VAMOS AL PUNTO.

[sirjohn]

Democrats’ War on the Middle Class

by Andrew Moylan (more by this author)

Posted 09/16/2010 ET

If you didn’t see enough Hail Mary passes in week one of the NFL season, look no further than to the White House and congressional Democrats who are hoping that a desperate Hail Mary, in the form of a supposed “middle-class tax cut,” will grant them a reprieve from a widely predicted Election Day drubbing.

This strategy is both curious and misleading, especially considering that these same officials, who claim to be concerned about the middle class, are the ones piling on higher costs and more tax burdens to the already weary middle class.

Up until now, the Democrats’ legislative wish list has included a failed economic stimulus plan which has caused unparalleled increases in the national debt, crippling new taxes on American energy, an extended moratorium on domestic energy exploration, and an unprecedented explosion in government control of our healthcare. These disastrous policies have rightly caused middle-class Americans to question the President’s dedication to their interests, regardless of the lofty rhetoric he espouses.

Take, for example, the current ban on offshore drilling for oil and natural gas, which the Obama Administration has enforced and is up for more debate in Senate hearings this week. The President has ignored calls for a common-sense approach from respected members of his own party and Gulf coast experts.

The chairwoman of the Senate Small Business Committee, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D.-La.), said an extended drilling moratorium would cause “a substantial loss of jobs—jobs that may not return to the Gulf for years.”

By enforcing the extension of a needless ban on U.S. energy production, the Obama Administration will reduce domestic oil production by 82,000 barrels per day in 2011. This will undoubtedly raise energy prices for working families across the country while also eliminating thousands of needed (and highly-paid) energy-related jobs.

Another attack on the middle class came with so-called “cap-and-trade” national energy tax legislation, which the House passed by a razor thin margin last year. Analysis from the Heritage Foundation found that the bill would increase energy costs for a family of four by $829 while causing gasoline prices to soar by 58% and household electrical rates to increase by 90%. The middle-class families that President Obama seeks to help cannot afford these huge new burdens.

For more examples, take a look at the President’s $800 billion stimulus package. Billed as a way to create 3.5 million jobs and keep unemployment below 8%, the “stimulus” will actually cost every American household an additional $8,172 over the coming years. Not to mention, it has also failed to improve unemployment rates or create anything close to 3.5 million jobs.

Now, as if the first stimulus was not enough of a failure, the President is now floating a second (or is it third, or fourth?) stimulus package, which will be paid for by job-killing tax increases on the American energy industry. These taxes will impact the industry’s nine million workers along with the hundreds of millions of Americans needing low-cost gasoline.

This plan would also increase government spending by another $50 billion on infrastructure programs, despite the fact that the administration’s first stimulus bill already included $48 billion for so-called “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects.

Perhaps the greatest threat to our economic recovery came in the form of the healthcare bill. Passed at a cost of $940 billion, expenses to both small businesses and middle-class Americans are only now emerging. To start, the bill foisted another $8,911 in costs on every household over the next decade—that’s without taking into account potential increases in healthcare costs, losses of coverage, or hikes in insurance premiums.

While consumer confidence, the housing market, and other economic indicators continue to fall, support for bigger government and more spending drops even lower. Job losses, soaring national debt, and a potentially huge increase in the cost of living have Americans (middle class or not) rightfully disgusted with the offensive coordinators of these policies.

Soon enough though, the pain and hardships felt by most Americans will be shared with incumbents who will likely join millions of their former constituents in the unemployment lines when their last Hail Mary pass falls short.

Mr. Moylan is Director of Government Affairs for the 362,000-member National Taxpayers Union, a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizen group founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes, smaller government, and economic freedom at all levels.

[siboneyes]

Lifestyles of the Rich and Liberal Democrats

The conspicuous consumption of today’s Democratic pols.

BY Noemie Emery

September 20, 2010, Vol. 16, No. 01

EXCERPTS

   "The very rich are different from you and me,” F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, eliciting the famous rejoinder from Ernest Hemingway, “Yes, they have more money.” Today he might add that they are apt to be Democrats, often exceedingly liberal Democrats, fond of talking of “fairness” and equity as they rake in what seems like vast sums of money, and spend immense sums on themselves. Confronted with tales of their zillionaire populists, liberals claim (a) that the way that they vote counts for more than the way they spend money; and (b) that many great names in political history have lived well and had money themselves. The last point is true, but there is a difference in degree and in kind that has only come recently. Let us consider the facts.

    Oddly, it was with three of the four on the Democrats’ 2000 and 2004 national tickets that the great change would take place. When he at last lost the Florida recount, Al Gore had lived for eight years in the vice president’s mansion, and owned two different houses: a brick Tudor across the Potomac in Arlington that had belonged to his wife Tipper’s family, and his family farm back in -Tennessee. Shortly, he bought a 20-room, 10,000-square-foot house in the Belle Meade section of Nashville, and embarked on a career in the private sector that would balloon his net worth into a substantial fortune, in the $100 million-plus range. At the same time, he began a second career as an anti-global warming crusader that won him a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar, but allowed him to use an endless procession of jet planes and motorcades as he went to a series of Save the Earth rallies, at which he urged people to live in a green and more modest manner, build smaller houses, use less heat and power, and drive and fly less.

   In 2008, he acquired a houseboat, a 100-foot custom-built Fantasy Yacht estimated to cost between $500,000 and $1 million. In 2010, he bought a fourth house, a seaside estate in California, spending almost $9 million for a “gated ocean-view villa with a swimming pool, spa, and fountains;.wine cellar, terraces, six fireplaces, five bedrooms, and nine baths in more than 6,500 square feet.” In 2007, a study by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research revealed that Gore’s house in Nashville “devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt hours in 2006—more than 20 times the national average,” that his monthly gas bill averaged $1,080 and his electric bill $1,359. “Why would anyone need a fourth mansion?” asked the Huffington Post, which called “Gore’s commodity addiction” at odds with his professed belief in “simplicity of living, care for other beings,” and concern for the state of the earth.

   All this was true, but at four houses, (two of them mansions), along with one boat, he was still a mansion short of John Kerry, the Democrats’ nominee in the 2004 cycle, who, when he married Teresa Heinz, widow of John Heinz, the Republican senator, fell heir to all this in one swoop. And some swoop it was, consisting of spectacular digs in five first class settings: the Heinz family house in Fox Chapel near Pittsburgh; a mansion in Georgetown; a beach house in Nantucket; a ski lodge in Idaho (shipped over stone by stone from Great Britain); and a $6.9 million town house on Boston’s Beacon Hill. The combined square footage of these spreads is unknown, but they had an aggregate value of almost $30 million when he was running for president in 2004.

   To balance his ticket, he tapped John Edwards of North Carolina, who had made nearly $60 million in his prior career as a tear-jerking lawyer, and, while campaigning on behalf of children too poor to afford coats in the winter, was soon to start building a spread in his home state that seemed like four houses in one. The Carolina Journal reported that the main building was 10,400 square feet, connected by a 2,200-square-foot enclosure to a 15,600-square-foot “recreational building,” housing a basketball court, a squash court, two stages, bedrooms, kitchens, and bathrooms, a swimming pool, a four story tower, and a room called “John’s Lounge.” Edwards, who talked incessantly of the poor, might have served them better if he had just built the main house and given the cost of the rest to a neighborhood charity. That would have bought a whole lot of coats.

   In July 2010, as Bill and Hillary Clinton were throwing a $2-3 million-plus wedding for their daughter Chelsea (of which $11,000 went for a gluten-free wedding cake) and Michelle Obama was planning a lavish vacation to Spain’s Costa del Sol, the Boston Herald revealed that John Kerry was the owner of the Isabel, a 76-foot, $7 million yacht custom-made in New Zealand, which he had kept at a dock in Newport, Rhode Island, to avoid paying an estimated $500,000 in Massachusetts state tax. The boat, according to the brochure of the company, had two VIP suites (and one for the help), a wet bar, cold wine storage, and seated six around a custom-made table of Edwardian sstyle ornate varnished teak. Add this to the Heinz-Kerrys’ five land-based places of residence, and they now have in all six luxury “houses,” each estimated at over $4 million, for a total of $36 million.

