
Abraham Lincoln warned of people whose ambitions can only be fulfilled by dismantling the institutions of this country, because no comparable renown is available to them by supporting those institutions. He said this 25 years before the Gettysburg Address, and he was speaking of political leaders with hubris, whom he regarded as a greater danger than enemy nations. But such hubris is far more widespread today than just among political leaders.
Those with such hubris– in the media and in education, as well as in politics– have for years eroded both respect for the country and the social cohesion of its people. This erosion is what has set the stage for today’s dismantling of America that is now approaching the point of no return.

“To those who claim omnipotence for the Legislature, and who in the plentitude of their assumed powers, are disposed to disregard the Constitution, law, good faith, moral right, and every thing else,” Lincoln declared in an early speech to the Illinois legislature, “I have nothing to say.”

In Lincoln, we have a glimpse of prudence in a liberal democracy; but it is also our best glimpse of it, and perhaps our best hope for understanding and recovering it, and our best hope for the possibility of statesmanship in an age of the partisan absolute, where ignorant armies clash by night. (Heritage.org)
Or on the Internet and the 24/7 News cycle…:)

Trust:
reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.confident expectation of something; hope.the condition of one to whom something has been entrusted.the obligation or responsibility imposed on a person in whom confidence or authority is placed: a position of trust.charge, custody, or care: to leave valuables in someone’s trust.something committed or entrusted to one’s care for use or safekeeping, as an office, duty, or the like; responsibility; charge.
The new “reach for hope” should be a renewal of trust. But Verify

We The People

It has often been a theme in my blog for this nearly first year about the dishonesty of this administration, the Orwellian Tactics, and the Alinsky maneuvers. How the dripping contempt for the ‘little people’ from the political Elite Class has boiled over and how the Ministry of Truth (The Mainstream Media) is both a partner, a sucker, and a toadie for it all.
How the Left like to define everything in their own terms and you aren’t allowed to disagree with them.
Leaving you and me, the average citizen, hung out to dry.
Now Thomas Sowell, a evil abomination that liberals don’t want to exist – a black Conservative- a great piece today.

‘We the people” are the central concern of the Constitution, as well as its opening words, since it is a Constitution for a self-governing nation. But “we the people” are treated as an obstacle to circumvent by the current administration.
One way of circumventing the people is to rush legislation through Congress so fast that no one knows what is buried in it. Did you know that the so-called health care reform bill contained a provision creating a tax on people who buy and sell gold coins?
You might debate whether that tax is a good or a bad idea. But the whole point of burying it in legislation about medical insurance is to make sure “we the people” don’t even know about it, much less have a chance to debate it, before it becomes law.
Did you know that the financial reform bill that’s been similarly rushed through Congress, too fast for anyone to read, has a provision about “inclusion” of women and minorities? Pretty words like “inclusion” mean ugly realities like quotas. But that too isn’t something “we the people” are to be allowed to debate, because it too was sneaked through.
Not since the Norman conquerors of England published their laws in French, for an English-speaking nation, centuries ago, has there been such contempt for the people’s right to know what laws were being imposed on them.
Yet another ploy is to pass laws worded in vague generalities, leaving it up to the federal bureaucracies to issue specific regulations based on those laws. “We the people” can’t vote on bureaucrats. And, since it takes time for all the bureaucratic rules to be formulated and then put into practice, we won’t know what either the rules or their effects are prior to this fall’s elections when we vote for (or against) those who passed these clever laws.
The biggest circumvention of “we the people” was of course the so-called “health care reform” bill. This bill was passed with the proviso that it would not really take effect until after the 2012 presidential elections. Between now and then, the Obama administration can tell us in glowing words how wonderful this bill is, what good things it will do for us, and how it has rescued us from the evil insurance companies, among its many other glories.
But we won’t really know what the actual effects of this bill are until after the next presidential elections — which is to say, after it is too late. Quite simply, we are being played for fools.
Much has been made of the fact that families making less than $250,000 a year will not see their taxes raised. Of course they won’t see it, because what they see could affect how they vote. But when huge tax increases are put on electric utility companies, the people will see electricity bills go up. When huge taxes are put on other businesses as well, they will see the prices of the things those businesses sell go up.
If you are not in that “rich” category, you will not see your own taxes go up. But you will be paying someone else’s higher taxes, unless of course you can do without electricity and other products of heavily taxed businesses. If you don’t see this, so much the better for the administration politically.
This country has been changed in a more profound way by corrupting its fundamental values. The Obama administration has begun bribing people with the promise of getting their medical care and other benefits paid for by other people, so long as those other people can be called “the rich.” Incidentally, most of those who are called “the rich” are nowhere close to being rich.
A couple making $125,000 a year each are not rich, even though together they reach that magic $250,000 income level. In most cases, they haven’t been making $125,000 a year all their working lives. Far more often, they have reached this level after decades of working their way up from lower incomes — and now the government steps in to grab the reward they have earned over the years.
There was a time when most Americans would have resented the suggestion that they wanted someone else to pay their bills. But now, envy and resentment have been cultivated to the point where even people who contribute nothing to society feel that they have a right to a “fair share” of what others have produced.
The most dangerous corruption is a corruption of a nation’s soul. That is what this administration is doing.