  If “$300 will put you on the briny in a fine sit-on kayak, Kerry’s tax bill alone could guarantee summer fun for 1,666 Bay State households,” the Boston Herald reported, adding that if this was too primitive, a 10-year-old 24-foot Bayliner could be had for $30,000. Kerry “might not want to be seen in one,” the paper conceded, “but for what he’s been shelling out in taxes, he could be the proud owner of 16 of them, and still have about six months of his average constituent’s take-home pay.”

   As all this played out against the recession, Michelle Obama, who has the use of the White House, Camp David, and the family manse in Chicago, took off for Spain on Air Force Two with her daughter, a few pals, and several dozen members of the Secret Service, blocking off 60 to 70 rooms in a hotel described as a “millionaire’s playground” where rooms went for between $400 and $6,500 a night.

    For the next five or so days, people in the Gulf states and elsewhere were treated to film of her enjoying the oil-free beaches and waters, seeing the sights in Jackie-O sunglasses, being ferried by plane to Majorca for lunch with Spain’s royal family, and taking the waters on a beach near the ocean, which had been specially cleared by police. The cost to the public was estimated at close to $375,000.

    Once, as National Review’s Jim Geraghty notes, the Obamas had seemed a refreshing and sensible couple, “comparably normal by;. candidate standards, a successful couple with adorable children who] talked about paying off student loans.” This was before “vacations so frequent they; blur together,” and “entertaining with $59 per pound Wagyu steak, [and] fundraisers with quail egg and caviar and salmon ceviche.”

Al Gore owns four homes, one boat, and gorges on kilowatts while urging the world to make small carbon footprints. John Edwards crusades for the destitute while building a palace. John Kerry promotes higher taxes while dodging those on a $7 million yacht he bought in a recession. Michelle Obama urges young people to reject high-paying jobs in the business world for nonprofits and community service, while indulging a taste for designer couture, expensive vacations, and designer sports sneakers, which she wore while feeding the poor.

    What’s wrong with these pictures? Two things. First, the hypocrisy undercuts the moral authority, and makes it ridiculous. Second, it’s a mega leap up from what looks from the outside to be not that much more than upper-middle-class comfort—nice house in town, nice country house, nice small sailboats, nice American cars—to the mega-rich level of yachts and multiple mansions, available to only a very small fraction of the upper crust: rock stars, sports stars, film stars, nouveau-riche captains of industry, and others not known for their modesty, balance, and sense of restraint. Live on a level accessible to some of the people you govern, and you send the message that you are a citizen.

     Live like a king, and you send the message that you think you are one, that you see nothing amiss in appropriating far more than what your politics say is your share of the universe; that you are entitled because you are worth more than others, that this is your due. Someday, Democrats should sit down and ask themselves how they came in such a short space of time to produce so many marquee figures who wanted to talk like French revolutionaries while living like French royalty. Ask Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, or the Bushes to spend $7 million on anything, and they would have had heart attacks. Ask them to buy a yacht during a recession, and they would have been aghast.

Fitzgerald said the rich were soft where others were hard (and vice-versa), and he may have been accurate. But these rich are soft in the head in a way that is nothing but hard on their party, which needs to restore a previous model. There was, after all, no “Jack’s Lounge” at Hyannis and no “FDR’s Lounge” at Hyde Park.

Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.

[sirjohn]

Obama y la falsificación de la historia

 6 de Octubre de 2008 -   

Alberto Acereda

LIBERTAD DIGITAL

    A cuatro semanas para que los norteamericanos votemos a un nuevo presidente y a un nuevo Congreso, los acontecimientos se precipitan, las encuestas se multiplican y el futuro electoral sigue, pese a todo, tan incierto como volátil. No es esta realidad la que se quiere presentar en el ramo mediático predominante, es decir el que favorece al mesiánico Obama. La más que notable actuación de Sarah Palin en el debate del pasado jueves inquietó a más de uno que daba ya por caído y enterrado al ticket Republicano. Aun así, la penosa e hipócrita aprobación al día siguiente del nuevo paquete económico intervencionista por parte del Congreso permitió a los medios obamitas disimular el éxito de Palin y esconder en buena medida las catorce mentiras perpetradas por Joe Biden durante el debate. Porque de eso se trata casi siempre en las filas Demócratas: de falsificar la historia y contar las cosas como más convenga.

////

    La distorsión de los hechos, o sea la reinvención de la historia con su consiguiente falsificación para atacar a los Republicanos, es uno de los grandes éxitos propagandísticos del Partido Demócrata. Es por eso que de la situación económica actual se culpa únicamente -y como siempre ocurre- a George W. Bush y a los Republicanos, obviando que son los Demócratas (los Frank, Schummer, Dodd y aun el mismo Obama…) quienes permitieron que buena parte de la raíz del problema (Fannie Mae y Freddie Mac) no se solucionara. Eso, claro, además del hecho de que el Congreso lleva ya dos años controlado completamente en sus dos cámaras por sendas mayorías Demócratas; dos años, es decir el mismo tiempo que hace que llevamos recibiendo malos datos económicos.

       Pero como el grueso de la Derecha norteamericana parece tener la columna vertebral de mantequilla al querer ir de “moderada” y dialogante, apenas se oyen voces que hablen claro y que expliquen a la ciudadanía todas estas cosas. Lo mismo ocurre con la falsificación de la historia emprendida al hilo de la cuestión racial, tema que vale la pena ejemplificar hoy aquí y al hilo de la comedia que es la campaña misma de Obama.

      Si recuerdan, al final del discurso de aceptación de Obama en la Convención Demócrata el pasado 28 de agosto, el senador de Illinois evocó la figura de Martin Luther King, Jr. Obama aprovechaba así un calculado aniversario, el del célebre discurso de King (“I Have a Dream…”) en las escalinatas del Lincoln Memorial de Washington en tal día del año 1963.

    Justo cuarenta y cinco años después, Obama buscaba presentarse de esta manera como el fiel heredero del reverendo King. Lo que Obama no contó, y lo que silenció por conveniencia propia, fue que tanto su partido -el Demócrata- como quienes por él pululan -incluido Obama mismo- tienen mucho que callar respecto a lo hecho para facilitar realmente esos sueños de Martin Luther King, Jr. En realidad, si hablamos de convenciones políticas, valdría recordarle a Obama que la parte final del histórico discurso de King tiene un gran parecido con el pronunciado por el Reverendo Archibald Carey, Sr., amigo de King, precisamente en la Convención Nacional del Partido Republicano en 1952.

    Ocurre que, históricamente, el partido antiesclavista y el que más ha defendido la libertad y los derechos civiles para la población negra en Estados Unidos no fue el Partido Demócrata, sino el Partido Republicano, ya desde su fundación en 1854 y especialmente con la valentía de su líder y luego presidente, Abraham Lincoln. Pese a la tergiversación histórica perpetuada por Obama y sus valedores, el Partido Demócrata fue siempre el partido de la segregación y a día de hoy viene a ser ya el de la soñada importación de la socialdemocracia a Estados Unidos, el partido encargado de transformar la nación americana en otra Europa socialdemócrata y alicaída.

    El partido en el que ahora habitan Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden y estos chiquilicuatres, herederos de los nefastos McGovern y los tragicómicos Carter de los setenta, es el mismo partido que quiso mantener a los ciudadanos negros en la esclavitud y que movilizó la creación del “Ku Klux Klan” para linchar y aterrorizar a la comunidad negra.

Fue también el Partido Demócrata el que luchó con más ahínco para imposibilitar la aprobación de cada una de las leyes de derechos civiles, desde 1860 hasta los años cincuenta y sesenta, ya en el siglo XX. El mismo Martin Luther King, Jr., que estuvo siempre más cerca del Partido Republicano que del Demócrata, luchó contra los miembros del Partido Demócrata que se negaban a aprobar esas leyes.

    Hubo de ser el presidente republicano Dwight Eisenhower quien empujó para que se apoyara la Ley de Derechos Civiles de 1957 y quien mandó soldados a Arkansas para acabar con la segregación escolar que discriminaba a los niños negros.

      Incluso una figura elevada a los altares por la progresía como John F. Kennedy votó en 1957 como senador contra esa Ley de Derechos Civiles, al igual que votó en contra otro senador Demócrata: Al Gore, Sr. -el padre del Al Gore que luego fue vicepresidente con Bill Clinton y actual gurú de la estampita del calentamiento global-.

     En marzo de 1968, el senador Demócrata por West Virginia -Robert Byrd- que sigue hoy en el Senado y que perteneció al “Ku Klux Klan”- atacó despiadadamente a Martin Luther King, Jr. hasta que éste fue asesinado.

    En cambio, fue el Partido Republicano el que más luchó por los derechos, la ciudadanía y el voto de los negros (enmiendas 13, 14 y 15 de la Constitución). Fue también el Partido Republicano el que creó la organización nacional negra NAACP -convertida luego por los Demócratas en un nido de radicales aprovechados que en poco o nada ayudan a la comunidad negra-.

    Fueron también los Republicanos quienes, a través del presidente Richard Nixon en 1969, lanzaron los programas de “Acción Afirmativa” (inicialmente bien intencionados pero luego alterados en su concepto original por el Partido Demócrata). Fue también el Partido Republicano a través de su senador Everett Dirksen de Illinois quien abrió el camino para la legislación de derechos civiles que -con el apoyo de todos los Republicanos en el Congreso- pudo aprobar Lyndon B. Johnson. En realidad, fue el senador Republicano Barry Goldwater, uno de los grandes conservadores hoy olvidados, quien quiso forzar a los Demócratas en el Sur de Estados Unidos a dejar de aprobar leyes discriminatorias contra los negros.

A pesar de esta historia de hechos objetivos y probados durante los siglos XIX y XX en Estados Unidos, en cada elección presidencial nos encontramos con el mismo Partido Demócrata que acusa al Partido Republicano de todos los males, incluido el estar alejado de la comunidad negra y de ser, en fin, casi un partido de blancos racistas.

      La realidad es muy otra, como muestra la historia y el hecho de que pese al consistente y abrumador voto negro al Partido Demócrata en el último medio siglo, la comunidad negra en Estados Unidos no levanta cabeza, sobre todo en los lugares tradicionalmente gobernados por los Demócratas. Los valores de trabajo, responsabilidad individual, educación, propiedad privada y prosperidad, libertad e igualdad de oportunidades son los que sostiene el Partido Republicano y los que anheló Martin Luther King, Jr. No extraña así que a lo largo de las primarias Demócratas la carta racial se jugó hipócritamente tanto por Obama como por los Clinton, en otra lamentable exhibición de hipocresía.

    Estamos ante la misma hipocresía y la misma falta de perspectiva histórica que mostró Obama en aquel discurso suyo de aceptación en Denver, simulando ser otro Martin Luther King, Jr., frente a un artificial Lincoln Memorial cuarenta y cinco años después. Lo artificial de la decoración y el arrogante elitismo progresista de Obama en esa Convención emborronó el recuerdo del noble discurso de King.

      La historia, bien mirada, prueba que no es en ese partido político ni tampoco en ese candidato donde la América negra debe buscar su futuro. Y es que, gane o pierda Obama la presidencia, resulta fuera de lugar y totalmente errado tildar a Estados Unidos de país de blancos racistas.

     Aun así, lo fácil es repetir y hacer creer la falsía de la carta racista Demócrata cuando la realidad es bien distinta. Porque mientras el voto blanco se dividirá a partes muy iguales entre Obama y McCain, el voto negro se calcula que irá otra vez en su inmensa mayoría a los Demócratas, y en esta ocasión en un más del 90% para Obama. Ante los complejos de la Derecha, también aquí en Estados Unidos, esto es lo que ocurre al seguir calladitos y permitir que los de siempre falsifiquen la historia…

[sirjohn]

THE DELUSIONAL DEMOCRATS

by Roger Hedgecock 

Posted 09/17/2010 ET

While the current headlines focus on insurgent Tea Party candidates defeating Republican establishment picks in the recent primaries, the real story remains the collapse of the Democrat coalition and the impending Democrat loss of control in Congress.

Much has been written about American voters reacting negatively to the Obama-Reid-Pelosi lurch to the left with the bailouts, the stimulus, the financial "reform" and, most of all, the crazy idea that government can borrow and spend our way to prosperity.

But there is another cause of the Democrats reversal of fortune that is rarely explored by pundits left or right. It is the Obama jihad against Arizona for daring to take action to enforce America's border with Mexico.

Cartoon courtesy of Brett Noel

Arizona's law, SB 1070, empowered state law enforcement officers in any arrest, traffic stop, or other contact within the scope of their duties to require identification and in the absence of identification to call in federal immigration officials to determine immigration status.

Before this law could even come into affect or be enforced, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano denounced the law as "racist" and then had to admit they had never read it.

President Obama likewise denounced the Arizona law and invited Mexican President Calderon to address a joint session of the American Congress and stood by approvingly while the Mexican President chastised Arizona for passing this law.

Even after public opinion polls showed strong majority support for Arizona's stance on border control and even after horror stories of Mexican drug cartel incursions into Arizona, the President ordered the Justice Department to sue Arizona to invalidate SB 1070.

The latest Rasmussen poll still finds American voters favoring passage of an Arizona sstyle law in their own state by a margin of 59%-41%. And 56% oppose the Obama Administration's decision to oppose the law in court.

The very idea of an American President suing a state for trying to enforce a federal law that that President refuses to enforce infuriated a significant majority of American voters already frustrated and angry about other actions taken by the Obama Administration.

For example, in Kentucky voters were asked "How angry are you at the current policies of the federal government?" 74% of the respondents were angry (47% very angry) with only 7% being not angry at all.

It isn't just the debt, the crazy spending, persistent recession and high unemployment; American voters are frustrated by President Obama's apology tours, bowing to foreign leaders, and now suing a state within his own country for trying to enforce a federal law where widespread public support demands a controlled border.

Consider a specific example in California. Loretta Sanchez represents Congressional District 47 in Orange County, Calif., and was re-elected in 2008 with 69.5% of the vote. In the 2010 election the political terrain looks completely different. Van Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant, is a member of the California State Assembly, the Republican nominee in the Sanchez district, and a border control advocate.

According to Sanchez in an interview done on September 12 on Univision, the race is within 2-3 points. In that same interview, Sanchez appears to be playing the race card desperately calling Van Tran "very anti-immigration and very anti-Hispanic."

Desperate Democrats this week trumpeted their latest party line—that the Tea Party backed Republican nominees (Christine O’Donnell the latest) were “more extreme than the public.” Really? Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidates Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Joe Miller, and John Boozman are all running ahead of their Democrat rivals. Sharron Angle is within the margin of error against Harry Reid.

And what’s so “extreme” about running on a platform of restoring constitutional government and balanced budgets and free market solutions? What an increasing majority of Americans see as extreme is the “transformation of America” into a Big Government nanny state which, if Michelle Obama gets her way, will dictate the content of the menu at your favorite restaurant.

Then I heard the spin that independent voters are not going to buy the grassroots, Tea Party candidates that are winning Republican primaries all over the country.

But it is precisely the independent voters who are most abandoning the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda. In Florida's Senate race, for example, Tea Party backed Republican Marco Rubio leads the so-called "Independent" Charlie Crist among independent voters 38% to 36% with the Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek getting just 16 % of the independent vote.

In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer will be re-elected by at least two thirds of the voters, including independents, even if she never debates her opponent again.