I would add in the socialist corruption of the Education process so that even if they can’t destroy you they can destroy the future and the little darling brains full of mush will never know because they will never tell them.
It starts in grade school where you just don’t mention certain things, events and concepts and moves on through college life. So that by the end of 16 years of “education” you’re effectively a mindless idiot willing do what the government says because “it’s fair” and “it’s sensitive”.
And you wouldn’t want to be “unfair” and “insensitive” now would you?


A central goal of these programs is to uproot “internalized oppression,” a crucial concept in the diversity education planning documents of most universities. Like the Leninists’ notion of “false consciousness,” from which it ultimately is derived, it identifies as a major barrier to progressive change the fact that the victims of oppression have internalized the very values and ways of thinking by which society oppresses them. What could workers possibly know, compared to intellectuals, about what workers truly should want? What could students possibly know, compared to those creating programs for offices of student life and residence, about what students truly should feel? Any desire for assimilation or for individualism reflects the imprint of white America’s strategy for racial hegemony.
Planning for New Student Week at Northwestern University, a member of the Cultural Diversity Project Committee explained to the Weekly Northwestern Review in 1989 that the committee’s goal was “changing the world, or at least the way [undergraduates] perceive it.” In 1993, Ana Maria Garcia, assistant dean of Haverford College, proudly told the Philadelphia Inquirer of official freshman dormitory programs there, which divided students into two groups: happy, unselfish Alphas and grim, acquisitive Betas. For Garcia, the exercise was wonderfully successful: “Students in both groups said the game made them feel excluded, confused, awkward, and foolish,” which, for Garcia, accomplished the purpose of Haverford’s program: “to raise student awareness of racial and ethnic diversity.”
In the early 1990s, Bryn Mawr College shared its mandatory “Building Pluralism” program with any school that requested it. Bryn Mawr probed the most private experiences of every first-year student: difference and discomfort; racial, ethnic, and class experiences; sexual orientation; religious beliefs. By the end of this “orientation,” students were devising “individual and collective action plans” for “breaking free” of “the cycle of oppression” and for achieving “new meaning” as “change agents.” Although the public relations savvy of universities has changed since the early 1990s, these programs proliferate apace.
The darkest nightmare of the literature on power is George Orwell’s 1984, where there is not even an interior space of privacy and self. Winston Smith faces the ultimate and consistent logic of the argument that everything is political, and he can only dream of “a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.”(reason.com)

Let’s take that a step farther. The liberal left says that you are “insensitive” to muslims if you object to the mosque being built next to Ground Zero.
But you also “insensitive” to Latinos if you want the border secured. That’s “racial profiling”. You’re a “racist”.
But yet, if you’re a devout Christian who doesn’t believe in Gay marriage, because of your religion, You’re an insensitive, homophobic bigot!
So you’re insensitive to the Muslim religion if you object, but if you object based on your Christian religion you’re also insensitive.
And if you tell the proponents of the mosque that building it there is “insensitive” they will shoot back that you’re stereotyping all Muslims and that the Constitution protects there right to build it there.
So they can tell you you’re “insensitive” but you can’t tell THEM they are “insensitive” because they are your Insufferably Moral Superiors and you can’t even begin to judge them.
Orwell couldn’t do much better than that. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

O’Brien’s re-education of Winston in 1984 went to the heart of such invasiveness. “We are not content with negative obedience…. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will.” The Party wanted not to destroy the heretic but to “capture his inner mind.” Where others were content to command “Thou shalt not” or “Thou shalt,” O’Brien explains, “Our command is ‘Thou art.’” To reach that end requires “learning… understanding [and] acceptance,” and the realization that one has no control even over one’s inner soul.

The school must become a therapeutic and political agent of progressive change. For your own good. But especially, before you figure out you’ve been had.
And the liberal media is there to reinforce it.
Look at how they frame the Ground Zero Mosque issue, for instance.
It’s all about Constitutional Right to worship as they please. The fact that this is a perversion of the First Amendment aside, it’s a clever little Alinsky tactic. Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
So you wouldn’t want to go against The Constitution now would you?
The fact that that isn’t even the real issue isn’t even the point. It’s a tactic. They don’t care about the Constitutionality of it. They know that’s irrelevant.
But they also know they can off-put you by pushing it. Just like when they call you a “racist” when you object to illegal immigration.
And if that’s the only argument you hear, then that’s they only argument you know.
If the free speech and religious freedoms protected in First Amendment are suddenly so sacrosanct, why is it that Obama and his left-wing allies continuously push for a return of the fairness doctrine and for getting religion (except islam) out of schools and everywhere else??
And if the Constitution is so all important to Liberals all of the sudden why do they continuously push for gun bans (aka The Second Amendment)?
And where in the Constitution does a Health Care Mandate come from? And what other Mandates can they come up with if they think there is??