Message to the ruling elites and power brokers of both political parties: Americans are fed up with total Democratic Party control of the federal government and so far the Republican Party elites don't have any better ideas. The good ideas and a new wave of candidates are coming up from the people to challenge both parties. This "wave" election could become a tidal wave.

Roger Hedgecock is a nationally-syndicated radio talk host. Visit rogerhedgecock.com. The Roger Hedgecock Show is syndicated on the Radio America network.

DEMINT/RUBIO EN EL 2016???

Christine O'Donnell Nails Her First Major Speech Since Her Election

 By Nicole Allan  

     In the most anticipated speech at today's Values Voter Summit in Washington, Delaware's new GOP Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell ignited the Omni Shoreham ballroom with a tangible buzz. She strode onto the stage to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'," with orange spotlights sweeping the room. (None of the other afternoon speakers got a light show.) The packed crowd gave her an enthusiastic standing ovation, continuing to applaud long after she took the podium.

She wore a black suit and pearls and seemed nervous at first, ticking off the perilous resume of Obama's Washington: health care reform, the stimulus, bailouts, terrorist trials in Manhattan. "The conservative movement was told to curl up in a fetal pposition and just stay there for the next eight years, thank you very much," she said, then pausing as a big grin spread across her face. "Well, how things have changed." The audience broke into applause, and from that point forward, O'Donnell seemed to relax. Her speech featured quotable bits about American patriots throughout history and overstepping liberals, and even featured a few self-deprecating cracks.

"The small elite don't get us," O'Donnell said. "They call us wacky. They call us wingnuts. We call us 'we the people.'" Addressing the GOP infighting her nomination has come to symbolize, she admitted, "We don't always agree. ... We don't always endorse the same candidates or speak off the same talking points. We're loud, we're ratty" -- when the crowd laughed, she corrected the word to "rowdy," fumbling a bit. "We're that too," she said. "We're passionate."

Further proving her penchant for fantasy epic fanhood, she told a story from C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When one of the children asks whether Aslan, the lion who symbolizes Christ, is safe, another answers, "'Course he's not safe! But he's good."

"That's what's happening in America today with this grassroots groundswelll," O'Donnell said, "with this love affair with liberty. It isn't tame, but boy, it sure is good."

O'Donnell settled into a bit of a folksy rhythm not too dissimilar from Sarah Palin's speaking sstyle, acknowledging the left's criticisms and giving as good as she got:

Will they atttack us? Yes. Will they smear our backgrounds and destroy our records? Undoubtedly. They will. There's nothing safe about it. But is it worth it? ... I say yes, yes, a thousand times yes. This is no moment for the faint of heart. Some have accused us of being just an aging crowd of Reagan staffers and home-schoolers. They're trying to marginalize us and put is in a box. ... They don't get it. We're not trying to take back our country. We ARE our country.

She also took Palin's cue with an oblique reference to death panels and a string of family metaphors to describe the relationship between government and the people. "They'll buy your teenage daughter an abortion, but they won't let her buy a sugary soda in the school's vending machine," O'Donnell quipped to a chuckling crowd. "And what kind of mom or dad sticks the bill to a kid who'll have to pay it tomorrow?"

Acknowledging criticism about her unpaid (until recently) college debts and various other financial struggles, O'Donnell admitted to her share of economic challenges. "I never had the high-paying job or the company car," she said. "It took me 10 years to pay off my student loans. I never had to worry about where to dock my yacht to reduce my taxes." (This last John Kerry jab did not go unappreciated by the audience.)

When her speech wound to a close, the crowd leapt to its feet again. The moderator who took the stage after O'Donnell asked the audience to pray for her, saying, "This woman of faith is going to be under severe attack."

It's critical to understand that though O'Donnell seems to have nailed this speech, she was preaching to the choir. It will be far more interesting to see how she does during press conferences, TV interviews, and moderated debates (like last night's conversation between her and Democratic candidate Chris Coons, which didn't reveal much about either candidate). Will she run from the press, Sharron Angle-sstyle or embrace the publicity and spin it to her advantage, Sarah Palin-sstyle? Given that O'Donnell has made a good portion of her (admittedly spotty) income through press appearances and seems to have already absorbed chunks of the Palin persona, the latter path seems more likely. 

A Kenyan Marxist: No, Not Obama, Chris Coons VS. TEA PARTY DARLING CHRISTINE O'DONNELL

Wednesday, September 15, 2010 5

by Brian O'Connor

"Can you guess which man is the Kenyan Marxist?"

Communist, Democrat, What’s the Difference?

Democrats came out drooling Wednesday morning, saying that Christine O’Donnell was just the candidate they wanted in the Delaware Senate race.

Which got me thinking.

If the Democrats are acting so giddy and excited…

What are they trying to hide?

Could it be Chris Coons’ past?

An article Democrat Chris Coons wrote for his college newspaper may not go over so well in corporation-friendly Delaware, where he already faces an uphill battle for Vice President Joe Biden’s old Senate seat.

     The title? “Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist.”

In the article, Coons, then 21 years old and about to graduate from Amherst College, chronicled his transformation from a sheltered, conservative-minded college student who had worked for former GOP Delaware Sen. William Roth and had campaigned for Ronald Reagan in 1980 into a cynical young adult who was distrustful of American power and willing to question the American notion of free enterprise.

     “My friends now joke that something about Kenya, maybe the strange diet, or the tropical sun, changed my personality; Africa to them seems a catalytic converter that takes in clean-shaven, clear-thinking Americans and sends back bearded Marxists,” Coons wrote, noting that at one time he had been a “proud founding member of the Amherst College Republicans.”

     Hoffman said the trip to Kenya helped lead to Coons’ decision to become a Democrat.

Hilarious!

Our political system did not have a Communist party, so Coons joined the next best thing.

The Democrat Party.

Between Harry Reid’s oopsie and Chris Coon’s record, it seems that it’s Christine O’Donnell who got just what she wanted in the Delaware Senate race.

Chris Coons!

[siboneyes]

BARRY GOLDWATER, NUNCA FUE NI RACISTA, NI EXTREMISTA

DQBAN22

9/19/2010

“Extremismo” es el arma más efectiva,  más destructiva y más sistemáticamente usada por los radicales de izquierda contra los conservadores,  tal como propugnaba Saul Alisnky en su famoso libro “Rules for Radicals”, tácticas usadas con gran virtuosismo por su devoto seguidor, Barack Obama y sus secuaces del partido del KKK, de la segregación y del aborto.

    El término “extremismo” conlleva intolerancia, racismo, odio, fanatismo y promoción de la violencia. Supremos ejemplos de extremismo fueron los genocidios de Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro.   No creo que haya habido en la historia de los Estados Unidos, ejemplo más infamante de extremismo que el del KKK y el linchamiento de negros a manos de  los demócratas  recurriendo al terror para mantenerlos subyugados aún después que fueron  liberados por Lincoln.

     Afirmaba el filósofo Jorge Santayana que “quien ignora la historia está condenado a repetirla.”  De nuevo recurren los demócratas a las patrañas usadas contra Barry Goldwater en la campaña presidencial  de 1964.    

     Racismo y extremismo son los epítetos usados al granel por los demócratas para difamar y des caracterizar al movimiento de masas conservador, el Tea Party, tal como hicieron en los años 60 contra Goldwater.

      Ante la vil y sistemática campaña de los demócratas acusando de extremista a Barry Goldwater, al aceptar en 1964 la candidatura presidencial por el partido Republicano respondió a esos ataques con una frase lapidaria: “Quiero dejar sentado que extremismo en defensa de la libertad no es un vicio… y que moderación en la demanda de justicia no es virtud!!!”

     Jonhson, famoso por su falta de escrúpulos, uso dos videos al cual más vil que han quedado en los anales de la política americana como paradigma de ignominia.  En uno aparecía una niña en medio de un campo lleno de flores y de pronto la niña miraba el hongo de una explosión nuclear a la vez que la voz de Johnson decía “ESTO ES LO QUE ESTA EN JUEGO” implicando que Goldwater era un guerrerista que nos llevaría a una guerra nuclear.

    El otro anuncio no menos mendaz e infame fue usar a uno de los líderes demócratas del KKK diciendo que prefería a Goldwater antes que a Jonhson, patraña con la cual quería implicar a Goldwater con el KKK.

      Lo cierto es que Goldwater tenía un rico historial de lucha por los derechos civiles de los negros, al extremo que Goldwater desagregó la guardia Nacional de Arizona antes que Truman lo hiciera con las fuerzas armadas de Estados Unidos.

      Antes que Barry Goldwater ocupara ningún cargo público, ya él había integrado el negocio familiar.  Siendo concejal  en Phoenix, Goldwater fue uno de los fundadores de NAACP (Nacional Association for the Advance of Color People) de Arizona, y permaneció orgulloso miembro de esa organización hasta su muerte.

     Goldwater apoyó ambas Actas de Derechos Civiles de 1957 y 1960.  Posición que contrasta con las que tomó el congresista Lindón B. Johnson y el senador Al Gore Sr., entre otros baluartes del partido Demócrata que se opusieron a esas leyes, una de las cuales prohibia los linchamientos de negros.  El más respetador senador demócrata, Robert Byrd  que murió recientemente después de una larga carrera en ese hemiciclo donde los demócratas le honraban inapropiadamente con el título de la “conciencia del senado” ya que lo correcto hubiera sido titularle “la conciencia de los demócratas del senado”, ya que de líder del KKK paso, ya senador Byrd, a ser uno de los enemigos más furibundos de los derechos civiles de los negros al extremo de llevar a cabo un filibuster que duró 74 días tratando, sin éxito, de bloquear el Acta de los Derechos Civiles de los negros.

      Es de destacar que los colleges y universidades de negros fueron fundadas por los republicanos.

    Los demócratas que tienen en su pasado el haber fundado el infame KKK, el linchamiento de negros,  y haber mantenido subyugados los negros liberados por Lincoln violándoles sus derechos civiles y sometidos a la degradante  segregación racial, tienen además el vergonzoso historial de contar con toda una pléyade de  presidentes racistas y anti-semitas que van de Woodrow Wilson hasta Barack Obama, pasando por F.D.R., Truman, J.F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, y Jimmy Carter.   Así, carentes de modelos dignos, quieren apropiarse para sí el récord ejemplar de aquellos que abandonaron asqueados el partido Demócrata para pasar a formar parte del Great Old Party de Lincoln, como fue el caso de los Presidentes Dwight Eisenhower y Ronald Reagan.

       El partido Demócrata no ha cambiado la virulencia de su racismo, solamente cambiaron los métodos de mantenerlos subyugados,  ya no linchan a los negros que quieren liberarse de su yugo, sino que recurren a asesinar su carácter como hicieron con el Juez de la Suprema Corte de Justicia, Clarence Thomas, o los condena a vivir en la miseria  por generaciones  dependientes  del estado “welfare” destruyéndoles las ansias de superación y bloqueándoles el camino para superarse.

    Es anatema para los radicales en control del poder el tratar de poner un coto al crecimiento incontrolado de un gobierno que se mete en todo, como describía el filósofo francés, Jean Francois Revel, al estado hipertrofiado. 

      Los padres fundadores de Estados Unidos eran opuestos a las violaciones de los derechos individuales y al estatismo.  Para los radicales del régimen obamunista, es inaceptable el “extremismo”  de defender los derechos inalienables del hombre y los principios de libertad y capitalismo que hicieron de los Estados Unidos la nación más libre y próspera del mundo.

      Los demócrata están histéricos ya que el tsunami libertario y constitucionalista del Tea Party amenaza con poner fin al régimen dictatorial de Obama en las elecciones de Noviembre terminando el control de los demócratas sobre todo el poder Legislativo a la vez que minan e infiltraban al poder judicial con verdaderos extremistas de izquierdas para que se hagan cómplices de las sistemáticas violaciones de la Constitución perpetradas por el régimen de Obama.

     Las tropas de choque del régimen marxista de Obama atacan de extremistas y racistas al movimiento de masa popular, el Tea Party, por que defienden el capitalismo y los valores tradicionales de Estados Unidos ya que no tienen argumentos validos para debatirles en la base de principios.  Calificándoles de fascistas, extremistas, racista y cuanto otro epíteto de su caudaloso léxico degradante tratan de demonizar a los defensores de la constitución y de las libertades que nos legaron nuestros padres fundadores.

    Así, los demócratas, a través de sus corifeos en la prensa que ellos controlan masivamente, ensalzan a los republicanos "moderados", que en política implica inconsistencia ideológica, el llamado “middle of the road”, el político listo a sacrificar los principios para recibir loas de la prensa.  Son los que disfrutan del status quo y tratan de preservar los privilegios que gozan confraternizando con los demócratas en el poder a la vez que se hacen cómplices del avance incontenible del estado y de un el endeudamiento que constituye una carga insostenible para las generaciones futuras.

    El Tea Party está limpiando el congreso de los demócratas corruptos y de los republicanos moderados o RINOS que siempre están listos a rendirse y aceptar la incontrolable avalancha de gastos e impuestos avanzada por el régimen de Obama y sus secuaces en el Capitolio.

     Revivamos el lema de Barry Goldwater y proclamemos parafraseándole que “una defensa moderada del capitalismo es un vicio y que una defensa consistente del capitalismo es una extrema virtud.”

[siboneyes]

O'Donnell vs. Coons: Analyzing Extremism

By Selwyn Duke

9/20/2010

     Unlike for most Americans, the Delaware senatorial primary was not my first introduction to Christine O'Donnell. I remembered her from as far back as approximately fifteen years ago, making appearances on shows such as "Politically Incorrect." So when I heard about her supposed "extremist views," I had to wonder if I was overlooking something. It's hard to forget such a pretty face, but did I fail to recollect some strange aspect of her ideology? 

So I did a Google search and quickly found criticism of her at the Huffington Compost. "What better source for getting the dirt, real and imagined, on a Tea Party candidate?" I thought. Yet I figured I knew what I'd find, and I was right. Had she ever proclaimed herself a Marxist? No, that was her opponent, Chris Coons. Had she ever belonged to a socialist party? No, that was Barack Obama in the 1990s. Did she once advocate forced abortions and sterilization? No, that was the president's "science czar," John Holdren. Had she headed up an organization that promoted "fisting" for 14-year-olds and books featuring sx acts between preschoolers? No -- while Obama's "Safe Schools Czar" Kevin Jennings did do that, O'Donnell's sin is far different:

She believes in sexual purity.

To be precise, she is a Catholic who embraces the totality of the Church's teachings on sexuality. I could elaborate on that, as I'm a devout Catholic myself, but this misses the point. To wit: The most the left can do when trying to cast O'Donnell as a danger in government is cite something that she believes has nothing to do with government. She won't propose the "Self-gratification Control Act" of 2011 any more than she will mandate that you must attend Mass on Sundays, fast during Lent, or believe in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist. (Note that former senator Rick Santorum never did, and as a devout Catholic who often attends Mass even on weekdays, he presumably believes all O'Donnell does.) What the left is mischaracterizing as her ideology is actually her theology of the body.

Then, I must say that I tire of how the word "extremism" is bandied about so thoughtlessly. This isn't primarily because the label is often misapplied. It is because it is always misunderstood.

The late Barry Goldwater once said, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." But to be more precise, extremism that reflects Truth is a virtue. After all, if you live in a land where everyone believes 2+2=5 and you insist it is 4, you'll be considered an extremist. All being an "extremist" means is that your views deviate greatly from those of the mainstream. It doesn't mean you're wrong.

But we don't talk about wrong, or right, as much as we should in this relativistic culture. Instead, believing that "man is the measure of all things," we naturally take the norms of current civilization as the default and any deviation from them as defect (in fairness, all cultures tend to be guilty of this). But the reality is that while Truth sometimes lies at the center of a culture, at other, times it occupies the fringes. Sometimes, like with an abolitionist in 1800, an extremist is just someone who is right fifty years too soon. Or you could say that an extremist may be someone who upholds the wisdom of the ageless despite the folly of the age.