And then you get the counter. It’s not the Imam and the Mosque next to Ground Zero that is the problem, it’s YOU who object to it, you’re the problem.
Speaker Pelosi on a radio show: “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she said. “How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City.”
Calls to investigate the funding for those proposing the $100 million “Cordoba House” have fallen on deaf ears, though, as New York’s Mayor Mike Bloomberg has described such an investigation as “un-American.”(Washington Times)

The only thing the majority of American opposed to this haven’t been called yet is…. RACIST!
But I’m sure it’s coming. It’s always coming…
And have you noticed, the proposed memorial to the victims of 9/11 hasn’t been finished 10 years later?
And a Greek Orthodox church crushed by the twin towers falling can’t get the zoning and building permits to rebuild?
Funny that.


And the final word today goes to former Obama Communication toadie Anita Dunn on MSDNC when challenged by Pat Buchanan on “tolerance”,“Anita, let me ask you about this word tolerance. I mean, what about tolerance for the views of the thousands of families of those who died on 9/11, the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who are saying, ‘Please, you have a right to move the mosque there but please don’t do it. It doesn’t belong there,’ and the vast majority of Americans who say the same thing?” Buchanan said.
“They have a right to build a mosque, but for heavens’ sakes given the fact that the terrorists were Islamic, it was crucial to their identity and their mission, please don’t put an Islamic mosque just two blocks from where this happened. What about tolerance for the vast majority of Americans and their opinions?” he said.
Dunn responded: “Well, you know, I have to ask, it’s two blocks … It’s a center that is supposed to be about promoting interfaith, and really reaching out, which in many ways is I think what President Bush back in those horrible days of 2001, really tried to promote.”
“And how many blocks is ok? Is nine blocks okay? Is 10? I don’t know where you go with this argument,” Dunn said.
“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski ended the segment with a non-sequitur.
“And Anita, they have, like, other things that a lot of people have issues with, like peep shows. So, I mean, I think you bring up a really good point,” Brzezinski said.
Last impression: it’s about peep shows, not “sensitivity”.
Doing Orwell proud.

The Yokes on You

Even though some people say we are living in a “knowledge economy,” we are living in a political atmosphere in which ignorance has more power than ever. Washington politicians who have never run any business are telling all kinds of businesses — from automobile companies and banks to hospitals and insurance companies — how they have to run their businesses. This is the golden age of ignorance in power. (Thomas Sowell)
WASHINGTON — The White House made it clear Tuesday that President Barack Obama will veto Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s proposal to curtail the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, in the unlikely event the Alaska Republican’s proposal passes Congress.
Murkowski on Thursday will ask fellow senators to vote on a rarely used disapproval resolution, which signals congressional displeasure with the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health. The proposal would keep the federal agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from large polluters such as power plants, a regulatory move already under way in the absence of any comprehensive climate bill by Congress.
The White House went as far as to issue a statement of administration policy on the EPA matter, and said Tuesday that the proposal from the Alaska Republican would “undermine the administration’s efforts to reduce the negative impacts of pollution and the risks associated with environmental catastrophes, like the ongoing BP oil spill.”
“As seen in the Gulf of Mexico, environmental disasters harm families, destroy jobs, and pollute the nation’s air, land and water,” the White House wrote.
The administrator of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, had even harsher words Tuesday at an EPA environmental conference for small business owners. She called the oil spill a “tragic reminder of the hazards of our oil addiction” and accused Murkowski of undermining the agency’s efforts to zero in on large emitters, not small ones.
“It would take away EPA’s ability to take action on climate change,” Jackson said. “And it would ignore and override scientific findings, allowing big oil companies, big refineries and others to continue to pollute without any oversight or consequence. Finally, it will result in exactly zero protections for small businesses.”
The EPA is working on regulations that will limit emissions by large producers of greenhouse gases, as part of its compliance with a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring the agency to determine whether greenhouse gases endanger the country’s health and welfare. (Miami Herald)
After all, if the Government controls energy, they control you.
If they control Health Care, they control you.
If they control what you eat (Obesity) they control you.
But don’t worry, the government is benevolent and here to save you from yourself.
They just wanna help.
They have the best of intentions.
Or do they?
That can’t be wrong now can it?
We have now reached the truly dangerous point where we cannot even be warned about the lethal, fanatical and suicidal hatred of our Islamic extremist enemies in our midst, because to do so would be politically incorrect here and, in some European countries, would be a violation of laws against inciting hostility to groups.
Think about it.