So saying someone is an extremist relates nothing about his rightness. The problem with Islamic extremists, for instance, isn't that they're extreme -- any truly religious person is thus viewed in a secular time. It's that they're extremely wrong. This brings us to O'Donnell's opponent, Chris Coons.

Since the left is digging up old O'Donnell quotations, it's only fair to delve into Coons' past. And when we do, we find this interesting bit of extremism: An article he wrote titled "Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist." It details how a trip to Kenya that Coons took as a junior in college served as a "catalyst," completing his transformation from "conservative" to communist. Yet while one could elaborate further here as well, as with O'Donnell, this misses the point. To wit: Marxism has everything to do with government, as it is about transforming it through socialist revolution into something tried and untrue, something that slays the light and visits a dark age of a thousand sorrows upon its victims. It's something that killed 100,000,000 people during the 20th century and every economy it ever touched. That is a negative extremism if ever there were one, and it should scare the heck out of every one of us.

And what is this supposedly balanced with on O'Donnell's side?

Oh, yeah, the sexual purity thing.

Of course, Coons' piece was written 25 years ago when he was 21 and will be excused by some as youthful indiscretion. But I'll make two points. First, the ability to profile properly is always necessary when choosing candidates, as the information you will have on them is always limited and managed. A politician certainly wouldn't admit to harboring Marxist passions; thus, in keeping with the maxim "The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior," the best yardstick we have for measuring Coons is actions and pronouncements taken/made before he had a vested interest in lying about his aims. (And wouldn't we instinctively apply this when judging someone with a neo-Nazi or KKK history? Would we give David Duke the benefit of the doubt many would give Coons?) Second, when profiling, know this: People who embrace communism but then truly renounce it generally become passionate rightists. Those who remain leftists usually haven't renounced anything but honesty about their intentions.     

The reason why we should fear Coons is the exact reason why leftists fear O'Donnell: In their universe, moral statements are synonymous with policy positions. If they don't like salt, fat, tobacco (paging Mayor Bloomberg) or free markets, they play Big Brother and give us a very unfree society. But traditionalist Americans are different: We don't think that every supposedly good idea should be legislated. We understand that government and its coercion aren't the only forces for controlling man's behavior; there is also something called society, with its traditions, social codes, and persuasion, and something else called individual striving. We can preach sexual purity while also practicing constitutional purity. As to this, note that while some snarky leftists have criticized O'Donnell for living in the 1800s, the men who gave us our Constitution lived in the 1700s. And the norm back then was to have traditional sexual mores. But guess what they didn't have: Marxism.

Speaking of which, that great adherent of Marx, V.I. Lenin, once said, "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation." Given that we have a government poised to do just this -- with steep tax increases and rapid money-printing that will cause inflation -- should we really be concerned about a candidate's views on sexual propriety? Or should we be more concerned about a candidate who may be harboring Marxist passions?

So all the libertines amongst us should know that Christine O'Donnell will not take their sx toys away. But Chris Coons may want to take all their toys away. To vote for him is to play with fire.

[siboneyes]

Obama goes to church to hear a Muslim speaker!

WHY DOES THIS “CHRISTIAN” ALWAYS FLOCK TO HEAR THE MUSLIM MESSAGE?

by Brigitte de Maubec

Did Obama attend a Protestant church on Sunday because a pro-Palestinian Muslim was invited to speak?

    (Sept. 20, 2010) — Yesterday, on Sunday, September 19, 2010, the Obama family attended church for only the third time in a year. They went on foot to the St. John’s Episcopal Church situated across the Lafayette Park.

     But what is widely not reported by the White House and the MSM is that on that particular Sunday in that particular church, Dr. Ziad Asali, M.D., a Muslim, founder and president of the American Task Force on Palestine, was the guest speaker. He was there to speak on the subject of “Prospects of the two-state solution in the Middle-East.”

     According to the website of the American Task Force on Palestine, it is a “non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC.” The organization describes itself as “dedicated to advocating that it is in the American national interest to promote an end to the conflict in the Middle East through a negotiated agreement that provides for two states – Israel and Palestine – living side by side in peace and security.”

    Dr. Ziad J. Asali is described as “a long-time activist on Middle East issues” who has testified to both chambers of Congress about Palestinian interests, increased U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority, and “Israel’s disproportionate use of force” in Gaza.  A retired physician, Asali received his early medical training at the American University of Beirut.  He previously served as President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and Chairman of the American Committee on Jerusalem (ACJ), which he also co-founded   He also served as the President of the Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG).

    Next Sunday, September 26, 2010, another guest speaker, Dr. Aaron David Miller, a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is scheduled to speak on the same subject. Dr. Miller was a State Department Analyst and Negotiator from 1978 to 2003. According to the Wilson Center, his expertise lies in US-Middle East relations, Arab-Israeli negotiations, Arab world and Palestinian politics and Israeli politics. He has appeared on major network television as a guest, and his writing has been internationally published. His latest published book is titled The Much Too Promised Land; America’s Elusive Search For Arab-Israeli Peace and was published in 2008.  An excerpt from the book can be found here.

    (Dr. Miller is not to be confused with a famous organist with the same name and professional title who ironically has been a church organist and music director at Protestant churches.)

    Let’s see if Dr. Miller’s views on the subject will have enough of the same attraction for Obama and his family to return to Church or if the appeal of golf shall once more be irresistible.

[sirjohn]

THE GRAND OLD PARTY – THE REPUBLICAN PARTY BEGAN AS A TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

     It is vital for the future of our nation that the Republican establishment reconcile with the Tea Party movement. The way for the GOP leadership to do that is to recognize that the Republican Party began as a Tea Party movement.

    As Republicans try to repel the socialist onslaught, the way to win – and to deserve to win – is to embrace our party’s original reform agenda. The patriots who created our Grand Old Party did so in order to preserve the vision of the Founding Fathers. And the way they did it has valuable lessons for us today.

    Let’s first look at the party currently in power. Democrat ties to the legacy of Thomas Jefferson are negligible. In fact, the Democratic Party was established in 1832 at a national convention organized by Cabinet secretaries and other prominent supporters of the Andrew Jackson administration. From the start, the Democratic Party was a top-down organization. Submission to the grand leader and astroturfing – that is, fake grassroots activity – for the Democrats it’s the same old same old.

     In contrast, the Republican Party began as a truly grassroots movement very similar to the Tea Parties now sweeping the nation. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things – that’s what created the GOP. For example, at the famous meeting in Ripon, Wisconsin that named the party “Republican” there were no politicians at all, just fifty-three men and women who took a stand. The first Republican state convention, in Jackson, Michigan, was attended by thousands of farmers and laborers and small businessmen. From the grassroots upward, that’s the Republican Party at its best.

     The Republican Party was born as a civil rights movement. Our party began as a protest against a very specific outrage perpetrated by the Democrats, a law they wrote in 1854 that allowed slavery to expand into the western territories. The Democratic Party had chosen to promote slavery, and the police state and economic stagnation that went with it.

     Amid the intense reaction, opponents of slavery united with a single purpose: “Enough concessions to the ‘Slavocrats’! – That’s what they called Democrats in those days, Slavocrats – “Enough concessions to the ‘Slavocrats’! We draw the line right here. NO SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES.” Over the next few months, these groups coalesced into our Republican Party.

     The Republican Party was phenomenally successful from the very start, growing swiftly into one of the country’s two major parties. The Whig Party had disappeared because they refused to take a stand on THE issue of the day: slavery, yes or no. Let’s not forget that slavery is the biggest big government program of them all.

     Today, the question is…socialism, yes or no. So that the Republican Party does not go the way of the Whigs, we must take a stand on the issue of the day. We must say NO to all things Obama.

     Republicans achieved a synthesis of the best of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, combining Jefferson’s appeal for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” with the Whig Party’s Hamiltonian agenda for economic growth.

   In time, established political figures, such as Salmon Chase and William Seward, joined the Republican Party. Nonetheless, rank-and-file Republicans were the core of this Grand New Party and many achieved leadership positions. In a similar way, Sarah Palin and other influential politicians are contributing their talents and prestige to the Tea Party movement, but they are not in control.

    Instead of trying to co-opt the Tea Party movement, Republican leaders should recognize that it is in the best tradition of our Grand Old Party. Tea Party activists are championing the original agenda of the Republican Party: free minds, free markets, free expression and unlimited opportunity.

    Here then is our chance to re-establish the Big Tent, but it won’t be done by reaching out to Democrats, compromising on this or that issue. On the contrary, we must remain resolutely opposed to the Democrats. When, back in the 1850s, the Democratic Party tried to promote slavery, people of honor and common sense realized that the minor issues that had been dividing them just did not matter. The only issue that did matter was stopping the expansion of slavery.

    And so once again, our Grand Old Party is poised to attract a broad range of moderates and independents, who, whatever their differences, will come to understand that the only issue that does matter is stopping the expansion of socialism. Yes, millions of Americans are going along – for now – with the President. But, as the Obama administration becomes ever more disastrous, the Republican Party will be the political home of everyone who cherishes the American way of life.

    Throughout his political career, Frederick Douglass appealed for Republican unity, in what he knew to be “the party of freedom and progress.” He speaks to us today.

     Ill-informed critics of the first Republican President Lincoln fault the Emancipation Proclamation for only freeing slaves in areas not yet under the control of the U.S. government, but — because of the Democratic Party’s resolute defense of slavery — the federal government had the necessary authority only over so-called “property” of the rebels.

     Within two years, the Republican-controlled 38th Congress followed up this great advance by enacting the 13th Amendment, banning slavery throughout the nation.

  A  Republican President issued the Emancipation Proclamation
   IN 1862, President Abraham Lincoln (R-IL) issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Effective at yearend, all slaves in Confederate-controlled territory would be “forever free.”

     « The first African-American at the Naval Academy was nominated by a Republican congressman | Main | a recent Review of Back to Basics for the Republican Party at Barnes & Noble »

   In 1872, James Conyers became the first African-American midshipman at the United States Naval Academy. He had been nominated by Rep. Robert Elliott (R-SC), also an African-American [pictured]. Sadly, racial prejudice and abuse forced Conyers to resign after a year. He later graduated from Howard University Medical School.

     Author, Michael Zak is a popular speaker to Republican organizations around the country. Back to Basics for the Republican Party is his acclaimed history of the GOP, cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision. He is also the author of the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar. His Grand Old Partisan website celebrates more than fifteen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. See www.grandoldpartisan.com for more information.

     PARMA — Recently I read a column by Leonard Pitts in the newspaper attacking Glenn Beck for a statement he made on remembering the true history of the civil rights movement. I felt like the column misrepresented history.

     When the Republican party was founded in 1854, its purpose was to outlaw slavery. After Republicans gained power they passed the 13th Amendment (1865), which outlawed slavery. While 100 percent of Republicans voted for its passage, only 23 percent of Democrats did so.

Next, Republicans introduced the 14thAmendment (1868), which guarantees citizenship to African Americans. No Democrat supported it, although 94 percent of Republicans did.  Next, Congress passed the 15th Amendment, giving the freedom to vote to African Americans. This amendment was ratified (1870) with no Democrat support.

     Congress passed other civil rights bills that were later repealed when Democrats took control of Congress. Finally, two of the most famous bills passed, the Voting Rights Act (1965) and Civil Rights Act (1964). Without Republicans who brought similar bills up year after year, these bills may have never been put up for a vote. These bills would not have passed without Republican support; although Democrats held a clear majority, only 63 percent of Democrats voted for the bills while 83 percent of Republicans did so.

      Another interesting piece of history is that by 1880 several African American congressmen had been elected from southern states and all of them were Republican.

     Republicans are not rewriting history, Democrats are!

The true Republican party has not changed. The party still holds the same values as it did in 1854. The Republican still loves liberty and equality for all. Though the issues have changed, the true Republican party still fights for individual liberty and Glenn Beck belongs to the “We” who stood and stands for liberty and equality for all.

—Amber Donihue, age 14

    CARL SCHURZ, REPUBLICAN HEROE
Grand Old Partisan salutes Carl Schurz (R-MO), who arrived in the United States on -born Schurz became a leader of the German-American community in Missouri and entered politics as a Republican. He was a delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention, where he supported Abraham Lincoln for the nomination. President Lincoln appointed him ambassador to Spain. A year later, Schurz became a general in the U.S. Army during the Civil War.

    In the summer of 1865, Schurz traveled throughout the post-war South. His report on conditions during the administration of Democrat President Andrew Johnson outraged Republicans across the nation:

    “The former masters exhibited a most cruel, remorseless and vindictive spirit toward the colored people. They have no rights whatsoever. They are killed, and their bodies thrown into ponds or mud holes.”

      In 1868, Schurz was elected to a term in the U.S. Senate. He did desert the GOP for the Liberal Republican Party in 1872 but then returned in time to serve as Secretary of the Interior during the Rutherford Hayes (R-OH) administration.

     Gracie Mansion, residence of the mayor of New York, is in Carl Schurz Park. The plaque on his statue [pictured], at Morningside Drive and 116th Street, reads: “A Defender of Liberty / A Friend of Human Rights”

     This article is adapted from Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of the GOP cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision.

• “The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.”
  Abraham Lincoln

• “The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.”
  Ronald Reagan

[sirjohn]

Obama’s Glass House
Victor Davis Hanson

9/22/2010

      America’s discontent may stem in part from suspecting that the administration thinks we’re stup...id, fearful, cowardly racists.

/////********//////******="margin-top: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">     Preachers and professors have it hard as presidents. They sermonize too much. Finally the public gets tired of being lectured by those whom they increasingly see as no more upright than themselves. Prophets crumble from feet of clay, and stones shatter glass houses. So it was with Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter, and so it is now with Barack Obama.

     The Obama administration is throwing stones at a lot of people — John Boehner, Republicans, tea-partiers, Fox News, Glenn Beck, doctors, insurers, Wall Street, and business in general.

    Such invective invites a response, and here the White House is becoming as fragile as glass. We saw that recently in the presidential petulance at supposedly being talked about “like a dog,” and in a touchy press secretary Robert Gibbs unloading at everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Forbes magazine.

      Last February, Attorney General Eric Holder, self-appointed racial philosopher as well as the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer, lectured his fellow Americans: “In things racial, we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” Professor Holder went on to complain that “certain subjects are off limits and that to explore them risks at best embarrassment and at worst the questioning of one’s character.”

     Fair enough: Most Americans would be willing to engage Holder in his desired racial seminar — if it were two-sided, and did not devolve into something like the imbroglio over Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.   Before even hearing the facts of that case, remember, the president of the United States, as arbiter of racial relations on campus as well as commander-in-chief, rushed to condemn the Cambridge police for acting “stupidly” and then accused law-enforcement officers in general of racial stereotyping.

     In contrast, did Eric Holder’s proposed conversation include questions of welfare dependency, anti-social cultural messages, or lack of personal responsibility — in addition to racism — to explain much higher than average rates of illegitimacy, illiteracy, failure to graduate from high school, and criminal behavior among some minority groups?

     So far, Holder himself has never dared to raise such “off-limits” controversial issues. Yet in the case of the Arizona immigration statute, the attorney general was hardly so reluctant. He lambasted the legislation as “unfortunate,” possibly unconstitutional, and leading to racial stereotyping — all before he had even read the law. Cowardly?

      Recently, Michelle Obama advised Americans to eat better foods to combat the national epidemic of obesity. She envisions using government power to teach restaurants how to restructure their menus, and helping targeted communities with federal money to improve their collective diets.

Fair enough once more: As a nation we are probably too fat, and First Ladies often seek to better the American condition.

     But as in the Holder case, does the First Lady, as first professor and preacher, really wish to lecture the American people on their personal sins and to follow that up with federal programs and expenditures? If the issue is to promote better health by using the bully pulpit of the First Family in symbolic fashion, then Michelle Obama might first more quietly start at home with her errant husband.

    The presidential role model is secretively a chain smoker — a habit that promotes both heart disease and cancer, and kills millions of Americans each year. At almost every photo op, President Obama is enjoying hot dogs, ice cream, and beer. The president deserves a private life, and his smoking and consumption of fatty foods are his business alone — unless his spouse is suggesting simultaneously that the rest of us must not only avoid such behavior, but seek to fund and institutionalize its antithesis.

      A voter might well respond to the First Lady’s lectures on diet with something like, “First convince the first husband to stop smoking and to eat better, and then I’ll listen to your advice about my own diet.” Otherwise one might conclude that smoking can keep down weight as effectively as restricting one’s diet can. Such are the wages of a White House of “Do as I say, not as I do.”

      We saw more of this disconnect between sermons and behavior when the president lectured us that in rough times we all had to cut back: “Everybody’s going to have to give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game.” Apparently that did not mean giving up one’s vacation at Martha’s Vineyard or the Costa del Sol. Lectures have consequences.

    Businesses and banks are increasingly criticized for not hiring and lending while they’re sitting on trillions of dollars in cash. Both charges — made by the administration and the unions — are true. But does greed and self-interest alone explain these organizations’ reluctance to spread their wealth to others?

       Maybe private companies were stung by the Obama administration’s reordering of the creditors in the Chrysler bankruptcy case. Or maybe their hesitancy derives from the serial anti-business references during the Gulf oil-spill disaster, such as the ones about putting a boot on BP’s neck and forcing it to cough up $20 billion in clean-up costs. Or maybe it has something to do with the stereotyping of insurers and doctors as greedy. Or with the refrain about suspect earners who make over $250,000, and who thus owe the rest of us higher income taxes and health-care surcharges.

     Again, our average voter might respond, “If you want a two-way conversation on recovery, why not question the unions’ anti-democratic tendencies, haphazard productivity, and inflexibility, or the tax avoidance of allies like Charles Rangel, Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters, and dozens of White House staffers, or the mismanagement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the wasted stimulus, or the new bureaucratic empires that can only hamper commerce?”

   Then we come to radical Islam. The president weighed in repeatedly on the so-called Ground Zero mosque. Here too he wishes to use the symbolic prestige of his office to offer a teachable moment about a local controversy. But to play sermonizer-in-chief requires at least appearing fair-minded.

      At various times, the president misrepresented the disagreement as one of legality rather than of taste and common decency. Obama finally implied that his illiberal opponents were lashing out at Islam because of rough economic times — reminiscent of his earlier psychoanalyzing of rural Pennsylvanians who voted against him in the primaries supposedly out of fear of immigrants and those “not like them” rather than because of opposition to the policies he was promising to implement.

     When Mr. Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, we first heard that he had “allegedly” done so — the same sort of tentativeness we witnessed in the president’s first interview with Al Arabiya. There he suggested that American problems with Islam were due in part to past American policies and presidents. In the Cairo speech, one would have thought Córdoba — a Western city conquered by invading Muslims — was a modern-day Amsterdam rather than a typical medieval city in which the dominant religion forced other faiths to pay obeisance.

    So an enlightened president likes to lecture less-informed Americans that Muslims are not more likely than other people to promote, or be silent about, radical Islamic terror. Again, fair enough.

    But is he as worried about the reality that, of the 31 major foiled terrorist attacks against the United States since 9/11, all of them involved Muslims?

     Again, our mythical voter might say something to the effect that “I will be careful to honor the right of Muslims to build a $100 million mosque near Ground Zero if you will at least ask the Muslim community to condemn Western Muslims who keep trying to kill those about them.”

     The terrorist impulse simply does not abate. We saw it most recently in Britain, when police broke up a plot by Algerian immigrants to kill Pope Benedict — who four years ago was a target of Muslim death threats for quoting a Byzantine text. Americans know that even as the president lectures them about being intolerant of Muslims, additional Islamist plots to kill them will be uncovered — and will probably not earn as much presidential moralizing as the Ground Zero mosque.

     When an attorney general, a first lady, and a president offer lectures to the American people about their purported unfounded fears, bad habits, and prejudices, like any sermonizer they invite reciprocal scrutiny, both about their own conduct and about the fairness of their critiques. As a result, a stone-throwing White House is becoming a shattered Glass House.

– NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.

[sirjohn]

Obama's subversion
Exclusive: Joseph Farah condemns president's plan to strip God from America

 September 22, 2010

By Joseph Farah

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ST. MAARTEN – Was it an accident or slip of the tongue when Barack Obama "edited" the Declaration of Independence by dropping one word key to the understanding of who endows men with their rights?

For the last 10 days, a group of about 500 Americans have been meeting first in Miami and now on a cruise of the Caribbean to discuss the critical importance of the Declaration of Independence to a complete understanding of the unique experiment in liberty that America represents.

We've heard from Alan Keyes, William Murray, R.C. Sproul Jr., Gary DeMar, Chuck Missler and many others, who have reminded us that true comprehension of our Constitution is impossible without recognizing the underlying foundation laid by the Declaration of Independence.

It's the same message I have been delivering with "The Tea Party Manifesto," a book I wrote to promote a mission statement for the grassroots movement that offers Americans a chance to reclaim their country from those who have placed it on a path toward tyranny.

If I had any doubts that what we have been saying at our Taking America Back National Conference and the Tea Party at Sea is correct, they would have been allayed by Obama's deliberate, calculated mutilation of the Declaration of Independence this week.

In case you missed it, Obama removed the reference to the "Creator" when he quoted a portion of the Declaration at a meeting of the Congressional Hispanic Congress.

Obama said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

But the actual quotation reads: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

This was not an accident.

It was not a slip of the tongue.

It was not an oversight.

It was not an innocent mistake.

This was an attempt at deicide by Obama.

This was an effort to strip from America's national heritage a direct connection with God Almighty.

Even worse, this was Obama's way of stripping from America's consciousness the notion that liberty's underpinnings require direct accountability and responsibility to the Creator, not man-made government.

Our rights do not descend from Obama, much as he might like.

Our rights do not descend from government, much as he might like.

Our rights are not endowed by evolution, much as he might like.

They are endowed by our Creator.

That's a key word that the Obama mentality would like us all to forget.

He clearly doesn't want Americans to be thankful and responsible to their Creator. He would like Americans to be indebted as subjects to him and the power structure he represents. In other words, we would like us to forget the sacrifices of our forefathers over the last 234 years, shirk our pledge to independence and freedom and be like the other nations of the world where the ultimate authority about right and wrong, law and lawlessness, liberty and servitude is defined by an elite class of mortal men.

Obama let it all hang out there with that simple act of omission.

But it wasn't merely an omission.

It was omission by commission.

Don't think for one minute that speech wasn't written in advance with an express purpose.

The purpose was to take America one more step away from God the Creator.

A couple decades ago, someone asked Alexander Solzhenitsyn how his beloved Russia had become such a nightmare world in the era of Soviet tyranny and repression. He answered in four simple words that we need to understand today to escape the same fate:

"We forget about God."

That's what Obama would like us to do – to forget about God, to forget that our unique experiment in liberty owes its success to a creed recorded in the Declaration of Independence, to forget that the acceptance of biblical morality is a requirement of self-government, to forget that we have a choice of the rule of law or the rule of men.

Obama reached a new height of subversion with his bastardization of these keywords from the Declaration of Independence. That betrayal of the founding document of our country – America's birth certificate, if you will – shows him not only unworthy of the office of the presidency, but unworthy of U.S. citizenship as well.